Talking Tickets 5 August 2022: Attendance Decline! The Pistons' Brand! Pricing! And, More!
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Hi!
I’ll be in Charlotte, Asheville, Atlanta, and Athens this month…among other places.
I’m also going to launch a co-hort based pricing class in September. More details next week or the week after. I’m just getting the finishing touches on the website and landing page.
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To the Tickets!
1. The Big Story: Is scheduling behind the AFL’s decline in attendance?
Big Ideas:
You must revisit your value proposition now.
Do you understand who your competition is? Really?
How much money is doing things the old way costing you?
I’m going to do this one a little different than normal because it can sometimes be difficult to translate something from the Australian market to the American market. So what I am going to do instead is write up 10 ideas about turning around a business that’s hit a bump, might have stagnated, or is in decline using some of the challenges that the AFL has run into as fans return from the pandemic.
To me, the AFL is amazing. So this is likely just a minor bump.
If your crowds have declined now, have you taken the step back to look at your strategy? A lot of places haven’t because they are understaffed or they just haven’t seen the importance of thinking through their strategy. What does strategy really mean in the context of tickets? Knowing what your value is in the market and understanding your customer. AFLW does this very well.
If you’ve allowed TV to schedule the games to fit their schedule, does this put you in competition with something else? Look at the ratings, are you just filler content that gets well paid? Or, are your games competing with something else entirely that could cause you long term damage for short-term gain?
Have you looked at your market lately? I know that many organizations haven’t really done any market research because they are likely overstretched. Also, many organizations didn’t have a culture of market research before the pandemic. Now, even less. This might be causing you to miss opportunities worth millions of dollars in tickets sales a year. For the AFL, looking at their market has been a constant, especially in Melbourne, over the years because the AFL has many teams in Melbourne and it is the sports capital of the world.
What does your advertising look like? Most of the ads I see everywhere for live entertainment are tactic. This means they are short-term, sales activation type ads that lose their effectiveness if not paired with some long-term, top of the funnel brand building ads. Track your numbers over 3 years and you’ll see that not supporting your ticket sales with some brand building will make your targeted sales ads work less effectively each year and each year the trend downward will accelerate.
Getting fans back into the seats is about value: I started in nightclubs and our number one job was getting people in the door. If we got you in the door, we could make money off of you and you’d be glad to give it to us. Because we threw a party. In thinking about your game presentation, look at it through the lens of your customers. What’s fun for them? Not for you, but for them? Go back and check out my conversation with Ruth Hartt about ‘Jobs to Be Done’.
Recognize that the length of your sales cycle is longer than ever: I’ve been studying the length of the sales cycle for teams around the world and it is amazing how many touches it takes to close a sale…teams might count 8-11 and go with that number, which has been pretty consistent around the world, but the real number is often much more than that because there are numbers of touchpoints that we don’t even know are going on that add value or subtract value in the sales journey. This means we need to be more thoughtful about how we are showing up for our fans and potential fans.
You do realize that most fans don’t go to tons of games: Most fans might go to one or two games, tops. This is the same data that shows up in most product categories, if you dig deeply enough you recognize that this mythical creature that goes to a dozen shows or games a year is a small portion of your audience. This means that you need to grow your pot of potential fans by doing brand building and working to expand your addressable audience.
Don’t try and do a one-size-fits-all approach: There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all approach to ticket sales. You have to get into your market, know your customers, and design your products and services to fit their needs. The AFL does a really nice job of that like with that program I shared last week from the North Melbourne team. You need to be in your market, not doing the same thing that every market does.
Have you priced your market out of your games? Most businesses start the pricing discussion by talking about the revenue number they need to hit. That’s backward. You need to start by understanding what your customers value and what they are willing or able to pay for that value. The chain of value has been broken in a lot of sports for a long time. In the States, this has been insulated by the continuing willingness of brokers to overpay for a lot of inventory in hopes of finding a “hit”, but who knows how long that is going to last.
Look at the numbers from a different angle: how much money is not making a change costing you? I’ve used this trick a few times lately and we’ve discovered that minor changes can lead to big bucks. Segment the market differently, there’s a 9-figure market opportunity. Just keep rolling down the road the same way, your sales and renewals start slipping and you are down high-7 figures fast. Position yourself differently to your corporate partners and all of a sudden you’ve found a low-8 figure annual deal. My question is are you looking at your numbers the right way?
Keys:
Be specific to your market. Don’t try to do what other folks in other markets are doing.
Check your numbers: prices, renewals, new sales, premium, partnerships. Look at them from different angles, you might find opportunities waiting.
Understand that fans behavior has changed. It takes 66 days, on average, for someone to change a habit. We had a much bigger interruption since 2020. What does that mean for the way folks act? Buy? Consume your games and events?
2. The Road to Recovery: Putting a little Detroit flavor into the Detroit Pistons:
Big Ideas:
Too many sports teams’ brands could be from anywhere at this point.
If you have an identity, you double down on it. You don’t run from it.
Brand management is on display here.
Your brand is the thing people think of when they think about you. I learned coming up that everyone should have a definition of a brand that they use as a guide when they are thinking about branding and brand management.
My definition is that a brand is the accumulation of all of the interactions your market has with you over time, good and bad. Keeping in mind that the good stuff adds up slowly, but the bad stuff can wipe you out in a minute.
I bring that up because this story about the Pistons and how they are embracing the nature of black culture in Detroit to infuse the brand with personality caught my eye a few months back and I wanted to break it down a bit more.
Life happens, so I return to it now.
First thing, the Pistons are doing a really nice job of brand management here. Without asking the team in Detroit what they are going for, I’d say that the words/phrases they are attempting to get across to their audience are:
Detroit
Personal
Relevant
I’m likely off on one of them, but it doesn’t matter for the point of brand management which is that you want to make certain that your brand comes through in everything you do.
This means that every piece of content, every ad you run, and every decision you make is held up against that ideal.
That’s what really stands out with the post-it note about “black culture”.
Never forget what you want your market to think of.
That’s on display.
Second, if you have an identity, lean into it.
I’ve bemoaned some of the places I’ve visited over the years and how you could be anywhere in the world, not necessarily any place particular. I’ve often felt that one of the big downsides of Nats Park was that more of DC wasn’t built into it.
When you have a personality and an identity in your city or brand, lean into it.
That’s what the Pistons are doing here. They are leaning into their city, the culture of Detroit, and the unique personality of the area.
Good for them.
Your brand should be uniquely you.
Third, brand building takes time.
A lot of teams and organizations think that they can only build their brand when there is a great show or a great team in their building, but that is far from the truth. You can and should be building your brand every day.
You need to have your brand codes like the Pistons do with:
The logo
The retro logo
The blue and red
The chant of “Detroit Basketball”
And, probably 1 or 2 other things.
These things need to be infused in everything you do and when you think you’ve done them enough, picture me yelling at you, “No. Use them on everything and use them more.”
Key Take Homes:
Brand codes help you build a brand over time. You can’t over use them.
Make your brand have a personality that reflects the city or place you are in. Place is an important part of branding.
Remember that brand management is the job of making sure people think what you want them to think about you.
3. How To: Set a pricing philosophy for your organization:
Big Ideas:
Mark Davis draws a line on pricing.
You still need research.
His words are music to the secondary market’s ears.
Mark Davis gave a quick interview to LVSportsBiz.com recently where he talked about pricing and why the Raiders will never dynamically price their tickets.
It is interesting because it is actually stating your pricing philosophy out in the open. Plus, he shared some thoughts on the secondary market that I’m sure will have the brokers excited about.
First things first, Mark Davis sets a line in the sand by saying the Raiders will never dynamically price their tickets.
I actually like this because he says that all the teams they are playing are professional teams, but what he is really signaling is that you are coming to see the Raiders and the Raiders are the draw.
I like that.
Have pride in your team and product.
This philosophy might change over time…more likely than not, but I dig it in the short term.
Second, setting prices well does require research.
Having the highest price on the secondary market means that you are likely leaving significant money on the table. Or, it means that prices are high because you have the highest ticket and brokers are trying to recoup some of their cash.
I’m guessing it is a little bit of both.
Either way, you need to do some research to find out what the market will really absorb…even if you don’t work to capture everything.
Finally, Davis’s comments about a ticket being the customers to do with as they please after they purchase are music to the secondary market’s ear and probably make the NFL’s HQ’s ears ring.
What does this mean for the secondary market?
They don’t have to worry about Mark Davis saying they can resale.
They can also use his words in any arguments about whether fans should have the right to resell tickets.
So this is entirely great news for the secondary market.
YOLO!
BTW, the stadium is amazing…if you haven’t been, go.
Take homes:
Do your pricing research. Find out what is a good price in your market, even if you underprice your inventory.
Never look a gift horse in the mouth. When someone says something you find favorable, run with it.
YOLO.
4. Tech/Tools/Profiles: Moveable Ink helps the North Melbourne AFL team be more specific:
Big Ideas:
These are the kinds of tests that even smaller organizations can run within their email systems. You might not have the scale, but you can still test messages.
The extra time on personalization is paying off in conversions, renewals, and win-backs.
Also, look at how this isn’t done around one offer, but breaking the market down to use in segmented ways around many different offers.
Trishan is great!
The AFL does great work in general with understanding how to engage their audience.
I’m sticking this into the newsletter today because I like the way that it brings together the full compliment of wisdom that the AFL team has developed and put to work over the last few years.
First, experimentation.
These teams and the AFL league office aren’t taking a one-size fits all approach.
That’s important because if you have a lowest-common denominator message that’s pretty much guaranteed to not get you the best results.
But if you test messages in smaller segments, you have a greater potential to find success from your email campaigns.
How do you know what is working?
You test and experiment.
Second, segmentation.
In most market segmentations, you’ll see that a well-done one will provide you 6-8 unique segments.
Unique means that a customer can’t fit in two segments at once.
If you are looking at your segmentation as we speak, you might say, “I only have 4 or 3.” I’d say that you may or may not have the data you need to get where you need to get to, but 4 is about as low as you can go and find the practice useful.
Segmentation in the case of North Melbourne meant breaking folks down by behavior. It also might mean doing a segmentation for each of your products like memberships, tickets, renewals, and win-backs.
The key is that you need to break the market up into behaviors so you know how to make the right offer to them.
That’s on display here.
Third, personalization.
In Australia, they do this the best.
Someone might say this is due to the size of the market, but I would say it has a lot to do with the competitive nature of the markets as well. Looking at North Melbourne, for example, Melbourne is the most competitive market for live sports of any market in the world. I run out of fingers and toes before I begin to get to the end of the number of professional teams in Victoria and Melbourne that are competing for many of the same discretionary entertainment dollars.
The point is that customers and fans in Melbourne demand more, as they should.
This makes personalization much more important because you can’t just mail it in with your customers. You have to dig deep, build the relationships with the fans that will stick, and make sure every message is ingrained with a touch of the personal and the personality.
Key Take Homes:
Don’t take your fans for granted. Even though your market might not be like Melbourne, you need to respect your customers. They can go somewhere else.
Use the power of your technology to help you experiment. Everyone can A/B test at this point.
Segment your market. Most organizations I’ve talked to haven’t done this since the pandemic began and it is making the job of recovery even more challenging.
5. Blurbs and Such:
Audible Theatre works to bring theatre to earphones around the globe: My big takeaway from here is that if you have Amazon’s money behind you, you can roll out shows quickly and don’t have to worry about profitability.
Sam Freeman shares 50 tips to help arts marketers: I did 101 ways to market/sell/promote your live event once so I get how tough these lists are to create. Not impossible, but challenging.
Emmanuel from Spinzo wrote an end of the year list that holds up: Check this list out and you’ll see that even though this list was written 8 or 9 months ago, it holds up. Evergreen topic: a new sales model is needed.
Angela Higgins talks marketing the arts in Australia: Angela and Jo are putting on a conference, BTW! You should get down there to check them out! Because they are brilliant ladies, doing brilliant work.
In late-2018, Kirk Wakefield wrote about sales management needing to catch up to corporate sales management: Unfortunately, if I updated the date to mid-2022, not much would have changed.
Bookmyshow is under investigation in India: In the States, we’d just call this good business.
Bristol Rovers go back on ‘all-digital’: There are plenty of fans and organizations that still want hard stock tickets. I know some companies still have hard tickets written into their contracts and plenty of fans that would prefer to have hard tickets to keep as souvenirs for shows, events, and games that have a meaningful impact. If organizations want the data from their customers, add some value to the ask.
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Check out my friends at Booking Protect!
We continue to see the value of offering refund protection in the data. Feedback shows that the most challenging issues since re-opening have been pretty consistent for teams, theatres, and venues:
Consumer confidence
Changes in buyer behavior
COVID policies coupled with refund or exchange policies.
Offering refund protection helps you provide a solution for these challenges.
Hook up with the team at Booking Protect!
I did the FREE webinar a few weeks back but had some technical issues with the live stream on Microsoft Teams. I’m not sure if was Teams or my new desktop computer, either way…I’m going to continue to play with the tech stack and I posted the audio file in the podcast stream. So, pricing ideas to your heart’s desire.
Lots of great podcast conversations: check out recent conversations with Amanda Lester, Paul Williamson, and, Brett Goldberg.
Let me know who you’d like to hear from by sharing your ideas with me here.