It’s That Time Of Year Again

Well…were now into the holiday shopping season.  We just had “Black Friday”, “Small Business Saturday” and “Cyber Monday”.  As a marketer of tickets, did you participate in the fun? If you didn’t, you should have.

For some odd reason, we in the live entertainment business don’t think of ourselves as retail.  We put ourselves in a different category.  But we are retail.  We should be marketing our tickets with the same gusto that the big box retailers do over the holiday shopping season. I do see some venues and shows offering holiday specials but not at the level of retailers.

It’s more than “makes a great holiday gift” inserted in a newspaper ad.  There should be Black Friday mega deals.  We should be offering Cyber Monday deals.  AMEX was behind Small Biz Saturday.  They do a lot with the ticket selling world.  Why not have them do something big for us?

In our business, we don’t like to discount tickets.  Too many pieces of the pie to dish out. But if we planned ahead for the holiday season we could do the big discounting now and maybe not as much later.  If you are a venue, you know most of the upcoming year’s schedule.  Think of yourself as a “big box store”. Why not offer deep discounts for the first holiday shopping weekend and then stop.   Think about the fact you could sell tickets now for a show that doesn’t go on sale until May.  Any tickets you sell now are less that need to be marketed later.  Think of the discounts as part of the marketing budget.

In our business, we all like to create hype and excitement.  Isn’t that the fuel behind the holiday shopping season?

Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Group?

This is the story of my adventure on the other side of group sales.  I was the group leader trying to book lunch for a group of kids.

Over the holiday weekend my daughter’s pee wee hockey team was in a tournament near Patriot Place.  For those outside the Boston market, this is the New England Patriots version of City Walk or Downtown Disney.  At Patriot Place they have shops, entertainment venues, and restaurants.  We all agreed this would be a great place for the kids to have lunch after their game.

The kids wanted to go to Red Robin for burgers. So a week before the event I called them.  The date of our event happened to be Black Friday.  They informed me they could not book our group because they expected a big crowd.  I received the same response from every other family restaurant also. 

I sent an email to Red Robin explaining our situation.  Guess what, they called and made it happen!  Red Robin explained to me that they don’t normally book groups or take reservations. When we got there, they were ready for us at the exact time we asked for.  The service staff was great!  They had all 35 of us feed and out in one hour.  That is very impressive with a group of 12 year old girls.  The kids were happy and the parents only have good things to say for Red Robin.  In the end, we had a good customer experience and I know they will get repeat customers from our group.

You should also know that Patriot Place management was very understanding and tried to help us too.  They get it. They want groups coming to their place. They also tried contacting a few restaurants for us.

Here is what I don’t understand.  Why would any organization turn down guaranteed business if they have the capacity?  All of these restaurants had no idea how much business they would get on Black Friday.  In fact the weather was really bad that day with heavy rain and chilly.  This was predicted.  Patriot Place is an outdoor area with indoor shops. As we walked around the area we saw how low the attendance was due to the weather.  If you can book a group, does it not help you when the walk-up customers stay away?  Is it not better to know what you have versus not knowing?  Why are some people still afraid of group sales?

Follow Retailers Holiday Lead

The holiday shopping period is about to start (actually it started before Halloween).  If you carefully study what retailers are doing for this period, you will see what the mindset of the consumer is. 

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a story in the Marketplace section on “Catering to the Recession Mentality”.  The bottom line in the article is that the consumer is going to be frugal this season.  Because of this, here are some interesting observations:

• Retailers are promoting “Black Friday” sales now
• Retailers are spending larger chunks of ad dollars in October & November
• Walmart is offering 100 toys at $10

What does this mean to all of us in the event & entertainment business?  I believe we should take a page from retail and follow their lead. 

We should:

• Put our 2010 events on sale now with a “buy early” offer
• Don’t just put the event on sale and not market it.  Budget some money toward the early sale
• We should absolutely use the holiday season in our marketing.  Example: “tickets make great stocking stuffers”

Think about the fact that while the economy may be starting to rebound, its not back yet.  With over 10% of the working population out of work and the other 90% scared about their jobs, consumers are very tight with the money.  Especially with the discretionary dollars. 

We are not a necessity of life.  However, it is this time of year when consumers are looking for nice things to spend on each other. This is gift season, recession or no recession.  Let’s take advantage of the holiday shopping season.  Put your 2010 events on sale now and give them a reason to spend money with you.

Consumers Want A Really Good Deal

The results are coming out now on how retailers did through November including the big Thanksgiving weekend.  As we all know Black Friday did pretty well and was up from 2007.  However, the numbers have been dropping ever since.  The reason of course is the deals.  Consumers are buying for the holidays but they are going for the deals.  Deep discounts, promotions with teeth, this is what is working.  As marketers in the event and entertainment business we should be looking at this current trend and adjusting our marketing plans accordingly. 

While we may or may not be able to offer deep discounts we can offer promotions with teeth.  If you are going to put together a ticket package or promotion around the holiday period or to counter the recession don’t just do it to do it.  Create a promotion or package that will make an impact.  A good quality promotion should create some buzz, get to your demo, and move tickets. 

Use all the marketing tools you have to create the buzz.  Some of these don’t really cost much.  Spread the buzz on the social networks.  Go deep into these sites to find groups that are your true demo.  Try it, they are really there. Go to where the customer is.  If you are a sports team, go where the fans are.  If you are family show, where are the moms and kids hanging out?  These are your “low hanging fruit”.  Make your promotion fun.  Remember, you are selling fun. With consumers in a bad mood, they are looking for an escape.  Show them you are that escape.  If you can lower your price without losing your shirt or cheapening the product, do it.  This is no time to be greedy. 

Consumers are buying holiday gifts.  They just want a REALLY good deal.  Let’s get them thinking that event, sports, and entertainment tickets are a really GOOD deal.

Practice What I Preach

Since I have been writing for the past few weeks about using tickets as great holiday gifts, I thought I should help the sports and entertainment business by purchasing some tickets for gifts.  Today I am trying three different ways to get tickets.  I am buying tickets for one event at a box office, purchasing tickets online for an event, and I am trying to win tickets for another event via a mobile marketing promotion.  I will report back on the experience I had with all of these methods.

 

Post-Holiday Marketing Notes

Brand Packaging

Over the holiday weekend I went to Patriot Place.  For those not from the Boston area this is the new shopping and entertainment complex that surrounds Gillette Stadium (home of the New England Patriots).   The Kraft family built this very cool place to create a year round money making machine.  It reminds me a little of Universal’s City Walk or Downtown Disney.  We went Friday morning between hockey games that my daughter was playing in.  The place has big brand name stores, restaurants, movie theater, plenty of free parking, and even a live event place that is kind of like House of Blues.  One really important item was missing from this, people.  This was Black Friday (biggest shopping day of the year) and the stores were empty except for the Bass Pro Shop.  That was packed. But lets be honest they are an attraction.  Let’s call it the “Red Neck Disney”.  Very cool, interactive and great for the kids.  I believe the reason the rest of Patriot Place was quiet was lack of marketing.  I did see one radio station setting up for what was a mid-day promotion.  A place this size needs more then one radio station to make it work.

More Texting

I noticed that more and more marketers are using mobile text messages as a marketing tool.  I saw both TV and newspaper ads asking for customers to text them to receive something “free”.  This is a good start but how do we take this to the next level?

See I Told You

The numbers are in from Friday and people did spend money at the stores.  Retailers dropped their prices and their pants and the customers came in.  People do need to shop for the holidays.  They want the holidays to be an escape from all the bad news out there.  This leads me to the next topic.

Give The People What They Want

The biggest selling items were the ones with the best prices and the items that consumers want.  As event and entertainment marketers we should take a lesson from this.  Put together an event or show that our customers want and give it to them at a reasonable price.  I know we can do it so let’s try.

Cyber Monday

Today is what is now called Cyber Monday.  This is the biggest online shopping day of the year.  You know which group dropped the ball again this year?  How about the event and entertainment business?  I have already written in the past about marketing tickets as holiday gifts.  How many promoters of events marketed their products around today?  Don’t most ticket sales happen online?  Wouldn’t it be smart to market some shows with even a (God forbid) discount today?  Ticketmaster does most of their business over the net.  Today should be a “really” big day.  If I did Ticketmaster’s marketing I would have had a whole marketing campaign around buying tickets today.