20th Century Marketing In The 21st Century

Everyone who reads this blog on a regular basis knows that I love the new media.  Even though I was trained in live entertainment marketing in the 20^th century, I have embraced the internet; social media and any new form of marketing that will help me reach my audience.  But just relying on 21^st century technology is not enough.

If you are applying your 20^th century bad habits to the 21^st century then nothing is going to change.  In fact, you could make your results worse.  Remember, today’s marketing offers instant feedback and social interaction.  If you use today’s marketing to announce and put on sale (break) a show, how are you doing this?  If you just announce, run an ad, and put the show on sale then you are wasting your time and money.  It’s just like they did it in the 20^th century.  This was especially true with rock promoters.  God forbid they would kick off with a real promotion that created real buzz.  Today’s marketing is all about involving your customer.  They want input.  They want interaction.  They want a relationship!

You can put good 20th century marketing practices to work in the 21^st century.  First you need to slow down and do your homework.  Do today’s entertainment marketers even do marketing plans anymore?  Who is your customer?  I like to use the old apple tree analogy.  When I write my plan I first go after the low hanging fruit.  What marketing tools will help me get it?  Social media is good for this.  Then I get out my ladder (even though I am afraid of heights) and start climbing and working for those harder to reach apples.  I don’t know about you, but I think the hard to reach apples taste sweeter.

Today’s marketing takes effort even though you can do it from your computer.  If you just sit on your ass in front of the computer and try to market, you will develop 20^th century bad habits that will aid bad marketing health.  Apply the good, old fashion exercise of hitting the pavement with your creative marketing mind and your feet.

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.

 

Charity Makes Good Marketing

If you are a show, event, or sports team are you always sold out?  Do you have empty seats looking for a butt?  Why not use them to work for you and help a charity at the same time.

I went to a charity fundraiser over the weekend to support my kids youth hockey program.  At this event they had a silent auction, live auction and raffle items available.  What I was most impressed with was the amount of items.  There was tons of stuff to bid on.  There needed to be.  This is how the youth hockey group raises money.  The fundraising committee worked overtime to search out and obtain these items.  My thought as I walked around looking at the items was this is a great marketing opportunity.

In this age of cutting marketing budgets and trying to hit as close to the bulls-eye as possible, exposing your product at a fundraising event is good.  Picking what events you give to is most important.  This was a youth hockey fundraiser so what type of marketing demo attends?  They were parents of kids in hockey.  Chances are, they like hockey, sports, and anything related to their kids.  So in turn the most popular items were these things.  Tickets to the local pro sports teams, in particular the Boston Bruins and New England Patriots were big items.  Summer hockey camps for kids were huge items.  What I did notice was that the tickets for the pro teams did not come from the teams but from season ticket holders.  If I was with a team, I would set aside tickets for these events.  This is your low hanging fruit.  These are your past, current, and future fans.  If you are a hockey team, you don’t get any closer to the bulls-eye.  Think how you could market the brand to your core demo at this event while giving away the tickets.

At the company I work for, we get written charity ticket requests everyday.  I try to give to almost all of them if possible.  Because I get so many, I set the rules on who and how many.  At the very least, it exposes the brand and fills the empty seat to someone who wants to enjoy my product.

You don’t have to wait for a charity to come to you.  There are now new opportunities to market your product while doing good.  I mentioned during the summer of one online organization cmarket/BiddingForGood; http://www.cmarket.com/auction/BiddingForGood.action.  EBay also has a charity site. They both host online charity auctions.  On these online charity sites, you reach thousands of potential customers for nothing more then giving away a little product.