What Group Are You In?

We all belong to a group.  Think about it.  We really do.  No matter what you do there is a group imbedded in it.  If you work, the office and/or company are a group.  If you go to school, you belong to a school or college group.  If you are retired, you most likely belong to AARP.  If you belong to a health club, that is a group too. Social network sites are filled with groups and we all seem to belong to at least one.  Are you a member of AAA?  They are a big group and are known for offering members a discount. 

If everyone is in a group, then why don’t group sales rule the roost in the world of ticket sales and marketing?  Group sales accounts for no more then 30% on the high end and usually runs around 15% to 20%.

No matter what type of show, event, or sports team you work with there are all types of groups that belong to you.  Let’s look at some examples:

If you are a family show who are your demographics?  Well the two biggies are moms and kids.  Moms belong to all kinds of groups.  They belong to playgroups, neighborhood groups, PTA’s, and online social groups.  But what about moms that work?  Could you offer a group discount to moms @ work?  Why not go to HR managers at companies and offer a “Family Night”?  Kids belong to groups too.  They belong to youth groups, sports teams, dance groups, music and theater groups, and even toy clubs like American Girl Doll.  Families belong to church groups, country clubs, etc…

If you are a sports team you have lots of groups to market to also.  The youth sports teams that belong to your sport are the “lowest hanging fruit”.  Group sales departments should be all over this.  My kids belong to sports teams and we barely see any group opportunities come through.  This should not be selective.  Every single youth sports team needs to be offered at least one group outing (if not more) every season.  As I have stated in the past, these kids are your future ticket buyers.  They want to love and follow your team. Make it accessible to them. Don’t wait for them to call you.

If your show involves seniors, you have tons of opportunities.  You have retirement clubs, retirement communities, senior centers, bus companies, doctor’s offices, churches, fraternal groups, etc…  Have you ever thought of selling group tickets to pharmaceutical reps?  They could organize a group outing for patients and doctors.  They may even have the money to pay for the group.

With our economy out of whack, groups should be even more important today.  Customers are always looking for deal.  Groups can offer that.  People like to hang with other people they know.  Groups do this.  Groups fill up lots of empty seats. Isn’t that why we are in this business?

The point I am making is that group sales needs to step to the plate.  The days of just sending out a mailer to a list that is used over & over is not enough.  I am not dissing the group sales person, I am speaking to management.    If you sell for multiple events a year, a group sales department of one or two people is not going to cut it.  You need people on the streets and in the office. You need to give them the resources.

Start the new group thinking today.  Make a list of what types of groups will come to your event.  But even before you start that list write down every group you belong to.  You may be surprised.

 

Get Your Group Sales Out Of A Rut

All of you who read this blog on a regular basis know that I am always preaching about “thinking outside the box”.  This type of thinking goes for everyone in the event & entertainment business.  Group sales is an area that good use this type of thinking.

Group sales tend to get caught in a rut.  They don’t get the attention that other parts of marketing get.  Group sales tend to only use the traditional methods of direct mail and phone calls to sell.  Don’t get me wrong, I know that these methods still sell tickets.  But are you maximizing your efforts?  Are you leaving no stone un-turned?  Now is a perfect time to look at our group sales methods and give them a 21st century makeover.

All of us that sell group tickets usually don’t get into the transportation business.  We don’t want to book the transportation to get our groups to our events.  But did you know that you can put deals together that gets the bus companies working for you?  When is the last time you made sales calls to the bus/transportation companies? Many of them have sales departments.  You can put together group packages for the bus company to go out and sell.  Here is the Northeast we have two of the biggest casinos in the world.  A huge chunk of their business comes from busses.  They cut deals with the bus companies to make it a good deal for the customer to use bus transportation.    We can do this with our events.  If you are a sports team and you need to sell tickets, you should have ticket package deals in place with every bus company within a 200 mile radius of the venue.   

Group sales departments should be going digital.  Group sales people should be working the social networks.  They are all kinds of social sites that you could be working.  Facebook has tons of “groups” you could be pitching.    If you are selling for a family show, are you working the “mommy” social sites?  Why not find a group that makes sense to your event and offer the “group” members a deal?  Hold a special section and special price for these members.  You might be thinking “is this really a group”?  Why does one person have to buy the block of tickets to make it a group?  Why can’t individual members of a group buy tickets for a block of tickets on hold for them?  Stop thinking “old school”. 

Are you capturing mobile data and email addresses?  Wouldn’t it be nice to send text messages to group leaders?  Think about how quick you can get the group offer out.

Eight years ago I was part of a team who put together an online group sales company.  We went after 1000 plus employee based companies.  We offered their employees the opportunity to buy group tickets to a wide selection of events right from the comfort of their desk.  Yes, the employee could buy two tickets.  If you have this many employees and quality events, you will sell the minimum group requirement.  Think of this as virtual consignment with the company.  Amusement parks have been offering tickets for sale at the Human Resource departments for years.  With this system, HR managers don’t have to worry about being in the ticket business.  They can still offer a benefit without huge amounts of effort.

When we put together a deal with a company and offer a discount we call it a promotion.  Why can’t the group sales team put together a deal.  What about offering customers of a company or retailer a group sales deal? Ski areas have been doing this for years.  They put together group packages with sporting goods and ski apparel stores.  These stores sell these packages (sometimes with transportation) back to the customers. 

Some of you might be saying “we do all this”.  If that is you…great!  But I bet most group sales people are not.  Let’s make it a goal for 2009 to start thinking.  Look at every opportunity as an onion.  Keep pulling back every layer until you can’t.

 

Facebook Marketing

Now that I have been using Facebook on a daily basis, I have been looking at all the marketing opportunities that go with this type of online service.

Of course you can buy advertising directly with Facebook.  These are the ads that are placed on the right side of the page.  I would like to know the click rate for these ads?  Do members really check them out? 

But the most effective way to market is to directly ask the member.  The Obama & McCain campaigns have all kinds of direct marketing on Facebook.  I did a quick Obama search under events and it produced more then 500 Obama event causes.  McCain produced the same results.  Here is an interesting stat: The cause group that claims they are the “official” McCain group has almost 217,000 members and the big Obama group has more the 800,000 members.  There are two reasons for this.  I believe the Obama campaign has done a better job of marketing to the social websites and he appeals to younger voters which use the site.  When I was searching both campaigns on Facebook I could have looked forever.  The groups for both candidates go on and on.  Some have just a few members and some have tens of thousands.  No matter what, this is a lot of eyeballs promoting the candidates.

A great marketing tool with Facebook is the join an event option.  The first one I received was asking if I was voting. I had the option to RSVP with confirm or decline.  It shows you how many others have already confirmed.  This is a wonderful marketing tool because you have the person do something (interactive) which will help them remember and you have direct stats to tell you how many saw it.  It also creates hype.

Starbucks is using the election & Facebook to market.  They are offering free coffee to all who tell them they voted.  They added the RSVP feature to this.  Not because you need it to get the coffee but it tells them how many people really read it.  The last count I saw was over 61,000 people saying they would attend.

We all should be taking a closer look at social networking.  I think this is the next big marketing battleground.