🎟️ Subscriptions Ain’t What They Used To Be!

Good morning to you! 

I’m still collecting responses to my NPS survey. It is 4 questions this year and takes about 45-60 seconds. Let me know what you think. 

(BTW, I read through some of the responses: thank you. I’m going to start adding a few graphics to make it easier to get the content starting next week. And, someone mentioned more focus on smaller venues and leagues…these ideas for the most part will work no matter what league, town, or venue you are in. 90% of the process of marketing and strategy is the same for everyone. But I’ll try and find more examples to help illustrate that going forward.) 

Chatted with Simon Weber from Vivenu on “The Business of Fun” this week. Give it a listen! 

PS: 10 Quick Takeaways From Yesterday’s Antitrust Panel on Monopolies in Tickets.

I. The Big Story: Subscriptions’ value has to be what’s in it for the customer:

It isn’t the customer’s responsibility to know the value they should receive from being a subscriber. It is your job to make it seem like a no-brainer not to come to your productions. 

Start deep: Ruth Hartt has come on the podcast to talk “Jobs to Be Done” and arts marketing before. Give the conversation a listen.

Marketing’s foundational concept: Market Orientation tells us:

• We don’t really know what the customer is thinking without asking them.
• Research is the foundation of effective marketing. 
• You are not your customer. 

You can put this in action by taking two simple actions:

• Have some small focus groups or 1-on-1 conversations. 
• Doing an annual NPS survey. Take mine now.

What do you learn? 

• Qualitative Info
• Quantitative Info

Talking to folks 1-on-1 gives you qual data points. These data points let you create a hypothesis about what is working or not in your business.

The NPS survey is quant data and lets you dig into the individual feedback. Meaning, a bit of both. 

Why Should You Care? One key lesson in communications is that if your message isn’t received, that’s not the audience’s fault…it is yours. 

Too much marketing and advertising in tickets takes the standpoint of telling their audience, “I care about this and you should care about this in the same way.”

The thing I teach in my workshops: “You aren’t your customer.” 

This means:

• You can’t see the event like a customer, so you have to talk to them. 
• You can cause harm to your business by marketing to your audience the way you’d like to be marketed to. 
• You can’t recognize what the customer values without asking them because you are too close to the production, venue, or event. 

Trends: Subscriptions and season tickets are becoming a tougher sell. 

The Hamilton bounce for a lot of arts organizations has passed. 

Full-season purchases are becoming rarer in sports unless you have some really limited seating options, you are a corporation, or you are a broker:

• The limited options that sell out are really limited. 
• Corporations are seeing less utility in buying FS packages instead using the secondary market more and more to fill orders when they absolutely need tickets 10-12x a year. 
• Brokers: are struggling to make their FS purchases payoff. 

3 Steps to Start a Turnaround: 

• Step back and look at your market. I’ve found that people aren’t really doing research. They are looking at data reports, but they aren’t going through the process of setting up a hypothesis and finding out the answer. 
• Analyze the segments of your market. You should be looking at behavior. What kind of slicing data are you using? How many segments are you looking at? (4-8 is about right. There is some variance, but you go over 8 and you’ve probably gone too far.)
• Figure out how you are positioned in the market. Are you about your events? Are you against someone else? Do you even know the alternatives that people can pick over you?

Go Deeper: 3 Myths about subscriptions. 

II. Tools: Market Research

It ain’t technology today, but it is a tool that most folks aren’t using nearly enough. 

The Big Idea: Effective marketing begins with the realization that you aren’t your customer. This requires you to do research. 

It is why I do my annual NPS survey to find out what people are liking, dislike, and struggle with to offer more value. 

The big key is to know what you are looking to understand. 

Remember: The most valuable requirement in good market research: time! 

It takes time. Sometimes much more than you want it to. 

III. Concepts: Strategic Thinking: 

Most of what you call “strategy” isn’t strategy at all. 

Definition: Strategy is the art of making choices. Specifically around:

• What your destination is? (Ambition)
• Who is your customer? (Market Segment)
• Why you? (Value Proposition) 

To make a successful strategy, you can’t just throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. That is guesswork. 

Strategic Thinking is ultimately about picking where you will focus and where you will ignore. 

This means that when it comes time to figure out if a tool is right for you, you’ll know the answer because you’ll know who your customer is and whether or not a tool reaches that customer. 

You’ll know what to say because you’ll know why people pick you over the competition. 

Go Deeper: My strategic frameworks:

• Beyond Planning
• CFA Framework
• More than a plan

IV. Bullets: Keys to Building a Strategy in Your Business…

A sneak peak of what we deal with in “The Whiteboard Workshop”:

• What does success look like?
• Who is your customer, really?
• Why are they going to pick you?
• How are you going to reach those buyers?
• If you can only pick one thing to focus on, what is it?
• What resources do you need to pull off these actions?
• What are the next steps that you are going to take?
• How are you going to deliver your message?
• How will the sales process take place? 
• What goals and objectives are you going to set? 

Is the workshop right for you? Send me a note. 

V. Links: 

Scott Galloway asks, “Who Keeps It Real For Me?”: 

Obviously, that’s a good question. 

Too much of what we deal with daily can make us feel like we are missing something. 

You aren’t. 

Get yourself some context to keep yourself sane. 

Women’s Rugby World Cup could break attendance records: 

I’ll just sit this here and remind you that investing in women’s sports is the right thing, but also a smart thing economically. 

Hockey Canada finds itself in a full on crisis: 

The first rule of crisis management: stop digging the hole any deeper. 

I don’t know if this is going to have irreparable harm to Hockey Canada, but it does seem needless. 

The crisis management strategy here is straight forward:

• Acknowledge the issue. 
• Address what you can in the moment. 
• Give an update on the next steps you are taking. 
• Deal with the situation at hand. 

If not, you open the door to lots of issues ethically and financially. 

#BreakUpTicketmaster goes live: 

Good use of proper kerning in the hashtag. 

Their petition calling for the DOJ to investigate Live Nation gained over 4,000 signatures in the first 24 hours. 

I’m not holding my breath on any antitrust actions, but there does seem to be a lot more interest in putting constraints on big tech and other anti-competitive practices. 

So…you never know. 

I’ll have a bit more on this next. Plus, check my site. 

Linktree: Find everything I’m up to.

Join the ‘Talking Tickets’ Slack Group. Almost 300 people from around the world.

Booking Protect:

Customers are buying refund protection at rates 2x higher than before the pandemic.

Offering your customers refund protection:

• Gives customers certainty in their purchase.
• Gives you a new revenue stream.
• Improves your customer service.

Great podcast conversations: Take your business to new heights by learning from the best in the business.

Recent Conversations:

• Aren Murray
• Bill Guertin
• Scott Goodacre