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This is the first article in a series where we pick the brains of live entertainment promoters to discover their tips and techniques for staying successful amidst worsening economic times. If you’ve got some good tips you’re willing to share, please email Eric Housh or DM @ticketbiscuit.
While many concert promoters and live entertainment acts are struggling with the fallout of the economic recession, Josh Gair of Impact Entertainment Services in Orlando, Florida, says people are attending events more than ever. The key, he says, is using technology in a smart way to spread the word and reach fans. This approach, he says, helps him fill the house and keep costs down.
Using the Tools
“I use every free tool that I can, anything to help spread the word,” Gair says. “If we book a celebrity for an event, I’ll immediately post it to twitter and facebook, and encourage my network to re-tweet. A lot of times, I will get direct messages back from leads that often turn into business.” Gair is a poster representative of a movement that is rapidly gaining steam amongst live event promoters – acknowledging the importance of internet-based networking tools and using them to find audiences. Gair argues that it’s pretty much a necessity in today’s game. “I think that those who aren’t leveraging these tools are just too busy doing the business to slow down and realize the potential,” he states.
But that oversight may prove costly. In a recent interview with John Gerome, Gary Bongiovanni of Pollstar indicated that though the2008 numbers were good for the live event industry, they don’t necessarily predict a rosy 2009. He indicates that most of the tickets for events in the winter season were actually sold well in advance, before the whole economic picture was understood. So in short, staying profitable in the live entertainment industry in 2009 will require some innovation.
“It’s key to know your audience and figure out how to connect with them;” Gair explains, “our target audience is a content-hungry generation. Our blog gets about 300-400 hits per day, and it is translating into real leads.” He explains that a lot of industry blogs fall short because they are all about self promotion and hold no value to the reader. “I write stuff that I would want to read,” he adds. Good content is only a part of a bigger system, involving cross promotion across several web properties and physical pieces of collateral. “When I publish a blog, I’ll post a notification to twitter and my facebook groups, and start a discussion in the LinkedIn groups I am a part of. The only thing I haven’t done yet is YouTube, but it is in the works. And of course, my web info is on my business card as well.”
But Gair’s approach extends far beyond internet tactics, as he considers PR to be a crucial aspect to a successful event as well. “Never underestimate the value of free press,” he states, “at a recent event we had a celebrity performer do an impromptu unannounced mini-show in the city. It was incredibly effective at generating buzz and free media for our event. Think of tactics that will go viral, that will get people talking.” The only common e-tactic that Impact doesn’t use is email. “It’s just so impersonal, there’s no air of exclusivity to it. It has no personality. People want to feel special, bottom line, and email doesn’t accomplish that.”
With Social Networking and Internet tactics, Gair says it’s key to go into it with the right mindset. “You don’t do it to make money. But after a while, if you keep giving, you will get things in return. That’s our strategy.”
About Impact Entertainment: Impact Entertainment, based in Orlando, Florida, has been enhancing events with premeir talent, top quality entertainers, and celebrity appearances for over a decade.
A few days ago I wrote a post about the concert industry being in recession. I probably should have said ticketed events in general, because the emails I received shortly afterward certainly would indicate that the current economic climate is impacting more than music shows. Museums, comedy clubs, theatres – the impact is universal across the board.
It’s pretty common behavior. Times get uncertain and people start cutting back on expenditures. Dining out, live entertainment, the movies- these are pretty much seen as expendable line items on personal budgets once the belts tighten. Recessionary times don’t have to mean that business grinds to a halt though. You can still fill the house and invest in your club’s marketing during down times, as long as you spend wisely. The secret is to choose techniques that will create fans of your club or promotion, not just the performer or entertainer who happens to be there. Here are a few tips:
- Get social. If you don’t have a Facebook page, get one. Offer incentives to locals who become fans on Facebook. Print your facebook profile address on your tickets and link to it from your website. Once fans sign up via Facebook, you have a fast, easy, and free way to connect with them (and for them to connect with others). Here is an app which will allow you to create an easy to remember facebook profile address. Also consider signing up for a Twitter account.
- Get charitable. Consider hosting a free concert or event with the price of admission being donations to a local charity. A friend of ours named David Oblas recently held an MMA fight in Georgia where the only price of admission was a toy for Toys for Tots. It was a raging success, and several people attended the fight who had never been to a fight before. And of course the press loved it. So let’s see- Dave got new fans, great press, and tons of community goodwill. How much is that worth to you?
- Get data. Roy Englebrecht has sold out fights in southern California for over 20 years, yet barely invests in advertising at all. How does he do it? At each event, Roy has contests for cash prizes. In order to win, all you have to do is fill out a form with your name, address, and email. At each fight Roy gets about 1000 of these forms. So while the contest may cost Roy 100 or 200 dollars, he gets the contact info of 1000 fight fans in the local area in exchange, and is able to communicate directly (and freely) with them in advance of his next fight. Consider this: if you are NOT capturing your customers contact info, you are leaving money on the table. Your online ticketing software should be able to capture this for you. If not, it may be time to find one that will.
Do you have any tips for weathering economic tempests? If so, weigh in in the comments section.
Those of you who subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on Twitter already know this, but nonetheless we’re fired up to announce that TicketBiscuit has been selected as the official ticketing provider for the Rick and Bubba Show! Some of you may have heard them talk about us on the radio this morning – we’ll be providing Rick and Bubba with our state of the art software to automate their Golden Ticket Process as well as helping them ticket other events as they come along.
Rick and Bubba Golden Tickets POWERED BY TICKETBISCUIT
For those of you who may not be “in the loop,” the Rick and Bubba show is a daily talk radio show carried in about 60 markets nationwide from Georgia to Alaska. They reach literally millions of listeners on a daily basis. Their studio features “Golden Ticket” seats where listeners can come and watch the show live. I listen to Rick and Bubba often, and one day a couple of months ago heard about their problems keeping track of the golden tickets and their desire to put a ticketing system in place that would automate the process. I thought- “perfect fit!”
Big props to Scott “The Tech Guy” Ferguson for working with us to get the Biscuit implemented with Rick and Bubba. You’ll see the Golden Tickets link live on rickandbubba.com starting Monday January 12.
Back in July, when the IPhone 3G launched, I wrote about the future of Mobile Ticketing. In October, Juniper Research released a study estimating that by 2013 over 400 million users worldwide will choose to purchase tickets over their mobile device. I think that number will be higher, partially because of the ongoing convergence of mobile devices and the PC, partially because of the increasing proliferation of cell phones, and partially because today, TicketBiscuit released our Mobile Ticketing software, and made it available to all of our clients free of charge.
Wait, what? Oh, yes. TicketBiscuit becomes one of the first ticketing providers in the nation to release this technology, and the absolute first to make it free.
For our clients, this means that they get a mobile optimized version of the TicketBiscuit powered pages on their website.
For our clients’ customers, this means they can now buy tickets using their cell phone, or handy, or celly, or piece, depending on where you’re from.
Check out the video release below.
If you want to see the mobile software in action, point your smartphone to any of these sites and click the “buy tickets” link
or check out any of our other clients’ websites. If your favorite club isn’t feeling the TicketBiscuit love yet, send them our way.
A plea to the big 4 music labels: please get a clue
January 27, 2009 in Commentary | Tags: EMI, Guitar Hero, Music Labels, Pandora, Sony, Universal, Warner, YouTube | by ehoush | 1 comment
Attention, executives of Sony, EMI, Universal, and Warner: please get a clue. When a fan incorporates music that you own into an online video, it means that they like it enough to add their own creative flair to it and spread it among their social networks.
Why do you discourage that? Because you don’t get a penny for everytime someone buys the song? And YouTube, for goodness sakes, could you guys not have seen this one coming?
I read this article just now about how the big four are now re-negotiating their contracts with YouTube and as a result, videos are being pulled from the site. While I can put on my “old-timey” glasses and see why they would have such a knee jerk reaction (lawyers gotta eat too, by the way), the common sense part of me is screaming WTF?!?!?!
So here is my plea to the music labels: give us change. Give us leaders that are unafraid to share content and encourage fans to experiment with it. Make your artists tracks available for download on Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Quit trying to get paid every time a song is played, and instead invest in artists and technology that can connect with fans and connect fans. As for YouTube, my answer is simple. Require that fans cite the source for music that is used, but do not prevent the usage of your music. You can even work with YouTube to add links to buy the tracks on iTunes. After that, have contests, promotions, giveaways – invite fans to make their own music video for some of your new acts. Create a YouTube channel and pump it through your website. Feed it to your Facebook Group. Tweet if you dare. Just get involved and get present, and listen to your fans.
In the future of the music biz, labels will find and refine talent, promoters will bring the talent to the stage, and software developers (Activision, Red Octane) and online distribution channels (iTunes, Pandora)will bridge the final interface gap with the mass public. CDs will go away. Radio will be marginalized. Fans will find and interact with music on their turf and on their terms, empowered by broadband and inspired by their social circles. This is the future, like it or not.
So quit fighting the inevitable, or else your labels and the arcane business practices you so vehemently protect will go the way of the Big 3 automakers.
But the public won’t bail you out.