In years past, independent ticketing companies were challenged when it came to handling big spikes in demand. And when phone sales ruled, only the largest ticketing companies had call centers big enough to handle the volume. But times have changed. Independent ticketers are now the technology leaders. And telephone demand has fallen off dramatically. Massive demand spikes are no longer a problem for the leading independents.

So that leaves marketing. For a minute, let’s assume that a massive email database and domain name recognition are as effective at moving tickets as some of the tools and techniques offered by leading indies. I don’t believe for one minute that’s true. But let’s pretend it is. The question becomes, are the email list and domain name worth it?
What if you had an extra couple of bucks per ticket to spend on marketing – without increasing the total cost to fans? Could you use that extra money to market your shows as effectively? My bet is that you could do a better job. All promotion is local, right?

First, consider those happy times you find yourself with a show that’s going to sell itself with no marketing? With a major, you – via your customers – have paid for that email list and domain name whether you need it or not; with the right indie, those unneeded marketing dollars can fall to your bottom line.

Or what if you could lower the total cost for fans, without it impacting your bottom line, and without it dulling your artist’s image? Maybe that cost difference is enough to move the bulk of your sales into the advance column, saving you from the whims of weather and everything else that can decimate your door sales.

Have you considered the good will that a smaller ticket fee can engender amongst your customers? YOUR customers. With most indies, you have unfettered access to your customer data. You can slice and dice and data mine and analyze and target like never before. This, after all, is what good promotion is all about. It’s not just placing bets on bands you think will sell. It’s about having an intimate knowledge of your audience so you can match them up with the right events and take some risk off the table. Sometimes it’s about having some powerful data to give you the confidence to pass on the “next big thing” that’s not right for your customers – or to recognize that you can fill the house for an emerging artist while you can still afford them.

The real promise of independent ticketing is that it puts more of your fate back in your hands. If you don’t want that control, and the responsibility that comes with it, go play craps. Go play roulette. Promoting shows wasn’t always just about assuming the risk. A promoter is a marketer, an entertainment broker. To be successful, you must know the product and the market better than anyone. And you must have the tools and authority to put that knowledge to work.

“In 2008, we were one of the first ticketing companies to offer seamless Facebook integration, and now we’re setting the pace again,” said TicketBiscuit Chief Marketing Officer Eric Housh. “Using Facebook for live event promotion is a necessity now. If you’re not doing it well, you’re not as successful as you could be,” he continues, “Our new app has taken it a step further, transforming a client’s Facebook Fan Page from a marketing channel into an actual sales channel .”

Housh says that the TicketBiscuit Facebook app is unique in that it links in real time to the client’s TicketBiscuit account, meaning that ticket sales can be taking place simultaneously on Facebook, on the client’s website, via the TicketBiscuit-provided mobile optimized smartphone interface, and via TicketBiscuit’s web-based box office point-of-sale software, with all inventory managed centrally in real time.  The look and feel of the ticketing interface matches the clean look of Facebook. And in keeping with TicketBiscuit’s core philosophy, the client’s brand stays out in front. “It takes the concept of white-labeling to a whole new level: now you can have a white-label ticketing solution seamlessly integrated into your Facebook Fan Page along with your other web properties.”

Though TicketBiscuit just publicly announced Fan Page Ticketing today, it has been in testing for a couple of months. Several clients, including the Re:Generation Festival, Yarmony Grass Festival, and Comedy Zone Charlotte are already using the app with great success. The TicketBiscuit Fan Page Ticketing App can be added to any Facebook Fan Page with a couple of clicks. Housh says the only requirements are that you be an Admin of the Page and that you have a TicketBiscuit account.

Those that know TicketBiscuit know that our core mission is to relentlessly innovate to help clients sell more tickets. We were among the first to offer full social media integration, are one of the only to offer a powerful built in email newsletter engine, and remain one of the sole ticketing companies with an active affiliate program. We’ve led the way in helping active customers find and buy tickets, and empowering ticket buyers to spread the love socially and virally about the events they’re attending.

ScoreBig opens up a whole new horizon to our clients: the ability to be introduced to new customers. We see this as the perfect complement to our efforts to date. Plus, ScoreBig’s tech is way cool. They apply a Priceline-type “name your own pricing” approach to event tickets. You can find out more about ScoreBig here, or read the full press release below.

Welcome to the TicketBiscuit family, ScoreBig!

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TicketBiscuit, ScoreBig Announce Strategic Marketing Partnership

Birmingham, Alabama – February 2, 2011. TicketBiscuit, a leading provider of ticketing software and services, and ScoreBig, a new website that allows live entertainment fans to make an offer on more than a half million live event tickets  - all below retail price and without fees – today announced a marketing partnership that will enable hundreds of TicketBiscuit clients nationwide to leverage ScoreBig’s proprietary platform and marketing network to increase ticket sales.

TicketBiscuit CEO Jeff Gale said the partnership will help solve a key problem in live entertainment. “Currently, some 40% of tickets to live entertainment events go unsold. ScoreBig has developed a business model and service that solves this problem. ScoreBig fills unsold seats – and here’s the key –without devaluing our clients’ brands and cannibalizing full price sales.  It’s a truly innovative approach, and it fits perfectly with TicketBiscuit’s core mission: to help our clients sell more tickets.”

Gale added that the ScoreBig partnership is the latest in a series of ongoing innovations at TicketBiscuit.  In addition to pioneering social media integration with Twitter and Facebook, and offering a built-in email newsletter engine, the company unveiled an affiliate program in August that pays commissions to website publishers for referring ticket sales. “Our clients have seen great results from our affiliate program. It helps active customers – those who already plan to purchase – find our clients,” Gale said. “The partnership with ScoreBig is the perfect complement: it helps introduce new customers to our clients and move inventory that would otherwise perish.”

ScoreBig VP of Business Development Mark Meyerson said that having TicketBiscuit on board will broaden ScoreBig’s inventory and make the service more valuable to members. “TicketBiscuit’s impressive client roster of music venues, comedy clubs and event organizers will give ScoreBig members even greater access to quality entertainment at great savings nationwide.”

About ScoreBig
ScoreBig offers members guaranteed savings of up to 70% on tickets to live sporting, music and theater events with no fees and free delivery. ScoreBig partners with venues, sports teams, promoters, artists, entertainment properties and others to help move unsold ticket inventory safely and securely without the cannibalization risks and negative brand perceptions associated with traditional discounting. ScoreBig was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in Los Angeles. To learn more about ScoreBig, visit www.scorebig.com.

About TicketBiscuit
TicketBiscuit, founded in 2001, provides proprietary software that powers the online ticket sales of over 500 clients in 1500 venues across the United States and Canada. TicketBiscuit’s complete suite of services and solutions empowers clients to sell tickets online through their own websites, via call center, and via the TicketBiscuit web-based box office interface.  For more information on TicketBiscuit, please visit http://www.ticketbiscuit.com .

Contact:
TicketBiscuit Press Inquiries
866.757.8330
info@ticketbiscuit.com

ScoreBig Press Inquiries

Jill Wahler
646.428.0602
press@scorebig.com

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Why is this significant? The standard industry practice with live entertainment ticketing is to advertise one price, but when  ticket buyers go online to purchase, several fees are heaped on to the total.  For example, across town from WorkPlay at the larger arena in Birmingham, tickets to a popular upcoming country show are advertised at $27, but after ticketing fees, delivery fees, and order processing fees are added these tickets actually end up costing the buyer almost $20 more per ticket.  Fans have long complained that ticketing fees are exorbitant and unnecessary.

The concept of an “All In Price” is not entirely new. Live Nation / Ticketmaster experimented with convenience fee- free tickets during the summer of 2010, but fans complained that the fees were dropped for only the least expensive lawn seats.   Ticketmaster announced on a company blog in August 2010 that it would present fees earlier in the purchase process, yet the fees presented don’t include add-ons like ticket delivery and order processing charges.

By contrast, all of the advance tickets for the April 4 Guster show are the “All In Price” of $25, with no added fees or charges at checkout. Prices will be $27 on the day of the show.

“The collaboration of a ticketing company, a venue, and an artist to arrive at a fair price represents a new way of making live entertainment a more pleasurable experience for the fans,” TicketBiscuit CEO Jeff Gale said. Todd Coder, who recently joined TicketBiscuit as the Director of Business Development, added “The process was pretty easy, it just required clear and open communication among all parties, and a bit of willingness to deviate from the way things have always been done.  A lot of credit goes to WorkPlay and Guster for helping us make this happen.“

TicketBiscuit plans to use the positive experience with Workplay to make the All In Price more common in live entertainment. We’ve recently launched a website, www.allinprice.org , to share our approach and insights with other venues, artists, and ticketing companies hoping to further the practice.  “The fans demand an All In Price for tickets, and if we can give it to them, they will buy more tickets.” Gale said.

Tickets for Guster go on sale at 10 am Wednesday, January 19, at the All-In-Price of $25. They can be purchased at www.workplay.com or over the phone at 205.879.4773.

Back before Google, Facebook, Songkick, Eventful, and the other myriad services and websites that help fans find events, Ticketmaster arguably provided a valuable service in aggregating events on one website. But now, that “service” does more to hijack event owners’ website traffic than it does to provide exposure for those events.

I often hear Ticketmaster clients claim that “people just know to go to Ticketmaster.” I disagree. They know to go to Google; they know to go to Facebook; and they subscribe to services like Songkick which notify them of events they’re interested in. This new paradigm frees event owners from having to get the word out about their events (let your customers do that for you) and lets them instead focus on building brand loyalty and establishing direct communication with customers.

The live entertainment biz is changing – for the better if you ask me. As the combined Ticketmaster and LiveNation struggle to maintain their outdated business model, event owners would do well to sidestep the “middle man.” Those who do not may find their life rafts getting pulled under by that massive sinking ship to which they are tethered.

Already built in to all TicketBiscuit accounts, this powerful little bugger lets you schedule pre-written, post-dated tweets about your events that will go out automatically – from your own Twitter account – at pre-defined times relative to your events.

TicketBiscuit's Twitter App Makes it easy to tweet consistently about your events.

Your auto-tweets are fully under your control. Customize any part of the tweet, and insert event-specific details by using the handy drop down menus. Some of the details you can include:

• Event title, name, and date
• Links to buy tickets and to event details pages
• Ticket price ranges
• On-sale dates and times
• Venue city, state, and name

Scheduling your auto-tweets is a breeze as well: choose to publish the tweet when the event is announced, when the tickets go on sale, on the date of the event, or at any date or time prior to any of these.

You can schedule as many tweets as you like!

The TicketBiscuit Twitter App is just another example of how we never stop innovating to help you sell more tickets. For more information give us a call or send us an email.

Sequoia Slentz is an independent promoter that does events all over the country through his company CleanBox Entertainment. He is the booking agent for the “Killer’s of Comedy” which features comedians from the Howard Stern show.  Sequoia also books all of the West Coast Shows for “The Fab Faux,” a Beatles tribute band featuring Will Lee from David Letterman’s show and Jimmy Vivino from Conan O’Brien’s. 

I caught up with Sequoia the first time on January 20th, four days before the scheduled Fab Faux show at the Orpheum in Los Angeles. “At this point last year, I had sold this show out- 1400 tickets – without spending a dime on advertising,” he told me, continuing, “this year, I’ve done it all – radio, mailers, you name it, but to no effect.” Four days left until show time, and Sequoia had almost half of the house left to sell.

This tale is all too common lately- promoters struggle to sell tickets in the face of an economy that has forced people to eliminate line items from their budgets. Line items that are typically seen as discretionary, such as concert tickets, are often the first things to go.

The next time I talked to Sequoia was last Thursday, January 29. The Fab Faux show did not sell out, but he did move enough tickets to make money. I asked him to share his secrets for success.

Negotiate, Negotiate, Negotiate!

The thing about the economy is that it impacts almost everyone, and that includes venues, radio stations, hotels, and many other businesses. This opens up incredible opportunities. “The idea is to spread the deficit around. Radio stations need to sell ads. Hotels need to fill rooms. Venues need shows. We all need each other, we gotta help each other out,” Sequoia states. He advises to negotiate with the venues for discounted rates, and with radio stations for discounted air time or ticket giveaways. “Radio stations have an incredible amount of inventory, and they’re willing to deal to sell them all.”

Working with Hotels was effective for Sequoia as well. As part of his effort to increase sales, Sequoia struck a deal with the Kyoto Grand Hotel to offer discounted tickets to hotel visitors. After the deal was sealed, he was approached by four other hotels wanting to ink similar partnerships. “If these guys have empty rooms, they’re losing money – so again, you can help each other out.” He says to also negotiate for inclusion in email blasts sent from the hotel, venue, or radio stations to their respective customer or fan lists. “It’s free and easy – most of the time they will be glad to.”

Being creative also helps. For this last show, Sequoia approached a Professor of the Music Institute and convinced the professor to give his class extra credit for attending the show and writing a paper on it.

Use the Tech Tools

Sequoia uses email marketing religiously. “I’ll use it to communicate with my lists, and I used promo codes to give folks the opportunity to buy tickets at a discount price.” While promo codes are a very effective way of generating sales and tracking marketing effectiveness, Sequoia cautions against the “double pitch.” “If I send an email out on the on-sale date, and someone buys a ticket at full price, then I send that person another email closer to the date announcing half price tickets, one of two things will happen. Either they will become trained to wait for the discount, or worse, they will get mad and not buy any more tickets at all. Both are bad, obviously.”

He says the way to avoid the double pitch is through careful customer management or third party surplus ticket sellers. “I used a surplus seller for this show and it ended up putting an additional $3k in my pocket at the very last minute. I was very happy with it.” Surplus sellers have opt-in databases of people who agree to be notified when discount tickets become available, so the dangers of discounting are mitigated.

Pay attention to the details

“The littlest mistakes can kill your operation. In 2008, I put the tickets for the Fab Faux show on sale in early October, and the show sold out without me spending a dime in advertising. This year, I put them on sale a month later- in November.” While this may sound harmless to the lay person, Sequoia says it was probably a key factor in the slow sales. “Sure, all of the bad economic news was weighing on people’s minds, but also, in November people are thinking about Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and travel, and mentally budgeting. The entire frame of mind changes.” He advises that promoters pay close attention to on-sale dates and times, and the trends of how the tickets move. “I’ve already put the tickets for the October 2009 Show on sale,” he added.

Stick it out

Business will continue to be tough for promoters, with recent estimates saying that the economic recession will last well into 2010. But while the business is admittedly tougher, Sequoia says it’s actually good for his operation. “We’re learning a lot and having to become better and more creative. Not all promoters will come out of this, but if you can stick it out, you will be positioned securely.”

Visit CleanBox Entertainment on the Web

CleanBox News Blog

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.   

Visit Impact Entertaiment on the web

Impact Entertains Weblog

Josh Gair on Twitter

Josh Gair on LinkedIn