Tag Archives: marketing

4 Ticketing Strategies Arts Orgs Can Learn From Sports Teams

Austin Wranglers Fans

Austin Wranglers Fans

During a discussion at a recent Austin 501 Tech Club event a new friend reminded me that the challenges faced by small, producing arts organizations are in fact very similar to those faced by regional “for-profit” sports teams.

Connected with a Shakespeare theatre company in Texas Hill country, my friend’s litany of difficulties in creating both appealing and profitable pricing scenarios for all patrons, from first-time attendees to deeply engaged sponsors is a familiar story to nonprofit managers everywhere. Reconciling rising costs from vendors, such as ticketing systems, with the producing organization’s own need to increase margins to continue operations is a challenge universal to performing arts and sports events alike.

Small to mid-sized sports teams are more successful at marketing and reaching new audiences than their nonprofit counterparts because they treat the entire fan experience as a revenue opportunity, not just the sale of tickets. In fact, there are four key strategies performing arts organizations can learn from the way sports teams produce events and create exceptional experiences for fans while maximizing revenue.

Packaged to Sell
Sure you have single tickets and season tickets. Now get creative! Most ticketing services charge fees based on ticket price, so create packages that include more than just tickets. For example, the Austin Wranglers, an arena football team, included drinks, food, and table service with prime-front row seating. The setup required the sacrifice of an entire section of regular seats from the normal seating map, but the total revenue for the premium packages, which were often included as part of a sponsorship deal, exceeded the maximum revenue that could have generated from that section (if it sold out) by 10 times! In fact the revenue from the premium seating section was almost equal to the entire rest of the house!

Create smaller group packages. Groups don’t have to be ten or more. Include smaller group packages that net the same gross revenue to your organization by providing other “extras” such as coupons to be exchanged for food or drink at the concession stand, t-shirt, or collector’s program book, etc. For example, a family 4-pack including 4 sodas and 4 hot dogs might be priced similarly to a group of 10, and reaches a previously potentially under-served market segment. This kind of creative packaging has the added benefit of maximizing ticket revenue margin–since you sell fewer seats, you pay less ticket fees, and make up the revenue in additional services.

Reward early orders with special printed commemorative tickets. Even if your venue entrance system requires barcode scanning, most ticketing databases allow blocks of seats to be batch printed so you can create custom printed tickets which include barcodes. Companies such as National Ticket Co and Worldwide Ticket Craft are a good place to start getting quotes. If you don’t need barcodes, printing custom tickets is as easy as getting the seat numbers right. The effort you put into to designing and creating collectible tickets season after season, not only creates an urgency in your customer base to order early, but also also creates a deeper engagement with your best, long-term fans.

Something Special
Have a special promotion for every event. Rotate special deals, so it spreads the revenue “hit” across different operating budgets. The Round Rock Express use this technique for almost every home game. Examples of their promotions include: dollar hot dogs and sodas (concessions budget), get in free with a donation to local food bank (tickets budget), fireworks (game operations budget), special program (eg, kids club).

Creating special promotions is limited only by your imagination. Don’t let your ticketing or database system limit you. Think outside the box to create promotions that motivate ticket buyers. Listen to your sales staff, and be open to test new ideas. Don’t be afraid to fail. The promotions that fail never need be repeated, and ones that are successful can become traditions!

Include the Kids
Want to make sure the adults have a good time? Include children’s activities at every event to keep the kids distracted and out of mom and dad’s hair. For sports teams, this often means games or activities that happen during the game, off to the side. If your event allows it, consider creating a safe “kid’s zone” with low cost supplemental activities for families. Parents who want to attend the arts usually budget for childcare. Price the cost of your planned activities less than a night’s babysitter.

Don’t be dissuaded from this tactic if your organization produces art that isn’t necessarily considered “kid-friendly.” Get creative and find ways to include activities for the younger set. For example, most 11-year olds wouldn’t sit through Macbeth, but they would attend a fun Shakespeare “quick camp” while mom and dad see the show. Your organization can potentially supplement revenue and create life-long fans, all while providing a convenient service to parents!

Turn Fans into Cheerleaders
The Austin Wranglers had a very vocal set of fans, nicknamed the “Rowdy Wranglers.” These year-after-year season ticket holders made their presence known at every home and away game, traveling many miles, at their own cost, to support the team. The team recognized these raving fans by officially sanctioning the group, providing “uniforms” (in the form of custom printed official jerseys, which the fans paid for themselves) and allowing the group onto the field to perform pre-game. They literally paid to become cheerleaders for the team!

While pre-show public performances with pom-poms may not be appropriate for all producing organizations, arts groups can leverage their most loyal supporters by engaging them in peer-to-peer fundraising and advocacy campaigns, as well as volunteer opportunities. Have an engagement ladder that lays out the path from first-time ticket buyer to donor to board member. Always consider that butt in that seat gave his/her time and money to be at your event. What else might they be willing to do, if you ask them?

Nonprofit Doesn’t Mean “Doesn’t Make Money”
Being a nonprofit organization doesn’t mean you don’t make money; you just do something else with your profits. Instead of paying shareholders, you provide programs or serve the community. The same as all businesses, nonprofits must maximize revenue while minimizing costs. By following the example of successful events produced by local sports teams, regional producing arts organizations can garner that extra winning edge for themselves!

Word Cloud: Who Am I?

I recently attended a session at ProductCamp by Marc Miller of Career Pivot about how to maximize your professional brand on LinkedIn. One of the techniques he recommends is to create a word cloud of your resume so you can easily see what key words stand out. Just for fun, here is mine! I used wordle.net to create mine.

Dyer Resume Word Cloud

Word Cloud from resume of Stacy Dyer

Words are important. Regardless of whether you are marketing yourself or your product, drifting too far from the core focus dilutes your message and bores your readers. Worse than that, when writing for publication online, in the the world of SEO and Google-bots, having too many of the wrong words could translate to attracting the wrong audience altogether.

Word clouds can be a fun way to visually see the most frequently used key words and ensure your writing stays on target. What does yours say about you or your product?

ProductCampATX: 5 Steps to Architecting a Successful Whitepaper

Technology that allows marketing professionals to endlessly segment audiences and target campaigns is driving more and more content into the marketplace, but more is not necessarily better. While marketing teams need a constant stream of fresh content to fill the sales funnel with qualified leads, creating vital marketing assets like whitepapers can’t be a haphazard afterthought to product management.

Lori Witzel, a demand generation and content marketer, and I have proposed a session for ProductCamp 10 Austin on February 16, 2013 which will address this issue specifically with product managers and product advocates in mind!

Please join us for our session, 5 Steps to Architecting a Successful Whitepaper, Faster to learn our systematic approach to architecting and driving the creation of successful whitepapers, faster. This will be fun, lively, interactive discussion with a hands-on activity.

Also don’t forget to check out the rest of the great sessions proposed for ProductCamp Austin!

See you there! Follow the fun on Twitter with hashtag #PCA10

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5 Steps to Architecting a Successful Whitepaper, Faster

Experienced tech product managers know that Information-rich “written for people not search engines” content drives inquiries that convert to sales quickly. Whitepapers are one such tool to help your product out-perform revenue goals. All too often, though, it takes months and high-priced outside resources to create good whitepapers.

This session will teach you a systematic approach to architecting and driving the creation of successful whitepapers, faster.In this session, product managers will learn 5 steps to faster whitepaper creation—and will also receive a handout that’ll make it easier to architect the next whitepaper. One product manager will be selected from the audience to participate in a hands-on whitepaper activity, so all can share in the experience of putting these steps into practice.

The session leaders (Product Marketing Management and Demand Generation Marketing Management) have worked with software product managers in the rapid development of whitepapers that drive product sales.

QR code Case Study: New Albion Ale

As a product marketer, I am always looking for the new and interesting ways brands are interacting with their consumers and the general public. And while the talk last night may have been about all the Superbowl commercials, at least one company is making use of QR codes as a simple way to create a relevant, customized user experience without the big spend.

On the back of their limited edition, New Albion Ale, brewer, Sam Adams included a QR code link to additional content online. The code links to a brief, well-produced video discussing the history and background of their product (which is actually really cool!) This is great use of a QR code as a living hyperlink in real life to online content that enriches the end-use experience.

It could have been more mobile optimized. If it had been a direct YouTube link, it would have automatically prompted me to open the video with the appropriate app, making it a one click experience, instead of two, but I understand why they chose to use a custom landing page. Overall, this a great example of QR code placement and content quality .

Lots of lessons to learn here for small biz and charity alike!

View the video here: http://bbc.wistia.com/medias/4vi44xtr0m

Do you have an example of a great implementation of a 2D bar code? Please share!

Visualizing Good Writing

Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I once knew an architecture student who was assigned a project where she was to visually represent a movie with an architectural model. The resulting sculptures were fascinating to say the least. I began to wonder if movies that I liked would look similar in this static form of 3D rendering. Would movies I didn’t like look different?

example of architectural model of film structure

architectural model of “Twin Peaks” by Beth Warner, circa 1996

For example, two movies I love that (on outward glance) don’t appear to have that much in common are Star Wars (Ep 4: A New Hope) and The Princess Bride. However, I don’t like Star Wars (Ep 1: The Phantom Menace). Would an this kind of analysis and construction of a three dimensional, static, architectural model actually show that, despite the similarities in name, Star Wars/A New Hope actually has more in common with the Princess Bride than it does with Star Wars/Phantom Menace?

Indeed! If you look at the structure of Phantom Menace, strictly from a time/scene standpoint, for example, clearly the pod-racer scene takes up more than one third of the total time of the movie. In our architectural model, this might look like one gigantic room, overwhelmingly unbalancing the overall aesthetic appeal of the structure.

Would the models of The Princess Bride and A New Hope appear more balanced? What other similarities would exist in there visualized structures? What other ways are there to visually represent the abstract concept of a story through a three dimensional architectural model? Is it possible to identify well-constructed movies by looking only at the models produced, without actually seeing the movie? Does this hold true for good writing as well as film making?

As writers, how can we apply this concept to our work?

Conceptually visualize your work as a three dimensional space. Sketch it out on the back of a napkin, if that helps you. By looking at it in another way, it can help keep you focused on always creating balanced, engaging writing that is a pleasure for your audience.

G+ finds its audience! And it’s not who you think.

My husband never joined the infamous Book of Face… and now he never will.

At first, he was just being contrary; he actively avoided doing what everybody else was doing. But after a while, I think he was just intimidated. The thought of managing the flood of all those friend requests was too daunting and so he avoided the unpleasantness altogether.

Now, he has finally initiated himself into the ranks of social networking–without the Facebook baggage. And he’s not the only one of my friends to do so. I now have several friends in G+ who are not anywhere else. They are all male, thirty-something and have families.

I’m sure Google wanted entrepreneurial, tech savvy Millennials to flock to their new social network, and we did at first, but then we never really engaged there. Who Google is actually attracting and getting engagement from are thirty-somethings: fathers, busy with kids, who have never joined a social network before. This means that techies like me now have to update multiple social networks if I want all of my friends and connections to see my pictures, posts, and event invites.

My husband on G+

What a great opportunity for Google! They have at their fingertips a brand new audience as yet untapped by social media marketers. This demographic is ripe for opportunities for marketers of all types–sports, food & beverage, entertainment, news & weather.

G+ has won in 2 ways: Not only to they get a brand new, untapped audience of thirty-something men with little exposure to existing social networks, but they also get the tech savvy mom who just wants to see the cute pictures of daughter that dad is sharing from his ‘Droid…

Stacy Dyer on G+

What ever happened to full service gas stations?

Octane options in west TX

First, let me say that as an open-road loving, completely car-dependent American, I have been pumping my own gas since I was 16. I’m not the squeamish type or afraid to get my hands dirty.

But whatever happened to full service gas stations? While popping my own hood and adding a quart of 10W-30 is a great learning experience for my daughter to watch me do, it’s not quite how I’d like to spend my morning when I’m already dressed for work. What I wouldn’t have given for just one full-service gas station anywhere on my commute!

Mornings like these make me think of the “old” ways when service wasn’t a four-letter at the gas station. But is it really an “old” idea to crave a deeper interaction with the company with which you do business?

In an age where exceptional customer service, rather than the product itself, is the key differentiator for so many companies, why are sellers expecting consumers to be more and more self-service?

While it may have started in the highly price-sensitive, highly commoditized market of filling stations, my missing gas jockey isn’t the only disappearing dinosaur. Consumers are being completely self-provisioned even in traditional, brick-and-mortar stores. I have often used the expeditious self-checkout at the grocery store and innovative retailers, such as Apple, are working hard to ensure I don’t even need to wait in that line. With a smartphone and the right app, customers can scan and pay and walk out without speaking to an employee or touching a single piece of store equipment.

Somehow, in the race to “cloud-ify” the purchase/transaction experience, companies have lost sight of how to authentically connect with customers. The benefits of this strategy, particularly during busy, holiday shopping times, are obvious. But how does it affect customers?

I rely on the expertise of knowledgeable staff to help me choose the right product and help me use it the right way. At the gas station, that’s someone to check my oil and tire pressure as well as pump my gas, if I want it. At the grocery store, a balloon for my toddler and a few free samples would do the trick. Savvy consumers are willing to pay premium prices for premium experiences.

Rather than an anonymous, self-serve self-checkout where consumers are completely disconnected from the brand, companies who want to succeed should focus on creating added value around their services, connecting with their customers, and providing an experience that exceeds their customers’ expectations. Seriously, if there’s a pretty girl in a skirt and heels on her way to work – show some southern hospitality and have staff to pump her gas for her!

Four Strategies for Engagement with Location-Based Services

This article originally appeared in the April 2012 issue of onPhilanthropy.

Four Strategies for Engagement with Location-Based Services

By Stacy Dyer

You may be hearing about a popular new social media activity. Multiple apps, including Foursquare, Facebook Places, and Gowalla, allow individuals to check in at various locations using their smart phone, and then share their check-ins with their friends. Players can collect points and organizations of all kinds are offering real benefits for virtual check-ins.

Location-based games and services have seen exponential growth over the last three years. Nonprofit organizations are using them to increase their visibility to a growing audience of relatively young, affluent, and highly engaged supporters.

Getting started is easy.  Here are four strategies you can use to maximize your engagement with constituents using location-based services.

#1 Promote it at your event

Special events are the ideal time to take advantage of location-based services. During busy events, festivals, or other gatherings, the more individuals who check in, the more likely the location will become designated a “hot spot.” Hot spots are promoted to the top of the list whenever anyone in the area checks in, thereby piquing the curiosity of a wide audience. Promote your participation with visual signage in prominent locations. It reminds casual players to pull out their phones and check in.

#2 Offer a special

Offer a special to encourage folks to check in at your event. It can be a free drink from the concession stand, or a free give-away. Be creative. For a more long-term investment, consider offering a reward to the person who checks in most often (e.g. called “the mayor” on Foursquare) at your location.

To ensure an exceptional experience for those who check in and attempt to redeem the special, be sure to train all staff and volunteers.

#3 Drop an item or create a badge

As previously mentioned, Foursquare is not the only location-based service. Gowalla, an Austin, Texas-based company, has its own service, allowing users to unlock badges and encouraging players to leave or swap items when checking into locations. Facebook Places allows you to use Facebook to “check-in” to locations, as well as tag them in posts and photo uploads.

Consider creating a special item just for your event. Players may carry your item to a distant place and drop it off for the next player who comes by. Consider this example: a South by Southwest Music Festival (SXSW) badge from Austin is dropped off at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, or even farther away. How could such an activity spread brand awareness for your organization?

#4 Make it an adventure

Are you part of a collective of city theaters or museums? Consider creating a trip including all of your participating locations. You can highlight key attractions and direct players to hidden gems. Combine your trip with a special to create a special scavenger hunt game.

You could also develop adventure tours for volunteers to target parks for clean-ups, or donors to visit locations being benefitted by their support.

“One thing I like best about location-based networking is that people often link their check-in service to their Twitter accounts,” says Kristen Britt O’Donnell, director of public relations and marketing for Goodwill Industries of Southwest Florida, Inc. in North Fort Myers, Fla. “Having the Twitter link gives our organization yet another opportunity to engage with supporters one-on-one, by thanking them for stopping by, asking them how their visit was, or offering them suggestions for a future visit.”

Your options for using location-based services are limited only by your creativity. If you keep it fun and engaging, your forays into using this dynamic social media activity will open a new channel for you to connect with your community and donors.

To read more about different ways organizations can get started with Foursquare, specifically, check out this post on the Sage Words blog: “Foursquare is open for business! Not-for-profits take note.”

3 Personas You Have to Meet

Maybe you already know them. They certainly already know you. They are your constituents, your supporters, and donors. Want to know who they are? Keep reading…

As a product marketer, I am very familiar with the concept of using personas to help me understand my audience. At Innogive 2012 in San Fransisco, Jeff Dunlap of MobileCause, described the three key personas who interact with causes online.

First, there is the internet artist. He actually doesn’t really care about your cause. What he wants is to impress his friends. He is motivated by the number of retweets and likes he gets in social media. So he makes up something clever–like make up a t-shirt that says, “F**K CANCER.” You can’t say that, but he can! He is, in effect, a “free agent” as Beth Kanter describes in her concept of a Networked Nonprofit.

Next, the curator picks it up. She likes to put things into collections that are easy to browse. She pins that “F**K CANCER” t-shirt in Pintrest, where it gets picked up by Martha-Stewart-types everywhere, and creates a flurry! She doesn’t really care about your cause either, but loves it when her “pin” get shared around.

Now meet mobile grandma. She loves using her smartphone to share mobile photos on Facebook. She posts a picture of her niece wearing the infamous t-shirt. That post gets picked up by another mobile grandma in Denmark, who translates the t-shirt into 3 different languages (in effect, another internet artist) and the cycle starts again.

As you can see, these personas have the power to give your cause a huge boost, even though they may not actually donate cash (or buy the t-shirt) themselves. By understanding what motivates these personas, you can create (or, at least, not squash) opportunities to go viral!

So You Wanna Be a Mobile Superhero?

Ok, so there was a lot of talk about the Justice League at Innogive 2012.

Justice League

I’m more of an Avengers fan, myself, but maybe that’s just because I’ve always liked Stark’s toys.

Anyway…

Kayta Anderson, shared these 5 forgotten questions we need to answer before you can be we can become superheroes in mobile fundraising!

1) Who is it for anyway?

Know your audience. She says that when at least 5% of traffic to your website is from mobile browsers (you are using Google Analytics to track this, right?) However, there was some discussion that if you don’t have a mobile site, you won’t get mobile traffic.

2) What will it do for them?

We download apps to make our lives easier. Unless the app provides a something sought after by your audience, they won’t download it. Don’t build an app for apps sake. Provide value to drive behavior.

3) What do you have?

Time, resources, money, staff. And not just staff to run it, but who in your organization will get behind the project? They have to be willing to take risks.

4) Where does it fit in?

Mobile is another channel in your multichannel communications strategy. You need to align your messages and strategy across all your channels.

5) What will it do for you?

ROI vs ROE. Traditionally, managers focus on return on investment. Instead focus on return on engagement, which measures things like new supporters, brand exposure, added convenience for supporters, improved advocacy results.