A pillar of sound marketing, your sales strategy is absolutely crucial. As the live performance world digitalises faster and faster, the question of sales channels, and of outsourcing ticketing to resellers in particular, becomes ever more pressing.
In the past, ticket sales networks let venues offer their public services they could not provide alone. That was notably the case for online sales, before venues were equipped with suitable systems. Those days are gone, now that 90% of venues offer their own online ticketing.
At the same time, the rise of online sales has multiplied the ways of outsourcing. More and more players have emerged in ticket sales for cultural events, from general-purpose platforms to specialists in a niche type of event. But should we see this as a multiplying of a venue's commercial potential or rather as a blurring of its offer and its brand?
And in a post-Covid context where commercial pressure on venues keeps growing, should you continue to delegate part of your ticketing to specialised resellers? If so, how do you choose the resellers to work with and still keep control of your average ticket price and your brand? Conversely, should you try to gain independence by increasing your own sales at any cost?
Outsourcing has its advantages…
Some resellers have a genuine foothold in the market. They combine large databases, high public recognition and considerable marketing firepower.
They are therefore worth considering to reach a wide audience, particularly if your communication budget is limited. Working with a large general-purpose reseller usually means your shows are promoted through communication channels likely to reach a broad public — a newsletter, print communication, in-store promotion. Be careful, though: resellers increasingly put a price on that promotion, and it becomes a cost in its own right that can eat into your margin. It has to be part of your calculation.
Beyond that, working with resellers can be very useful for reaching an audience you have no other means of reaching. You might rely on a reseller with a strong regional footing through a network of physical outlets. Or work with a reseller offering a highly personalised experience to a public with specific needs, an agency putting together coach-tour packages, for instance.
Outsourcing part of your sales to resellers should be the result of carefully considered strategy, and each reseller you choose should match your goals and your brand. Before you start working with them, look into their positioning, their audience, their communication channels and the quality of their customer service. And once you have chosen, remember to assess the policy through analysis in a tool that lets you categorise the split of your sales by channel in a few clicks, such as Arenametrix.
Working with every reseller that offers to sell your shows is not a good solution: such an absence of choice can dilute your positioning and clog your ticketing team's schedule, because every reseller partnership draws on your people — contract management, negotiating promotion, accounting and remittance of sales, configuring and integrating the allocation into your ticketing. So take the time to think calmly about your sales strategy.
…but it can also cut into your margins
Your sales policy has to be thought through for the long term. In the short term, selling your tickets on every possible site may look like a good way of filling your auditorium. Over the long term, the strategy can have perverse effects on your business model.
Going through resellers means paying fairly for their work as intermediaries. Two direct, easily identified costs have to be taken into account: the reseller's commission (six euros on a thirty-euro ticket, for instance) and the cost of promotion through their communication channels. Beyond the commission, you will increasingly be asked to allocate a significant advertising budget so that your shows have real visibility in the online or physical sales space. You will pay for a panel in the annual brochure, display advertising on the website or the presence of your show in a themed, targeted newsletter.
An impact on your brand and your average ticket price
If one thing helps your public form an idea of you, it is your brand and, through it, your artistic vision. Building an image takes time and requires control not only of your communication but of other aspects of your business, such as your price positioning or your customer service.
Those are precisely the aspects you delegate when working with a reseller, which is why it is essential to choose resellers whose standards match your own.
Pricing is a particularly important part of your marketing strategy and should not be neglected. Yet it is sometimes influenced by the resellers venues contract with. Choosing a reseller whose price positioning is a selling point can therefore contribute to lowering your average ticket price.
That kind of player will ask you to offer reduced or even heavily discounted tickets so they can run continual promotions. A strategy that pays in the short term, but which entrenches a lower average ticket price over the long term and cannibalises your own sales channels. The arrival of certain « discount » resellers is not entirely unrelated to the fall in the average theatre ticket price in recent years in some areas where supply is abundant. The issue matters all the more because that fall is hard to reverse once the public has grown used to finding cheap tickets regularly.
Giving up an essential asset: audience data
By selling your tickets through intermediaries you also give up a goldmine: audience data. Resellers have understood the importance of capitalising on their buyers' data and do not share it with you, whether contact details or information that would help you know your audiences better.
And when you consider that the share of sales outsourced to resellers can reach 70% in some cultural organisations, notably private Parisian theatres, the question is far from anecdotal.
Your resellers' buyers are therefore so many audience members you do not know, cannot contact and cannot keep. Worse still, they are people who do not benefit from the content you produce — emails with exclusive artist interviews, behind-the-scenes videos — or from the services you have invested in: a fast website, online ticketing with exclusive features such as seat selection, or a commercial policy that is yours alone. Why invest time and energy in your content and your tools if your tickets keep being sold somewhere other than your own site?
Creating emotion and a unique audience experience is your reason for being, whereas a reseller's business is selling tickets. To keep offering the best possible experience, you need to be able to know your audiences and keep them through audience data — a crucial issue that will only grow in importance in the years ahead.
In 2021-2022, the number one marketing trend among venues will be to improve the audience experience through a digital journey designed to build loyalty. Arenametrix clients — Crazy Horse, Château de Versailles Spectacles, Opéra de Rennes, Maison de la Poésie, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Théâtre des Célestins and various national stages — are already putting these strategies in place through welcome emails, basket reminders and pre- or post-show messages. All easy to configure thanks to the new marketing automation tool offered by Arenametrix.