The Story
Event tickets - price anchoring techniques
I often come across businesses who set their ticket prices very low to attract bigger crowds. The problem is that their brand, sales, marketing and even the event itself suffers as a consequence. The event tickets price depends on the perceived value to the audience. If the audience is not excited about attending they will not want to pay too much for it - chances are they wont buy the tickets even when they are offered at lower rates. What happens is that the cost of arranging the event becomes more than the revenue earned through the event. Whats the point of going through the hassle if you’re not going to earn big profits. Right?
If you can somehow increase the actual and the perceived value of the event for the audience, you will be able to charge a higher rate for the tickets, which if done right, will in turn sell more tickets as well. It will also allow you to draw more attention to prospective new customers as apposed to ones who have purchased from you before. I have posted before about the cost of a new customer being a one off cost, why not build this cost into new launch campaigns. Increased value that is measured in ticket pricing will also demonstrate traction and excitement around your event to prospective sponsors which will result in your ability to get them to pay a lot to get their brand in front of your audience. So, in essence, the entire success of the event could come down to the perceived value.
Think about the perceived value like this: A glass of water will have a higher perceived value to a thirsty athlete than a person who is not thirsty. So even though the glass of water is the same physically - it has different levels of perceived value to a different audience. Similarly, your targeted audiences need to want to be a part of your event. They need to feel like they belong there. They need to feel a sense of ownership and association with your event. They need to be excited about it all the way up to the event day. The value of your event to them should be incredibly high, so that they become willing and mentally ready to pay high prices to be a part of it.
The way to build perceived value is by hitting the right emotional triggers in the right audience at the right time. By engaging your audience in a conversation about the event, you are going to have more chance to hit these triggers than you would if you hand them a brochure or flier. Its about building a story that has the target visualizing themselves being in the middle of a community of like-minded people who are all enjoying an experience that none of them would want to miss.
Once you have achieved this trigger throughout your conversation you have options. A good example of this process lies in the fact that you are not in a position to introduce a sense of scarcity around your event’s ticket sales until you have your audience wanting to attend. Who cares about limited tickets if you don’t want to go? Price anchoring is a technique that can be applied as a mental trigger to bait the prospects into impulse buying. What happens when people are in a certain mode is that they start searching for a solution that they have already made the decision to purchase. They have researched it & know what they want - and so have embarked on a mission to secure it. They are on a buying frenzy and nothing is going to stop them other than the purchase itself. Well suffice to say, its when people are in this mindset that you want to get in front of them with a final call to action trigger.
Throughout your event prelaunch campaign you work on building the perceived value of your event bearing in mind that perceived value and actual value are in the same family. Throughout this phase you need to engage your audience into a conversation that represents value for them to join, you do this be serving up social proof of value with the help of your existing customer or past event community & enhance this technique through the use of some other social marketing strategies. Once you sell them on the strength of value you can introduce discrete trigger’s like suggestions of scarcity such as an audience member posting comments on a blog about rumors of limited tickets being released to the public. It takes very little to introduce a sense of scarcity once the perceived value is already built.
Sometimes all it takes is a subtle scarcity trigger to send an audience into a buying frenzy where all you need to do is get a ticketing page up on the internet. When a touch of scarcity is combined with a high perceived value you’ll get the early adopters, the effect is almost magical if those early adopters are people-movers and not followers. Once this effect kicks in you can feel it because you go into lock down mode, hiding from everyone who is constantly asking about tickets, requesting favors, access & head starts etc. I like to call it the Event Line & I even named my blogs after it. It’s the line where your event transform from being a vision in your mind to a vision in the minds of your audience. Let’s face it you’re not going to be planning an event that you think won’t be perfect. Right?
Throughout your campaign you can set a value and even a price estimate that will embed numbers in their heads without actually telling them the price. This can be done by comparing your event with other events of a similarly perceived value. These numbers need to be lurking somewhere in the back of their minds, all the while in a generally accepted manner that those numbers will be the price although you have never said so. When you have built that sense of excitement, exclusivity, scarcity, traction and pressure of a world of people rushing to become a part of it (all trigger points that should be planned into your campaign) - open your tickets for sale at a rate which is slightly lower than the number you had planted into the back of their minds (but higher than what you would have generally charged prior to inflating the events perceived value up from its actual value) - If the audience are exposed to a release of tickets going on sale at the right time they will be inclined to purchase them immediately, without further ado. Why wouldn’t they, the event is hot, everyone wants to attend, tickets are scarce & they are actually cheaper than what they had already lead themselves to believe they were going to be.
The impulse buying mode that you have worked them into, will lead to greater ticket sales and larger audiences - that can sell out in hours, days, even weeks before your event. Its got to be better than placing an ad and waiting for one ticket sale at a time.
The Pizza Store Dilemma
How often do you see the same sad story around you? Small businesses struggling hard to survive - short-sighted and unprepared to take risks, unwilling to secure the potential future of their business. I have had pizza in 26 different countries in the world, and yet none of them compares to this tiny corner pizza shop in the Noosa Hinterland, close to where I live. They’re pizza’s are to die for. This is why I feel unnerved to see how their business hasn’t been ’secured’ for long term success.
The couple (lets call them Jack & Jill for the sake of anonymity) took a vacant building a couple of years ago and built the pizza and coffee business from scratch. Despite the mouth watering pizzas, they still aren’t making enough money to buy the property. The property owner is stalling their lease renewal and wants them to leave if they can’t buy the freehold. Recently I found myself thinking about the possible reasons for a business that provides a great product and delivers such a valuable service to it’s customers, is not in a position to buy the freehold of the property it trades out of. Now my only interests other than looking at this as a great case study is to see them pull through - being a loyal customer who benefits from the value their store offers me (i.e. delicious pizza). I have vested interest in the business being a success. If it goes under, I loose a convenient destination for coffee breaks and an easy place to take the kids out for pizza on weekends. There will be no replacement shop if they fail to secure the building freehold which will not only effect the proprietors but will effect the lifestyle of customers who have come to lean on the business as well.
One of the core issues I can see with the business is the owners approach to business, the couple who run the place are chalk and cheese in the way that they view what the business is to a customer and how they translate this into success.
First Jill: Although friendly and personable, she is not open to advice on ideas for securing more revenue or funds to secure the businesses future. She simply phases out if you offer advice. She makes the business atmosphere casual and homely as though the customers are visiting her in her lounge room which is nice (they live behind the shop) but when it comes to money its impossible for her to hide a tight-fisted, short sighted approach to business.
Now I, for one, find the dynamic in this particular business as interesting as any I have seen before. Whats interesting is the fact that her attitude - being so money focussed - has such a contrasting effect on me as her customer than the opposite and equal reaction I have when dealing with her partner Jack’s attitude. She’ll skimp on servings, serve canceled orders to save making a fresh pizza & count every nickel and dime owed to a point where she actually makes me repel against wanting to give her any more money than I have to. Her attitude seems to instill a feeling of wanting to visit the shop less and spend less regardless of how nice it is if she is on duty. Also, if spending anything, it’s as though she makes me want to scrutinize everything she serves. Its almost as if she wills her worst fears upon herself. Being worried about not making enough money results in customers thinking about how much she is taking from them and what they are getting in return. Its a vicious cycle that I would never had contemplated if I wasn’t lucky enough to have been able to watch such contrasting styles in the same business on rotating days.
Jack the partner: A laid back personality compared to Jill with a completely different attitude to business. His attitude is to offer free coffee, give extra servings, and a philosophy that ‘near enough is good enough’ when it comes to the bill. He’d say nice stuff like “that ones on the house if the experience is anything but perfect”. His attitude makes customers feel like no matter what you pay him, you are always getting real value. He makes you feel like he is looking out for you as his customer and this attitude in effect translates into you enjoying the visit more, thus increasing your frequency of visits.
What makes this case study so interesting is the following question it raises. If the business is not generating enough money to buy the building it trades in, although the food and the service it provides is excellent value for money, will it survive? Is the business failings because Jack is giving away to many freebies to customers (although by doing so he entices them to spend more time), shouldn’t this translate into success? Or is it failing because of tight-fisted Jill who extracts every last penny from customers without winning any awards for enticing customers into spending more time in the business each week, even though she can be assured that she has extracted every last cent when customers do visit?
You can probably imagine Jill is always on Jacks back for giving away too much for too little or for being way too generous with the helpings and so on. I often see him hushing and hiding his generosity to avoid conflict. There are no awards for guessing who Jill blames for the business not earning enough money and if she had it her way, Jack would be forced to follow suite with the style in which she employs to govern the business, she sees no value in his style. You do not sense a willingness to compromise between her style and his, when it comes to the methods by which she believes, needs to be employed for profitability.
Now Jack on the other hand would probably subscribe to a view more in tune with a combination of a little tight-fisted scrutiny on Jill’s part giving him the bad cop enforcer behind him to cover positive approach to dealing with customers. Customers first. I sense that if he has the freedom of exercising his style of management without scrutiny that he would have the business pumping in no time.
Now to me, I see myself as a potential $5000 customer of this business because if frequenting the business daily I would spend just under $10 daily as well as the bi-weekly $50 family pizza nights we would enjoy. I am sure thats how jack sees me too which is probably why we are on the same page where he considers me a great customer & I consider myself lucky to have such a great value local hangout at my disposal that is so laid back and comfortable.
Now jack’s philosophy is probably to build more customers just like me that come in every day & his strategy is pretty simple, he gives back to ensure the customer experience is always positive. He seems to know that each customer’s experience is only ever as good as their last.
Now Jill on the other hand can only focus on what giving away a FREE cup of coffee means to her in lost revenue, she cannot get past the value she feels she is already providing for such a small return and she doesn’t feel she owes it to anyone to give them anything for free.
Jill does not see me as a $5000 customer, I sense she sees me as an $8 to $10 customer every time I walk into the shop and in doing so I feel like one, thus I am sure I act like an $8 customer by scrutinizing my change and what I am being charged, though when I am served by Jack I both feel and act like the $5000 customer I am.
Now lets do the analysis on this for arguments sake. I can say with absolute certainty that if Jill ran the business her way and Jack did not exist, the business would become little more than an inconvenience to me as it was before they took over the building. I personally would most probably become a $5 customer on bi weekly frequency as opposed to a $10 a day customer, buying little more than a coffee and the newspaper which would cost me a total of $520 per year. This being the case I would be $4480 per year richer and the business $4480 poorer.
What do I end up with at the end of the year for my extra $4480 if Jack was in charge? I get a sense of community, I have a place to visit when I need to get out of my office or away from the home, a place that feels like a second home. I have a place to take my family for stress-free casual dinners on Sunday nights & a place to meet business associates or friends where the proprietor is always friendly, always makes me feel like $5000 customer who knows my name and what I like to eat and drink. I can even ring him on holidays and ask him to check my pool for me.
Is it worth $4480? Absolutely, but if I didn’t have access to it my life would adapt & any perceived value would evaporate, as it does with most business services - its a want of mine to retain this facility, it’s not a need. There is a difference there.
I guess the lesson here is that money is little more than paper or coin that is effectively worthless. It serves as a currency of exchange between goods and services from one person or group to others. Whats important is not the money but the goods and service being provided to your customers. Business is about perceived value, all a customer ever sees is your intent, the exchanging of money serves little more than to provide a common denominator by which we measure our satisfaction.
If customers feel they are realizing perceived value through any relationship they have with a provider, they will continue to hand over money asked of them without questioning it. The minute a customer questions the perceived value they are receiving they will focus on the money being asked which is the beginning of the end, of a mutually profitable relationship.
I guess the crux of this case study would be to always allow your to business to focus on the perceived value of what customers enjoy from your products or services. Ensure they keep enjoying it whilst finding others who will enjoy the same. Evangelism. Do this and your money will always keep flowing in, focus on the money and you will eventually run out of people willing to keep giving it to you.
Book launch themes
This is an event launch strategies blog - and I try not to go off on other topics. But when I received the third invitation to a book launch this month I just knew I had to write about this. Now although I don’t consider myself an author, I have written & sold e-learning books which has got to count as close. A book launch is an exciting and memorable step in your career as a budding author. You don’t always have to resort to launching in halls and bookstores. By using the internet you will be able to drive more attention to your launch and consequently your book than through any other medium.
Selecting a theme is an important step in planning a book launch and its no different if launching an event, a product or a book. You just need to look at your launch with the same creativity with which you used to pen your book, create your product or visualize your event.
You can have the book lauch around a similar setting to your book. If the book is about a trekking expedition have the launch atop a mountain (or hill). Get the audiences to trek all the way up. If the novel is an adventure, have it in a boat. If its a romance novel pick a beach spot or a romantic hideout.
The idea is to get creative with your launches and turn them into newsworthy events. Don’t just stick to traditional ways of launching anything. Go out of the way to build a theme that would attract your targeted audience, a theme that journalists will write about. The theme itself becomes an important part of the hype building process before your book launch.
Another interesting thing that you can do is get your prospects to design a theme for you - or you can involve them by getting them to fill out surveys or having discussions and online focus groups. If you involve your audiences in the planning process up front at this point, they will feel like they are already a part of your event and will take ownership in making it successful. This being the case they will feel obliged to attend and to spread the word out to their networks. Hey, the more people who attend, the more news worthy, the more press coverage, the more book sales.
So, to sum it up, get your creative juices flowing. Make your book launch as memorable as the book itself or if launching an event the same principle applies. The press are looking for newsworthy stories every day so they get noticed. Its not difficult to create a launch event that gives them something to work with that does not demand you to invest a lot of money.
Launch Stories - make a perfect blend and serve it hot
Stories have an important role in making a launch a raving success. Your launch story is simply how you present information to your prospects. What are you about? Why should they care? I’ve always wondered why some launch stories hit it big and others just fizzle out like they never even existed.
We all want big successful launches, and it turns out that a lot of it is in our hands. All of this assumes that the product or event that you are about to launch is worth the hype.
I’ve written about how to build your stories here and here. Today, I’m just going to expand on it a bit more. If you are marketing your services or launching products, you need to really know how to tell effective stories. Story telling is an art that you can learn and adopt for your businesses and it helps define complex things into simple words. We come across countless situations where we can benefit from this skill - when you’re in an elevator with a potential business partner, when you get a chance to meet an investor, when you’re pitching to your clients, when you run across an old school friend on a weekend getaway and most importantly, when you are about to launch products or events in the market.
Telling a launch story is about summing everything up nicely and presenting it in a way that can influence your potential clients or audiences to take action. This is done by hitting the right mental triggers to the right people at the right time.
The mental triggers that you choose to hit will depend on your individual products, but we can safely say that the old tested rules of “hero play” still apply. And boy do they work! We, as humans, are attracted to stories of drama, intensity of emotions, shock, winning. We want that adrenaline rush. We want that human to human association. We want that heroism. We want to listen to people who understand where we come from. If you can incorporate these into your story, you’re bound to have a greater impact and response from your targeted audiences.
Make your key message (verbal or email) as informal and relatable to your audiences as possible. Make it like a conversation between two people. Here is a structure (also proposed by Industry leader Jeff Walker) that you can use for your message:
1- start with reiterating the fact that you are just like them. That you have a lot in common. The purpose of this intro is to get the attention of your key targeted audience and make them think “hey this guys just like me..”
2- Then name a few frustrations that you have (related to your launch). E.g. “I’ve been looking around for cool places to hangout, where I can just take my mind off work and network with likeminded people.. but there is just no such place in the entire town…”. This should make them think “yea. I totally get it”.
3- When you’re sure you have that nod, talk about how you aspire for things to be different. You can throw in ideas and thoughts and let their minds wander off. Don’t limit their thoughts to specific examples, let them imagine as much and as far as they can.
4- Finally, when you know that they are excited about how all of this can turn around, present your solution and discuss how it can benefit people like you (i.e. him).
It takes very little time to come up with the good meaningful stories that you can use to turn your business around. So get down to work and get creative. Let me know if you need further inspiration or assistance.
Its all about the buzzz..
Having the right strategy for your launches is important for the success of your ventures. If you don’t plan your events well, you may not be able to draw the attention that it otherwise deserves. Remember how we discussed that events are like revolving doors of launches and relaunches? The more hype you can create in your launch, the more revenue you will generate for even bigger and better launches.
You have to make your events news worthy to create the initial buzz. Have stories within stories. Make people want to share the “did you know that….” stories about your event. A great way to do that is to have interesting themes for the event and streamline your entire promotions based on those themes.
The more different and unique the themes are, the more interest they will generate. So, think creatively. Look at it this way, if you can get people to blog or talk about you - you are getting free media coverage worth thousands of advertising dollars. Its a win-win for both you and your targeted audiences. They want something interesting to talk about, and you want to be talked about.
You can also create videos and demos to generate buzz. Good videos spread around a lot faster and are great tools for marketing. I’ll add a post on how to use videos on the Social Media Strategies blog soon. Teaser ads or messages are also a great way to attract attention. Anything that leaves questions in the viewers minds will make them wait for and talk about you.
Whatever marketing strategies you apply, make sure you can get your audiences buzzing way before you launch. The reason why I am repeatedly talking about creating hype is because I really want you guys to get your pre-launch preps right. Just want to make sure our basics are covered before we dive into details of launching.
Building reputation and credibility
This post is directed towards people who are launching products, offering services or simply providing their own event management services. If you’re running your own firm, you can focus entirely on getting business instead of pleasing supervisors. This usually equates to getting customers and making sure they are happy. The issue is that it isn’t always as simple and easy as it seems. Unless you are in a very specific niche, chances are you’ll have competitive sharks swimming in the water as well. Those businesses that thrive on reputation based sales become very competitive.
The good thing about today’s time is that you can channelize multiple forces to carve a stronger foothold on the market to make sure that you can get as much business as possible. Here are some quick tips to get you started:
Drive competition away
The best and surest way to earn reputation is to find what sets you apart from competition. What value does your product or service offer which is different and can be highlighted? Don’t restrict yourself - be creative.
Quality and consistency
Secondly, focus on ensuring quality and consistency in your services. I’d say, set high standards and consistently meet them. Your work has to be good, your services have to speak for themselves, your web presence has to be top-notch, how quickly and well you handle customer queries has to be right on. Don’t compromise on quality and wonder why your business is not where it potentially can be.
Endorsements
When you know your competitive edge and have provided high quality services, make sure you request for feedback and reviews from your customers. This is extremely important in building credibility in business. People trust what others have to say, especially if those “others” are people they look up to. So, if suppose, Micheal Arrington says something good about a new startup, people will check them out.
If your product or service isn’t something people can find and write about themselves, at least you can request testimonials from your existing customers. You have invest time in building your reputation, it doesn’t just happen by itself.
Get more visibility - Create a following
All of that effort can go to waste if people don’t know about you. Once you have all of the other pieces together, you spread the word. Start a community and build a following instead of just marketing your services. Like anything else, you need to build credibility first. You can use different tools like blogs, microblogs (e.g. twitter) and social pages (e.g. facebook) to build a community of likeminded people (or potential customers). This will definitely get you more visibility and will help in building your reputation.
Make everything into an event
Every little instance or occasion in our lives is an event. A teleconference meeting with your staff, is an event. A new purchase, is an event. Hearing sad news, is an event. Going out to watch a movie, is an event. All of these different events make up our life experiences.
You’ll notice how when we try to think back to our earliest memories, we just remember glimpses of different situations or feelings. These glimpses were once events (whether recurring or one-time) that stayed on with us as memories.
This observation has two important sub-thoughts that we can learn from:
1- If we react to different situations in our real-life just as meticulously as we plan large-scale events, imagine how it will effect the happiness quotient in our lives.
2- We don’t have to be marketing big events all the time, we just need to figure out how to create traction around smaller level things as well. This can be great for the relaunching strategies that we discussed earlier.
Event launches - whats your attention magnet?
I am sure most of you would agree that we can’t just expect people to get excited about our events just like that - they need to have an incentive to. These incentives are based on basic human feelings - joy, thrill, excitement, suspense, comfort. Understanding what causes these emotions and what effects they have on the moods and actions is important for creating the right kinds of incentives for your audiences.
When you have built the brand of your events, you will know exactly what emotional bracket you want to trigger to build hype. Different events play on different human emotions - new years eve at Times Square plays on thrill, happy family picnics play on joy, the Macworld plays on suspense and curiosity, concerts play on fun, soccer matches play on excitement, talk-shows play on comfort.
Once you figure out how you want your audiences to feel before your event, you’re already half way to creating hype. Lets call it the ‘event emotion’ for convenience. All of your marketing messages, communication, interactions, advertisements, letters - everything has to trigger the event emotion. If you manage to touch their feelings, they will form an invisible relationship with your event - whether they know it or not, you just managed to touch their heart. This will put them in a position where they will be more likely to attend the event or tell others about it. Thats your attention magnet!
This may sound like you are toying with people’s emotions - but thats not the purpose of this exercise. Always remember, the new year’s party at time square will thrill everyone present and give them a natural high. But what would happen if nobody knows what new year’s at time square is? What would happen if nobody knows what it ‘could’ potentially mean to them? Well, they’d rather stay home and watch TV. Unless you tell them what to expect from the event, you can not expect them to come. Thats it - you’re just setting their expectations straight using event emotions.
Next time you’re planning an event, make sure you find your attention magnet first. Good luck.
What we can learn from unconferences
What are unconferences?
First a little brief background. Unconferences are facilitated discussions that are participant-driven and are centered around a specific theme. It is the opposite of typical conferences where speakers and audiences are separate. In unconferences, everyone is expected to speak and pitch in to move the discussions forward.
You can read more about unconferences here.
Whats the big deal?
Unconferences gained a lot of interest and momentum in the crowds because of the following reasons;
1- Its a leveled playing field for everyone who is present;
2- Everyone is a participant and not just there to sit and listen;
3- It ends up being highly intellectual discussions where everyone learns something;
4- It demonstrates the power of collective wisdom;
5- When moderated properly, it delivers good results.
What can we learn from it?
As event marketers there are a number of lessons in these gatherings. First of all, it shows the importance and power of community driven discussions. Just like people are more responsive and energetic in these unconferences, they have the exact same behavior in communities online.
Secondly, it proves the power of collective wisdom. So, if you’re planning your events what better way to do it than engaging your community online? You can allow them to have a direct input in the event’s flow or proceedings.
Thirdly, because of its up close nature, the relationship with the participants grows deeper. The participants will be more likely to remember you, to remember the event and to have a good after-taste about it. In the same way, in online communities you can build that level of relationships through different ways of interacting with your community to build relationships of trust.
You can read up a good post on unconferences here (although it is a relatively old article)
Each event is a brand - Part II
This post is a sequel to my previous rant on the importance of building your event’s brand story. This topic is so important that I can’t stress it enough. A lot of people still don’t ‘get it’, so I thought I’d discuss it in a little more detail.
I see this mistake over and over again: People think that when they’re doing a launch the story is about them. They are WRONG! The story is always about their PROSPECTS.
This is something you have to get right. I’m going to walk you through the process of getting to your prospect’s story and tying it with your launch story.
I’m sure that this probably sounds all hippy-groovy granola right? Trust me it’s not - this is critical stuff and it’s all about creating a crushing event launch for you. In fact, this could even be the single leverage point that changes everything.
The first step is to truly understand the value of your product or service. This will involve answering questions like… “is it really useful?”, “who can benefit from it most?”, “how is it different from other options that already exist?”.
Next, based on the value, imagine the ideal prospect that can benefit most from your product or service. Marketing folks also call this step “brand personification” - but the idea is simple. If the brand of your product or service was a person, what would he/she look like and how would he/she feel. Understanding your market is key to being able to communicate with them effectively. Put yourself in their shoes.
Once you understand your ideal prospect’s story, link that story to your brand’s story so that its a perfect fit and see the magic happen.
MySpace
FaceBook 
BeBo
Linked In
Pownce
Twitter
Friendfeed
Tumblr
Second Brain 
Wink
Live Journal
Simpy
Get Boo
Net Vouz
Yahoo
HelloTxt
YouTube
del.icio.us
Digg
Stumble Upon
Technorati
Furl
Reddit