Latest / Talk Commerce / The Top 3 Things Event Organizers Must Know to Boost Ticket Sales in a Post-COVID World with Ashley Stanford
Transcript
- Brent Peterson (00:02.542) Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce. Today I have Ashley Stanford. She is the founder of Ice Cream Social. Ashley, go ahead, do an introduction for yourself. Tell us your day -to -day role and maybe one of your passions in life. Ashley Stanford (00:14.889) Sure. Brent Peterson (00:19.534) Yeah, I didn't mean to do that quite yet. That was... I was just explaining to Ashley that I have a new little box and I hit the wrong button. I meant to mute myself, but now go ahead. Maybe that should be my intro for you. Yeah, in the future. All right, go ahead. Ashley Stanford (00:32.073) It went better. I'm into it, yeah. Thank you, Brent, for having me. Also, I am loving your t -shirt, giving very fiery aloha vibes. So, appreciate it. As you mentioned, I am co -founder of Ice Cream Social, which is a social referral widget meant to turn all of your customers into influencers for your brand. I also work for a company called TicketSocket, which is a white labeled ticketing and events registration platform. And the reason I mentioned that is because it was, you know, really my work through TicketSocket, which I work with our TicketSocket clients to support them in their marketing initiatives. You know, everything from just getting basic analytics set up to maybe supporting a strategy and even executing. social advertising, email, SMS campaigns. And in working with my clients there, that's where we found the need for what is now Ice Cream Social. I had some clients that were just kind of struggling to make the dollar work as much as it used to back in the day. And we're looking and brainstorming for ideas of what can we do to sell more tickets. Ashley Stanford (02:04.071) without spending more money. And that is where Ice Cream Social was born. You know, it's really meant to activate that word of mouth marketing in a digital world. Brent Peterson (02:18.126) That's great. And what about passions in life? Ashley Stanford (02:22.249) passions. Well, as we were chatting earlier, I live in the beautiful Orange County, California, right here near the ocean. So one of my favorite things to do is in the mornings, go watch my son at his surf club. And lots of beautiful hiking here. Love doing that. And, you know, you might not believe this, but I like to read a little bit. Brent Peterson (02:50.542) Yeah, I was commenting on, is it you that's, are you a cricketer or is your bookshelf cricket? It's a good view. I am also a, I'm gonna say aspiring surfer, a very poor surfer. I really wanna, I want to learn how to surf and I took lessons on a very big board and then I bought some Jerry Lopez, I think they're seven or eight foot boards and I'm really struggling now. So maybe I should come to Huntington Beach. Ashley Stanford (02:58.473) Okay. Brent Peterson (03:20.398) and take some surf lessons. But everybody tells me I just should buy a bigger board. Ashley Stanford (03:22.377) We are. Yeah, I mean sometimes those bigger floating boards help. We are Surf City USA, if you didn't know the song that the beach boys sing about. But anyone who gets out there, I give it to you because the ocean is strong and unpredictable and it's a little scary if you ask me. Brent Peterson (03:44.558) Yeah, I have a standard paddleboard as well and I'm perfectly okay on that. I did learn how to stand a paddleboard in the ocean and that was hard. I summer in Minnesota which is full of lakes and they're all flat and very few waves but anyways. Ashley, before we get started, you have volunteered to be part of the Free Joke Project and all I'm going to do is tell you a joke and all you have to do is say, should this joke be free or do you think at some point we should charge for it? Ashley Stanford (03:47.017) Right. Yeah. Ashley Stanford (03:57.321) Yeah. Brent Peterson (04:14.318) Or as we talked earlier, maybe this is a one scoop joke or a three scoop joke. And so here we go. I'm going to tell you the joke. Ashley Stanford (04:22.215) Hit me. Okay. Brent Peterson (04:24.846) A lawyer walks into a bar and asks, is this where I take the exam? Ashley Stanford (04:35.913) Oh, that's the joke. Brent Peterson (04:37.486) That's the joke. Alright, this is great. Yes. Ashley Stanford (04:39.975) You know, I'm not good at getting punchlines. It'll click for me later in the day. I'll be like, uh... Brent Peterson (04:46.574) Yeah, so the lawyers have to take a bar exam. You have to pass the bar. I know. I apologize. That was a particularly bad joke. But I appreciate the response. Ashley Stanford (04:50.697) Oh, I get it. Yes, okay. I get it. Ashley Stanford (04:59.429) I might have said, it's still early here and I'm still drinking my coffee. Although, it's probably way earlier than where you are. Yeah. Brent Peterson (05:04.302) It's, yeah, it's 7 a .m. It's, we're at 7 a .m. here. The sun just came up. Good. So Ashley, tell us a little bit about how things have changed, especially in the entertainment and in the event industry since COVID started, since after, since COVID. Ashley Stanford (05:26.441) Yeah, COVID has been an interesting time in events. And, you know, obviously, at Ticket Socket, when events weren't happening, we really had to shift. And that's where we really peeled off Ice Cream Social from being a feature inside of Ticket Socket to being its own standalone company. So while, you know, COVID has been a downer, that is kind of a silver lining that I... like to think about and as events came back, maybe eight or nine months later, some outdoor events were able to kind of, you know, start figuring things out. And there was a real surge, a demand for events and sales were beautiful for about six months. And then they started to tank again. And what I'm finding, you know, there's, There's three things in particular that I'm finding with events and marketing right now. One, you have to be smarter with your budget than ever before. And I'll just give one quick tip, maybe, you know, one way of doing that, and we can dive into more detail later if you guys are interested. But one way of doing that is before you ever go on sale for your event, you really want... to create a lot of buzz and create a lot of leads. You know, get the names, emails, phone numbers of people who are interested in going to your event because the cost to acquire those leads are pretty nominal. Depending on the event, you could pay 50 cents a lead, you could pay $5 a lead. Now, the cost to acquire a customer is so much more expensive. So if you have a database of leads before you ever go on sale, It's going to help bring down your overall cost per acquisition, which is going to help your event be more profitable. The second one is you have to get your timing right on marketing your event, which goes back to just being smarter with your budget. Nowadays, it is difficult to compete with for people's time. It's not just about competing events. It's about time. And I've noticed people are also not planning ahead. Ashley Stanford (07:48.297) as far as they used to. And part of that is because there's so many options. So, you know, people will buy tickets more last minute, more so than ever. So you want to make sure that your budget is split in a way where you're heavy on the on the peaks of your sales cycle. And you're not just spending money to drive sales during a time where people aren't going to buy. And This one's a given and it's not exactly marketing, but it absolutely affects your marketing. You need to put on a great event. You need to have a great track record, a great history. And what I'm finding is a lot of events that used to sell really well, let's say like fun runs, they're struggling right now. And it's because we're really shifting. events and to being something so much more immersive, you know, your event really needs to activate, you know, all five senses and really, you got to think about that and think about adapting to people's attention spans, you know, social media, all of that. Brent Peterson (09:02.202) I think one of the things you said earlier about how the virtual events were the thing and even the big event promoters thought maybe in person was going to be done. My experience now has been I'm so tired of online events. I want to go back in person. And I was at ETAL West this last week in Palm Springs. It was one of the, I think it was the biggest one they've ever put on. And it was so great. to be in front of so many people again. Why do you think some events are growing, like some of those industry -specific events, and then other ones are really dying off? Is there a shift in how people are doing it, or is it just how the events are put on? Ashley Stanford (09:49.097) A little bit of both. I will say if you have the right audience, things like e -tail, things that are educational, it allows you to educate yourself, which is a huge trend right now in this, what I would still call, I know it was kind of like a trending thing for a while, this whole gig economy, but I don't think that's going anywhere. To me, That's kind of been my whole career. And I think people are catching onto that. So anything that, you know, values education and networking, people find value in. And I think if the event's put on right, it has a great track record, which of course, ETale does. Things like that will do well. But some things, they're just, they need to evolve. They need to grow. You can't put on the same exact event. for 10 years and not think that you can just stay stagnant. You know, gotta keep up with, you know, what people are interested in. Brent Peterson (10:59.822) Tell us a little bit about Ice Cream Social. I will say that I've been involved in Magento community events for almost 15 years now. The social aspect of it, I think, was much more in tune 10 years ago. Are the social aspects of being at an event changing now? And how should an event organizer leverage social? Ashley Stanford (11:30.537) Sure, I mean... You have to be on social or people just don't even think you're legitimate. And social is honestly tells a better story. A lot of times you can go to an event's website, but you're not, you're not really, you're getting like a one -sided story about what the event is like, where if you have social media, you can see more of it. You can see, you know, the reactions on people's faces. It just, it tells a better story. It's more engaging. So yes, social is such a vital role in event marketing and honestly, probably any kind of marketing and ice cream social. Well, it is a social referral tool. What we're trying to do is, you know, gamify word of mouth marketing in the digital world now. I'm going to say something a little controversial, but an influencer does not need to have any social media. An influencer can be just any person. And that's what we're trying to help events realize and activate within their customer database. They have a large customer database that is not posting their whole life on social media. You know, it's actually probably a smaller percentage. You know, of course, a lot of people are looking, but there's really not a lot of people in the grand scheme of things that are just posting all the content. If I think about, you my circle of people, you know, I probably have a handful that are posting everything happening in their lives. And so the idea is facilitating a way, giving people the tools that they need to share an event with people. Ashley Stanford (13:25.481) yes on social, but also in SMS and messenger. Things that help facilitate that share without social media being needed because I work in social media every day. So I'm not super active in promoting my personal life in social media. That's just not my thing. But I'm talking to friends and family all day long on my phone. And so you don't want to leave. that group of people out, because honestly, it's the majority of your customer base. Brent Peterson (13:56.48) Yeah, that's such a good point that sort of and I know some of the new events We've had the the whatsapp channel or the whatsapp group that gets created before the event is such a great driver on making sure that What's happening during the event gets conveyed to the other event? attendees and then Sort of that direct approach where individuals are going even in DMS to say hey Have you seen this event or have you seen that event? Ashley Stanford (14:13.833) sure. Brent Peterson (14:25.752) how that helps. Is there strategies that are changing now since COVID or from a social standpoint or are the same strategies working that were 10 years ago? Ashley Stanford (14:38.473) You know, I'd have to say strategy is one thing and that will always work. Most people approach their marketing without a strategy and that's where they fail. Now, the things that are ever evolving, of course, are the tactical things. And one thing that I do notice a lot of event marketers doing, or I'd say event managers. who are wearing a lot of hats doing the marketing themselves. Cause if you have someone dedicated to marketing, they probably understand this, but a lot of event managers might just say, I'm doing Facebook ads, but my event's not selling. I don't get it. Maybe I need to spend more or maybe my event sucks. No one wants to come. Or maybe Facebook ads just don't work. And... That's not the case. You really want to approach it holistically and think about all of the possible marketing channels. So your organic social, your paid social, your search, your SMS, your email marketing, and you really need to make sure that they work together. And it's a cohesive strategy. Yeah, it's a lot more work. Um, but having all those pieces work together, play together in the sandbox nicely. It is going to drive sales tenfold rather than you doubling down on one or two marketing channels. And it's going to make the cost per acquisition for customers lower because it's just that idea of all boats rise with the tide. Brent Peterson (16:19.926) Yeah, you bring up a good point especially about partnering with with other with your with your marketing service and with your other sponsors talk a little bit about how important it is to have Not only those partnerships in place, but maybe your sponsors help you with that strategy of getting your the word out and From my experience. It's been that a lot of sponsors. Don't when they when they pay the money. They're just figuring that the organizer is going to take care of everything. As an organizer, how do you get the sponsors to help participate in that? Ashley Stanford (16:51.593) Mm -hmm. Ashley Stanford (16:57.065) Sure, so I would say, and this requires a lot of planning, proper pitching, and not kind of shoot from the hip. I need a sponsor because I need funds for my event, but you really wanna think about, we'll call them strategic sponsors. You wanna think about sponsors for your event that very much align, has very similar raving fans. of people who would like to come to your event because they're going to have a captive audience of the exact people you're trying to reach. So first and foremost, I would think locally for most events, you know, a lot of events that I work with, they're traveling events. It's the same event, but they're in a new city every weekend or every six weeks. And so you want to think locally because they're going to have the local market of people who can attend. So... One, do your research or homework on local if it's happening in a city that you're not involved in. Plus the local community appreciates that anything you can do to help drive business in the local community, it's great that you're bringing all these people to the city, but how can you also help that community in a way that's going to leave an impact where they're going to welcome you and want to help promote your event every year. I've talked to some. people in certain cities where they're upset because events will come in and they'll leave and they don't do anything to support the community and they leave a mess and you don't want to be that event. So first think locally and then think about the products and things that your customer base loves and align with them. You need a deal that's going to work for both of you. It's not just, hey, we'll throw... We'll let you pop up a tentner event and we'll throw your banner on an email that goes out like that's just not great value. Brent Peterson (18:58.016) Do you recommend to event organizers that especially on those strategic partners that they double down and help them on those on those marketing items where you maybe you would take on some of that for them in terms of social or whatever that is? Ashley Stanford (19:14.697) Yeah, I mean, I've done this a lot with both sponsors and working with like influencers or celebrities with a brand. You wanna make it so easy for them to help you that you, we give them a whole package. Hey, here's some pre -written social media posts customized for each platform. Here's a folder of images. Here's a blog post. Like here is, everything you could possibly need. Here's some pre -written emails. Feel free to wordsmith it so it fits your brand. But hey, we want to make this easy on you. So like here's a whole package to help you. Brent Peterson (19:57.998) Tell us a little bit about the game. You said gamification, and I know that one of my early events, we would do who can do the most tweets. And I'm a very voracious in -line tweeter. So as I'm listening to a speaker, I'm able to take shorthand notes via tweets. And I would always win the, not always, but I would often win the tweet contest because I was so good at it. Is that gamification thing still in play? Ashley Stanford (20:33.353) I think so. First off, I think that's a brilliant idea for a B2B event. So kudos to whoever came up with that. That's great. I think, yeah, any kind of activity you can come up with on site and event that creates social content, because really that's the whole reason someone's doing that. It's creating social content. It's getting their name and brand out there. on the internet. So it might look different for B2C events. So maybe you have a really great display. I like to say like your event needs to be Instagramable. Like you have to have these moments at the event that people want to post on Instagram. So maybe it's as simple as having those and letting people know that, Hey, post it with this hashtag and you know, within one hour after the event, we're picking X amount of people to win a gift card or whatever the case may be. You do want some element of gamification in it. Ice cream social does that through rewarding people. So one example might be, hey, if you get five friends to buy a ticket and come to this event with you, we'll give you a full refund. And that creates an incentive for them. Brent Peterson (22:03.47) Yeah, that's great. So the referral thing and other, what other things have you done around social media to gamify it? Like I said earlier, there was always a board up then who would have the most tweets, would win. Actually, we didn't win anything, but now that I think about it, we just got the pleasure of knowing that we're the first, we're on the top of the leaderboard. But having a, I don't know, and actually, this is more than, 10 years ago, but I bet the organizer wasn't thinking in terms of, hey, that volume of hashtags out there is gonna bring more people or more awareness to the event. Do some event organizers look at that during event as too late to get people? And I guess the follow -up on that is, hopefully there's gonna be a next year, and you want us then to kind of... lean into that and use some of that for later throughout the year to keep people interested. Ashley Stanford (23:03.955) Right, that's the mindset you have to have for that kind of engagement on site is you got to think about next year or even, yeah, I guess like e -tail, it can probably hold in different cities, different years. So no matter where you're going, you still want that content because that content is going to help feed your organic social content for the rest of the year. I... honestly can really only speak to leading up to the event because I'm just focused on sales and Not so much once the event starts, but one thing that we do for You know adding that layer of of fun and engagement Pre -event is we'll usually do a big big Opening night on sale. So when I say opening nights not opening night is the event opening night of tickets on sale? So I mentioned we'll do a lead generation campaign. We'll collect thousands of leads leading up to the day that we're gonna go on sale. And we make a really big deal about going on sale. So one that I did recently, if we'll go on sale, let's say in the evening, I usually like to go on sale on like Monday nights at 8 p .m. What we'll do is in that first hour, You get the cheapest ticket until they're sold out. Sometimes we sell out of the cheapest ticket in eight minutes. We'll do things like anyone who purchases opening night, they go into a raffle and we give away things like, we gave away a Peloton, we gave away a hotel stay and like a gift card to a restaurant in that city that we're going to close to the venue. That way they can make a whole like, night of it. So we do things like that that will help drive sales. Just because I'm sales focused when I in the marketing that I do. So we'll do fun things like that as well. It works. Brent Peterson (25:11.886) Yeah, I love that. And those are great ideas. Hopefully, I get this into a format that we can use the little snippets of what you just said for social. Because honestly, I think that's great. And we've done, like we've put on these Meet Magento events, and we did that opening night thing. But I love the idea of having a raffle if you're part of that, and then do gift cards as part of that raffle. How about if you as an organizer, you put on this opening night and you don't sell out all those tickets that first day or second day, how do you kind of keep some momentum going? Do you come up with a new day in the future where you say, OK, here's our second opening or something like that? Or you word it as, hey, this is or. maybe have a sponsor say, this is sponsor day and there's so many gift cards available during this day that you can be in line with winning. Ashley Stanford (26:22.249) Great question. So with the clients I work with, we have a formula. And if sales are not where they should have been on opening night, Oftentimes we'll cancel the event right then and there. Usually we'll open within a time period where we haven't yet fully paid the venue fees and all those things will open. And if it bombs, we know there's not room for us in this city. This city is not our target market or this event. There's just not the interest we thought. Um, so I'm pretty confident in my opening sales strategy and if it bombs, oftentimes we'll pull the plug because we just know we've carried, carried on before and it is a very stressful sales cycle and it doesn't work out. Um, if we're borderline close, maybe we didn't meet the goal, but we know we can, you know, still do pretty good. Um, There are different strategies that we'll do. I try to stay away from the Walmart pricing where we just kind of roll back pricing here and there and have these sales. We try not to do that because then that upsets people who bought the whole incentive of buying on opening night, getting the best deal. So we don't ever put another deal on that is better than what they could have got on opening night. We might do some flash sales. Like sometimes we'll do like a... a lunch like a lunchtime flash sale or like something random like that. But the one thing that we do to continue to keep those little spikes of sales going is essentially oftentimes price bumps. Prices are going up on this date, you've got 48 hours or the ticket price is going to be this. So that yes, it's you see it a lot, but it is effective. Ashley Stanford (28:34.153) The only time it's not effective is when you should have pulled out of that market because sales are going to be a struggle the whole time anyways. Brent Peterson (28:41.31) Do you think some events look at the attendance as maybe a smaller attendance sometimes is better and maybe their initial goal was already too big and the event could be put on in a fashion that's maybe smaller and more intimate that makes more sense? Ashley Stanford (29:01.389) Yes, that before you go into this and like going on sale you need to know your numbers and you need to know your goals Because for some for the events I work with if we don't have a strong opening night it does not make sense to carry on because they're not gonna make up the revenue and other places and You just have to have that mindset some events, you know, you could almost give away the tickets because you know, once you get the butts in the seats, when they're there, they're gonna buy. It's kind of like, I don't know, traffic and conversion summit. You still buy tickets to go, but when I'm there, I'm also like throwing my credit card on stage, spending way more money than what my ticket cost. So in cases like that, you just, it depends on the event. You need to know your numbers, but you need to know that before you go on sale. Brent Peterson (29:54.086) All right, so last question. In the, like every industry has specific events. How do people find out about events that are maybe touching their, like you've mentioned traffic inversion, but there's so many events that intersect with other events. Is there a good way to find out about maybe a sister event or event that, like if I'm in the e -commerce business, maybe a marketing or SEO event would be also relevant? Is there? A good way as both an organizer to know these events are happening and does it make sense to partner with some of those and then as an attendee, sometimes it's hard to learn to know about all the different events out there. Ashley Stanford (30:36.177) Yeah, I don't have a great way. I mean, I rely on them to market to me. If you want me to go to this event and it's going to be awesome, you need to be targeting in the right way that it's going to get me because I get great ads that are very relevant. So you just you got to know how to market. As far as teaming up, I mean, it is important to have an an idea of who your potential competitors are. Even if they're not direct competitors, it's kind of competing. People probably aren't going to go to both in one year type thing. You do need to understand who those people are. That's part of your research when putting on an event before you do your marketing. Because what you don't want to do is go into a very similar market to them around the same time. you know, maybe if you still want to put on your event, do it on the other side of the country and do it a different time of year type thing. So you just, you do want to be aware of any kind of competitors. If you can find events, I do help some of my clients find complimentary events where maybe we can share resources like email lists and help promote each other's events because we do go to the same markets, but not at the same time. and we have similar audiences. So if you can find those kind of, uh, complimentary events, that's great. You know, maybe they could send out email blasts to their database saying, Hey, we love this event and you should get a ticket. You could give them an affiliate link and they could at least get paid for that. So for sure, it's definitely something you should put in your marketing strategy. Brent Peterson (32:29.922) Ashley, I know we've gone through our 20 minutes. As I close out, and thank you, it's been a really interesting conversation. As we close out the podcast, I give my guests a chance to do a shameless plug about anything you'd like. What would you like to plug today? Ashley Stanford (32:47.369) Ooh, I would say definitely check out icecreamsocial .io. I know, not .com, it's .io. So if you're looking for us, that's where we are. Or you can visit ashley -stanford .com to learn more about me, ice cream social, ticket socket, and all the fun things I love. Brent Peterson (33:10.414) That's great, and I will make sure I put those in the show nuts. Ashley Stanford, the co -founder of Ice Cream Social. Thank you so much for being here. Ashley Stanford (33:18.569) Yeah, thank you Brent for having me.