Pricing is an art form, and many or our clients struggle with how to properly price their products. This is especially true of our performing arts organizations that serve more mature audiences with fixed incomes. Even so, try some of the ideas below to see if you can increase ticket revenues.
Once a price is set for your event though, it can prove beneficial to play around with the price based on sale date, weather conditions or other factors. It's important to thoroughly plan how you want to sell tickets to your event online. Smart pricing policies can add to your ticket sale count, improve your total revenue, and at the same time, provide benefits to your ticket buyers. Let's look at a few concepts to guide you in your own policies for how to sell tickets to your event online.
One of our favorites is simply dynamic pricing based on sale date. If your price is generally $20, you might consider lowering the price to $16 for the first couple of weeks that event sales are open. You'll want to highlight the "early bird" price to inspire customers to take advantage of the discount by indicating your price schedule with dates of upcoming price increases. Selling tickets online makes sharing this lower price easy, utilize social media and your own website to make buyers aware. You can incrementally raise your price right up until the day of the event. On event day, consider adding just a couple of dollars to the ticket price for procrastinating buyers. Instituting a dynamic pricing policy helps fill the house early, yet day-of price increases can offset losses from early discounts.
The 2014 Super Bowl was held at the Meadowlands in New Jersey. This year has been a particularly brutal winter, and after another frigid blast hit the state last week, ticket prices began to tumble on ticket selling websites. Then, the weather forecast suggested it just might be a "balmy" high of 51° and prices were on the rise.
Adapting this type of dynamic pricing for your outdoor events can add significant profits to your event. As the date approaches, check your local weather and if it is shaping up to be a perfect day, consider adding to your event description a link to the forecast, embed a weather "widget", or simply invite customers to come enjoy your event under clear skies. Increase your ticket price, stock up on beer and ice, and enjoy the higher profits!
It's been rumored that Jimmy Buffet concerts are known to bring in more revenue from alcohol sales than most musicians. Use your historical data to find out which events, days of the week, or external factors invite greater celebration and then consider lowering prices to fill the house. Maybe you won't be lucky enough to have Mr. Buffet himself, but one of your recurring acts may see a bump in alcohol consumption per person attending.
You can also look at external factors like spikes in young tourists flooding your city for big collegiate games who might find their way to your event. As always, your aim is to fill the house, but when you take advantage of the "consumption per person" factor, lost proceeds from lower ticket prices can be amply made up with increased, higher margin alcohol sales.
Pricing just right is always fraught with unknowns, but when you can discern patterns to dynamically price your tickets, there are opportunities for increased profits. There are a host of factors to consider when looking at dynamic pricing adjustments: weather, acts, patronage, and even seasonal adjustments might be just the ticket to increased profits.
Start to Sell Tickets to Your Event Online Today!
As the ticketing industry leader in software free of per-ticket fees, ThunderTix is positioned to help your business sell tickets to your event online more than any other ticketing vendor. It is important that your ticketing website makes it easy and simple to change your ticket prices. ThunderTix allows you to easily edit ticket prices throughout the event sale. Additionally, ThunderTix offers you the ability to set up automatic ticket price changes. Venues with ThunderTix benefit from the cost saving benefits of our subscription based no fee ticketing software. The vast majority of our customers pass the savings we provide along to their customers by reducing or removing per-ticket fees. This pay-it-forward practice has been proven to increase ticket sales volume and velocity.
You too can join their ranks using the same best practices for ticket fees. Be sure to take a look at all the features we have to offer and sign up for a free trial today!
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