Many music festivals have been using tiered pricing for years, but since advance concert ticket sales are suffering due to a changed customer ticket buying behavior in the last 2-3 years, concerts are seeing better advance sales with better discount incentives.
For many years, music festivals have offered an early bird price, advance price and a gate price, promoting through email broadcasts just before the price change to create a sales spike. These prices are usually separated by $5, $10, or up to $20 increments. The greater the price change, the greater the sales spike. "A tiered pricing matrix in your website connected to a ticket landing page is the best way to direct the buyer to action. Just don’t make your pricing too complicated"
"Once the landing page comes up, at the top of the web page, offer some add-on discounts (special parking, limited time seating upgrade, meet and greet photo op, or a VIP package", Abramson advised. Just a 5% conversion relates to added gross revenues that don’t get passed onto the bands.
"Make sure once these ticket tier deadlines pass, you are not slow or sloppy about making sure no advertising is out there that shows the lower, earlier prices. Feature the new price and the new deadline immediately, even if it has to be changed just after midnight", Abramson said. Your tickets also need to be designed so that the right price is on the ticket you are selling at that time.
Pre-sale is another technique used to offer a super discount for a very limited amount of time (2 weeks or less), that is launched prior to the Early Bird sale.
Abrasmon added, "we live in a time when the correct PRICE POINT can make the difference in selling tickets and not. So be careful of the ending gate price because many are waiting to buy and you don’t want to penalize them for waiting to the point of hurting your gate walk-up. New lower ticket pricing is working to increase volume."
Sticking to higher ticket prices because the event costs dictate it in your figuring should alert you to re-thinking the viability of that particular event. If that ticket price is too high for your area, you may have trouble selling enough tickets to make it work. High break even points in this troubled economy is a bad gamble. It’s better to pass.
High unemployment, high gas prices, changes in consumer confidence and competition for that discretionary dollar have all changed the concert and festival world. Newer festivals and everyday concerts by indie promoters must offer a special appeal to increase chances of profitability.
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