3 Questions to Help Qualify a Ticketing Lead & How to Find Them

There are a few questions you can ask yourself to help determine if an event or event creator is a good lead for your ticketing brand:

1. What is the ticket fee revenue potential for the event?

The most obvious way that an event creator can qualify as a good lead is by taking into account how much money they will make you. Oftentimes you can determine this revenue potential prior to even speaking with them. During the research phase of your sales process, look at how many tickets they will sell over the course of a year and their average ticket prices. For a venue, this may include averaging how many tickets they sell to each show and how many shows are happening throughout the year. 

You can use these numbers to find your overall ticket fee revenue potential: Take the average ticket price and multiply it by 4%, add $1.50 and multiply that by your fee split percentage. Once you have the ticket fee revenue you earn per ticket sold, multiply it by your estimate of the number of tickets they will sell. The end result gives you an idea of what you could earn from a single event creator each year.

((Average Ticket Price x 4%) + $1.50) x your fee split = Average Ticket Fee per Ticket Sold

Average Ticket Fee per Ticket Sold x Tickets Sold Per Year = Yearly Ticket Fee Potential

Understanding the event's yearly ticket fee potential prior to your sales meeting will help you create and pitch a free (or discounted) content package to entice them to ticket with you. This revenue number also helps you work out additional advertising and marketing deals that you can offer based on their potential marketing budget for the event.

2. What is the quality of the event? 

Another way to determine if a lead is good for your ticketing brand is by looking at how successful or popular their events are within your community. 

Ask yourself, do they have successful events year after year? Do those events have a reputation of selling out in advance? Do members of your community talk about the event as it is coming up? Is it an important event in your area? Your answers to these questions will tell you how well their tickets will sell. Ticketing for quality event creators like this gives you the opportunity to elevate your brand by aligning your ticketing brand with their events. Their success is your success. 

Quality events also tend to have larger marketing budgets which means that they will not only sell more tickets but there is opportunity to up-sell them on advertising and marketing opportunities. Quality event creators with smart marketing and your guidance will also understand that they need to promote your ticketing brand while they are marketing their event in order to drive those ticket sales. 

Above is a prime example of this technique at work. This billboard was paid for by the event creator, The Little Fleet, not MyNorthTickets. The sales person at MyNorthTickets coached this event creator to mention MyNorthTickets each time they are promoting their event so that ticket buyers knew where to go to buy their tickets. 

3. How influential is the event creator in your community?

The third way that you can qualify a lead is to look at their overall influence in your community. Event creators in your community that will help elevate your brand or influence other event creators to work with you are not only a good lead but a strategic lead.  

These types of event creators are people who will talk about your ticketing to other event creators like themselves and share their experiences. They may have a large following in the community that will not only attend their events and use your ticketing brand but will also engage with any content you provide for the event. This engagement helps to broaden the reach of your brand and grow your audience. 

The local knowledge that you have within your community is a huge advantage you have over other national ticketing companies. You are close to your community, you know what event creators will help your brand grow, and what event creators or venues your community listens to and trusts their opinions. 

Now that you know what makes a good lead, where can you find them? 

Look within. You have the advantage of working at a media company that writes about local events, sells ad space to local events, and operates an ongoing calendar full of local events. All of the event creators that you’re working with in some capacity are already familiar with your existing media brand and work with you regularly. You now have the opportunity to strengthen that relationship further by working together towards a common goal of selling tickets.

Find your leads: 

1. Explore your current internal advertising and Evvnt Sales CRMs. Search out those quality events that spend ad dollars every year with you already.
2. What events are you sponsoring? Work in your ticketing brand as a part of your sponsorship deal.
3. Look in your music or events department. Is there someone there that has a strong relationship with local music venues? Use them as a way in the door to talk about your ticketing.
4. Dive into your Evvnt calendar. My favorite trick is to look at a community calendar like a time traveler. Look in the past about 8 months ago and see what kind of events were going on. This will give you leads for events happening again this year.
5. If all else fails head over to Google and keep your ear to the ground to find out when new venues are opening and festivals are starting. 

While digging around for your next ticketing lead, remember, you are the local expert. Use it.