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Location, Location, Location By Ashley Hennigan August 30, 2012 If you’re a presenter in Seattle, you’re probably not selling many tickets to people in Kansas City (and you’re not trying to). The bulk of your ticket sales takes place within a fairly confined geographic area. Enter “location-based” social media services. You’ve personally used location-based services (LBS), probably without realizing it, and it’s a fair bet your customers are also already using LBS. Many are likely reviewing and sharing your venue and concerts, so it’s time to get up to speed. A LBS is any service that requests your current location or inherently uses GPS technology, often through the use of a smart-phone. This includes anything from finding directions on Google Maps to “checking in” on Foursquare (more on that later), to searching for nearby deals. There are three basic benefits to employing LBS:
How LBS works Examples of location-based services abound. For instance, businesses contract with the popular “daily deal” site LivingSocial to offer its users deeply discounted deals on everything from Real-time reach with Yelp and foursquare You can update your information on these LBS applications to help the mobile audience find you. Your mobile, spur-of-the-moment audiences—the prime target for last-minute ticket sales—are probably using Yelp and foursquare . [Editor’s note: The foursquare company chooses to not capitalize its name.] Yelp foursquare As a presenter, you can take control of your venue’s foursquare page at no cost. After officially claiming your location on foursquare, you can track customer check-ins, offer specials, and use analytics tools provided by foursquare to view photos and tips. If you have not already done a search for your location on foursquare, go here. Specials are one of foursquare’s best features and are used by a number of presenters to attract new customers and reward loyal ones. For example:
These specials will also help to spread the word of the event as each customer unlocks the special and shares his purchase with his social network.To get started with foursquare, go here. Influencing ticket sales with local daily deals The most popular are probably Groupon and LivingSocial, but it’s worth checking out which other daily deal sites might be catering to your local community. According to Groupon’s statistics, 91 percent of the people purchasing deals either return or plan to return as customers to the business that offered the deals. One of the big selling points for the daily deal services is the trend of customers buying additional products from the businesses offering the deals as well as bringing friends to the businesses offering deals. Groupon found that customers spend about 55 percent more than the value of the deal they purchased and 75 percent of businesses report that Groupon users bring friends along with them when they redeem their coupons. LivingSocial boasts similar results, stating 29 percent of their deal redeemers are new customers for the participating local businesses. For selling tickets to performing arts events, the most relevant Groupon service is the recently launched GrouponLive. GrouponLive is targeted at driving ticket sales for live events. Campaigns can run as soon as an event is announced with a pre-sale ticket deal and continue up to the date of the performance. To get started with Groupon, go here.
Ashley Hennigan is a social media marketing consultant for small businesses and has been a featured speaker before national higher education and professional development groups. Ashley is also assistant director at Rochester Institute of Technology, where she is helps manage the University’s mobile web and social media efforts.
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