Ticketmaster CEO Nathan Hubbard has made no secret of the ticketing giant’s increased digital plans and aspirations, and it appears that some of them are beginning to pay off for the company.
According to Facebook executive Dan Rose, vice president of the social network’s partnerships and platform marketing division, whenever a user posted on the site about a concert or event they had bought tickets to and were planning to attend, Ticketmaster benefitted to the tune of an additional $5.30 in sales. Rose disclosed the figure while speaking at Bizaarvoice’s Social Commerce Summit this week in Austin, TX, as reported by the New York Times, and those additional sales likely came from that user’s friends on Facebook also buying tickets.
“We now have a direct link between sharing on Facebook and revenue generation at e-commerce sites,” Rose said, according to the Times.
With 500 million users worldwide, it is no secret that Facebook has become a game-changing force in marketing and e-commerce over the past few years, so when its users post newsfeed items about goods or services, or utilize the site’s “Like” feature, it clearly carries weight among consumers.
Which means, recommendations from friends and family members, whether online or off, remain an important way in helping people make purchasing decisions. Facebook benefits, too, because Ticketmaster is more likely to consider also spending money on advertising on Facebook if it knows that the social network can help drive sales.
“This is word of mouth on steroids,” Rose said, according to Direct Marketing News. “This is how you take advantage of the social Web.”
Ticketmaster is certainly not the first company to realize this and increase its social media efforts — the company struck a deal with Apple to sell tickets through the electronics company’s Ping service, for example. But, due to Ticketmaster’s size, and the millions of names the company says it has access to in its database, it is in a strong position to take advantage of it.
The company identified boosting its internet presence as a major objective in 2011, which the often-brash Hubbard has taken to with zeal. The CEO has sparred online with rival StubHub and launched several new social media and e-commerce initiatives in the past six months, including adding the Facebook “Like” buttons and revamping the Ticketmaster.com shopping cart.
“Ticketmaster.com quickly, not-so-quietly emerging as one of the most social commerce sites around,” Hubbard wrote on Twitter this week, referring to Rose’s statements.
