by Mike Guiffre, Special to Ticket News
While a lot of people out there recoil when you bring up the “secondary market” – in reality, it’s a more and more attractive proposition for many business. There are three key reasons for this.
- Flexibility and Budget-Maximizing
- Local and National Markets in One Spot
- Ease of the Information Highway
1. Flexibility and Budget Management
Over the years when thinking of how businesses may utilize the secondary market, the thought process typically involved large or hard to get hospitality. And why not? You could easily obtain season ticket packages for each team or venue in your market and fit your entertainment around that inventory. You would then purchase additional tickets as needed. Eventually, if the need arose for large scale hospitality or an event such as The Masters or The Super Bowl, the company would could source the purchase to a large vendor.
However, recently with the increase in the types of seating options, especially in premium seating, as well as a many more desirable concert or musical acts touring the need to be flexible has become increasingly necessary.
Companies now work with the secondary market because they can customize their purchases to more effectively work within budget and time constraints as well as maximize ROI.
At TicketCity, we have a division dedicated to working with companies of varying sizes (employees, locations, and revenues) with a wide range of ticket needs. The ability to customize inventory within a company’s budget helps maximize what they can accomplish in client entertainment.
For example, instead of purchasing eight season tickets for every MLB game during the regular season we work with companies who provide requests based on more specific needs AND a similar budget. Having only eight tickets but to every game is difficult to manage logistically and forces the scheduling of your staff and clients to not necessarily fit everyone’s needs.
Because secondary pricing follows the market pricing, high and low, we can use the same budget and provide tickets to fewer games but in a better fashion. Some of the budgets will be used for the company to entertain its top clients in premium seats at the most popular and expensive games, some for smaller sets for basic entertaining when best scheduled for all and the rest for large blocks of tickets for employee or client events at lower cost games. Because some premium games may have higher costs and some lesser desirable games a lower cost, the company can get maximum value across the board.
It ends up being a win-win as the company better maximizes its budget and ROI, the scheduling is not forced with inventory and date constraints, and finally, there is little to no waste of tickets.
2. Local and National Marketplaces in One Spot
As I mentioned above, we work with companies to better customize packages and pricing to fit their specific needs. One note missed by many when planning this is how we can help across multiple teams or venues in one city or even across the entire country.
To be more clear, not only do we work with companies in need of customized local packaging. We also work with many companies that have multiple locations or client entertainment needs across the country. Our Corporate Relations Department can essentially become a one stop shop for any ticket needs for any event at any venue.
This then allows companies to funnel their multiple local or national requests to one person who then has us to do the legwork. Having access and expertise on multiple venues and pricing, we are equipped to help save time and money as well as maximize the budget. With all of the tickets now in one spot funneled from one employee a company can keep better track of their client entertaining and have a better understanding of customizing their needs moving forward.
Lastly, our Corporate Partner rewards including discount codes to be used by employees nationwide. Instead of needing to set up multiple programs or discounts with each team or venue in your city or nationally our programs are good for any event at any time. This make an employee reward program or an online ordering system for client entertainment seamless nationwide with little need for oversight or ongoing maintenance.
TicketCity Corporate Partnership Programs
3. Ease of the Information Highway
Secondary sites carry a large portion of the B2B ticket sales market share because of a national digital marketing reach. As I wrote about in an article here: B2B Sales and Marketing Planning most businesses are researching online for a specific need and to capture the customer requires budget and a segmented digital footprint. In fact according to a few studies, 94% of B2B buyers research online before making a decision, and B2B customers are 65-90% of the way through the purchase decision process before they contact you.
Even locally there is an abundance of sporting events and concerts to attend. Most cities are developing entertainment districts that carry small theaters, entertainment venues and additional amphitheater types that create an even more crowded market. Each just as valuable in different ways for client entertainment purposes.
The customers have to cut through the noise, and the way to do that is researching and comparing. Something as simple as searching for an event date is an opportunity to capture a B2B customer. Most secondary sites are experts not only in digital marketing such as SEO, PPC, mobile and creating an overall online print but consumer acquisition and retention growth through data analysis and technology integrations.
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The B2B consumer values time and is always looking to save money and maximize ROI. At the end of the day having multiple local or national venues inventory in one place, a company of experts that work for you, flexibility and the ability to find results quickly, then compare and make informed decisions has allowed the secondary market to move into a B2B role that on the outside looking in seemed to focus solely on B2C.
Mike Guiffre is the Vice president of Sales for TicketCity. This article is an updated version of one he originally published on LinkedIn. Mike can be reached at [email protected], on Linkedin, or on Twitter @mjguff.
