Choosing the right ticket outlet

We’re likely to say: “Choose Skiddle to sell your tickets.”  However we accept that different ticket agencies have different specialties and it’s important that you choose an agency where there is plenty of synergy between what they do and what you do (or what your event is about).

Skiddle is the UK’s Biggest What’s On Guide by a long way, however it’s fair to say we are more orientated towards clubbing events. If you think about an average Friday or Saturday night up and down the country it stands to reason that many of our events are orientated towards this market, simply because of the sheer numbers of nightclubs there is out there and their need to sell as many tickets as possible.

Choosing A Ticket Agency With The Right Target Audience

Skiddle has grown up a lot since then and our market penetration has grown considerably into other areas of the market, so although our core is still the nightclub sector it’s fair to say our audience is interested in a very varied range of events, from clubbing, to festivals, to gigs etc and on top of that we have a not-insignificant number of customers who never go to events and simply use Skiddle to find a restaurant or hotel.

Choosing A Ticket Agency Who Can Promote Your Event

Probably the biggest thing to think about is the ability of your ticket outlet to get out to an audience, so you need to be clear about the number of people that are using the ticket outlet in choice. For example, in 2012, 6.6 million people in the UK used Skiddle (that’s somewhere like 1 in 10 people in the UK used Skiddle in 2012), the level of market penetration is a good indication as to how successful the ticket agency will be in helping you promote your event or sell tickets to your event.

The next thing you’ve got to ask yourself is what are they going to give you in the way of marketing support? There are a lot of budget brands out there that don’t support any of the events that they’re listing other than by sticking them on their website and hoping that will be enough to get them sales. Skiddle is dedicated to supporting the events on sale with us, it makes sense for us to put this effort in – it all well and good getting millions of people on to Skiddle but if we don’t have news and information we wouldn’t keep them for long. Our marketing support consists of a variety of options including editorial content, display advertising on Skiddle.com, social media through Facebook and Twitter as well as email marketing.

Choosing A Ticket Agency Who Are Technology Focus

In 2001, Skiddle.com became the first website out there that enabled event promoters to add their event directly to our listings. If you remember the early days of the internet, 2001 was well before the days of user generated content and web 2.0. Skiddle has continued to be innovative with technology ever since, with a team of developers in house we are dedicated to improving what we do on a daily basis.

Over the years this dedication can be seen in everything from our development of RapidScan on site ticketing solutions through to becomming the first ticket outlet to create a Facebook Ticket Shop App and later the first to create a Timeline integrated Ticket Shop app on Facebook.

In this period there has been a lot of pretenders that have come and gone, and often it’s this lack of dedication to technology that has meant they’ve not been able to keep up with us.

Basically, if you’re choosing a ticket agency, you want to make sure they can not only do what you need them to do now, but also that they’ll be able to do the things you don’t know you want them to do in the future – that means you want a tech business.

How do ticket agencies make money?

Most ticket agencies work in the same or a similar manner, it’s important to understand how they make money and how you benefit from them making that money instead of you.

Essentially most ticket agencies charge a fee for selling tickets, that’s either charged to the customer in the form of a booking fee, or a charge to the event directly. Skiddle tends to work on a booking fee basis. This booking fee goes on to pay for the promotion of the events listed by the ticket agency and for the development of the website and software systems that sit behind their website.

By allowing a number of ticket agencies to make money off the back of your event you are enabling your event to reach a much wider audience than it would have done previously if it was just to reply on your brands perception and penetration.

Asking the right questions of a ticket agency

Crucially in all of the above you want to make sure you’re asking the right questions of the ticket agencies you’re speaking to. There’s a lot of flash in the pan agencies out there and lots of events are getting stung by falling for smooth sales processes that leave them stuck in contracts that don’t satisfy their requirement.

To list tickets on Skiddle visit our promotion centre now at: Skiddle.com/Promotion