How much should I charge for a ticket?
Isaac and Nessa confront the mental blocks around pricing and how to get the feelings out of the way so you price your event tickets right the first time. Get more at geteventlab.com
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
01:06 Today's FAQ and what people actually want to know
03:34 Managing feelings around reputation and money fears
05:30 Unclear marketing strategy = unclear pricing decisions
07:56 Reframing "marketing" and erasing that stereotype you have in mind
09:44 What do people want from this experience? Know your audience.
14:39 A recent personal experience with pricing for a specific audience in mind
17:03 Recap!
Key takeaways
- To price a conference strategically, understand your audience and the outcomes they need to achieve.
- Know your audience! What value are you delivering to the audience and how does this event serve those needs?
- How does your audience perceive value? What is most important to them?
- These questions should inform your content which will term turn your marketing efforts into a conversation communicating values and not a hard sell.
The question of how much to charge for a conference ticket is really about the value of the conference to the attendees. To price tickets fairly, consider the outcomes attendees want and how they perceive the value of the conference. Also consider demographics like where attendees are located and what they can afford. Marketing should communicate the value of the conference clearly to potential attendees.
Figure out how much your conference ticket could be worth using a tool we regularly use with our clients: geteventlab.com
Next episode: What city should I host my conference in?
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy
Transcript
How do you as a leader of a growing community, truly make a
Isaac Watson:conference or event that has impact, a gathering with purpose and an attendee
Isaac Watson:experience that knocks their socks off.
Isaac Watson:An event that leaves your audience in awe and wondering where
Isaac Watson:you've been their whole life.
Isaac Watson:Make it Kickass is the podcast that explores these questions
Isaac Watson:by uncovering the strategies.
Isaac Watson:Tactics and tools that we use every day to bring our clients' conferences to life.
Isaac Watson:I'm Isaac Watson, executive producer of Kickass Conferences, and we are
Isaac Watson:here to help you make it kick ass.
Isaac Watson:Hello everyone.
Isaac Watson:Welcome to another episode of Make It Kickass.
Isaac Watson:I am Isaac Watson, executive producer, and with me in our virtual studio
Isaac Watson:is the one, the only, the asker of good questions, Nessa Jimenez.
Nessa Jimenez:Hi everybody.
Isaac Watson:Nessa is our operations manager and is one of those just
Isaac Watson:fantastic people who knows how to get to the crux of things, and that's why
Isaac Watson:we are doing this podcast together.
Isaac Watson:If you are fresh into things, we are spending this season of the podcast
Isaac Watson:focused on those core questions that we get asked a lot from people and teasing
Isaac Watson:out what exactly are they asking.
Isaac Watson:What are the underlying problems that are drumming these questions up?
Isaac Watson:And what are things that we can offer as solutions, as
Isaac Watson:alternative things to think about?
Isaac Watson:Or different questions to ask to help answer those in a little
Isaac Watson:bit more intelligent way from the context of conference production.
Isaac Watson:Without further ado, this episode's question is how much
Isaac Watson:should a conference ticket cost?
Isaac Watson:And I will slightly reframe that by saying that usually, especially when working with
Isaac Watson:our clients the question is phrase is, how much should we charge for tickets?
Isaac Watson:But let's talk about let's talk about what people really mean
Isaac Watson:when they're asking that question.
Isaac Watson:Nessa, what is your laser focused evaluation of that?
Nessa Jimenez:Yeah so when we start having these conversations about money,
Nessa Jimenez:we start asking for clarification, right?
Nessa Jimenez:What do we mean by this?
Nessa Jimenez:And I think the most popular one is this conference actually worth
Nessa Jimenez:what we're trying to charge?
Nessa Jimenez:And worth is the keyword there, right?
Nessa Jimenez:Cuz , does it?
Nessa Jimenez:There's a billion ways to answer that question.
Nessa Jimenez:What is worth, what does that all mean?
Nessa Jimenez:That's usually the big one.
Nessa Jimenez:And then eventually it'll usually come out as, can I get
Nessa Jimenez:away with charging this much?
Nessa Jimenez:And I.
Nessa Jimenez:Get away with in quotes, because it's as if we're trying to cheat somebody
Nessa Jimenez:or we're trying to, pull a fast one this feeling of I wanna charge it.
Nessa Jimenez:Or I know this should be the price, but I just don't feel comfortable with it.
Nessa Jimenez:Or I'm scared of this number, so , how do I get away with it?
Nessa Jimenez:And finally, And this one is especially true of community leaders.
Nessa Jimenez:Are people gonna be mad at me for charging this much?
Nessa Jimenez:Am I gonna get attacked or canceled on the internet?
Nessa Jimenez:Because of our, of how much this conference costs.
Nessa Jimenez:And I mean that right there.
Nessa Jimenez:Are people gonna get mad?
Nessa Jimenez:People get mad about all the things, right?
Isaac Watson:welcome to this 21st century.
Nessa Jimenez:Yeah.
Nessa Jimenez:Welcome to our lives so are you gonna get mad at me?
Nessa Jimenez:That's like the backlash, right?
Nessa Jimenez:Like, how is the audience gonna respond?
Nessa Jimenez:To, to the ticket price when I finally announced it.
Isaac Watson:And I think underlying that is this kind
Isaac Watson:of, Question around reputation.
Isaac Watson:, right?
Isaac Watson:Am I going to be seen as, money grabbing or trying to capitalize on the
Isaac Watson:community I've created, or are people going to think that I'm just trying
Isaac Watson:to take them for everything I can?
Isaac Watson:And that I think it adds, the.
Isaac Watson:Generally the relationship that we have as I would say predominantly in
Isaac Watson:the us but I, I think is also the case in modern society is, has this really
Isaac Watson:complicated relationship with money.
Isaac Watson:And so I think that especially as people get into the mix of
Isaac Watson:business and community building and purpose it can get really murky.
Isaac Watson:And we can have a lot of feelings come up and a lot of concern around.
Isaac Watson:Reputation and how we're being perceived with other people.
Isaac Watson:So I think that those are also some like deeper kind of psychological stuff that
Isaac Watson:I don't think we'll be able to get into.
Isaac Watson:But there is, I just wanted to acknowledge that there is there's a
Isaac Watson:lot of weird money stuff going on in our brains for better or for worse
Nessa Jimenez:Money stuff and like imposter syndrome and this
Nessa Jimenez:like shy lack of confidence because our community leaders aren't used
Nessa Jimenez:to being in the spotlight and presenting like these types of events.
Nessa Jimenez:It might feel like they are right in, in, in putting themselves out there.
Nessa Jimenez:So it can be scary, but yeah, there, there's a lot.
Nessa Jimenez:And we could go on about that forever, but we won't.
Nessa Jimenez:So now that we know the questions that people are actually trying to ask us and
Nessa Jimenez:what they're trying to get to, Why don't you tell us a little bit about what the
Nessa Jimenez:actual problem is and how we get to that?
Isaac Watson:So I think if you're asking questions about cost and how
Isaac Watson:much you're asking people to pay for it, and this is of course presuming you're.
Isaac Watson:Charging tickets for your event, which most of our clients do.
Isaac Watson:A lot of the underlying source of those questions comes from
Isaac Watson:a couple different things.
Isaac Watson:One is not having a clear marketing strategy and through developing a
Isaac Watson:good marketing strategy that will help you develop the confidence to
Isaac Watson:address what value you're offering in a way that articulates the.
Isaac Watson:The desire to, to invest that much money into it and really understanding
Isaac Watson:who you're targeting and what their what their perception of value is.
Isaac Watson:There's another kind of underlying thing, and I am.
Isaac Watson:party to this.
Isaac Watson:So I can completely relate.
Isaac Watson:Is this hatred for selling, being seen as a salesperson, as a
Isaac Watson:marketer, as a, as somebody who's trying to pitch you on something.
Isaac Watson:And I think that's true for a lot of people, especially if
Isaac Watson:you're in the community space.
Isaac Watson:Developing a community and an audience around a shared experience
Isaac Watson:around a shared purpose it can feel icky to then, feel like you need
Isaac Watson:to capitalize on it in some way.
Isaac Watson:And it and then the third piece is just not having a very high confidence in the
Isaac Watson:attendee experience that you've crafted.
Isaac Watson:Because normally before you start selling tickets for an event or a conference,
Isaac Watson:you've done some work on your program.
Nessa Jimenez:Yeah,
Isaac Watson:what you're crafting what you're creating.
Isaac Watson:And if you don't have high confidence in the experience that
Isaac Watson:you're putting together for your attendees, it's gonna make it really
Isaac Watson:uncomfortable to try and sell that.
Isaac Watson:Because you just don't have the, there's no there.
Isaac Watson:So these are some of the kind of underlying problems and some of them
Isaac Watson:are a little , like I said, they can get into a psychological thing
Isaac Watson:where it's, imposter syndrome and crisis of confidence and self-esteem
Isaac Watson:and reputation and things like that.
Isaac Watson:But these issues of having a solid marketing strategy or not having a solid
Isaac Watson:marketing strategy can really affect your ability to to deliver on selling tickets.
Nessa Jimenez:And it's a framing issue.
Nessa Jimenez:Like instead of saying marketing strategy, let's look at from
Nessa Jimenez:the perspective of framing.
Nessa Jimenez:Cause once you say marketing strategy, once you say selling- Jesus.
Nessa Jimenez:We know the internet is just inundated with all of these marketing people and
Nessa Jimenez:spammers and they've always got something.
Nessa Jimenez:And there's the tricks and the tips and the blend, right?
Nessa Jimenez:And I, Isaac, you know this I cannot I just cannot I'm not really
Nessa Jimenez:on social media at all, cuz I'm just like, I can't with this.
Nessa Jimenez:But I think at the end of the day, with an event for a community, right?
Nessa Jimenez:The organizer is the community leader.
Nessa Jimenez:That's who our clients typically tend to be, right?
Nessa Jimenez:, it can be a framing issue in their mind because that they're thinking
Nessa Jimenez:about it from that sleazy marketing perspective, and they forget that what
Nessa Jimenez:they're doing, what we're doing is that we're building an experience for
Nessa Jimenez:the their community, people that they already interact with, like every day.
Nessa Jimenez:It's not, and we're not taking from them.
Nessa Jimenez:We're giving from them.
Nessa Jimenez:Because I know, and I wish we could do conferences for free for
Nessa Jimenez:everybody all day, every day, but the reality is that there are hard
Nessa Jimenez:costs and it has to be paid for.
Nessa Jimenez:But our community leaders are creating something that the attendees invest
Nessa Jimenez:in, but that we hope, and we build it that way, that they get way more
Nessa Jimenez:out of it than what they put in.
Nessa Jimenez:That's always our goal.
. Isaac Watson:Yeah, exactly.
. Isaac Watson:So some of the things we walk through with our clients to solve for these
. Isaac Watson:underlying issues is first thinking about the outcomes for your event.
. Isaac Watson:What are your attendees gonna take away?
. Isaac Watson:When all is said and done, what do they remember?
. Isaac Watson:What have they learned?
. Isaac Watson:What aha moments are you giving space to, to have happen?
. Isaac Watson:What experiences are you helping them share with other people?
. Isaac Watson:Because that right there, even if it's qualitative instead of
. Isaac Watson:quantitative, that is value.
. Isaac Watson:And those kind of lasting moments and that vibe and that experience
. Isaac Watson:that they come away with is one of the like, highest rates of or highest
. Isaac Watson:contributors to perceive value that you can have on the audience.
. Isaac Watson:I think another Another thing is just understanding how it is that
. Isaac Watson:your audience perceives value.
. Isaac Watson:What do they value?
. Isaac Watson:Where do, where does it matter?
. Isaac Watson:We've spent another episode talking about event tech and if you have an
. Isaac Watson:audience that doesn't care or isn't accustomed to high tech solutions,
. Isaac Watson:then why would you invest in.
. Isaac Watson:Fancy event tech.
. Isaac Watson:That's right.
. Isaac Watson:Because that's not gonna, that's gonna, I'm not gonna make a
. Isaac Watson:difference to them in the end.
Nessa Jimenez:Yeah.
Nessa Jimenez:And that comes back to the question we started with right.
Nessa Jimenez:Where What they're actually asking is the conference actually
Nessa Jimenez:worth what we're charging?
Nessa Jimenez:The worth it's, it comes from what you're offering, right?
Nessa Jimenez:And who wants it?
Nessa Jimenez:Because something that's valuable to me does not matter to somebody else.
Nessa Jimenez:So who is your audience?
Nessa Jimenez:Is it the people that really care or they don't care?
Nessa Jimenez:And I think event platforms and event tech is an easy area to talk about that.
Nessa Jimenez:Yeah, there, there's so much event tech that the attendees don't even notice.
Nessa Jimenez:You spent like 10,000, $20,000 on a thing.
Nessa Jimenez:They didn't even notice it, didn't even look at it.
Nessa Jimenez:And it's because you bought a thing or you rented a thing or whatever service
Nessa Jimenez:that your audience does not care about.
Isaac Watson:And to me, like the big solution is just
Isaac Watson:knowing who your audience.
Isaac Watson:Knowing what their values are when you're thinking about pricing,
Isaac Watson:it's not just about recouping production costs and finding a price
Isaac Watson:that allows you to achieve that.
Isaac Watson:It's about knowing what your audience can afford.
Isaac Watson:You really need to know who your demographics are.
Isaac Watson:Demographics, psychographics, sociographics, all of the different
Isaac Watson:components that, that make up your audience are gonna influence their
Isaac Watson:decision to attend or not to invest or not in this if you're doing something in
Isaac Watson:person, how willing are they to travel?
Isaac Watson:We've seen this through the last year or so of dealing with covid where.
Isaac Watson:Certain groups of people are itching to God again and have a higher tolerance
Isaac Watson:for risk and other groups are not.
Isaac Watson:And so how do you, how does your particular audience feel
Isaac Watson:about that kind of stuff?
Isaac Watson:If you're doing work within a particular professional industry
Isaac Watson:who's actually paying for the ticket?
Isaac Watson:Is it coming out of pocket from each individual audience member, or is it
Isaac Watson:more likely that an employer's gonna support that through an education fund?
Isaac Watson:What do you know about the current state of education funds
Isaac Watson:within that particular sector?
Isaac Watson:Is it a balance between the two?
Isaac Watson:All of this stuff affects how you adjust your pricing.
Isaac Watson:What geographical area are they coming?
Isaac Watson:We've had a lot of discussions in the last year or so with other conference
Isaac Watson:producers and organizers about regional pricing, especially as the
Isaac Watson:pandemic has allowed these geographical expansions in audience, right?
Isaac Watson:It's the geographical accessibility to attend a virtual event is, Massive
Isaac Watson:once you navigate the time zone shifts.
Isaac Watson:And, but the economic index between different regions can be so sparse
Isaac Watson:sometimes that, you know what a North American attendee sees value in paying.
Isaac Watson:Vastly outpaces somebody in another country where, average
Isaac Watson:salary is a heck of a lot lower.
Isaac Watson:And there's less discretionary income.
Isaac Watson:So all of these things, this is great context to know and that's
Isaac Watson:one of the reasons why we love digging into this during the
Isaac Watson:strategy process is because you.
Isaac Watson:We are massive believers in context informing what we do and having that
Isaac Watson:kind of context around who the audience is what they're willing to do, what they
Isaac Watson:need, what they what they're missing in their lives or in their professional
Isaac Watson:journeys is going to inform what we can then intelligently price a conference.
Nessa Jimenez:Yeah.
Nessa Jimenez:And when you say, Can I get away with charging this much?
Nessa Jimenez:That just tells me you don't know the audience.
Nessa Jimenez:You don't know what who they are and what they need.
Isaac Watson:Exactly.
Nessa Jimenez:And exactly in the realm of pricing.
Nessa Jimenez:And I see this, I Isaac, you've seen this as well, whereas these events that
Nessa Jimenez:are supposed to be uplifting community events and ' Oh we're gonna, we're gonna
Nessa Jimenez:learn and achieve in the community'.
Nessa Jimenez:And all of these I don't know what it's called, self-help or like these
Nessa Jimenez:lifestyle types of events and they're, 'Oh for the community', whatever.
Nessa Jimenez:And then, They're marketing an event to an audience that cannot afford to attend,
Nessa Jimenez:and then they're wondering why Yeah.
Nessa Jimenez:They can't sell the tickets.
Nessa Jimenez:It's yeah, cuz your audience is struggling to pay their own bills and
Nessa Jimenez:now you're asking them to drop like $3,000 on, you're your experience
Nessa Jimenez:or your retreat or whatever.
Nessa Jimenez:You should have done your homework.
Nessa Jimenez:, and it's embarrassing to see, I see this a lot,
Isaac Watson:yeah.
Nessa Jimenez:Where these ridiculous, the price does not match the audience
Nessa Jimenez:that they're trying to reach, and then they wonder , why it's not working.
Isaac Watson:Yeah.
Isaac Watson:On the flip side I can offer a more concrete example.
Isaac Watson:We just recently wrapped up a project with a client who wanted to do a
Isaac Watson:first time conference, a virtual conference for a community that she had.
Isaac Watson:Leading for some time, and it's a community that has
Isaac Watson:been, it's free to join.
Isaac Watson:It's very much focused on the people coming together to improve their
Isaac Watson:work experience and in their sector.
Isaac Watson:And she's been essentially subsidizing the costs of running this community
Isaac Watson:out of pocket because it's something she believes in and has cultivated
Isaac Watson:this amazing group of people.
Isaac Watson:It was clear from the get go that one of the core reasons for hosting this
Isaac Watson:online event was to be able to introduce a first time ever paid event for the
Isaac Watson:community to attend, but with the express purpose of raising operational
Isaac Watson:funds to continue sustaining the growth of the community because there's a
Isaac Watson:certain extent to which this client.
Isaac Watson:Put in time and money and effort into doing it.
Isaac Watson:So knowing that going into it, we were able to be very sensitive to
Isaac Watson:what the production costs were.
Isaac Watson:Of course, a virtual event with the scope we were looking at was much cheaper
Isaac Watson:to produce than anything in person.
Isaac Watson:And we were able to.
Isaac Watson:The ticket prices that were sensitive to the sector, the industry, the
Isaac Watson:the, average income across this group of people and make it in a
Isaac Watson:way that was fairly affordable.
Isaac Watson:And in the cases where it weren't, we developed a very robust scholarship
Isaac Watson:program where we had sponsors subsidizing a large number of tickets.
Isaac Watson:It was inclusive and accessible to those who wouldn't, for some
Isaac Watson:reason couldn't afford that.
Isaac Watson:And through that we were able to sell with confidence and say, This
Isaac Watson:is what we're putting together.
Isaac Watson:We were transparent about the financial goals of the event.
Isaac Watson:We are, we the, these proceeds will continue to help this community operate.
Isaac Watson:And that allowed us to market successfully.
Isaac Watson:And it was.
Isaac Watson:In the end, like we hit our budget goals and we have now operational income for
Isaac Watson:this community to keep working throughout the year, and there's a trajectory set
Isaac Watson:for future events and that right there is like a little encapsulation of yes.
Isaac Watson:This is how you decide who your people are, what you're creating,
Isaac Watson:why you need revenue, and how that's going to carry forward.
Nessa Jimenez:So why don't we wrap this one up then, Isaac?
Isaac Watson:Alright, so the core question that we're asking or that
Isaac Watson:people ask us is how much should a conference ticket cost, or how much
Isaac Watson:should we charge for my conference?
What they're really asking:is what we're creating actually worth, what
What they're really asking:we're wanting to charge for it?
What they're really asking:Can I get away with charging this much feeling like.
What they're really asking:Maybe this is a little hyper capitalist, maybe like I'm trying
What they're really asking:to profit here off of things.
What they're really asking:Or are people gonna be mad at me?
What they're really asking:Am I gonna get any backlash over charging X amount for a ticket?
What they're really asking:. And some of the solutions that can help avoid that in the first
What they're really asking:place are really understanding what outcomes you're offering.
What they're really asking:What value are you delivering to your attendees?
What they're really asking:How do your attendees perceive that value?
What they're really asking:Because how they perceive it may differ from, the work you're putting
What they're really asking:into to deliver that value and really understanding who your audience is.
What they're really asking:All of those demographics, where they are, what they can afford.
What they're really asking:Are they willing to travel to do something in person?
What they're really asking:Is geographic accessibility important?
What they're really asking:Who is actually SU paying for the tickets?
What they're really asking:Is it their employer?
What they're really asking:Is it them?
What they're really asking:All of those questions will inform your marketing strategy, understanding
What they're really asking:how best to communicate the value.
What they're really asking:Which is essentially what selling is communicating value and delivering on
What they're really asking:an exceptional attendee experience.
Nessa Jimenez:Thanks for joining us for this week's episode.
Nessa Jimenez:The Eternal Question, How much should I charge?
Nessa Jimenez:While you can actually figure that out by using a tool that we use with our
Nessa Jimenez:clients regularly and you can get a free copy of that tool at geteventlab.com