I have had a great summer. It seems like the kids have been off for months! And one of the reasons that it has really felt like a holiday for me is that I have been to London to the theatre four times in the past 4 weeks!
That might not seem much to you, but the last time I went was to Wicked on New Year ’s Eve. And before that it had been 2 years. Why? Because it is so expensive to go to the theatre. Or so I thought.
We had a visitor over from Germany and I thought it would be good to go to the theatre as a special treat. I remembered seeing the last minute ticket booths at Leicester Square and was prepared (but not happy) to stand in the line for whatever was on offer for that evening. But I was saved by the internet!
I decided to just try a search for last minute theatre tickets and found lastminute.com. I knew them for holidays, but theatre tickets?! Their site was brilliant! I could search for any shows that evening in London, and then sort the results by price. So we chose each morning what we would see that evening. We started at the bottom of the list, the cheapest tickets, and worked upwards! Which meant we saw
– Jeeves and Wooster (with John Gordon Sinclair – remember him from Gregory’s Girl?) – hilarious, really worth going to see
– The Mousetrap – which I worked out I had seen over 35 years ago. Made our guest promise to keep the secret of whodunit – have you seen it yet – been running for 62 years!!!
– Once – beautiful original songs and set in a Dublin pub – ironic, as I had just been in Dublin the weekend before
– Billy Elliott – much better than I remember the film, and the kids dancing was amazing.
The point I am actually trying to make is this.
The theatres knew that they need to get bums on seats. And in August, with the normal theatre goers on holiday, they need to get “out of towners” and tourists in. So offering cheap tickets for a show that is going ahead anyway, is a good way of getting PR for the show and meeting their overheads. PS and it was better than Groupon, as you got treated as a normal human being, not the scum of the earth!
Do you have a quiet time in your business? For many of us that is August (although someone forgot to tell our clients this year!). What could you do attract new clients during this time? What discounted offers can you make? What new products can you offer? What new marketing pillars / ways to market could you use? How can you make it even easier for your clients to buy from you? Instead of spending time working out how to tighten your belt, spend it working out how to earn some more money!
(add in pictures/posters of the shows mentioned above)