THE FOUND GROUP and found.ee – Intersection of Ideas

CROSS-PLATFORM ATTRIBUTION AND RELEVANT

MESSAGING - FESTIVALS

found.ee enables today’s festivals to track fan behavior across multiple platforms, and attribute

conversions to both the bands that triggered the engagements, and to the platforms that drove the

conversions

By Jason Hobbs, CEO and founder of found.ee and THE FOUND GROUP

INTRODUCTION

Desire to understand where ticket sales are coming from has grown exponentially over the past couple

of years, and for legitimate reasons. Understanding sales paths-or what we call attribution-is necessary

to not only increase immediate sales, but it’s also necessary for understanding the behavior of a festival

fan that purchases tickets, so that you can develop future campaigns more effectively. Marketing is no

longer the shotgun-splatter-against-the-wall-and-make-assumptions-of-what-stuck approach that it

once was. Marketing is now a laser-focused beam, targeting qualified audiences, reducing costs, and

increasing conversions. Companies are getting more and more sophisticated, so in order to stay ahead

you must understand not just behavior, but attribution.

WORKING TOWARD SOLUTIONS

Keyword, “solutions,” not “solution.” Understanding consumer behavior across multiple platforms, and

being able to attribute sales to those consumers is not a turnkey tactic you can simply turn on as part of

an order form, but there are tools, that when combined, will provide you with the transparency you

need to: understand consumers, recognize intent, determine which platforms are important to your

conversion, and attribute conversions. found.ee is one component, of several, in a series of steps

required to do just that.

Advertising platforms such as Google AdWords and Facebook are attempting to track consumers across

platforms and devices, and both offer the ability to do so to a certain degree, but neither are turnkey

solutions either. Google and Facebook both assign unique ID’s to their users, and are able to track

behavior while those users are on their platforms, but those, like many other disparate platforms, don’t

talk to each other.

Interactions on Twitter, or YouTube, or a premium publisher, don’t sync across some universal

advertising platform that watches everyone’s activity across the disparate internet. Targeting models

are based on engagements and extrapolations taken from those engagements on their respective (and

disconnected) platforms, but since these platforms don’t sync their information, there isn’t an accurate

cross-platform targeting model. Instead those intersections are used as models to “define” segments of

people based on similar behavior—analogous targeting. Sure, you can find similar audiences and buy

advertising against that, but what you really want is access to the exact set of people that took those

actions on those different platforms. And you want to be able to target those people based on interest,

behavior, context, and event intent.

UNTANGLING THE WEB

Who drove that spike? The announcement came from 45 bands all at once; they all drove the spike.

But who drove the sales? Well the band you want to see most at your festival of course. Or maybe not,

but it feels that way.

Who might drive the most sales from here? Good question. The bands posted across social media,

pushed a newsletter to their subscribers, and published the festival ticketing link on their website. All at

the same time! Just kidding, that never happens, but let’s imagine they did a coordinated

dissemination, simultaneously. Well, now you have to untangle everything to find out who is driving the

most sales through their owned media. Maybe a second status update will seal the deal if you can

convince them to do it. But what if you can’t convince them to do it? They aren’t obligated to post a

certain number of times (or maybe they are). The festival is six months out.

It’s your job to find the consumers that didn’t buy, but showed interest in buying, and convince them to

buy. This is commonly done using blanketed remarketing campaigns simply targeting all who have come

to your ticketing platform—this gets even harder when you have a tier 2 festival using a third party

ticketing platform that has no desire to install remarketing pixels for you.

Note: remarketing is a term used for advertising to people that have been to a

specific website previously, receiving a remarketing cookie (pixel) on their

computer, and later advertised to, based on that cookie.

The problem with a blanketed remarketing campaign is that all you’ve defined is an audience that sort

of showed an unspecific level of interest. There is no identifiable intent. Remarketing using blanket

targeting drives up advertising costs, due to a lack of qualified targeting. If you have remarketing set up

across the entire checkout system you can run a campaign and only remarket those that got to step 4 of

5, before falling out of the checkout funnel. That shows more intent than the person that just spent 30

seconds on your homepage looking at the full lineup. The latter may not even be interested after seeing

the lineup. The cluster of people that got to step 3 of 5, but also watched the tour trailer, and

subscribed to your email list, well that is a cluster you better hope to understand too. Why did 40,000

people take the exact same series of steps? Good question. Can you get them to buy? What does it

take? Set up your rule-based remarketing segments.

That’s a good start, but what else can you do to bolster your campaign?

CONNECTING THE DOTS

Here’s where found.ee comes in. Instead of providing the same shortened URL to every band on the

lineup, you customize a URL to each band. Sure, this takes about 5 extra minutes, but it saves about 5

months of headaches, and tens of thousands of marketing dollars with untailored messaging and

experiences.

If The Strokes do the aforementioned list of tasks-or their fantastic digital person does it with their

approval-and drive 100,000 people to your homepage; 40,000 of which watched the tour trailer,

subscribed to your email list, and got to step 3, but didn’t convert, then your advertising to those 40,000

people should absolutely be tailored to those fans, as fans of The Strokes. Don’t tell them about the

entirely unrelated, lack of crossover potential, PINK playing on day 2. Tell them about The Strokes, their

new album, remind them of why they fell in love with The Strokes in the first place, tell them how long

it’s been since they’ve played a festival: create an appeal surrounding the thing you know they like.

Advertising creative, messaging, and even the landing page you drive these segments to, can and should

be tailored to this. Sure, you’re selling a festival, not a concert for The Strokes; the fans are aware of

that, but it’s a good thing to reinforce. Since you’re attempting to get these fans to pay 3 - 10 times

what a normal concert would cost, you’re going to have to convince these fans of why this festival is

better than simply waiting for The Strokes to come back on their own tour, and tailoring your marketing

to the interests identified in these fans is going to increase their propensity to buy festival tickets. To

understand a bit more about why people buy, I recommend reading, “Buyology” by Martin Lindstrom, or

“Why We Buy” by Paco Underhill (both with a grain of salt).

Oh, I also recommend you learn from this as you go. Learn about your consumers. Save the learnings

for your next festival. Find the crossover; market to it. Save these segments, refresh these segments,

create new segments. You can build your own consumer targeting models using a combination of

found.ee links and remarketing pixels on your website. Just don’t forget your rule-based remarketing

segments require you to think logically.

Shameless self-promotion: found.ee will define your segments that show an intent to buy, for you, in

2015.

HOW TO

1) Create a found.ee Account

-You’ll want a “master” account, so you can keep your links and segments organized

2) Create a Google AdWords and Facebook Advertising Account

3) Copy Your Remarketing “Pixels” and Paste Them Into Your found.ee Account Under “Manage Pixel”

-Do not forget to click “update” to save it

4) Generate Your Shortlink to the Ticketing Page

-And repeat for all the bands you’re going to be providing unique URL’s to for remarketing

5) Customize Each Shortlink

-Something along the lines of found.ee/festnamebandname, but maybe shorter, and repeat

6) Set Up Rule-Based Remarketing Lists for Each Link Within Each Advertising Platform

-If people go to found.ee/festthestrokes then create segment, “The Strokes Ticketing Link”

-Repeat

7) Place the Same Remarketing Pixels Across Your Website and Checkout System

-Repeat step 6 about creating segments

-Create a rule for the “Conversion Page” (or “Thank You” page) so you can exclude people have

purchased from remarketing campaigns (so you can focus energy and money on those that haven’t

purchased yet)

-And so you can upsell VIP packages or merch or whatever to purchasers

8) Get Carried Away with Rule-Based Segments

-If people go to “The Strokes Link” and festwebsite.com/checkout/3.html then create segment

-Repeat

9) Design Advertising Creative Tailored to Fan Interest (Which Is Identified By These Rule Based

Segments)

10) Build Campaigns

-Watch

-Test

-Analyze

-Optimize

I know, this is quite a process. Quicker to write out than to perform every day. But it’s worth it. And

you can always hire a company to do it for you. I can recommend one: THE FOUND GROUP.

CONTACT

http://found.ee

http://www.thefoundgroup.com