Online ticket sales are taking off! People are paying top dollar to see live sports, concerts, theater, comedy, and other live entertainment. If you're a ticket broker, you have probably benefited from this surge in demand.
More than likely, however, your profits from ticket sales are not nearly as high as they could be.
ARE YOU SELLING ENOUGH TICKETS?
The success of an online ticket broker rests firmly on their online visibility. The more web visitors, the more tickets sold. Consider this: In a typical month, over 50,000 people search for NBA basketball tickets on Yahoo! alone. Over 150,000 people search for Broadway tickets. When you add Google, the total number of monthly searches for these keywords is at least doubled. Wouldn't it be nice to be at or near the top of the search results getting over 150,000 searches per month?
HOW CAN YOU GAIN MORE VISIBILITY?
The answer is search engine marketing. This umbrella term breaks down into two disciplines: search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process by which your existing web pages are modified to be "search engine friendly," ensuring they are both indexed by the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN) and ranked highly. Good websites are still able to get listed in search engines like Yahoo!, Google, Alta Vista, and MSN free of cost. Inclusion, however, does not guarantee high rankings. By properly optimizing your pages, you can have your ticket website listed HIGH in the major search engines and avoid the recurring cost of many pay-per-click campaigns. Once listed, you'll get exponentially more visitors, without having to pay for each one that finds your site. Being ranked in a search engine is a necessity. Being ranked high will drive your business.
If you are at all familiar with search engine optimization, you'll know top rankings are not achieved overnight. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising does offer immediate visibility. Pay-per-click allows you to target specific users on the Web and only pay for the visitors that actually click through to your website. PPC provides instant results for businesses looking to make an immediate impact.