5 Critical Questions For Your Sales and Marketing Team

Driving audience engagement and achieving sustainable revenue growth starts with asking the right questions. Knowing how to prompt and guide your sales and marketing team is key to ensuring they deliver excellent results.

The following 5 questions will help spark critical conversations between you and your team, to assist you in evaluating your marketing performance and uncover opportunities for improvement. Let’s learn them:

1. Are we targeting the right audience segments?

Success lies in precision. Beyond general demographics, ask your marketing team how they are using behaviour-based segmentation to identify key patron groups such, first-time attendees, lapsed patrons, and multi-buyers. Use our blog 7 Must-Have Segments in Every Ticket Campaign for inspiration. What specific strategies are in place to engage each group effectively?

Broad, generic messaging won’t resonate, but focused strategies will increase your response rates and build loyalty with your audience, especially when you can segment them based on their relationship with your org.

2. What return rates are we achieving with first-time attendees?

Industry-wide, only 25% of first-time buyers return; how does your return rate compare?

Challenge your team on the specific tactics they’re using to improve these return rates. Explore what follow-up activities – such as personalized emails or exclusive offers – are being used to ensure first-time attendees return for a second visit. Which tactics have proven most successful in increasing retention, and where are the gaps in your current approach?

3. How are we tracking repeat attendance and loyalty-building efforts over time?

One-off ticket sales don’t build a sustainable future. Ask for a clear picture of how single-ticket buyers progress into multi-buyers, subscribers or donors. What percentage of your audience is moving through this pipeline?

Check that campaigns are fostering habits like early booking and frequent attendance rather than focusing solely on one-off ticket purchases. An effective loyalty strategy unlocks stable recurring revenue by strengthening patron relationships.

4. Are we effectively leveraging demand-management and pricing strategies?

Demand-management is a powerful lever for financial growth. Challenge your team to evaluate:

1. How are our pricing strategies impacting revenue growth?
2. Are we maximizing the average revenue per ticket while maintaining accessibility?
3. Is pricing being adjusted in real-time to create urgency and align with audience behaviours?

Encourage a proactive approach to monitoring ticket/seat availability and strategic price adjustments. These efforts can significantly enhance revenue performance while improving the overall patron experience. Remember, you can use lower priced tickets strategically to make the house feel fuller. (Looking at you front seats in the wings!)

5. Have we completed TRG’s Marketing Assessment, and what have we learned?

If your team hasn’t yet completed TRG’s free Marketing Assessment, now is the time. Work with your marketing team to prioritize this, and ensure time is set aside to review the results and discuss actionable next steps.

If the assessment has been completed, dive into the findings:

• What were the key takeaways?
• How are we addressing identified gaps in segmentation, retention, and pricing?
• What progress has been made in implementing the recommendations?

Moving from “What Are We Doing?” to “How Well Are We Doing It?”

These questions go beyond surface level tactics, encouraging your team to critically evaluate their performance and focus on measurable outcomes.

If you haven’t already, we encourage you to complete TRG’s Marketing Assessment today and set time aside as a leadership team to review the results and discuss these critical questions above.