Challenge & Selection

I was hired as a consultant by a small event ticketing platform to help them find ways to increase  their revenue. And just like any other company we came up with a business plan: One to increase  revenue by amping up the marketing, especially on social media and to onboard more clients. We  pumped in a lot of money into it. This plan was based purely on assumptions and data and it did not  necessarily help us reach the targets we were aiming at. After a lot of brainstorming, we decided to  venture into organising events alongside being a ticketing platform, and we organised 2 small  events-one a party and another a day fest. What exactly is a learning launch? A learning launch is  basically an experiment to see if a particular idea might work or not. And that is exactly what we did  with those two events- test the waters of event organising.

Application

Following our social media marketing and meetings with clients and customers, we realised that  people had started associated “a good time” with the name of the company that the company had  created a name for itself within the events industry. And so the idea we came up with was to start a  whole division of the company focusing on organising a big event once every few months. However,  first it was important to test it out as it was a small start up and had limited resources that needed to  be used wisely. So instead of hiring a planner or outsourcing any of the work we did it all ourselves  and hosted a small themed party at a local club. It was a raging success. We got the chance to speak  with many people at the event and realised that while there are plenty of parties happening around  the city, not many fun events happen during the day. And so we decide the next step would be to  test that out. We organised the city’s first Extravaganza for Dogs, keeping it real small. People would  buy tickets and come with their dogs to ejoy some games, good food and just have a good time. This  again turned out to be a huge success and in the subsequent years became one of the biggest  Carnivals in the city.

Insight and Approach

Now, we have an entire department within the firm, only tasked with organising large scale events  once every few months like during various festivals and even otherwise. Hosting the 2 small events  helped us realise that there was a whole market out there just waiting for us. Although it started off  as just a ticketing platform, the marketing on social media had helped to establish the firm as a big  name in the parties and events industry and played a huge role in why people were interested in  attending our events. While we had originally only been thinking about how to increase ticket sales,  venturing out and trying out something new resulted in a big impact on the company’s revenue.

