SeatGeek – The Web’s Largest Ticket Search Engine
SeatGeek is a search engine for finding tickets to live events like concerts, sports, Broadway and comedy shows. They search dozens of the biggest ticket sites and present the results all in one place, with a simple interface designed for speed and savings. SeatGeek aims to help customers find the best deals, and is 100% free to use.
After implementing Marin Display, we’ve been able to focus on expanding our best performing segments and testing out new campaign ideas faster. We’ve averaged a 140% increase in traffic every month on SEM without suffering drops in ROI.
A Lean, Mean, Marketing Machine
SeatGeek earns commission by referring sales to ticket marketplaces. This creates an interesting dynamic in their marketing strategy. Though SeatGeek is friendly with other ticket marketplaces, they often compete for the same traffic. On top of that, other ticket companies can usually afford to bid more for each sale, so SeatGeek is forced to be rigorously efficient, creative, and agile in finding and exploiting paid marketing opportunities.
The SeatGeek team used AdWords for search, but found it difficult to extract the level of insight and business intelligence they needed from their reports. They also considered managed services but found them to be too slow, preventing the team from quickly launching campaigns or making changes. SeatGeek needed a solution that would improve efficiencies and reduce the amount of time spent on campaign management so they could focus more on optimizing and identifying new sources of traffic.
A Dual Solution for Cross-Channel Efficiency
SeatGeek initially started working with Marin Display to supplement their existing social retargeting solution, but soon realized the platform offered superior technology and results. Unlike other retargeting platforms, Marin Display required only a single tracking pixel on each web page, eliminating complicated tagging structures and allowing the team to retarget at a very granular level. And Marin Display’s flexibility and control in building audience-lists enabled SeatGeek to create precisely-targeted audience lists to drive greater ROI from their retargeting campaigns. The team has now fully adopted Marin Display as their primary social retargeting solution, and is able to quickly launch and manage campaigns in the self-serve application.
Next, SeatGeek looked into a solution to automate bidding for their search campaigns and maximize efficiencies. The team selected Marin Search for its top-notch reporting and customizable bidding rules. They implemented Marin’s automated bidding to gain traffic on informational queries such as artists, schedules, and venues. This strategy allows SeatGeek to stay competitive by generating lots of traffic at a low cost versus bidding head-to-head against its competition on more transactional terms. Marin’s keyword expansion tool has also been instrumental in expanding SeatGeek’s reach, and is their primary source for keyword discovery. To manage at scale, the team exclusively uses Marin’s bulk uploader to quickly build and upload campaigns. Finally, Marin’s analytics now provide a new level of insight over the AdWords offering, allowing SeatGeek to quickly identify areas for optimization and make adjustments to ensure maximum profitability.
Powerful Results
SeatGeek has been able to maximize their spend and efficiency with the Marin Search and Display, and the team looks forward to further integration between the platforms. Specific results include:
- 140% increase in traffic month-over-month
- 2x increase in CTR with dynamic Facebook retargeting
- 20% boost in conversions from retargeting
- More time to test new programs
