Let’s face it – planning a great, memorable event is why you’re in the business. We all know that one of the biggest challenges to pulling off a successful event is selling tickets. So, if you’re wondering how to sell tickets to a show or event, you’ve come to the right place. Here are four event marketing campaigns you can do right away to ramp up ticket sales for your next big gig.
- Reach those who purchased event tickets from you before
It’s no secret that it's easier to get existing customers to buy from you than new ones. In fact, according to published data, your current customers are between 60% to 70% more likely to buy from you again. But what do you do if those fans aren’t following your social media accounts or subscribed to your email marketing? One answer is social media advertising, where you can use email addresses and phone numbers from past purchasers for targeting. You can upload these lists to a social media platform like Facebook and then pay to run event ads in their feeds.
- Market your event to people who look like your fans
Smart ticketing technologies can track demographic data so you know more about your typical customers. What events do they like? Where are they from? Which channels are they using? With this data, you can target similar audiences on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media with their ‘Lookalike’ functionality – one of the most effective event advertising practices available. Rather than paying for eyeballs or clicks from a wide audience, you can use your existing base of fans to try and market to people just like them.
- Get in front of those who are looking for events in their city
Google Ads is an advertising platform that is still underused by many – including event marketers. You have ads which appear in ‘search results,’ and you bid for a position in the top of those ad results. So let’s say you’re searching for events in Calgary, AB...if your bid for ad space wins, you can show up in the top three listings in the search. This can be a very powerful tool to sell out your event because we all know that people are statistically more likely to click on one of the top three results. And the best part is that you pick the keywords you want to target and negative keywords for the words you don't want to appear for, allowing you to manage your advertising budget.
- Remind visitors to buy their tickets
We all know some of the people visiting your event registration site will leave before clicking ‘buy tickets.’ Maybe they needed to check in with their better half or maybe they are considering another option on the exact same evening. Whatever the reason, there are things you can do as an event promoter to bring them back. It’s called remarketing. And it involves serving up reminder ads to past visitors when they’re on other websites. You can do this by using pixels on your checkout pages, which trigger cookies that identify users who started the registration process on your site but failed to complete the sale. Later, when potential customers visit other websites, the cookie will tell that website to show the user your targeted ad, reminding them to purchase their tickets before the event is sold out.
With years of experience in events, from large festivals to municipal conferences, Showpass knows how important it is to make marketing easier for event organizers. Visit our marketing page to see how our ticketing app is built to help you sell out events with social discounts, email and SMS tools, and more.
