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EVENT MARKETING: 5 TICKETING STRATEGIES TO HELP SELL MORE EVENT TICKETS

It doesn’t matter how off-the-charts your event is: if it doesn’t achieve the desired ticket sale levels, then it won’t adequately fulfill its purpose. There is a lot of planning on your end to ensure you sell as many tickets as possible, perhaps even filling the venue to capacity limit.

Achieving this end takes a lot of work, but it’s certainly possible when you implement these ticketing strategies into your event marketing. Read on to find out how.

1. Early Bird Sales

Whether you begin selling tickets four weeks, five weeks, or six weeks out, you need to designate an early bird timeline. This should preferably begin about one to two weeks before the start of tickets sales to the rest of the general public.

Early bird specials should be limited to a certain demographic, such as VIP, subscribers, or gold card members. Also offer a discount as an incentive for taking advantage of the special. When promoting the early bird deal, emphasize that buying a ticket during this brief window ensures that members are guaranteed a spot because tickets can be quickly sold out the minute general admission tickets go on sale.

1. Reward Previous Customers

Remember, a good bulk of attendees will make up of those who attended a previous event. These are also your repeat customers, and you want to ensure that they remain repeat consumers. The way to do this is to acknowledge their loyalty. You can do that by offering a select discount exclusively available to them. Previous customers also aren’t limited to those who attended past events. Those who have made purchases or signed up for a service can also be rewarded.

Rewarding previous customers with a discount can be a part of the early bird sale or a separate deal altogether. You can, for example, extend the early bird sale to those who have made an X amount of purchases in the past 60 days or so, while providing a separate discount offer during the general ticket sale to those who attended a previous event. This will heavily influence the WOM (word of mouth) marketing surrounding your event.

1. Include Promotional Offers

You also want to offer some sort of deal to general members who may otherwise not qualify for an early bird or other type of special offer. This can be a discount code for every ticket purchased or a discount off the ticket price with the purchase of a product.

Examples of promotional offers may include:

• Buy two tickets – get 10% discount code good towards an online purchase
• Spend $50 or more on an online purchase and get 20% off ticket price

Whatever type of offer you provide, it should not exceed the offer provided during the early bird or whatever offer extended to your loyal clientele. Doing so may subtract from the worth of the offer in the eyes of those members. In other words, if an early bird sale provided a 30% discount, then a promotional offer to the general public should be below that, perhaps 20% or 15%.

You could even go as far as offering select vendors a discount or paid option for lead retrieval services at your event.

1. Use the Scarcity Tactic

With any event, there will always be the “maybe” people. These are the people that are considering attending but are just not sure. In any case, if you don’t continue to gently nudge at them, they will quickly forget that your company is even holding an event.

One way to remind them is to convey a message of urgency, letting them know that tickets could be sold out at any moment. In other words, if they don’t act now, then they could miss out. You can also include a ticker on the RSVP event registration page showing the number of tickets remaining, which changes every time a ticket is sold. This can be accompanied by a message like the following:

Act now to secure your spot. Tickets are on a first come first serve basis. A delay on your end may mean having to wait another year before you get a chance to be a part of our highly anticipated conference.

1. Create a Competition

Not every ticket has to be sold. Some can be given away. However, don’t just hand them out freely; make people earn it. The way to do this is through some form of social media competition. This creates engagement, and promoting the contest means more opportunities to promote the event as a whole.

Whatever type of competition you hold, keep the rules simple to avoid confusion. Here are some ideas that are simple yet fun for participants:

• Keep Calm – those “Keep Calm and Carry On” T-shirts have become quite trendy with companies coming up with their own “Keep calm and ….” quote. You can do the same here. Have participants come up with their own slogan that is related to the company or industry.
• Answer the Question – In no more than the length of a tweet, have participants answer why they love your company or one of its products. Answers may also include emoji’s or text speak.
• GIF contest – Have participants create their own GIF along with a caption in response to an event-related prompt or image.

Reward winners with a ticket, while participants get a small prize, such as a ticket discount, or discount towards a purchase if they already bought their tickets. Opt to make self check-inpart of the fun to keep the contest going up until the event doors open.

It’s All About Your Approach

You can’t expect to achieve high ticket sales if all you do is send email reminders here and there. You have to think outside the box, provide perks, and implement the latest trends to make attendees feel like they’re getting a good deal.

Guest Bio: Dan McCarthy is an Event Manager at JD Parties, an event management company based in the UK. Dan has 5 years of event project management under his belt. He has worked on many successful events, and currently he shares his knowledge by writing on the company blog. Follow him on Twitter @DanCarthy2.

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