Encouraging customers to buy a ticket for an event, show, or other offering can be challenging. As the organizer, you want to drive ticket sales, promote awareness, and create excitement around your event. This requires careful planning, targeted marketing, and incentives that motivate purchasing. Here are some proven tips to boost ticket sales for your next event.
Understand Your Target Audience
The first key is understanding who your potential customers are for the event. Gather insights into their demographics, interests, and preferences. Send out surveys, monitor social media, and research competitors to build a customer profile. This will allow you to tailor promotions and messaging to their wants and needs when marketing the event. Focus on your ideal target audience and where they spend their time online and offline.
Create Urgency with Limited Time Offers
Scarcity and urgency are powerful motivators. Create exclusive pre-sale offers, flash sales, or early bird pricing to encourage early ticket purchases. Countdown the days or hours left for the promotion to capitalize on the fear of missing out. Limited time offers make people act fast for special rates before tickets sell out. Just be sure to follow through and cut off discounts when promotions end.
Offer Ticket Bundles and Upsells
Package together tickets with additional offerings to increase order value. Consider including VIP options, exclusive merchandise, or add-ons like parking and meal vouchers. Dynamic ticket bundles and upsells allow you to capture more revenue. Make it easy for customers to upgrade their experience during the checkout process. Just be sure the perceived value matches the price.
Reward Loyalty with Discounts
Offer savings for returning customers and loyal followers. Provide special promo codes for previous ticket buyers, newsletter subscribers, and social media fans. This rewards brand loyalty and incentivizes repeat attendance. Discounts for groups are also popular, allowing friends and families to attend at a lower price point. Just be careful discounting too heavily that it hurts your bottom line. Find the right balance.
Form Strategic Partnerships
Align with complementary brands and influencers to market your event to new audiences. Identify partners who also serve your target demo and explore cross-promotional opportunities. Negotiate affiliate partnerships where you pay commission for every ticket sold through their platform or network. Well-executed partnerships expand your reach.
Invest in Paid Advertising
Allocate part of your marketing budget to paid advertising and optimize campaigns to drive ticket sales. Use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, and Eventbrite to raise awareness and promote offers through different stages of the marketing funnel. Track conversions and optimize towards lowest cost per purchase. Paid ads allow you to reach broader audiences.
Spotlight Customer Reviews and Testimonials
Peer recommendations are extremely influential. Collect and prominently display customer reviews, testimonials, ratings and photos from past events. This builds social proof and reinforces your event’s credibility. User-generated content directly from past attendees is more authentic and trusted. Promote highlights on your website, email marketing and social channels.
Sell Convenience with Reserved Seating
The ability to reserve specific seats upfront adds value and convenience that customers will pay for. This is especially effective for theater performances, concerts, conferences, and other ticketed events with unique seat locations. Use ticket mapping software and interactive seat selection apps to enable online seat reservations during the buying process.
Offer Easy and Flexible Ticket Purchasing
Make it effortless to buy tickets online, on mobile, and through multiple channels. Allow customers to purchase tickets in just a few clicks using an event page optimized for conversions. Accept multiple payment types like credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, etc. Provide flexible delivery options via email, mobile tickets, will call, or print-at-home ticketing. Minimize friction in the checkout process.
Send Personalized Reminder Emails
Use email marketing automation to target customers who abandoned their cart or haven’t purchased yet. Send timely reminder emails recapping event details, highlighting key attractions, announcing new artists, and showcasing customer feedback. Make it easy to complete their purchase. Effective nudges can increase conversion rates. Just avoid being overly promotional. Focus on value.
Get Social with Contests, Polls and Exclusive Content
Drive engagement on social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok. Share exclusive behind-the-scenes content, announce special promotions, and run creative contests leading up to the event. Polls and user-generated content is also popular. This raises awareness while allowing fans to get involved.
Advertise Locally with Posters, Billboards and Radio
Don’t forget about local advertising opportunities like posters, flyers, billboards, local TV and radio ads. Physically advertising in the area where your event is held raises local awareness from people passing by. Attendees still discover events through traditional advertising channels despite the digital shift. Explore grassroots street marketing too.
Offer Discounts for Non-Profit Fundraisers
Supporting charity can be a creative way to move excess ticket inventory while giving back. Offer special rates to non-profit groups reselling tickets as a fundraiser. This incentivizes them to aggressively promote and sell tickets on your behalf. They rally support for their cause while driving sales. It’s a win-win scenario when executed strategically.
Gamify the Booking Process
Make ticket purchasing more fun by incorporating gamification techniques. For example, offer prizes or unlockable content for sharing event pages socially. Provide progress bars showing limited inventory selling out. Unlock early access by joining an email list. Gamification adds engagement and urgency.
Cross-Promote on All Owned Channels
Don’t just rely solely on Ticketmaster or Eventbrite for ticket sales. Actively promote on your website, email lists, blog, social media, and other owned channels. Capture demand directly by linking to your ticketing pages everywhere. Cross-channel promotion catches consumers at multiple touchpoints.
Email Marketing Tips for Selling Tickets
Here are some proven email marketing strategies to boost ticket sales:
– Send a series of emails on schedule leading up to launch, not just one blast. Follow-up and reminders convert.
– Segment your list based on past attendance, interests and activity to tailor content and offers. Recent buyers get special loyalty perks.
– Make it very easy to click and buy tickets with prominent calls-to-action in the email.
– Spotlight new artists, attractions and updates to reignite excitement levels in past attendees.
– Offer limited-time pre-sales and discounts exclusively for your email subscribers.
– Share special sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes content to get fans engaged.
– Send last chance reminder emails to inactive contacts right before the event.
– Thank you emails post-event can promote satisfaction and tease next year’s event.
Social Media Tactics to Sell More Tickets
Social media is key for modern event marketing. Here are some ideas:
– Run ticket giveaway contests leading up to the event for shares, likes and comments.
– Share visually appealing graphics and videos highlighting the event experience.
– Promote early bird discounts available only through social posts.
– Leverage influencer and artist takeovers on Instagram Stories to expand reach.
– Go LIVE on Facebook to create excitement and announce real-time offers.
– Use countdown clocks on Instagram to highlight limited-time deals.
– Promote user-generated #event hashtag and showcase attendees having fun.
– Retarget past attendees with Facebook and Instagram ticket ads.
– Partner with local social media influencers to promote tickets to their followers.
Provide Excellent Customer Service
Deliver exceptional support across every touchpoint, especially for confused, upset, or demanding customers. Helpful service representatives willing to go the extra mile create positive word-of-mouth. Ticket purchase questions and issues need smooth resolutions. This improves customer satisfaction, likelihood to buy again, and referrals.
Customer Service Tips for Ticket Sales
Here are some customer service tips for dealing with ticket purchases:
– Be highly available with expanded phone, email and chat support during the sales period.
– Arm staff with detailed event info, seating maps, and FAQs to resolve inquiries.
– Empower reps to provide credits, discounts or other perks to save dissatisfied customers.
– Follow-up with emails to customers who had issues to proactively address any lingering concerns.
– Monitor social media for complaints and immediately reach out to assist.
– Thank customers after the fact who left positive reviews or feedback.
– Survey attendees post-event on their satisfaction levels and where you can improve.
Offer Payment Plans
Breaking ticket purchases into smaller incremental payments can overcome budget barriers. Consider partnering with firms like Affirm, Afterpay or Klarna to provide installment plans. This allows customers to pay over time versus one lump sum. Just ensure total costs and terms are clearly communicated. Also pursue in-house payment plan options.
Provide Detailed Event Information
Have clear event details easily accessible on your website like lineup, venue maps, schedules, restrictions, and FAQs. Create a dedicated event page people can link to that answers common questions. Share key attraction highlights, vendor lists, local accommodations, and transportation recommendations. The more info available, the more confident attendees feel purchasing tickets.
Make Ticket Purchasing Fast and Simple
Optimize your website and checkout process for speed, security, and simplicity. Load pages quickly with fast hosting. Use trust logos and SSL certificates. Integrate user-friendly ticket purchasing platforms into your site like Eventbrite or Ticketmaster. Have clear calls-to-action for next steps. Make entering payment information easy and error-free. Minimize form fields where possible. Every extra click or hassle loses sales. Test across devices.
Conclusion
Encouraging event ticket purchases takes careful planning, marketing and customer service. Tactics like special discounts, unique packages, strategic partnerships, paid advertising, email reminders, social media promotions, excellent support, and a frictionless website will help drive sales. Know your target audience, promote across channels, make buying easy, and deliver real value. Monitoring analytics while optimizing based on data will help you continually improve results. With a strategic approach, you can boost event ticket sales.
Tactic | Description |
---|---|
Limited Time Offers | Early bird pricing and flash sales create urgency to buy before tickets sell out. |
Ticket Bundles | Package tickets with VIP upgrades, merchandise, and add-ons to increase order value. |
Loyalty Discounts | Provide promo codes and special rates for previous buyers and loyal followers. |
Partnerships | Work with influencers and affiliates to cross-promote your event to new audiences. |
Paid Advertising | Run campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google to boost awareness. |
Reviews and Testimonials | Collect and showcase authentic customer feedback to build trust. |
Reserved Seating | Enable customers to select exact seats upfront for convenience and value. |
Flexible Purchasing | Accept multiple payment types and offer mobile tickets, email delivery, and other options. |
Reminder Emails | Send customized emails recapping event details to those who haven’t purchased yet. |
Social Contests | Run creative giveaways and contests across social platforms leading up to the event. |
Local Advertising | Use posters, flyers, billboards and radio locally where the event is held. |
Non-Profit Discounts | Offer special rates to charities reselling tickets as fundraisers. |
Gamification | Incorporate game mechanics into the ticketing process to boost engagement. |
Cross-Promotion | Actively promote ticket sales across all your owned marketing channels. |
Excellent Customer Service | Go above and beyond resolving issues to increase satisfaction and referrals. |
Payment Plans | Allow customers to pay for tickets over time in installments. |
Event Information | Have FAQs, venue maps, schedules, and other key details readily available. |
Fast & Simple Buying | Optimize your website and ticketing platforms for speed, security and ease of use. |