Introduction
The secret to sell more tickets for entertainment events is to have both a strong ticketing strategy and a well-thought-out marketing plan. When they are in congruence, you will have the best opportunity to sell out your event as the highest average ticket price possible.
Pan for whole ticket sales cycle in both your marketing and ticketing strategy. The ticketing sales cycle begins when the event is announced to the public and runs until the event begins. Depending on the event, it may last just a few weeks or many months. Events with good ticketing strategies usually have a minimum of 3 months between the start of ticket sales and the event date.
It has five stages.
- Announcement stage: when the event is announced to the public
- Presale stage: when tickets go on sale to a select group
- On Sale stage: when tickets go on sale to the general public
- Maintenance stage: the period when tickets are on sale between to the general public and the final phase of the ticketing sales cycle
- Closing stage: the last few days of ticket sales before the event
Ticketing sales will have ups and downs throughout the ticketing sales cycle, with a large peak when tickets go on sale and another large peak during the closing stage. In between, during the maintenance stage, is a period of small relative sales stability. A good ticketing strategy and marketing plan will include specific marketing and ticketing sales tactics to increase sales throughout this maintenance period.
One rule of thumb is that 40 percent of your marketing budget is allocated to the event announcement and sales launch, 20 percent allocated to the maintenance stage, and 40% allocated during the closing stage. The actual amount distribution between these stages will depend on the length of the ticketing sales cycle, analytics from previous event sales, and how aggressive you want to be to increase sales during the maintenance period.
Online Marketing to Sell More Tickets
This article is about various tactics you can use throughout the ticketing sales cycle to sell more tickets. We will address online channels and tactics, recognizing that depending on your target audience for the event, certain offline marketing channels will also be a part of your overall marketing plan.
This article assumes that you have researched your target audience and that you have priced your various average ticket price and ticketing tiers to meet your revenue goals and audience expectations of the perceived value of the event.
Before delving into specific online marketing channels, there are a couple of things you should keep in mind when selling tickets and marketing your event. These are fundamental to your efforts.
- The first is that you should be selling tickets wherever your target audience is found online. What that means is that you should be selling tickets everywhere your audience is. Instead of trying to send them to your website, use a widget to sell the tickets directly from each online channel you use to market the event.
- The second is copromoting with the artist(s) performing at the event. After all, they have a fan base of loyal fans that are most likely to purchase tickets to their performances. Your efforts should be getting the artist(s) to help take advantage of their fan base and their connections with that fan base to sell tickets for your event.
Artists will participate in the announcement stage and announce the event on their website and social media platforms. Your challenge is getting them to stay engaged and promoting your event to their fans on a continuous basis. This can be a challenge with more well-known artists. Getting a “shout out” video of the artist(s) inviting people to come out to see them at your event is important. The video can be used on various social media platforms and the audio can be used for both online and offline channels, e.g., radio promotion.
You should ask for other content you can use to help promote your event such as behind the scenes video, song clips, etc. that you can use to keep content flowing for your event’s online sites. Don’t forget that ticket sales are important to them as well. Whether it’s a backend deal where they get a percentage of ticket sales or wanting to have good box office sales reported to third party sites, artists want to sell out the venue.
If you want their help, be sure to ask for it and make it easy for them by creating custom content such as personalized event imagery they can share on social media. Don’t forget to tag the artist(s) in your own social media posts to encourage them to reshare. Depending on the artists and your marketing strategies, you can even incentivize them and provide referral codes to track sales they are generating.
Online Presence Optimization to Sell More Tickets
Events today have an online presence on venue or event websites, box office sites, and event pages on various online locations, Facebook being a standard. Another to consider is your city’s City Subreddit page where you can share event details. Google’s latest algorithm update boosted the rankings for Reddit pages.
While it goes without saying these days, your event online sites should be designed to be both accessible and mobile friendly.
It’s also important that your online presence be optimized for search engines so people looking for entertainment will find your event. That means that websites will need to be optimized for these SEO keywords that describe your event or venue. Search engines rank sites not only by keywords, but how often content is added to the site. That means that venues and event organizers will need to keep content flowing to their event pages.
The kinds of content you can use to provide quality content to your online pages include such things as:
- Event details: providing updates on the event as it get closer.
- Blog posts: more in-depth content about some aspects of the event or venue.
- Feature video and photo content: Search engines like multi-media and using graphics and video are more engaging than just words on a page.
- Showcase talent: share talent social media and shout out videos and audios
- Share testimonials from previous events
Other Online Marketing Channels to Sell Tickets
While there are a myriad of online channels that exist, the basic breakdown is as follows:
- Organic social media posts
- Online Advertising
- Email Marketing
- Influencer Promotion
Organic Social Media Posts for Selling Tickets
When it comes to social media is a “pay to play” environment. Organic posts have no reach. For example, organic Facebook posts today only reach between one and two percent of followers/fans. If you want more people to see the posts, you will need to do one or more of the following:
- Pay to boost the post to more people’s news feed.
- Create posts that people will want to share because of the creative nature of the post.
- Incentivize people to share the post with their friends using contests, an ambassador program or other types of incentive programs.
- Get artist(s) to reshare to their social media accounts
You should also encourage fans to use your event hashtag when doing their own social media posts. Encouraging them to post pictures of themselves at previous events or wearing swag can help as well.
Online Advertising to Sell Tickets to Entertainment Events
There’s no getting around the need to do online advertising to get the reach you need to sell more tickets for events. The common channels Include
- Social Media Advertising
- Search Engine Advertising
- Email Marketing
- Influencer Marketing
Social Media Advertising
The average user of social media worldwide is spending almost 2.5 hours on social media. That makes social media advertising a good investment for your advertising spend. Facebook and Instagram are the most popular channels for advertising. However, you need to keep in mind your target audience and the social media platforms they frequent. For instance, Gen Z is more likely to be engaged with Tik Tok and YouTube than Facebook.
All of these platforms allow you to target ads based on age, gender, location, interests, etc. Facebook’s Ad Manager (now known as Meta Ad Manager) is intuitive to use, and with its help, you can launch effective ad campaigns not only on Facebook but also on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Retargeting is also possible as is A/B testing and creating lookalike audiences.
Search Engine Advertising
Search engine advertising allows you to directly display your paid ads among the search results on various search engines, like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Search engine advertising shows ads to users who are actively searching for specific keywords. Advertisers pay a fee each time someone clicks on the ad. This type of PPC (pay-per-click) advertising is especially effective because people who conduct searches tend to reveal a lot about their intent with their search query.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is still an effective marketing channel to promote events and sell tickets to them. Most venues and ticketing platforms maintain the email addresses of past ticket buyers. When using email marketing to promote events, it’s best to send targeted emails segmented into different lists depending on the variable you select, e.g., past purchases. Make sure the email content is targeted and relevant to each specific segment you target.
When using email as a marketing tool, remember to:
- Give people a reason to open it by creating compelling, creative, and concise email subject lines and preheader text.
- Utilize a responsive, short, and clean design staying away from too many images and spammy language.
- Automate your email. Email automation allows you to send emails based on triggers you choose. For example, an event confirmation email after a ticket purchase or a series of emails sent at specific intervals, i.e. a drip campaign, after someone has expressed interest in the event.
Influencer Marketing to Sell Event Tickets
Influencer marketing has evolved significantly over the last few years and is now a part of an effective event marketing campaign. These social media influencers are found across all social media networks. Recommendations from these influencers serve as a form of social proof to your event’s potential customers.
You are looking not for large, broad audiences, but those that boast of smaller, more targeted audiences in your locality. While they offer a smaller reach, these nano-influencers can be excellent partners for venues who want to target specific communities and demographics without breaking the bank
According to The 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, almost half of all consumers (49%) make purchases at least once a month because of influencer posts; and almost all consumers (86%) make a purchase inspired by an influencer at least once a year.
Test and Track Your Ticket Selling Efforts
Testing which ads or emails perform better should be standard practice for your ticket marketing strategy. Most advertising and email platforms allow A/B testing of your content.
You should also trace which marketing channels are best suited to your event’s ticket sales by utilizing various tracking tags. Depending on the specific channel, you will utilize tracking pixels or tracking links to segregate from which online channels box office traffic and ticket purchases were generated. You also provide referral codes to venue ambassadors and marketing influencers.
Tracking pixels are used to track user activity on a website, such as when they complete a desired action, like making a purchase. Tracking pixels can also track other metrics and channels. They can be used to optimize campaigns and improve conversion rates.
Tracking links are used to track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns, such as the number of clicks, where the clicks came from, and what users do after clicking the link. Tracking links are recommended when directing traffic to a website from an external channel, like email, social media, or banner ads.
Referral codes are used to encourage existing customers to become brand advocates and to acquire new customers through word-of-mouth advertising. When a new customer uses a referral code to make a purchase, the person who referred them receives credit. Referral codes are also known as promo codes, vanity codes, or discount codes.
Analytics should be used to determine the most effective ways to reach your target audience and get them to purchase tickets. Based on analytics you can adjust your event marketing strategy to sell the most tickets for your event.
There’s an old adage that says that if your not measuring it, you can’t manage it.
Conclusion
If you want to sell more tickets to entertainment events, you will need to understand your target audience and market to them on the channels they frequent. Sell your tickets on those channels directly without sending them to a venue website. Remember that partnering with the artist(s) performing is critical to promoting an event and selling tickets. Digital marketing and advertising are the best ways to reach potential buyers for event tickets. Whatever channels you use, it’s critical to measure results in real time so you can adjust your marketing efforts to maximize impact.
