Every event organiser wants to sell out their event. After all, once all the tickets have gone, you can be assured that you’ve hit the top end of your profits prediction, and you can start thinking about bigger venues for the next gathering – more impressive and expensive catering and entertainment options, or more renowned keynote speakers.
As they say; it takes money to make money, and everybody wants to be on an upward trajectory. The secret to all of this? Getting more people excited about your event, having a stronger social media presence, and using every trick in the book to get those tickets flying off their metaphorical shelves.
As always, we’re here to help you out, and we are more than happy to share with our insider knowledge on how to sell even more tickets to your event! Read on to discover our top techniques, and see how to sell ticket for your event.
1. Get In Touch With Your Previous Attendees
If you’ve held events in the past, you should definitely be starting your ticket sales drive with those who have already seen what you’re capable of. Your past attendees are going to be more open to coming along to your latest event, and are also going to appreciate the fact that you’ve remembered them, and are getting back in touch.
However, simply by sending out a group email to those who’ve bought a ticket in the past isn’t necessarily going to hit all the right notes, and they really should never be taken for granted.
People love exclusivity – the feeling of belonging to a special, elite club or group. This is the vibe you want to be encouraging in your communication to your past attendees, so present your communication with them as a secret, clandestine message, destined only for those already in the know.
To push them to buy a ticket even further, make sure you guarantee them some sort of bonus – one free drink on arrival, or the chance to benefit from an exclusive discount on ticket prices – and use promotional images taken at the event they were at. It can really make all the difference!
2. Incentivize Referrals From Your Fanbase
There are more ways to make the most of those who have already attended, or expressed a real interest in your events. Firstly, you should regularly be posting shareable content to your social media pages, as each and every time one of your followers or fans clicks that ‘share’ button, they’re making your potential network a little wider and more effective.
This isn’t going to be enough to get those ticket sales figures rocketing, so let’s see what you can do:
A
Get The Fanbase Work For You
You should be getting that fanbase working for you, and offering great incentives for them doing so. For example, you could request that each of your fans invites five of their social media friends to ‘like’ your page or follow your account, and offer them a discount code in return for their efforts.
B
Offer Free Tickets For Informal Agents
Alternatively, you could offer free tickets to those who work as informal agents for your event, essentially encouraging their friends and connections to sign up and buy their own tickets. It’s a tried and tested method which brings out the loyalty in your past attendees and fans, and can help boost ticket sales quite easily. You can see some great ideas for incentivizing referrals at SmallBizTrends.
3. Get Competitive
Competitions come in many forms, and they’re a great way of mobilising your social media network and connections, and spreading news about your event across the internet.
Creating competitions are a brilliant way to easily come up with viral promotional content (after all, people love to share these kinds of things on social media), and as such, are great when you’re looking for ideas regarding how to sell tickets online for an event.
Your competitions can be as simple as you like – for example, it might be nothing more than rewarding those who generate the most ticket sales via referrals. However, these are best utilised alongside more creative competitions; we’ve seen amazing examples recently where event organisers have asked their fans to write a ‘theme song’ for the event, and the results were astonishing, and extremely shareable!
Caption contests, photo competitions and poster design competitions are also ideal methods for tapping into your fanbase’s creative juices, and all are capable of boosting ticket sales. Check out how this Scottish graphic design festival involved their competition page and their ticket page together in the same place – it’s seamless, effective, and highly tempting for those in that particular industry.
4. Create Different Types Of Tickets To Sell
One of the best answers we’ve seen recently involves an increasingly common technique, which is as straightforward as it is effective. Simply put, you offer more variety in the type of tickets you offer, and thus widen your net and generate more interest from a wider selection of people.
The range of tickets you could offer is relatively varied, and includes several recognisable types. These include:
● Early bird tickets, which usually come at a discounted price for those willing to buy one well in advance,
● VIP tickets, which offer a full range of extras and bonuses like free meals and drinks included in the price,
● Group tickets, which are a very simple way of boosting sales, simply by offering a tempting discount to those who buy multiple tickets at once,
● Half day tickets, which offer a cheaper rate for those who are only able to attend one part of the event (for example the evening party, rather than the daytime activities etc).
5. Get Your Speakers Involved in Promotion
If you’re hosting the kind of event which features keynote speakers, special guests or presentations, you’re staring at a great well of untapped potential when it comes to selling more tickets.
If you want to know how to sell tickets for an event, simply look at the numbers of follows on the respective social media accounts of your speakers and special guests: all of those individuals can be seen as prospective ticket holders to your gathering.
Ask your speakers and presenters to consider sharing promotional material via their social media feed, or get them to directly engage with their fans, and let them know where they’ll be appearing.
The chances are they’ll be more than happy to get involved… after all, they agreed to speak at your event, so it would be strange if they didn’t want more people to be there!
6. Get Your Pre-Game On
If you’re looking for an effective and dynamic way to drum up excitement for your event, and thus hopefully energize ticket sales, consider holding a pre-event event. What’s that?
Well, a pre-event event is essentially a mini gathering, a small-scale encapsulation of what your event is going to involve, designed to get tongues wagging and hearts racing in anticipation for the big day itself.
Hold your pre-event event a week or two in advance of your main one (any longer in advance and it won’t seem so relevant) and make sure you include snippets and tasters of what’s to come. Ensure your branding is all on point, and use it as an excuse to boost your online presence.
Livestreaming is a great idea, and the perfect way to reach a wide audience during this warm up evening.
7. Quick… Don’t Miss Out!
Nothing motivates people to buy tickets quite like the sensation of FOMO – Fear Of Missing Out. Nobody wants to be too late to get involved, and everyone’s experienced the crushing disappointment that comes with realising the tickets you so desperately wanted have all been snapped up.
That’s exactly why you need to encourage a sense of urgency while promoting your event. You need to make your potential attendees feel that NOW is the time to buy a ticket, and if they delay, there’s a chance they’re going to regret it.
One highly effective way of creating this sensation is by adding a timer widget onto your ticket sales page – you can essentially show the minutes ticking away, demonstrating just how long your prospective guests have to avoid missing out! If you like this kind of psychological approach, you can see more similar examples here, at MarketingLand.
Sold Out!
So, there you have it – seven effective, tried and tested methods to help you sell more tickets for your event. There’s really nothing more important to event organisers than making sure they’re ticket sales numbers remain healthy, as this is one of the only ways to ensure there’ll be more events in the future.
Do you need help with this aspect of your event? Don’t worry – Ultimate Experience are here for you, and are ready to give you advice and their expertise when it comes to packing out your venue at your next event.
As always, we’d love to hear from you. Have you used any of these tactics? Do you have any more tricks of the trade up your sleeve? Let us know in the comments!