10 Ways To Lift Your Event Ticket Sales in 2018
You may have separate sales and marketing departments to promote your event, but the truth is that the entire event and its contents can be leveraged to boost sales.
Organizing a planned pandemonium that is an event, to create experiences where people connect with businesses, is no mean task. After spending a humongous amount of money, time, energy and effort into putting together an event, it can be depressing to watch bare venues and vacant chairs. If you’ve been through such a gloomy experience before and want to ensure that your next event is teeming with the right kind of people, then read on!
Tell Stories, Sell Experiences: One of the most powerful and memorable ways of selling experience is by telling stories. You can texture your pre-, during- and post-event strategies with relatable stories that connect with your audience emotionally. Your stories can encapsulate the cause of your event and purposes of the people and brands associated with it through text and audio-visual mediums. However, don’t make it all about them; ensure that you make your audience and prospective customers the hero of your story. Nobody is going to be interested in attending your event unless you keep them engaged by making a genuine effort to solve their problems. Tales that offer value can capture, retain and increase attention and increase ticket sales.
Leverage The Guest List: If your event comprises a list of speakers, performers, artists or the so-called “chief guests”, then you must use their presence to attract attendees to your event. While arranging for a celebrity can be easy to attract a crowd, it can also be relatively expensive. Instead, why not go the TED way and create celebrities out of ordinary people doing extraordinary things? Based on the theme of your event, you can look out for unique people, spread their ideas and create brands out of their businesses. You could also get your guests to invite people from their social circles to ensure that your event is full of like-minded people.
Targeted Communication: An event is a collaboration of several stakeholders, including organizers, performers, media, sponsors, suppliers, and the attendees. Using template-based mailers or social media posts to attract all probable event contributors can be unproductive. Before the event, consider creating a series of communication material to engage all your contributors, keep them informed throughout the event, and generate a feeling of gratitude post the event. When the right message is delivered to each party at the right time, there is less chaos on D-day, which works in making better memories for your audience.
Be Inclusive: Organizing an event that appeals to a heterogeneous audience can inspire non-believers to support the cause of your event. Walk the extra mile and invite people from various regions, cultures, and ethnicities. When dealing with a diverse set of people, make sure that you are aware of their community’s sensibilities. Avoid hosting your event on religious or national holidays that may be of significance to a section of your audience. Design your venue in a manner that promotes interaction between communities and helps in sharing ideas and thoughts. This way, you not only get a larger number of people to join your event but also ensure that you communicate your event’s message through word of mouth across a large geography.
Use Text Messages: According to “10 Event Trends For 2018”, a report published by Event MB, text messages are one of the sure-shot ways of ensuring immediate consumption of your communication. It says that 90% of the time, consumers read text messages within three minutes of delivery. So, if you think your sales is stagnating, then club SMSs with targeted communication tactics to evoke immediate action even at the last minute. Send out SMSs that include the participant’s name, freebies and discount codes, or simply an exciting schedule of happenings at your event.
Leverage Ticket Prices: As the day of the event nears, event organizers often start offering tickets at marked down rates. While this can be effective in some cases, you could also try bolstering sales by increasing ticket prices towards the end. Set the dates to increase your ticket prices and communicate these to your target audience. By doing so, you could induce a feeling of urgency and encourage people to book tickets earlier. An alternate strategy could involve having a limited number of tickets at different prices. For instance, a cheap ticket could guarantee entry to the event, while an expensive one could allow the attendee to meet your event’s chief guest in person or offer easier access to some of the most popular stalls in the arena.
Invest In Analytics: The event management industry is swathed with various kinds of software and devices that can measure and analyse participants’ data during your event. Several event planners are increasingly using smart mats as a non-intrusive method of counting footfalls. Similarly, you can also data captured by social media sites to quantify the popularity and relevance of your event. Reliable and accurate data on the demographics of your attendees, can justify your asking rates to sponsors and exhibitors. This in turn could help increase your budget for marketing and sales and increase ticket sales.
Augmented Reality: Using technology to create immersive and personalised experiences can help in generating larger footfalls. Augmented reality that superimposes elements such as audio, video, and graphics onto a person’s vision of the real world produce an artificial, yet engaging environment. For instance, you can let your prospective participant get a “feel” of the live event by allowing them to explore the place through an app. Exhibitors can use the technology to create a simulation of their products and services. By doing so, a company that is in the business of selling large or bulky products can also avoid the hassle of transporting their goods and equipment and save costs. Apart from adding a sense of newness, it can also turn out to be a reason of attendance for many inquisitive participants.
Food! The food and beverages counters are probably going to be the most crowded section of your event. Splashing your communication collaterals with redolent photos of signature dishes that match with the theme of your event can attract attention and increase click rates on the “buy” button. Having attractive food stalls offering a combination of local and international cuisines across your event scene can be a great way of getting a larger number of participants to enter your venue. Ensure that your food stalls impress your customers by quickly processing orders and offering great value for money. Speedy delivery will prevent crowds from stagnating near the food counters and ensure they’re well-distributed across the area of your event.
Know That Weird Is The New Normal: Adding a dash of eccentricity to the event can be a fun way of creating a buzz and introducing an element of surprise. You could do anything from inviting artists to arranging for a helicopter to land at your venue to keep your audience engaged and enthralled. If you don’t have a very big budget, you can also do something as simple as creating a quirky wall or photo booth with props where visitors can take selfies and share on social media. Using bizarre ways of interacting and creating a suspense around the event can spark curiosity and lead to higher sales.
While there are umpteen ways of upping the amp of your event, there is only one time-tested strategy of increasing ticket sales, and that is by adding value to all participants in a delightful manner. The event should induce the fear of missing out by adding multi-sensory elements that stimulate, excite and trigger a sense of wonder amongst your attendees. It is also essential for you to stay on top of your game by keeping abreast of the latest developments in the event planning and marketing landscape. Events thrive on originality, and staying updated can help you consistently deliver novelty to your audience.
Doing this can be possible when the purpose of all event organizing teams lies in implicitly contributing to the customer and consequently driving sales. Though the marketing and sales teams will always remain under pressure to increase attendance, you can also use the end-to-end organization of the event as a marketing tool in every way possible. After all, each person involved in the making of the event is responsible for each customer walking into the venue. And a convenient way of leveraging the entire organization as a focused and powerful weapon is by using event tools, which the market abounds in. More specifically, you need a holistic events platform, such as Explara. Schedule a demo right now to know more…
