Confessions of a digital marketer. How we use big advertising tactics to sell event tickets.
Advertising used to be a fairly desperate state of affairs. We’d broadcast messages widely across the country using expensive media and hope someone was paying attention. Meantime our clients would stand around in their stores hoping someone would walk in. And the process would repeat. Today we can be far more measured and tactical. Digital media allows us to speak coherently to consumers across different platforms, to learn fast, increase relevance and optimise our approach carefully.
The best part is that these tools and methods need not cost the earth, and perhaps that’s the biggest breakthrough of all. By working smart, with smart media technology, you can make a relatively modest media budget go a long way. Which leads us to digital marketing for events.
Technology has made powerful media tools available for businesses and verticals who, in the past, were not employing very advanced advertising strategies. The event industry is a great example. An investment in digital media spend can be accurately tracked directly to ticket sales, allowing for the most cautious marketers to calculate their ROI and confidently green-light powerful online sales campaigns.
At MADE Media we work with a variety of event organisers from music festivals to conferences and tradeshows. We love the satisfaction of a sold out event, and the accountability of the media spend used to get there. We apply a number of big advertising tactics to selling tickets. Here are 3 we think are quite important.
Buyer Journeys
Consumers don’t go from unaware to shopping products instantly. Instead they go through a journey, exposed to different messaging on different platforms throughout their day. This is referred to as a buyer journey, which if done right leads your customer from mildly interested to committed and buying. This insight can be applied to selling tickets too. Although first you’ll need to understand tags & pixels.
Keeping track with tags & pixels
A good buyer journey is one that serves your customer with just the right message, at the right moment, on the right platform. We use technologies like Google Tag Manager and social pixels to help us do this. In simple terms, this means we are able to record that a customer watched a video on Facebook, then went to your website but did not purchase anything. In which case we can remarket them with some banners on their favorite websites, and later perhaps promote a special offer to seal the deal.
Keep cool, save the hard sell for last
Consider that consumers are bombarded with advertising throughout the day, and can tune out of yours at the flick of a switch. In this light, it’s better to not be constantly hard selling. If you’ve setup your tags and pixels, and have a nice little buyer journey planned, you know you’ll speak to your customers more than once. So you don’t need to overload them the first chance you get. Keep your cool, win their hearts and imagination then go after their wallets.
We hope these few pointers will inspire you to expect more from your media budgets, open your minds about the possibilities and ultimately make a success of you events. We’re here to help on a variety of levels, from strategic consulting, setting up your environments to full management of your online media spend. Reach us at hello@made.co.za or visit MADE Media for more information.
