With the advancement of technology, the means of buying tickets has changed drastically.
Gone are the days in which people had to queue up for long hours in order to gain entry into a movie screening or a concert.
With the accelerated growth of social media, advertising on digital platforms has become incredibly cheap and easy.
While this may sound good to the uninitiated, in actuality, it is only making the competition among brands to become even fiercer.
In fact, marketers have stated that reaching new customers is becoming increasingly difficult, with 89% of event creators citing this as the biggest challenge they are facing.
Due to the affordable and simplistic means of advertising digitally, your event is not only facing stiff competition from other event marketers, but also thousands of other brands that are competing for a consumer’s attention.
This means that unless your event is extremely well-established, (like for instance, Coachella) it could easily get overtaken by another event that is managing to market themselves properly.
Although this may seem like the industry is extremely tough to succeed in, the fact remains that if you are clever about your marketing plan, you should be able to sell your tickets.
This article will help you figure out different methods you can use for selling tickets with the help of Eventbrite.
A guide to selling tickets with Eventbrite:
Selling tickets with Eventbrite can definitely give you an edge over your competitors, as Eventbrite utilizes a given user’s history on different social media apps, ultimately managing to provide people with events that would suit their interests directly.
Eventbrite has teamed up with social media apps like Facebook and Instagram, as well as streaming apps like Spotify to engage consumers and nudge them towards events that they may be interested in attending. Event organizers that know how to sell tickets on Eventbrite have recorded significant success when they organize an event.
There are several ways to go about selling tickets through Eventbrite.
#1. Identify your audience:
Your core audience can be spread across several different social media apps, showcasing both passive and active behavior.
Active users will have a vested interest to seek out different events using various social media apps.
They will actively engage in a variety of events and can even influence the decision of other, more passive users to attend certain events.
At times, event managers make use of specific active users that have some sort of following on social media to promote their events.
Such influencers are especially helpful in influencing different people to attend an event, though this should not be the only means of advertising.
Generally speaking, passive clients make no move to seek out different events, rather they are guided by subtle marketing cues and even email newsletters to entice them to attend events.
Usually, passive users tend to be restricted by their busy day-to-day schedules, and tend to rely on others to guide them to events they may find interesting.
Event creators using Eventbrite to sell tickets can rest easy, as Eventbrite is integrated with Facebook, and can automatically create a Facebook ad for your event, making it more likely to show up in people’s newsfeed.
And as Facebook is among the most used apps on the market, this can work well in your favor. An age demographic on Facebook is presented in the graphic below:
Interestingly, 50% of all smartphone usage is said to be spent directly on certain applications and Facebook, and Facebook-owned app Instagram is among the top apps in use.
However, it is important to note that the volume of consumer usage alone cannot guarantee your event selling out.
If your event is failing to grab the attention of non-regular attendees, then it is safe to say that your marketing plan may not be as airtight as you thought.
Usage statistics alone can not guarantee a win, but rather it is through analyzing how consumers interact with several different social media that one can fully understand how to cater to a wider audience.
#2. Streaming apps:
Spotify and Pandora are the two mainstream apps used for streaming music. In fact, they are said to account for 18% of all mobile phone usage with the same study which states that about 50% of users not only stream on the platform but also use it to buy event tickets.
Streaming apps are used by 26 million people in the US alone, which makes them an obvious choice to advertise on. These streaming apps are known to help Eventbrite sell tickets.
Active users seek out whether their favorite artists are coming into town soon while passive users will be more inclined to attend an event if they note that their favorite influencers are also going to be attending.
Passive users can, therefore, be trickier to cater to, and advertising to them may be slightly more needed as compared to active users.
Partnering with third-party apps like Eventbrite, can tie in your events to streaming apps and make your targeted marketing much more effective.
#3. Search Engines:
At times, users gravitate towards search engines in order to find events that are suitable for them.
In particular, passive users can browse for relevant events in their vicinity with the intent of purchasing tickets to the event in mind.
Interestingly, around 89% of event-goers gravitate towards search engines while finalizing their decision plan to attend any event.
If an event you are planning shows up immediately in search engines, it can be the reason you gain new traffic.
For this purpose, your event page needs to be search engine optimized, and if you are unfamiliar with its concepts, you can learn more in this miniature guide.
It is safe to say that if you neglect this part of your event plan, you will be losing out on several new customers, as search engine searches are thought to account for 5% to 10% of total ticket purchases or registrations.
If you are unsure of your own expertise in SEO, then you can simply find a dedicated marketer whose strong suit is in SEO. Taking such steps can make finding your event on Google much easier, and can allow you to cast a wider net for event-goers.
Selling tickets with Eventbrite can help you stay among the top search results on Google, and can allow you to gain access to untapped crowds of event-goers. Regardless of Eventbrite costs to sell tickets, it is a great option to explore.
#4. Event discovery websites:
While passive users may be more inclined to look for relevant events on search engines like Google, active users tend to seek out events using event discovery websites.
In urban settings, users with niche interests make use of event-specific sites like DoStuff Media or Eventbrite in order to find events that can cater to their specific interests.
Several such sites exist over a wide variety of different niches ranging from events like concerts, conferences and other interest-specific events.
Eventbrite allows marketers to advertise to potential attendees on the basis of their location and previous event ticket purchases.
This can help you reach your audience in an even more targeted manner, which can increase the likelihood of them purchasing a ticket.
This mode of targeting should not be underestimated, as users who visit such sites are much more serious about purchasing tickets, as compared to those who come across events on social media.
#5. Email newsletters:
Email newsletters are another way to engage passive event-goers to attend an event.
However, on average, a person receives 170 emails a day so event invites can get buried in the inbox.
The best way to circumvent this issue is by using a different approach in addition to email newsletters in order to garner the best rate of registration.
A good example of this approach is how Spotify also sends emails to regular event-goers according to their listening history.
Personalized recommendations of this nature are more likely to be appreciated by event-goers as compared to the average email.
How can you sell the most tickets?
We’ve talked at great length about the different social media platforms you can utilize in order to bump up your event sales.
An equally crucial step is creating an adequate marketing budget and using it to advertise your event in a way that garners the greatest amount of attention.
In an ideal world, marketers would be able to adjust their marketing budget around the revenue they hope their ticket sales generate.
In reality, the picture is much different, and marketers are advised to examine the ticket sales of similar events in order to create a more accurate ticket projection.
In order to maximize ticketing sales, event planners are urged to pay attention to the event sales cycle, of which there are many kinds.
#1. The Generic Sales Cycle:
Generic events usually have a sales cycle that has three main stages.
Usually, once an event is announced, there is a spike in ticket sales, followed by a stagnant period leading up to the event, and then another spike in sales occurs a few days before the event starts.
The ticketing slump that occurs in the middle is sometimes called the “maintenance” stage, and having an in-depth understanding of these stages is crucial for maximizing ticket sales.
At times, event marketers can mistakenly blow their entire advertising budget during the maintenance stage, so when stage 3 does come around, there is no buzz being generated.
Errors of this nature can result in ticket sales that stand below projected levels.
Understanding the different stages is essential to maximize the number of tickets sold as buyers respond differently to advertising during different stages.
Another common error made by marketers is to spend all their budget on the initial announcement stage, leaving very little budget to advertise in the final stage.
Generally, it is recommended to approach budgeting with a 40-20-40 approach, in which 40% of the ad budget is spent during the first and final stage, and only 20% is left over for the maintenance stage.
Adhering to a budget of this nature can allow you to grab the attention of more people, and hopefully land you a larger number of ticket sales.
#2. Tiered ticketing and festivals:
While the generic event sales cycle can fit a wide range of events, festivals and tiered ticketing events tend to have a slightly different sales cycle.
Tiered ticketing schemes are referred to as those events which have a variety of different price points being sold to an event, such as general admission, an early bird ticket (which would be cheaper), or a VIP ticket (which would be more expensive).
Tiered ticketing is a little tricky to price right, for fears that low prices would result in low-profit margins, or that high prices would result in no sales at all.
One of the more recent examples of a failed attempt at tiered ticketing would be James Charles’ tour tickets, who’s exorbitant prices generated a lot of negative buzz.
The marketing budget for the event sales cycle for tiered events is suggested as 10% during the announcement of the event, 30% for the 1st tier, 10% for both the 2nd and 3rd tiers, and 40% for the closeout portion.
#3. Family-friendly events:
Family-friendly events are usually attended by passive personality types, who look into an event with the purpose of buying tickets.
As high-income people with families tend to gravitate towards such events, marketers are said to divide their budget into three stages, with a 40-30-30 split, as early promotions will generate the most buzz about their event.
#4. Nightlife or weekend events:
Weekend events like comedy shows have an audience that usually buys tickets 1-3 days in advance of a weekend event.
Budgeting for such an event should be concentrated in the first (50%) and final (40%) stage, with only 10% spared for the maintenance stage.
Summary:
By now you should know how to sell your Eventbrite tickets. Event promoters that know how to use Eventbrite to sell tickets will have the biggest advantage and success rate when it comes to ticket sales. Finding the right channels to advertise to event-goers is the key to getting the most out of your ticketing sales.
Creating detailed profiles of consumers and then sending them personalized recommendations can help you increase revenue drastically, and Eventbrite’s detailed ticket selling system can help you cast a wider net.
Dividing a marketing budget to improve your overall ticket sales is not an exact science, and a marketer should analyze the ticket revenue generated by similar events in order to gauge the best possible budget.