The online event marketing landscape is changing more quickly than ever before. What helped you to stay ahead of the competition last year might not be firing on all cylinders now. The aim of the game is to drive online ticket sales, so don't let you, your team, and your event, get left behind. Keep on top of these event marketing trends and maximise the impact of your online event marketing efforts to drive record ticket sales.
Offer Social Influencer Rewards
It’s no secret that marketing teams are consistently trying to stretch their marketing budget as far as they possibly can. With this in mind, it makes sense for teams to alleviate a bit of the pressure by engaging with social influencers who can provide plenty of their own pulling power to your event.
Social influencers are those followers on social media who carry a considerable amount of clout and influence themselves, perhaps with a few thousand friends on Facebook, or legions of followers across Twitter and Instagram. If they have shown interest in your event or are sharing your content then jump on it! Engaging with an influencer can be a great way to drive ticket sales. Get in touch with them start the conversation around how you develop a working relationship that benefits you both.
Get Creative with Competitions
The concept of delivering something meaningful and valuable to your audience is an important one. Competitions have been around since the dawn of marketing and, while they undoubtedly represent a positive means of audience engagement, they have grown a little tired in recent years.
To put it simply, it is no longer enough simply to offer free tickets, or small cash prizes. Instead, you need to be creative - really, really creative. Your audience can, and will, buy tickets if they want to, but what can you offer them that money cannot buy? Perhaps a chance to meet and hang out with the stars of your event? Perhaps some sort of once in a lifetime experience or backstage package? Consider this in your next competition, and keep in mind the idea of ‘experience’; we’ll be coming back to this.
Understand Page Performance with Analytics
Basically, this comes down to selecting the right ticket management system from which to sell your tickets or the right analytics tools to keep on top of this performance. Platforms like Ticketebo combine the best of both worlds, giving you a highly effective sales front from which to vend tickets from, and which also integrates with most major analytics tool suites, enabling you to monitor the progress and performance of these pages.
This level of understanding is critical. Without it, how can you tell what is working? How do you know if your audience is responding in the right way? Are people accessing your vending page and leaving without purchase? Why is this? These are the answers you need.
Do Facebook Right
Your audience use Facebook, therefore it makes sense that you must publicise your events on Facebook. But how to make sure that your Facebook events are really pulling their weight? A few simple tweaks should enhance the worth these event pages provide to your campaign.
For example, build a countdown app into the event page to generate serious buzz and momentum, enabling (and moderating) postings to build community engagement and excitement, and spend a bit of your budget on Facebook advertising to drum up some support.
Consider Paid Insta and Snapchat Approaches
Social media provides a great set of platforms for free publicity, but to get the optimal benefit, you need to be prepared to spend a few dollars. Paying for Instagram and Snapchat advertising enables you to get your event before the eyes of more people, expanding your audience and selling more tickets online.
Not only this, but these potential leads are qualified by analytics, which means your paid advertisements are seen only by those most likely to act on them. Your event marketing just got a whole lot more efficient.
Embrace the Tech
Virtual reality was once the preserve of video games and Disney Pixar movies; now it’s available to everyone. Embrace this; utilise the programming power of the modern smartphone and the dramatic advances in technology that we have experienced in recent years, and launch virtual reality content or an augmented reality app to support your event.
Capture your audience’s imagination with high-value, hi-tech content and watch as this is reflected in your online ticket sales.
Is the countdown well and truly on for your event? Make sure your event marketing is ready to compete online and delivers the results you need by using the latest event ticketing software, Ticketebo.
