Setting goals to increase your event bookings can be one of the most critical steps you take as an event planner. When you have concrete plans on reaching your targets, it will help motivate you to work harder, spend more time on your marketing and make better decisions about increasing your event booking.
Using the same promotional strategies to drive traffic to your event five years ago will not cut it anymore. As an event planner, you need to stay on top of the trends and employ new strategies as they emerge to increase your event bookings.
We’ve studied and surveyed some of the most successful events to collect a list of the best ways to sell tickets to your event or increase your event bookings.
- Become a digital influencer & use your social media community
- Have a specialized landing page for your events
- Highlight the benefits of your event.
- Maximize your call to action
- Create urgency. Show that there are very few spaces left.
- Make it easy to buy tickets: Device Friendly, Multiple payment options, Trusted
- Announcements via Email Marketing – Generate curiosity, Show offers
- Promote on Social Media
By implementing one or more of these eight proven methods, you can increase your event bookings in no time at all!
1. Become a digital influencer & use your social media community.
Find influencers in your industry and become a part of their community by,
- Following
- Liking
- Commenting
Start conversations with them using relevant hashtags. When they respond, make sure you’re polite and value their opinion.
If they share one of your pieces of content, send them a quick thank-you message. It never hurts to be kind!
Posting helpful content will help establish yourself as an expert in your field, which can help increase event bookings.
It also doesn’t hurt to give you valuable insight into working for others in your industry. The more successful you are at increasing event bookings, the more likely these influencers will want to work with you down the road!
2. Have a dedicated landing page for your events
If you want to increase your event bookings, you have to have a way for your customers and leads to find out about them.
Having a landing page or microsite increases your event booking and can help boost their exposure—and make sure people know where they can buy tickets when registration opens.
Have an email list sign-up at the top of it; make sure that when people do subscribe, they’re directed straight to a page where they can buy tickets right away (or at least access information about upcoming events).
Related: 17 Landing Page Builder Software For Any Business
3. Highlight the benefits of your event.
Most event planners focus on their product or service. Yet they forget that they have value-added benefits that should be highlighted.
Most attendees are not interested in your event but only in what it can do for them. So highlight your unique features, such as-
- Free parking
- Conference refreshments
- A good location near public transportation.
You may also mention any particular speakers, guests of honor, or participants and add co-benefits such as networking opportunities at lunch or coffee breaks and cocktail receptions.
All these little extras will help increase your event bookings tickets without harming ticket prices because when you think about it, a little advertising is like icing on an already great cake!
4. Maximize your call to action
When it comes to increasing event bookings, you need to do what’s called a call-to-action. That means you want visitors who arrive on your website to take action, whether that’s downloading an email list, attending an event, or purchasing a product.
A call-to-action encourages users to take specific actions and creates more engagement in your digital marketing campaigns.
Here are five tips for creating effective calls-to-action:
- Make your CTA clear and straightforward – Don’t make potential attendees work hard at figuring out how they can get involved with your next event.
- Use multiple CTAs – You can use more than one CTA on your website for maximum exposure.
- Keep CTAs consistent across platforms – Putting up new events? Be sure to put them up on all of your social media platforms as well as your website, so interested individuals have plenty of opportunities to learn about them!
- Keep exact wording across platforms, too – Even if you have different social media handles than your main business page, try to stick with using either Like us or Follow us instead of hashtags when promoting new events.
- Incentivize attendance or purchase – Offering a discount code or free shipping? Be sure to include those somewhere near any CTAs.
Having something extra special is always a great way of enticing those on the fence about coming!
5. Create urgency. Show that there are very few spaces left.
You can create a sense of urgency using impactful social proof notification tools like – Wisernotify.
- Wisernotify is an important social proof notification tool that can help you create review pop-ups.
- Wisernotify shows social proof alerts, which helps you increase event booking.
Getting traffic is challenging; converting it is much more difficult. With social proof and FOMO notifications, Wisernotify makes it simpler. Showing notification on sales pages encourages users to take prompt actions and increase their event bookings.
You can use these types of notifications, like –
- Only 20 spaces left.
- We have already received 50 applications for only 20 spots!
You can also inform people that there are limited amounts of free stuff if they book early enough:
- You and a guest will get a free t-shirt if you book by tomorrow!
- Time is money. Inform them that booking now means they won’t have to pay higher prices later, as it’s first come, first served.
- Ask questions. You ask your followers what they think is an effective way to get them engaged and increase your event bookings.
Ask how many other spaces should be left available or which time would be best for them to attend. Offer incentives. People love perks.
Ensure that people know about all offers on your website and use any exclusive offers or discounts. Hence, people know about those too with the help of social proof notification from WiserNotify!
Related: 50+ real examples of social proof
6. Make it easy to buy tickets: Device Friendly, Multiple payment options, Trusted
These three attributes are critical, significantly when increasing event bookings tickets.
- If your website isn’t responsive and doesn’t accept multiple payments, it might hold back ticket sales. That’s why you need to make sure your website is top-notch before you begin selling online.
- A straightforward Buy Tickets Online Now! Button or lin
k on social media will increase your attendance numbers significantly over time if placed well to increase event bookings. - Offering offline purchasing: Even though many people do buy online, a group of people still prefer spending money physically, in person.
7. Announcement via Email Marketing – Generate curiosity, Show offers
Email marketing is a great way to create anticipation for your upcoming event and drive ticket sales.
Send out a message announcing your upcoming event with information about tickets, prices, discounts, dates, and times.
Ensure you include links in your message that allow people to buy tickets immediately from your website. You can also send follow-up messages with additional details on upsell offers if they want more than what they see on initial pricing offers. This can help increase event bookings tickets by as much as 30%.
The lessons are short, sweet, and very effective at teaching you how to build an audience of raving fans that will grow your business – not just today but long into the future. Give it a shot – it’s free!
Also read: Best Email Marketing Tools For Startups
8. Promote on Social Media
When you have an event, promote it on social media. It’s a good idea to post about your event at least two weeks before it starts to get people excited and increase ticket sales.
Use social media accounts effectively and create reports on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest (at least) specifically for events like yours. It might seem like extra work, but reaching new potential customers is worth it.
After your initial post, keep your followers informed on any changes that may occur and how many tickets have been sold.
Additionally, using some hashtags can help you gain more exposure.
For example –
- If you are hosting a music festival, include #festival and #music in your posts. This helps users who don’t follow you know what they should be looking for.
- Additionally, if a prominent artist is playing, promote their name by including #bigartistname. This is beneficial because people who like famous artists will search for them regardless of whether or not they follow you.
Conclusion
Simple methods to enhance your audience reach primarily by identifying the best site to sell tickets online, applying proven ticket selling strategies, and ensuring you’re using the fundamental components of a strong ticket sales campaign are the best ways to sell event tickets. Using the proper sales strategies to sell event tickets can help you convert the numbers you’ve reached through marketing into actual tickets.
Ensure that successful parts of an event marketing strategy are implemented to help you establish more meaningful relationships and increase your event booking in the future.
