Our very own Client Account Manager, Dan Bagby has written his top tips for promoting your event...
In a sea of events, how can you promote your event so that it stands out from the crowd? Does money mean success? How do I organise it all without an army of people behind me? These are all questions we ask ourselves in the events industry and although there is (unfortunately) no magic formula, we have some top tips for you!
Plan your time
You have a million and one things to do when promoting an event, it’s hard to know what to prioritise. Here are some top planning tips for you to remember:
-Take 15 minutes at the end of each day to see what you want to achieve tomorrow. It will help you to start each new day with clear plans and goals.
-Be realistic with your time, you aren’t going to be able to do everything in a day so don’t try to. Split your time into manageable chunks, well in advance of the event.
-Just say no! You can’t make everyone happy, be prepared to move on to more productive tasks and move on from things that are holding you back.
Figure out your budget
Whether you’re running Coachella or running out of ideas, you need to have a budget. If you want to be able to run another event, they need to be sustainable and part of that is earning more money than you spend.
-Be sensible and be realistic - work out how much you have spent and then how many tickets you will need to sell to at least break even. What’s the plan if your first event makes a loss?
-Have other sources of income besides ticket sales - running your own bar, selling merchandise, selling space to traders. These are all things that can create more income streams to your event, use them!
-Always note down every cost - you’d be surprised how quickly your expenditure goes up when you don’t pay attention to it.
Make your ticket buying process a simple one
Customers value simplicity and so do we. If it takes you 20 minutes to purchase a ticket, then the customer may not even bother!
⚠Shameless self-promotion⚠
Use our ticket widget to install your event page onto your website for easy ticket purchase or your customers can call us on our 24hr support line to purchase tickets over the phone. We also have a customer focused streamlined checkout, nice and simple, just how we like it!
Have realistic expectations
We all want to be big time promoters, but unfortunately this doesn’t happen overnight. Often the best events build over time. Take Glastonbury for example, it started out at £1 a ticket with 1,500 in attendance back in 1970 and now, it’s doing ok I suppose! Whilst we don’t all have 48 years to build an event, it is proven time after time that starting small and growing organically is the best way to go.
Know your social media channels
Social media is the new way to promote and if you’re not prepared to move with it, then unfortunately it will leave you behind. If you’re still using Bebo then I'm talking to you!
Instagram
This is all about visuals, keep your customers updated with images of the event preparation or give them flashbacks of awesome memories. Make it vibrant, interesting and be unique!
Twitter
This has to be for your smaller updates surrounding the event, a tweet doesn’t hold the same significance when comparing it to a Facebook or Instagram post, so it is really useful for feeding in small details to keep your customers informed.
Facebook
It’s old school but EVERYONE is on Facebook, even my grandmother and she’s still getting used to electricity! Use this for big line-up announcements and important information, don’t flood this with small details.
You have to use social media effectively, finding the line between over promoting and under promoting is hard. Find yourself a good ratio of directly promoting the event and just presenting interesting content.
Top tip - get a hashtag trending!
Keep in touch with all of your old customers
Whether your event is every week or it’s every year, the key is to stay in touch. If you put on a great event last time, remind your customers about it and let them know when the next one is. Make sure that what you’re sending them is quality over quantity, when you do make contact make sure it’s something worth reading.
⚠Shameless self-promotion⚠
You can export all of your customer emails that have opted in to receive promotion, to make sure you can keep in touch with them until the next event.
Make some special tickets
Whether you’re giving a discount on tickets or sending out private links for VIP customers, creating some hype around special tickets always works. It doesn’t mean you under sell everything, but it’s always good to make a customer feel special.
⚠Shameless self-promotion⚠
Yep, you guessed it. We can do this too. You can create promotional codes and one-time links for some lucky customers on your promoter account. Do it, they deserve it!
OR
Use our absolutely amazing, brand spanking new ambassador scheme, in my very unbiased opinion it’s a great way to get people to buy tickets by encouraging friends to sell to friends for rewards. It also means that you can delegate some of the promotional work. So why not? It’s a win win.
Say thank you
Your customers make your events happen, listen to their feedback and please say thank you after the event. Just add a personal touch and make them want to come back.
Relax...until the next one!