Every day we enable thousands of live events to happen around the world, so we want to give you a behind-the-scenes look at what you can do to boost your ticket sales as you head into the final stretch toward your big day.
It’s important to remember each event and its sales cycle is unique; however, the following pattern is one of the more common paths we see:
- Has momentum during a presale window and into the onsale.
- Loses momentum and plateaus during the mid-sales cycle.
- Gains new momentum in a couple of weeks leading up to the big event.
From strategic planning to effective execution, here are 4 winning strategies to help you fill more seats.
1. Evaluate & Refine Your Marketing Messaging
First things first, you’ll want to take a step back and review the data from your marketing campaign to date to see how it’s trending in comparison to other campaigns you’ve run.
- Is it generating as many clicks and conversions as expected? Great! Keep that tone and swap in some fresh new event-focused creative – people love to get a preview of the event experience.
- Is it generating high clicks but not converting as planned? Consider extending a limited-time offer through your ads to help incentivize the prospective buyer.
- Are the clicks altogether lower than anticipated? Time to rethink your messaging and creativity, and try something new! Be sure to use creative that showcases the event experience, include a clear call to action (CTA), the main event details and remove all other clutter.
→ Is it generating as many clicks and conversions as expected? Great! Keep that tone and swap in some fresh new event-focused creative – people love to get a preview of the event experience.
→ Is it generating high clicks but not converting as planned? Consider extending a limited-time offer through your ads to help incentivize the prospective buyer.
→ Are the clicks altogether lower than anticipated? Time to rethink your messaging and creativity, and try something new! Be sure to use creative that showcases the event experience, include a clear call to action (CTA), the main event details and remove all other clutter.
2. Increase Your Participation in Effective Channels – & Engage New Ones
Just as you had evaluated your ad performance, dig into the channels you’ve been using. Which channels and audiences seem to be moving the needle the most? It’s time to ramp up those impressions – and bonus points for a fresh creative set! Additionally, consider expanding into new channels and audiences for even more impressions served. Ticketmaster’s Distributed Commerce partners are a great way to find fans where they’re spending their time. At this time, you can even revert back to marketing channels you had launched during your presale that were successful. From social media platforms to strategic partnerships, these channels tend to gain new momentum at different phases of your sales cycle.
3. Create a Sense Of Urgency
In many cases, when fans don’t purchase their tickets during the onsale, it’s because the date is still far enough out that they’re not sure if they’ll be available. With two weeks to go, it’s important that you get loud about it. By that time, your buyer prospects will know what they’re doing (or not) and if they don’t have plans, your event is a great option! Instead of counting down dates in your creative, use callouts like ‘Last Chance’ or ‘Before it’s too late’ with a clear view of your event date. Some additional creative ideas to consider are launching behind-the-scenes footage, previews of past performances and glowing testimonials from some of those event-goers. This immersive content really ignites excitement and brings out some big event FOMO.
4. Customize Your Outreach
Targeting key audiences with personalized emails is a highly effective way of letting prospective buyers know there are still tickets available. Take a page out of Ticketmaster’s email playbook, where last-call performer alerts are sent out to subscribed fans who haven’t bought their tickets yet – you can subscribe to these too through your MyAccount.
Implement a similar approach within your own database:
- Create a list of past buyers for similar types of events within your database that are opt-ed in to receive email marketing, and haven’t purchased tickets yet.
- Depending on how many tickets you’re looking to sell, your message can either be general awareness with a sense of urgency, or an email with an added incentive, like a discount or BOGO.
- Double-check your details referencing these 6 Steps to Improve Your Email Marketing.
- Confirm you’re addressing each of your subscribers personally through automation.
- Hit send and watch the ticket sales come in!
By integrating these 4 strategies into your final push, you will be giving yourself better odds of boosting your late-cycle ticket sales – and more tickets sold equals more fans experiencing your unforgettable live event!
Want to learn more? Get in touch with us.
¹Market Splash, 2023
