“Our members and stakeholders love us. They’ll for sure buy a ticket! We don’t need event marketing support.”
In 2017, I had three events where the client struggled with ticket sales. The stress!
On the logistics side, it was a total nightmare … in all three cases, we didn’t know if we had 100 people coming or 1000! The suppliers were hating me … from tables to toilets, the orders were constantly changing, and I spent countless unbillable hours trying to help the clients re-do the event budget to get it to a break-even point (just in case ticket sales didn’t pick up).
NEVER AGAIN.
Event marketing is one of the services that iSPARK provides, but not every client opts in. Many of our event clients go into it with the attitude of ‘we’ll build it and they will come’.
I often wonder if their internal dialogue goes something like this –
“Our members and stakeholders love us. They’ll for sure buy a ticket! We don’t need event marketing support.”
So, they shoot out a few emails announcing the event with a link to online registration and sit back and wait for the masses to open their wallets.
It’s false optimism.
Just because you think your event is AMAZING, doesn’t mean everyone else does too.
In reality, event marketing is way more complex. The call to action is critical. There are emotional triggers that actually incite people to act. The copywriting is key. The graphics are make or break. And your event registration/ticketing system must be easy peasy.
3 Causes of Weak Event Registration
Low event registration is usually due to one (or all) of these three things:
- No one is visiting your event website.
- There’s an obstacle in the way – time, money, functionality of the registration/ticketing process.
- Your audience doesn’t understand the relevance (or value) of the event.
If you figure out which of these three problems is standing in the way, you can stop freaking out, fix it and jumpstart your ticket sales & event registrations before it’s too late.
Why You Need Data
In order to know which problem you have, you need data. Measure everything! Dig deep to understand the analytics and you’ll have the root cause of the problem. Unless your event is a total dud with no appeal, the lack of ticket sales is most likely fixable.
Stellar Event Marketing Campaigns
Here are some great examples of event marketing campaigns that we’ve created for clients. All of them resulted in conversions (i.e. paid registrations/ticket sales) and built some hype about the client’s events.
If your event marketing strategy needs an influx of energy or fresh ideas, give us a call! We’d be happy to help.
PS – We also recommend you check out our blog on How to Promote Your Event Online: 7 Easy Ways.