How to launch your brand new event or festival

OK, so you’ve done the hard work and created a brand new event, sorted your location, booked a lineup and now you want to get it online and on sale. This may feel like the easiest hurdle to jump, but it is arguably the most important. Get it wrong and you’ll undo all the good work up to now. 

With demand for events now at an all time high as the coronavirus pandemic begins to subside, there’s no better time than now to launch a brand new event. But even then, there are still a few key things to keep in mind to make sure you have a successful launch. 

Make sure your website and social media profiles are easy to find

Before making a splash, make sure your website is working smoothly, contains all the relevant information, and is ranking well on Google. You need to be confident that fans will be able to easily find your website. If not, you could be missing out on a large group of potential customers. The same goes for your social media profiles. For more tips on how to promote events using social media, click here.

Identify your target audience

Are you looking to attract a local, national or international audience? The answer to that will define your marketing campaign so make sure you’re decided on who you will be targeting. Not being so could end up costing you precious time and money. 

If you’re looking to attract an international audience, we recommend offering your customers a wide range of travel and accommodation packages. This can also help boost your revenue. We have lots of experience creating bespoke packages to suit all events through our egTravel solution, so get in touch if you’d like our help with putting some together for your event.

Run a pre-awareness campaign to gather sign ups and generate hype

Once you’ve gone public with your new event, this is effectively the start of your pre-awareness campaign. Those days, weeks or months leading up to your onsale are arguably the most important in your entire marketing campaign. A successful one can be the difference between selling out and not. 

Imperative to a successful campaign is capturing the details of those interested in your event via a waiting list feature, much like the ones we run on Festicket and Ticket Arena. These give you a direct line of communication to potential customers to market your onsale, as well as valuable insight on sales expectations. 

You can find out more about how to activate the perfect pre-awareness campaign in another article on our blog by clicking here.

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Run a PR campaign

Receiving coverage in the media is crucial for any new event, and can turn any pre-awareness campaign from average into world-beating. In order to achieve this, set out your event’s USPs, settle on an angle and pitch it to relevant publications.

Decide on the best time to go on sale

Cutting through the noise is especially important for new events. Do your research to see what other events are planning to go on sale soon and avoid clashing, particularly if you share a similar lineup or genres of music. 

Pay days are a popular choice for sale days, given the increased willingness of fans to spend money and the general excitement of Fridays. But also make sure you’ve given yourself enough time between initial announcement and onsale to generate hype and run your pre-awareness campaign. 

Leverage your lineup’s fan bases

Your lineup is effectively a gateway to a whole new audience. Utilise this and leverage your lineup’s fan bases by getting those on your lineup to post about your event on their social media profiles, or by sending an email out to their database.  

Choose the right ticketing partner

We recommend going for a ticketing partner that can offer you more than just ticketing, for example one that can also offer things like marketing, travel and accommodation packages, access control and a cashless system. Bundling these together into one deal leaves you with more time to focus on the important stuff, like actually running your event!

At Event Genius we’re proud to offer our partners a fully end-to-end solution, featuring ticketing, access control, cashless systems, marketing and more. To find out more, get in touch with us today. ‍