Which marketing channels should you be using for your events?

Event promotion is a stressful job, but right at the top of that gauge has to be ticket sales. Who wants to put all that money and effort into putting on an event that no one comes to? 

In order to avoid the extra stress, nailing the marketing campaign for your event becomes as important as ever. Unfortunately, making sense of the best channels to use can be overwhelming, and more concerningly, using the wrong ones can quickly drain your marketing budget. 

Before you launch your ticket sales – or announce your event if it’s brand new – we recommend you spend a decent amount of time working out how your marketing campaign will play out, and also how much you want to spend. 

We’ve outlined six key channels we believe can help boost any marketing campaign. But bear in mind that not all may feel right for your event, and also make sure you continually analyse each channel’s performance and tweak where necessary to avoid wasting resource and budget. 

SEO

The foundations of any good marketing campaign. If users can’t find your event with an easy search, then you’re missing out on a huge number of potential sales. Make sure your website follows SEO best practices before it goes live, and then monitor its ranking before you open ticket sales. We recommend making sure either your website or primary ticketing agent is at the top of Google Search as part of your preparation for going on sale.

‍ PR

PR is an incredible way to boost awareness of your event. Whether you’re announcing a new event or wanting to increase exposure, write up your USPs and brainstorm angles you can pitch to relevant publications. It may be the unique location, quirky setup, an incredible lineup or something else. Once you’ve settled on your angle, write up a press release and send it off to those publications.

What’s more, successful PR can work wonders for SEO. Backlinks from high-quality websites will boost your own website’s score and make Google see you as the main authority on your event.

Content

These days customers don’t want to feel like mere customers. They want to feel valued and really buy into the event experience. Creating content is a sure-fire way to do that, but can often seem daunting at first. 

Content is a broad term, but can mean anything from a slick trailer movie to simple blog posts on your website. While the former will of course cost more, the latter won’t cost a penny and will take potential or current ticket-holders into your complete event experience, be it through articles on the activities beyond the music, the food and drink on offer, a city guide, an interview with the promoter or headliner, or simply a great lineup playlist. Check out some of the amazing content our in-house Festicket team team create to help promote our event partners here.

What’s more, great content can do wonders for your SEO.

Email

Keeping your fans engaged is a must for any successful campaign. Gathering sign-ups for your event before going on sale – for example via a waiting list feature like we have on Festicket and Ticket Arena – can be a great way to gauge interest, but how you convert these potential fans and keep them engaged post-purchase is hugely important. 

For example, email can be an effective tool to upsell ticket-holders to purchase accommodation, travel or other extras, as well as keep them excited by sending them content such as lineup announcements, articles, playlists and more. And remember, engaged ticket-holders are also more likely to recruit new ticket-holders. 

Social Media

Some brands can get carried away with chasing likes and follows, but a much more valuable metric to measure is engagement. Yes, some brands may have millions of followers, but if only a fraction are engaging with their posts or even seeing them, then what are those million worth?

Social Media is an ideal channel to ramp up excitement pre ticket sales, particularly by creating a Facebook Event which can also be another way of measuring interest. The event can then be used to keep your audience engaged, teasing on-sales, lineup announcements, pushing upsells and more. Those who have responded to your event will receive a notification whenever you post in it. 

Affiliates

Similar to PR, utilising an affiliate network can be a great way to leverage exposure by piggybacking on another brand’s audience.  Event discovery websites are a good place to start and usually only require a small commission of any sales, or simply expanding the number of ticketing agents you’re selling through can quickly increase the number of eyeballs that see your event. 

Being selective with your ticket company can also get you access to a more sophisticated level of affiliate marketing. Festicket’s integration with Spotify (pictured below) for instance is a great example of this. 

Want our help?

egMarketing offers promoters a tailored-made marketing strategy and access to Festicket and Ticket Arena’s diverse range of marketing channels, including all those above. This is the perfect way to achieve a 360 degree marketing campaign for your event, reach new audiences and ultimately boost sales. 

Our marketing engine and Campaign Managers draw on extensive industry data, campaign history and insight as well as a full marketing mix to create marketing plans primed to generate success, no matter the event type, location, size or genre.

egMarketing is available to promoters of all types alongside our wider ticketing offering. If you’re interested in finding out more about how egMarketing can help take your event to the next level, get in touch today, we'd love to hear from you!

‍