The Power of Online Ticket Sales in Event Promotion

Quick answer: Selling tickets online via TicketsCandy helps you promote your event with built-in marketing tools like event page, attendee management, social media marketing, and more.

Are you struggling to promote your event? Is it hard to reach the right eyeballs at the right time at the right place?

Event marketing is challenging. The number of online and in-person events organized on a weekly basis is growing rapidly. A report cited that 97% of marketers say that in-person events are crucial for their business success. It means more businesses are investing in events (both in-person and virtual).

This increases competition and the attendees have a lot of options to choose from. And thus, you have to increase your marketing budget to reach your target audience for ticket sales.

But, did you know that online ticket sales play a role in event promotion and make it easier to market your event?

Probably not.

This article covers the role of online event ticket sales and how it helps event organizers promote their events with exclusive event marketing techniques.

Why Online Ticket Sales is Essential for Event Promotion

Here is how online ticket sales pave the way for event marketing success:

1. Wider Reach

Probably the best thing about online ticket sales is that you can reach a much wider audience at potentially zero cost. Selling event tickets online requires an event ticketing platform that helps you create and manage your events. It requires having a website or an event landing page for online traffic.

You can use your event landing page to reach different target markets. For example, optimizing your landing page improves its ranking in search engines which gives you access to traffic from search engines.

You can share event page links on niche forums and sites like Quora to reach another audience. Similarly, you can share your event website link through a video to reach people who only prefer watching videos and spend most of their time on streaming sites.

It comes down to what target market (or buyer persona) you want to target and you can reach it easily when you sell tickets online.

This type of massive reach to diverse audience groups is impossible if you sell tickets offline. In that case, you are usually confined to a specific geographical area. Reaching a wider audience requires heavy marketing investment in the form of tv ads, radio ads, billboards, etc.

It costs $105,000 on average to run a 30-second commercial on national TV and the cost to reach 1,000 impressions on a streaming service is around $30:

Source: Fit Small Business

It isn’t just too costly to reach a diverse target market with offline ticket selling, but it has other costs too such as setting up physical stores or ticket booths at different locations and partnering with multiple sellers across different locations.

It gets too complicated and costly when you have to reach a geographically dispersed audience with offline ticket sales.

The same can be achieved with online ticket sales at potentially zero cost (yes, TicketsCandy is free to use for event organizers) and in a few minutes. Set up a dedicated event landing page, set ticket pricing, and you are all set to reach a global audience.

2. Online Presence

Research shows that 40% of event attendees buy tickets online which means having an online presence for your event in the form of a website, landing page, and social media is essential. Your online presence improves significantly when you sell tickets online.

Selling tickets online requires an online presence. You can’t sell tickets online if you don’t have any sort of online presence. The least you need is an event landing page.

How is online presence linked to event promotion?

A major chunk of people use the internet to find what they are looking for. Around 68% of online experiences start with a search engine and 82% of people use their phone even if they are shopping at a physical store.

You never know where and how your potential customers look for your event. It could be a search engine or an instant search on Google Maps or an online event marketplace.

The online presence of your event starts the moment you sign up with an event ticketing platform. You create an event landing page that starts ranking in search engines. This doesn’t just generate more sales for your event but online presence generates credibility and trust for your event.

3. Access to Online Marketing

Online ticket sales open doors for digital marketing for your event.

Digital marketing involves reaching your ideal customers and promoting your event through the internet. It includes pretty much everything like SEO, content, social media marketing, PPC, affiliate marketing, email marketing, referral marketing, influencer marketing, and more.

Source: Mamble

In order to use one or more of these online marketing channels to promote your event, you need the following:

• Online presence in the form of an event website, landing page, or social media account.
• Checkout process where your target audience can pay and buy tickets online.

You get these when you sell tickets online using a reliable online ticketing app like TicketsCandy. It lets you create an event landing page, create a simple checkout process, and give you full control over event ticketing and management.

And once you have your landing page with the checkout process, you can promote your landing page the way you like using any of the online marketing channels. Investment in a digital marketing channel takes your event marketing a step ahead of mere online presence.

Online presence means your event has some sort of presence on the internet. Your ideal customers can find you if they want. But with digital marketing, you reach your ideal customers online and persuade them to buy event tickets.

Here is an example of a Facebook ad to sell event tickets. This ad increases ticket sales by 70%:

Source: Akilli Digital

These types of online marketing campaigns can only be run when you are selling tickets online and have a dedicated landing page with an optimized and fully functional checkout process with a payment processor. You can send customers directly to your event landing page where they can buy tickets instantly.

This is the best way to reach your ideal customers quickly with online ads.

4. High Event Credibility

Online sales of event tickets boost event credibility, trust, and reputation.

Eight out of 10 consumers use their smartphones to look for a product online when they are shopping in-store. This is mainly to see reviews and the brand’s presence online.

This means if you are selling event tickets physically only, almost 80% of potential buyers will use their phone to search for the event or event ticket or event reviews online. Having no presence on the internet is suicidal. It will eventually lead to low offline event sales.

And it hurts event credibility significantly.

If you are selling event tickets online, potential event attendees can see that you sell tickets online as well through a professionally designed landing page or a website with reviews and social proof. This has a huge impact on offline sales as well as reputation.

For example, online reviews play a major role in defining a business’s reputation and credibility. A whopping 99.9% of customers read online reviews when they are shopping online. That’s almost 100% of customers meaning that you should have social proof in the form of customer reviews embedded on your event page or website as this is what potential attendees look for.

And this is how online ticket sales play a role in event marketing that leads to more sales.

Here are the steps you should take to use online ticket sales to boost event reputation and credibility:

• Create an event website and at least one event landing page.
• Add your event location and details on different platforms including Google Maps, Yelp, and others.
• Add your event and business details to review sites like Trustpilot.
• Encourage attendees to leave reviews as reviews help generate ticket sales.

5. Better User Experience

Buying tickets online is much easier for your customers. They can purchase an event ticket from their smartphone while sitting on the sofa watching their favorite TV show.

This significantly improves user experience and the ease of use generates word of mouth leading to event promotion. When a potential attendee can purchase a ticket conveniently, it leads to referral traffic.

Research shows that 72% of customers share a positive experience with at least 6 people leading to word-of-mouth marketing. And word of mouth marketing is the best form of marketing for your event. It is highly effective and trustworthy.

As much as 90% of people trust and buy from a company that’s recommended by a friend and 88% of people trust recommendations from friends:

Source: Invesp

Another survey revealed that word of mouth is the second most common way people find out about new events:

The UX should be your top priority when choosing an online ticketing platform. Look for features like:

• Customized event pages
• Mobile-optimized and customized checkout process
• Ability to control form fields
• Multiple payment processors
• Attendee management.

TicketsCandy offers all these and several other features at zero cost. Give it a try and see how it can help you offer exceptional UX to your customers.

For example, attendee management is a core feature that helps you engage with attendees before the event. You can send them customized emails, reminders, and help them solve issues on time. This generates word of mouth and the attendees will convince their friends to buy tickets.

Online ticket sales when done right can do a lot for your event.

How to Improve Event Marketing with Online Ticket Sales

Selling tickets online makes it easy to promote your event and the initial buzz is usually created automatically. You have to actively take some steps to leverage online ticket sales for event marketing.

Only using a ticketing service won’t do wonders due to the high competition. You need to stand out from the crowd and this requires taking actionable measures.

1. Understand Your Target Audience

Who is your primary audience? What do they do? Where do they spend their time? What are their challenges? What are their hobbies?

You need to know your target audience inside out to connect with them at the right online channels via the right marketing message.

Creating and using buyer personas is the right way to begin.

A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customers. It has all the details about your ideal customer and you create a fictional character that represents your potential customer.

Here is an example:

Source: Hootsuite

This type of detailed buyer persona helps you improve targeting. When you use a digital marketing channel, it is important that you know who your target customers are. Else, you will end up wasting your marketing budget with extremely poor ROAS.

Research shows that persona-based marketing increases marketing ROI by 171% with up to 900% increase in site visit duration:

Source: Semrush

Data collection is the most difficult task when you have to develop buyer personas. You can either collect primary data which is more accurate or you can rely on secondary data. Once you have the necessary data, use a buyer persona template like HubSpot or Semrush, fill in the details, and your persona will be ready.

You need to create at least one persona for one target group. For example, you are running a seminar for business owners. You will need to identify the types of business owners and create one persona for each business owner.

Once you have buyer personas ready, marketing gets easier. You need to create an event landing page for each persona to make it relevant and personalized. Run different marketing campaigns to target different personas.

Over 80% of customers are more likely to buy an event ticket if you offer them a tailored and highly personalized experience right from the marketing message to the landing page and beyond:

Source: Startup Bonsai

Buyer persona improves personalization, targeting, marketing, and sales. It’s a win-win.

Your customers love to see personalized marketing and you get more ticket sales.

2. Use the Right Event Ticketing Platform

This is the crux.

Because it all comes down to the platform you are using to sell event tickets. It plays a role in successful event marketing if it has the necessary features and tools.

There are event ticketing platforms that are least helpful in event marketing and focus more on generating sales. Your choice matters, choose your tool carefully and smartly.

Here is a list of the features to look for in an event ticketing platform when event marketing is your major focus:

• Marketing tools and resources. There are certain ticketing services that offer dedicated marketing tools to event organizers. TicketsCandy, for example, offers event promotion tools with the major one being that it shares your event on its social media channels to give your event an instant boost.
• Event page templates or builders. An event landing page is crucial when you want to market your event online. It helps you send targeted traffic to the page for conversion.
• Attendee management lets you improve user experience and interact with attendees before, during, and after the event. Offering them personalized services before the event persuades attendees to invite their friends and family. This creates word-of-mouth marketing for your event at zero cost. Don’t ignore the attendee management feature.
• Multiple ways to sell tickets. A ticketing platform that lets you sell tickets through multiple channels to improve event reach and marketing. The more touch points you have, the better as it helps you target different buyer personas by maintaining your presence on their preferred channels.
• Access to the marketplace is a great way to boost event marketing with online ticket sales. There are a few ticketing platforms that have their event marketplaces where you can market your event. This gives you access to a dedicated marketplace and its users.
• Customizable checkout process as it plays a major role in marketing and sales. The event app should let you customize the checkout process and should offer a guest checkout feature. The checkout process is linked to user experience which drives referrals so make sure you don’t ignore checkout process features.

TicketsCandy offers most of these features at no cost to event organizers. A free ticketing platform makes marketing much easier.

And this leads us to the next event promotion technique…

3. Keep Ticket Pricing Low

Event ticket pricing has a direct impact on marketing. Low ticket price provides you with a competitive advantage and you can use low price in marketing messaging to attract more customers.

According to a survey, discount codes and referral codes are among the top ways to increase event ticket sales:

Source: Skift

You can only leverage these techniques if you have a decent margin and can afford to offer discounts. With high margins, you can use referral marketing (by offering incentives to both referrers and referrals) to reach new attendees and increase sales exponentially.

However, keeping ticket prices low is quite hard as there are multiple factors that contribute to an event’s high cost such as:

• Platform fees
• Payment processor fees
• Withdrawal fees
• Administrative costs
• Venue, stage, and seating cost
• Sound system and IT cost
• Transportation cost
• Salaries and wages
• Miscellaneous costs.

Some of these costs can be reduced significantly such as platform-related fees as they directly impact ticket pricing. Most of the other costs are fixed such as venue, salaries, etc.

What you can do is try to minimize event platform-related costs and fees and try to choose a service with minimum fees.

Enter TicketsCandy.

It does not have the lowest fees, it is totally free for event organizers. This means no platform fees, no card processing fees, no withdrawal charges, and no hidden charges of any kind. You can sell tickets at a much lower price and pass this benefit to your customers to increase word of mouth and ticket sales.

Research shows that 63% of people get loyal to a company based on price:

Source: 99firms

Loyal customers do two things:

1. They buy from your company over and over and over again.
2. They act as brand ambassadors and refer your event and company to their friends and family without any nudging.

Not bad, right?

But there is more that you need to do for attendee retention…

4. Retain Attendees

Attendee retention is an area where most event organizers lack. It has a huge potential and retention rate plays a massive role in event marketing.

A 5% increase in customer retention increases profit margin by 95% and an average loyal customer is worth as much as 10x as the first purchase:

Source: Prisync

Loyal attendees are more profitable, would reduce CAC significantly, and will stick with your business. But how do they help with event marketing?

As much as 60% of loyal customers tell their friends and family about a company they are loyal to and would act as a brand ambassador at no cost:

Source: Reve Chat

You need to focus on retaining event attendees which helps your new events in multiple ways:

• Marketing through word of mouth or referral marketing
• Instant ticket sales as loyal customers are more likely to buy again from your company
• Low customer acquisition cost
• Higher margins and profitability.

The first thing you need to retain event attendees is an attendee management service from the ticketing platform. Attendee management ensures that you build a one-to-one relationship with them and offer them personalized services throughout the event.

Then engage with them via email to keep them hooked.

This is how online ticket sales make it easy to retain customers and improve event marketing.

Final Thoughts

The event ticketing platform is much more than a way to sell tickets online. It plays a major role in event promotion and makes it easy to reach new audiences across multiple channels.

It comes down to how you use your event ticketing app.

You can choose to use your ticketing tool to sell tickets only or you can use it to market your event and double or even triple your sales. Most of the marketing features are embedded within the tool that you have to use to grow your event.

Besides, it is also important to choose a reliable ticketing service that offers marketing tools. TicketsCandy is a decent and free option for event organizers. You can use its marketing features for event growth and reach your target audience easily – free of cost.

Sign up here and check out the platform yourself.