Event Marketing and Event Promotions

Ideas to Sell More Tickets for Your Next Event

The notion of selling additional tickets to your event is hard to resist. Wanting to sell more tickets is great, but many event organizers struggle just to sell enough tickets. Below are a few ideas for maximizing your ticket sales (including the strategy of selling fewer tickets to make more money). Each point is supported by additional article links expanding on the subject area.  You might be just a click away from an idea that will make your event extra money.

Here we go …

Do You Have an Alluring Event People Can't Help But Attend?
A highly desired event is the single biggest factor in selling MORE tickets. Far too many event organizers think just because they have an event, people will attend. It doesn’t work that way. If you want a financially successful event … There should be little, if any, convincing to get someone to buy a ticket.

As a site note … Be extremely careful if you’re planning a “never done before” event. The risks of failure are extremely high. If you want to try brand new event, START small and test. Only go big with your NEW event concept after it’s proven in the marketplace.

• The BIGGEST Secret to a Successful Event
• The Importance of Market Research in Planning Your Event
• Your Event Promotion and Marketing Strategy - Start Point
• When to Start Selling Tickets for Your Event
• The Truth About Your Advance Ticket Sales

Have a Marketing Campaign and Web Site that Sell!
A visually stunning marketing campaign is useless if it doesn’t drive ticket sales. Your visuals include everything from your web site to advertising design. Everything counts! Most graphic designers don’t have a clue how to PROPERLY design your event marketing pieces to boost ticket sales.  The individual who designs your marketing materials should have a proven track record in direct response marketing. Direct response marketers get your event measurable results.

• Horrid Event Marketing Mistake: Confusing Art with Results
• Advertising and Marketing that Sells
• David Ogilvy's "Secret Weapon" for Advertising Success
• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• Simple Tracking of Your Online Event Promotions
• The Experience Must EXCEED that of Your Event Marketing

The Irresistible Offer
At the heart of direct response design is compelling and persuasive copy. Do the words on your promotional materials DRIVE people to purchase tickets? It isn’t enough to just slap a series of “BUY NOW” buttons on your event web site ticket page. Each word on every piece of marketing must earn its place.

If you want to sell more tickets for your event, you need to present the consumer with an irresistible ticket offer. When they see your ticket offer, they can’t help but buy. The easiest way to evoke an “I can’t help myself” buying urge is with discount pricing. Discounting your ticket prices (smartly) is an easy way to drive both advance and total ticket sales. In order for discount tickets to work, you must carefully track your sales.  It’s imperative that you are driving additional revenue with discount, NOT giving it up.

• Leveraging Huge Ticket Discounts to Drive Advance Tickets Sales
• Your Event, Stories that Sell, and P.T. Barnum
• How to Use Words on Your Event Web Site . . .

Sell Fewer Tickets, Make More Money
It’s fairly easy to get caught up in the notion of selling a lot of tickets. But what if you could make more money by selling fewer tickets? What seems a bit counterintuitive can be very lucrative. Consider offering VIP or premium tickets for your event. VIP tickets are a great way to generate huge returns, while selling less tickets. 

One client generates around $100,000 a year by selling just 900 VIP tickets for their FREE event!  Another client sold over $175,000 of tickets for their event last year, 40% of their total revenue was premium and VIP tickets. The world is full of people who are willing to pay top dollar (in spite of economic conditions) to experience your event in an extraordinary way.

• Charging a Premium Event Ticket Price
• An Event VIP Experience Done Right  – Red Bull Style
• Monetizing Free Events - There is Money Everywhere

You don't have to use every idea above, but try to incorporate at least one into your next event.

The Most Important Reason to Sell Tickets Online

Today, it's difficult not to find a good reason to sell event tickets online. While most event organizers tend to focus on the convenience factors, there is one significant advantage of online ticket sales. Hint … it has nothing to do with advance ticket sales or fraud prevention (but those are both very good reasons to sell tickets online). Any guesses?

Your Customer’s Data
What's the most important reason to sell tickets online? Customer data. When your event attendees purchase tickets online they need to fill in their contact information. It's part of the transaction processs ... and it's a HUGE marketing resource for you!

At a minimum you're collecting their name and e-mail address. For most online ticket sales you usually get much more data. This includes your attendee’s full name, mailing address, e-mail, and telephone number. Such detailed customer information is a gold mine for event promotion, ESPECIALLY if you have a recurring event. As the old marketing adage goes, “your best customer is the person who just bought from you.”

Here's a little Insider Secret … the unbelievable client advance ticket sales numbers I proudly display on the “success stories and testimonials page” are directly a result of ethically leveraging customer data.

It's Not Neccesarily What You Think
Let me throw some counter intuitive insight into the mix … Leveraging your customer data goes well beyond selling people advance tickets. You can use customer data to gain tremedous insight about your event. This includes things like pre-event and post-event surveys. You can also use customer data to give event updates, directions, and parking information. Think of it as a customer service tool. How could you ethically leverage your customer information? I've included some ideas in the links below. Use customer feedback to improve your event ... Something your competition probably isn't doing!

One Very Important Note About Customer Data
If you are using customer data for marketing purposes, let your customers know. Even in today's Facebook laden world, privacy is a very important issue and must be respected! That means letting your customers know how their contact information will be used. It's also important that you're in compliance with local and national regulations regarding marketing solicitation. 

One strong recommendation ... never rent or sell your customer data to third parties. This is one of the quickest ways to upset your own customers. Remember, all it takes is one RAGING MAD Facebook or Twitter post, and you could be headed for a PR nightmare.

Don't Jump Ship Too Quickly
Some event organizers might be apprehensive about selling ticket online.  That's completely understandable! If you've been selling event tickets off-line for years, I recommend easing into the online ticketing world. You might be thinking, “you just told me why I should try getting all of my tickets sold online." Yes, I'm giving you slightly conflicting advice, but give me a moment to explain ... If you’ve been selling tickets online for years, immediately jumping to an online ticket system MIGHT cost you ticket sales. You can "get your feet wet" by selling tickets both online and off. This allows you to slowly step into the world of online event ticketing.  Easing to online tickets will also show you if there is a significant difference in revenue channels (offline to online.) If more than 80% of your sales come from online tickets, you can probably curtail or eliminate off-line ticket channels. 

To truly financial protect yourself, you need to have an excellent understanding of all of your event revenue channels. Always take a careful look at your numbers before changing how you sell event tickets.

Again, if you’re apprehensive about selling tickets online, TEST FIRST.  Sell tickets both online an off … with zero assumptions. After your event is over, consider the sales numbers. Chances are that the results will pleasantly surprise you.

Here are some additional resources regarding selling event tickets online:

• Leveraging Huge Ticket Discounts to Drive Advance Tickets Sales
• How to Sell Even More Tickets to Your Event
• Event Promotion: The Psychology of Ticket Prices
• Event Marketing: Multiple Ways to Engage Your List
• Constantly Go Back to Your Ticketing Well
• Event Marketing Idea: Blocking Your Tickets
• Smart Advance Ticket Strategies
• Why Buy Tickets For Your Own Event?

 

“Where Should I Advertise My Event?”

by Eugene Loj

One of the most common questions event organizers ask is, "where should I advertise my event?" Instead of getting into a long protracted article about event advertising, I am going to focus on the simplest, yet most powerful, advice I could give you. The information below might seem overly obvious, yet it gets ignored all the time. In the process, thousands (sometimes hundreds of thousands) of dollars are WASTED on ineffective advertising.

Message to Market Match
Marketing great, Dan Kennedy, introduced me to the concept of “Message to Market Match.” Kennedy created a marketing triangle which focuses on the THREE critical aspects of your marketing “Message, Market, and Media.” The Media component of Kennedy’s triangle marketing involves select the right advertising medium on which to advertise.  In short, regardless having the correct (possibly perfect) marketing message, you must advertise on a medium where your target market will see that message. Failure to use the right marketing media (medium) usually results in spending a ton of foolishly wasted advertising dollars. I can tell you first hand, this happens often, even with “smart” event organizers.

Don't Advertise Where Your Target Market Doesn't Look
In order for your promotional and advertising efforts to work, you must advertise were your target market is looking, listening, or watching (Print, Radio, Web, or Television).  Don’t be tempted by the “too good to be true” marketing campaign. Watch out when a salesperson says things like this … “We can get you 10,000 Facebook likes for just $997.” Or, “we can get your advertising message in front of 10,000 people a day." It's not about how many people see your advertising … It's ALL about how many people see your advertising and take a desired action. Instead focus on where you will get the most bang for your buck. In short, this means advertising in places that your target market is predisposed to seeing your message.

Know Your Target Market
In order to effectively market your event on the best advertising medium, you must intimately know your target market. In this case, "where are their eyeballs spending time?" This involves doing a little market research. Below are some questions that will help you in deciding where to advertise your event …

• What publications do they read (Newspapers, Magazines)?
• What television shows or specific channels do they watch?
• Do they frequent certain web site?
• Do they use Facebook or Twitter on a daily basis?
• What a radio stations do they listen to (AM or FM) and when do they listen?
• Where do they shop most often?

By answering the questions above, you'll have a much better idea of where to spend your marketing dollars. There is no need to invest in advertising, if your target market isn't paying attention.

The “Repetition” Argument
As a side note, if you think that repetition can help “get your marketing message out there,” you're headed for an iceberg of disappointment. I've seen event organizers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to change people’s minds, it simply doesn’t work. For more details on repetition and marketing, check out this article, “Don't Fall Prey to "Repetition" When Advertising Your Event.”

Ultimately, you want to make sure that your advertising is delivered through the right medium (media).  Before you sign your next advertising contract take some time to answer the questions above. It could save you big bucks on advertising and ensure your event is successful.

Here are some additional ideas to help you determine where to advertise your event:

• Event Marketing Research - Know Your Target Market!
• The Importance of Market Research in Planning Your Event
• Your Event Promotion and Marketing Strategy - Start Point
• Event Planning: The Customer Avatar and Your Event
• Don't Fall Prey to "Repetition" When Advertising Your Event
• Reviewing Your Event Marketing Strategy

 

A Persuasive Design Example for Promoting Your Event

In the previous post, “Horrid Event Marketing Mistake: Confusing Art with Results,” I dove into the differences between graphic design and persuasive design. Originally, I was introduced to the idea of persuasive marketing by Eben Pagan. Eben used magazine covers, during a live training event, to illustrate the fundamentals of direct response marketing.  Why am I writing about magazine covers on an event marketing and promotion web site? Because the same marketing fundamentals used to create a hot selling magazine cover can be used in your own event marketing.

The Magazine Cover Example

Image Sources: Women’s Health and Men’s Health

Combining Visual Appeal with Compelling Copy
How does a compelling magazine cover represent persuasive design? It targets the emotional heart-strings of a target market with visual appeal and compelling copy. Next time you see your favorite magazine, take a deeper psychological look. There is probably a person or image of interest featured on the cover. Magazine publishers use imagery to get your visual attention.

Next, you'll probably notice a series of article titles or headlines. Those catch phrases represent the information you’ll find inside the magazine. Something as simple as, “Lose Weight, Feel Better,” is amped up to say, “SLIM CALM SEXY - A Fast, Easy Plan to Drop Pounds & Beat Street! (Women’s Health Cover Above) Is that hype? Absolutely! But it works.

Those headlines and visual cues get you to pick up a magazine and read it … that’s persuasive design! You can use those same ideas to create your own event promotions such as billboards, posters, and even print advertisements.

I encourage you to look beyond your immediate market segment for event marketing ideas. Next time you’re at your local bookstore or library, spend some time in the magazine section. When you understand the fundamentals of sales and marketing, your next great event marketing idea is just around the corner.

Additional Event Promotion Resources:

• A "Must Follow" Event Advertising Strategy
• The Importance of Market Research in Planning Your Event
• Get Great Ideas from an Event Marketing Field Trip
• The Experience Must EXCEED that of Your Event Marketing
• Horrid Event Marketing Mistake: Confusing Art with Results
• A Black Friday Marketing Idea for Event Promoters
• Event Marketing from the Magazine Rack

 

Horrid Event Marketing Mistake: Confusing Art with Results

There are a number of people out there who are going to take issue with my next statement, but here goes … Most graphic design for promoting an event is a complete waste of time and money. You’re probably thinking, “are you serious?!?!?” (Make sure you read on, because you're probably going to agree with my previous statement.) Yes, I am seriors and here’s why … too many graphic designers confuse creating art and getting business results when it comes to their design. Please understand, I’m not saying that your event web site or collateral materials should be without any design. What I’m saying is that any graphic design used on promotional materials for your event, should be PERSUASIVE and RESULTS ORIENTED. That means that every word and graphic element EARNS it place on your event marketing and promotions. A “gorgeous” or “beautiful” advertisement is irrelevant if it doesn’t get measurable results ... e.g. driving a tidalwave of advance ticket sales or driving a ton of people to your event web site.

Below are two great examples of PERSUASIVE design in action. The images below are from the from the Las Vegas Rock-n-Rock Marathon web site. They combine great design and verbiage with a specific (and measurable) outcome ... "READ MORE".

Persuasive Design Example #1


Persuasive Design Example #2


Images Source: http://runrocknroll.competitor.com/las-vegas/event-details.

Falling for Drop Dead Gorgeous
Over the last 10+ years, I’ve seen event organizers fall in love with a visually stunning design. Unfortunately, for all the fantastic design work … results were almost impossible to quantify. Is this all the graphic designers fault? No! But the simple fact of the matter is great design shouldn’t deviate from the fundamentals of classic salesmanship and marketing ... Your advertising must get you  measureable results. Let’s look at a case study …

The Digital Billboard
Last year, a client designed a digital billboard to promote their event. Visually the design looked decent.  Their digital billboard design resulted in an extra 5 visitors a day to their event web site.  Was 5 extra visitors worth the cost?!?! That could be debated.  Consider this … The digital billboard cost was between $1,000 per day or $6,000 for the month. The billboard company states in their promotional materials that you receive approximately 1,600+ spots per day. One could argue against using digital billboards, but I don’t blame the billboard company. Simply put, the billboard wasn’t persuasive enough to get people to take action.

Leverage the Fundamentals of Direct Response Advertising
What can you do? Make sure that every promotion and marketing piece for your event is results oriented. Here’s how you can do that … Find a graphic design who understands and uses the fundamentals of direct response advertising in everything they create. Here’s a video link by the late David Ogilvy to bring you up to speed on direct response marketing, David Ogilvy's "Secret Weapon" for Advertising Success(LINK). Ogilvy was considered by many to be "The Father of Advertising." Yet, most advertising agencies and graphic designers completely ignore his fundamental strategies. Please don’t make the same mistake.

Additional Event Marketing and Advertising Resources:

• David Ogilvy's "Secret Weapon" for Advertising Success
• Promotional Headlines for Your Event Marketing
• A "Must Follow" Event Advertising Strategy
• Advertising and Marketing that Sells
• Using 40 Million Dollar Words
• Watch Your Typography

 

 

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You can also browse through 425+ event marketing articles and event promotion articles.

A Black Friday Marketing Idea for Event Promoters

There are some great marketing ideas you can borrow from all the Black Friday and Cyber Monday madness.  What can you do to get people to take immediate action? The simplest event marketing idea you can borrow is using an irresistible offer to drive advance ticket sales …

Leveraging an Irresistible Offer
Irresistible offers usually come in the form of a deep discount. They include hooks like, "SAVE up to 30% OFF Everything in the Store.” Or “Buy One, Get One Free." Those type of marketing messages drive people to buy. Next time you see some ridiculous offer on television, take a moment to ask, "Why are they doing that?" On the surface, deep discount offers seem ridiculous. Yet, it's most likely a well thought out marketing strategy. Discounts are typically based on average customer value … people come in the store, buy the discounted item, and then spend $X on additional items. It's similar to the old cliché in supermarket shopping, “nobody goes to the store just to buy milk." Consider what happened durring the recent 2011 Black Friday push ...

Best Buy a Winner as Holiday Weekend Sales Surge

"U.S. retailers racked up a record $52.4 billion in sales over the Thanksgiving weekend, a 16.4 percent jump from a year ago, as early hours and attractive promotions brought out more shoppers, an industry trade group said on Sunday ...

Best Buy drew in shoppers by being one of the companies that opened its stores at midnight Thanksgiving night, and unlike in 2010, it focused more on having lower prices for big TVs and other popular items."

Source: Reuters, "Best Buy a winner as holiday weekend sales surge"

Borrowing Retail Ideas for Your Event Marketing
How does this apply to marketing your event? Think in terms of driving advance ticket sales. What can you afford to give up in order to sell an advance sale ticket? In order to make discounting on advance ticket sales work, you need to have knowledge of average customer value (what your customer is ultimately worth). 

Can You Afford to Discount Your Tickets by 50%?
Here is an example ... Let's say you discount a $20 ticket to your event by 50%. Some event organizers would argue that such drastic discounting hurts them. That's why it's important to know your average customer value. Are people making additional purchases at your event and does that benefit you? What if your data shows that you make an additional $20 per ticket when people purchase souvenier programs, food, drink, etc. Thus, giving up $10 per ticket actually proves profitable. Here's an article that jumps into deep ticket discounting a little more: Leveraging Huge Ticket Discounts to Drive Advance Tickets Sales.

If you can’t offer a discount on tickets, can you offer something else? Maybe a bonus or some other premium.

Outdoor Events
Another way to look at this, especially for outdoor event organizers, is opportunity cost. Are you willing to give up 50% of the face value of your ticket (for an outdoor event), knowing that weather is a significant buying factor? Many event organizers would argue that giving such a huge discount will bankrupt their event. It’s interesting to see what happens when those same organizers have to deal with a lousy weather forecast and horrible weather. When nobody up to your outdoor event, because of lousy weather, it’s amazing how much an event organizer will discount tickets.

In order to create irresistible offers, you really need to know your numbers. Unless your event is truly extraordinary, most people won't buy tickets as soon as they go on sale. Use an irresistible offer to get people to buy tickets early. IMPORTANT: If you're going to discount, do so smartly! Just discounting to discount, is a losing strategy ... always think through the process.

Additional Ideas for Marketing Your Event:

• Leveraging Huge Ticket Discounts to Drive Advance Tickets Sales
• Event Marketing Ideas for Advertising on the Radio
• Get Great Ideas from an Event Marketing Field Trip
• Measuring Your Social Media Event Promotion Efforts
• The Importance of Market Research in Planning Your Event

 

Don't Fall Prey to "Repetition" When Advertising Your Event

When buying advertising for your event, you’ve probably heard the word “repetition.” Advertisers trying to sell you advertising almost always say, "you need to repeat your message several times before people will take action.” In short, if you spend more money with us, people are more likely to attend your event. Unfortunately one important caveat that is almost never mentioned … If the people you are advertising to are not interested in your event, repeating your marketing message does you no good!

Try to Get Donations from the Opposition

Let me give you a political fund-raising example to really drive home the point:

Because politics is so emotionally charged, this is a great example ... If a Democrat or Republican (Liberal or Conservative) organization is trying to raise money for their candidate, where should they focus their time and effort? Probably on people who have a similar ideological viewpoint.

Imagine the response you would get after sending a donation request to someone of the opposite polticial viewpoint. It's a fair guess that some people would be ticked off. You need to think about your event marketing and repetition in the same way.

Spend Your Advertising Dollars in the Right Place
Don't blow your advertising dollars trying to change the minds of people who will never be interested in your event. Few, if any, event organizers have enough advertising budget to change a prospect's mind. Your best bet is to focus your event advertising dollars where it will have the greatest impact ... Those people already interested in your event.

Before you spend a dime on advertising, do a little market research.

• Are there certain print publications your event prospect reads?
• Do they visit certain websites?
• Do they watch certain television programs?
• What radio station do they listen to?

Answers to the above questions will help you determine where to spend your advertising dollars. Before spending big bucks on advertising, you need to truly understanding your target market,  In regards to repetition, that's where you will get the most bang for your buck.

Additional Event Advertising Resources:

• Event Planning: The Customer Avatar and Your Event
• The Importance of Market Research in Planning Your Event
• Your Event Promotion and Marketing Strategy - Start Point
• How to Market Your Event with PPC & Online Advertising
• Event Marketing Ideas for Advertising on the Radio
• A "Must Follow" Event Advertising Strategy

 

Simple Tracking of Your Online Event Promotions

There is a great online utility that you can use to track your online event promotions. It is called bit.ly and it's FREE! The service was started to shorten very long web addresses. In recent years, the company added link tracking for any link that you want to shorten. You get information well beyond just how many people clicked on your link. It includes geographic tracking and link sharing information.

Sign Up for a bit.ly Account – It’s FREE!
Make sure that you sign up for a free bit.ly account. Having your own account makes it easier to organize numerous links. Each offer you have for your event should be tracked individually. How else are you going to know which offer worked best?

There are also a number of additional features beyond shortening long web addresses and link tracking. The short links that Bit.ly provides you are usually formatted as follows - bit.ly/fM7kYX.  The previous bit.ly link might not be the easiest to remember.  so the service allows you to customize the name of the link after the forward slash /.  That allows you to change "bit.ly/fM7kYX" to "bit.ly/EPS_Success_Stories." Bit.ly also provides you with conversation data where you can see how each link is “Liked” or “Shared” in Facebook and Tweeted on Twitter.

Direct Response & Simple Split Testing
With some of Bit.ly’s more advance features, you can get ambitious and track the effectiveness of individual advertisements or offers. If you want to go full tilt direct response, you can split test individual ads simultaneously using unique bit.ly links. There are numerous possibilities. The service is also a great way to evaluate your social media efforts. Make sure you're using it in tandem with your Facebook and Twitter campaigns. You might want to consider testing various "Buy Discounted Ticket Offers" with a bit.ly link.

Currently, I’m using bit.ly to track a email marketing campaigns for a number of clients. Below is a screen capture of the Bit.ly dashboard for an email I sent out yesterday. The bit.ly data, combined with Google Analytics allows me to show the client trackable online results. In this particular case, one simple 40 word email (to a qualified list) drove more traffic to an event web site than all the local media outlets combined. It's hard to argue with data driven results!



When it comes to your event marketing and promotion the importance of tracking advertising effectiveness cannot be neglected. Far too many event organizers and promoters foolishly waste money on ineffective advertising. The ignorance is so blissful, that most event organizers could never tell you which form of advertising brings a return on investment. When you use a service like Bit.ly, you can make informed decisions regarding your online and offline promotional efforts.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Simple Event Advertising Tracking with Google Analytics
• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• An Important Event Web Site Statistic for Promoters and Event Planners
• Did You Buy a Snickers Bar Yet?
• Hold Your Event Marketing Accountable!
• Web User Traffic Trends to Your Event Web Site

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

How to Market Your Event with PPC & Online Advertising

Let me give you a basic, yet powerful, pay per click (PPC) advertising strategy to drive advance sale tickets for your event. The following advice is applicable to PPC services on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Facebook. It can also be used for other forms of online advertising such as banner ads.

Don't Direct Paid Traffic to Your Home Page
One of the biggest mistake I see event organizers and promoters make with their online advertising is directing paid traffic to their event home page. You might be asking, "why is driving traffic to my home page a mistake?" Because people have too many options when they land on your web site. If you give a web site visitor too many options, they probably won't take the action you desire. Focus on driving traffic to complete one simple task, e.g. join your mailing list, buy a ticket, fill out a survey.

Before you buy ANY online advertising - Make sure you set a conservative DAILY budget limit and setup tracking for your ads! By having a daily budget limit and tracking, you won't spend money on advertising that doesn't bring you a desired result. At a minimum, have Google Analytics installed for tracking.

The Landing Page Strategy
Here's the strategy . . . Direct your online PPC traffic to a specific landing page. That landing page should contain an strong opt-in offer for the visitor. Don't give the visitor too many options on the landing page, focus on one goal. The person clicking on your ad has already shown an interest in your event, don't lose the lead because you don't have an opt-in (email capture). Consider the following event web site statistics . . . 70% of the people coming to your site only visit ONCE and 40%-50% of those visotors have an attention span lasting LESS THAN 10 seconds. I encourage you to take a look at your visitor loyalty numbers in Google Analytics, you'll see very similar numbers. By using a landing page you have the highest probably capturing online leads. Those captured leads can then be converted into ticket sales.

Within a Week of Your Event
If you're within a week or so of your event, you might want to consider transitioning from an email capture page to a long copy ticket sales page.

A well thought out landing page strategy will CRUSH sending paid traffic to your home page. Those captured leads represent the greatest potential drivers for advance ticket sales. Without an opt-in, most of your paid traffic will come to your site and never return again.

Click on the link below for helpful PPC starter tips on setting up a PPC campaign for your event.

• Sound Pay Per Click Advertising Tips

Here are some examples of hybrid landing pages from multi-million dollar online companies.

• Catch Him and Keep Him  (Offsite Link)
• Double Your Dating  (Offsite Link)

You'll notice that the above links are actually hybird home pages (contrary to my suggestion above).
The difference is that the above examples are specifically designed around getting an email opt-in.
They are NOT traditional home pages.

Want more info on online advertising for your event?
Check out the articles below:

• Hold Your Event Marketing Accountable!
• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• Simple Event Advertising Tracking with Google Analytics
• Tracking The Effectiveness of Traditional Marketing with The Internet
• Radio versus Pay Per Click: Snapshot
• A "Must Follow" Event Advertising Strategy . . .
• Event Marketing: Start Building Your List Early
• Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Selling Tickets for Your Event and Shopping Cart Abandonment

What to sell even more tickets to your event?

As you know, humans have incredibly short attention spans. Once you get online, attention spans get even worse. Here's the problem for event organizers and promoters - short online attention spans have a direct impact your ticket sales. When thinking of how to sell tickets to an event online - Beware of shopping cart abandonment! At it's simplest level, shopping cart abandonment is when people don't complete their online ticket orders. Abandonment happens in the time frame AFTER someone clicks your buy ticket link and before they complete their order.

Most event organizers NEVER consider the online ticket check out process and how it impacts their bottom line. Are you losing a ton of potential event revenue to shopping cart abandonment and don't event know it?

Consider the following:

"Despite improvements in site design and increased consumer comfort with online purchasing, 88% of Web buyers say that they have abandoned an online shopping cart without completing a transaction."

Source: Understanding Shopping Cart Abandonment, Forrester Research, May 20, 2010

Always Think About Event Ticket Sales From the Buyer's Perspective
It's pretty simple - If your ticket checkout process is difficult for the USER to understand, people won't complete their order. Other contributing factors to shopping cart abandonment include service charges and people not being ready to make a purchase.  You must always look at the checkout process from the user's perspective.

Shopping Cart Woes - Case Study
Last year, a client experienced a huge problem with shopping cart abandonment. A few days before their event, 14 tickets were left in a block of reserved tickets. In order to close out the block . . .  An email was sent to over 11,000 people in the event database. The messaging of the email was pretty straightforward - "There are only 14 reserved tickets left for Saturday, hurry up and buy them - click here." After the email was sent out, the tickets SUPPOSEDLY sold out in just a few minutes. Why "supposedly sold" out?  People clicked the "BUY NOW" button and proceeded to check out. The specific number of tickets selected were held by the ticketing system for 20 minutes or until the transaction is complete. This is done to prevent overselling tickets. Unfortunately the system worked against selling out the ticket block.

Here's what happened . . . People would put tickets in their cart, therefore making them unavailable for purchase and abandon their order. Other people who wanted to buy the reserve seat tickets would see that tickets were SOLD OUT. By the time the system released the tickets, the interested buyer already left the web site. It was a vicious cycle. Who's going to come back and try to buy tickets if the ticketing system says they're sold out? Probably nobody. (Scalpers aren't included in this example.)

Take a Serious Look at Shopping Cart Abandonment
I would encourage you to ask the ticketing company you're either looking at or working with questions about shopping cart abandonment. To date, I have yet to see any ticketing company position themselves as serious about shopping cart abandonment. (That isn't to say they don't exist!) There seems to be more emphasis on the bells and whistles of various ticketing systems. Being able to buy a ticket online and then scan that ticket form an iPhone is pretty cool. But, if a someone can't complete their ticket order, does it really matter? By taking the time to look every aspect of your ticket sales, you'll figure how to sell even more tickets to your event.

Check out the link below for specific recommendations to reduce shopping cart abandonment:

• 7 Ways to Cut Shopping Cart Abandonment

Want to get more event ticketing info? Check out the articles below:

• Event Marketing Idea: Blocking Your Tickets
• Smart Advance Ticket Strategies
• Event Promotion: The Psychology of Ticket Prices
• Leveraging Huge Ticket Discounts to Drive Advance Tickets Sales
• How to Sell Even More Tickets to Your Event
• When to Start Selling Tickets for Your Event
• Charging a Premium Event Ticket Price
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

 

Event Marketing Ideas for Advertising on the Radio

A few days ago, I critiqued a radio ad for an event promoter. Certain aspects of their ad were reducing potential ticket sales. Specifically, the ad directed people to buy tickets from two completely different web sites. That might seem like a good idea (diversifying), until you consider all the details a listener must remember in a 15 or 30 second radio spot. The more details you pass along in your radio advertisement, the less impact and retention.

Here are some radio advertising suggestions you can take away from example above . . .

Think About Your Radio Promotions From the Listener's Perspective
If you're using radio ads to promote your event, take the time to carefully think through the sales process. It's especially important to consider your radio ad from the listener's perspective. Your radio advertisement is most likely going to be grouped with a number of other ads. Therefore, you're competing against other advertisers for the listener's attention. The question to ask yourself is, "what do I want the listener to take away from my radio ad?"

Emphasize your Dedicated Event Web Site
When it comes to advertising your event on the radio, direct people to one place for additional information. I'm a firm believer that the most important piece of information you want to promote any advertisement is your event web site address.  Ideally your web address should be coupled with a strong call to action. - e.g. "Buy Your Discount Tickets TODAY on yourwebsite.com." Repeat the call to action two to three times in your spot.

If there are multiple outlets where people can purchase tickets to your event . . . Let them know on your web site ticket page, NOT your radio advertisement. If you try and pass along too much information, you'll clutter up your advertising message. Make it a point to repeat your web address two to three times in a radio spot.

From Radio Ad to Purchasing Event Tickets
Regardless of the form of advertising, make sure you carefully think through the entire sales process. What starts as an advertisement is completed with a ticket purchase. Any bumps in your advertising or sales process will cost you ticket sales for your event.

If you're instructing people to "buy tickets @ yourwebsite.com" on your radio spot, make sure that the web site "buy tickets" link is easy to find. Don't expect people to click around your site, looking for the ticket purchase link . . . It needs to be brutally obvious to the consumer. If not, you're losing ticket sales to poor web site design.

Shopping Cart Abandonment
The last part of the process is getting people to purchase tickets on your web site. They've heard your ad, visited your web site and clicked on the "Buy Tickets" link. One area that is largely ignored by event organizers is shopping cart abandonment. Even though shopping car abandonment is a seperated topic, I want to bring the problem to your attention. People will bail from your shopping cart, without completing an order, before they ever complain to you. Most event organizers don't even consider shopping cart abandonment as a sales concern. If you have a great radio ad that drives people to your web site, make sure you aren't losing sales to shopping cart abandonment.

Want more info on radio advertising for your event?
Check out the articles below:

• A "Must Follow" Event Advertising Strategy . . .
• Your Event Marketing on the Radio
• Your Domain Name and Radio Advertising
• Radio versus Pay Per Click: Snapshot

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

The Truth About Your Advance Ticket Sales

Over the last ten years, I've hear the follow statement said by event organizers countless times, "We have to get our tickets on sale as soon as possible!" My rub with the previous statement is as follows . . . Too many event organizer think that because their tickets are on sale early, people will buy. That's rarely the case.

Here's a question to carefully ponder, "Are you giving people enough incentive to buy tickets early?" If you don't provide a compelling enough reason (that resonates with the target market) you won't sell many advance sale tickets for your event - regardless how early your tickets go on sale.

Six Months of Lousy Ticket Sales
Just the other day an event promoter was telling me about their advance sale ticket woes. Ticket have been on sale for over SIX MONTHS! But nobody is buying tickets.  A closer look at the promoter's event marketing shows that there is little reason for people to buy tickets early.  The event promoter now has to bank on last minute sales, which is a potential recipe for disaster.

Give People a Compelling Reason to Buy Early
If you want people to buy tickets to your event early - you need to create an IRRESISTIBLE OFFER. Remember, people are motivated by their own self interests, not yours! You need to go beyond the flawed logic of "tickets that go on sale early = more advance sale tickets being sold." Put your effort into creating an irresistible offer that your ticket buyer ACTUALLY cares about! Your offer needs to supercharge the demand for advance sale tickets. If not, it's not an irresistible offer.

A Discounting Example
Look at what hotels do in Las Vegas during the off season . . . they offer deep discounts on their rooms. You can find a hotel rooms for $42 a weeknight that normally sell for $150 (or more) during a busy season. Room pricing is adjusted according to the simple rules of supply and demand. Hotel owners know that you can't give up margin on a hotel room that nobody intends to book. By significantly discounting price, hotels are incentivizing people to buy. The same analogy can be applied to ticket sales.

The Classic Irresistible Offer - A HUGE Event Ticket Discount
One of the easiest ways to create ticket demand is to significantly discounting your event ticket price. You might want to consider 50-60% OFF a general admission ticket to your event. Your first response to the previous suggestion might be, "but I'm giving up large massive amounts of revenue by discounting." The reality is - you're only giving up ticket revenue if the demand level is high enough to sell tickets.  You can't argue giving up ticket revenue, if people aren't interested in buying tickets.

Protect Your Margin - Even While Discounting
A great way to protect your profit is by blocking your event tickets. Ticket blocking means you limit your discount offer to 500 tickets at 50% OFF.  Once that block of tickets sells out, the price goes up. Blocking tickets works even better if you know your numbers. When are most people buying tickets for your event?  I know for outdoor events - approximately 70-80% of ticket sales occur within two weeks of the event. The reason for this . . . People are waiting for the weather forecast. If you have an outdoor event, you need to come up with an offer that trumps the weather forecast. 
 
Here's the bottom line . . . If you want to maximize advance ticket sales to your event, you NEED to give people a really good reason to buy tickets early! If you don't want to offer a discount, are there other ways to move people toward buying tickets early?

If you have your own ticket sales start, please share it in the comment section below.

Want to get more event ticketing info? Check out the articles below:

• Event Marketing Idea: Blocking Your Tickets
• Smart Advance Ticket Strategies
• Event Promotion: The Psychology of Ticket Prices
• Leveraging Huge Ticket Discounts to Drive Advance Tickets Sales
• How to Sell Even More Tickets to Your Event
• When to Start Selling Tickets for Your Event
• Charging a Premium Event Ticket Price
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early
  
• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

How to Sell Event Tickets with Service Fees

A few weeks ago, I got into a spirited debate with an event producer on the topic of ticket surcharges. The main point we haggled about was whether to include the service fees in the ticket price. If you want to sell more tickets to your event, it’s important to consider how you present ticket price and service fees to your customer. What seems trivial on the surface can have a huge impact on how many tickets (especially advance tickets) you sell to your event.
Looks the Same - But Completely Different
Here’s how the debate with the event producer went . . . I argued that if you have a $10.00 ticket and a $2 service fee, you should combine everything into one ticket price.  That means the ticket buyer would be presented with a flat $12 ticket with “ALL FEES INCLUDED.” The event producer’s argument was to separate out the service fee. Hence, a $10 ticket with a $2 service fee.  Ultimately, both ways add up to a $12 ticket, but how the consumer internalizes price is very different.  There is a lot of psychology involved in selling tickets for your event, service fees are but one small part. When setting your event ticket and fee prices, carefully consider the buyer’s perspective.

Can you think of anyone you know who enjoys paying a service fee? I can’t! In my experience, it’s easier to sell $12.00 ticket, all fees included, versus the $10.00 ticket with a $2.00 service fee.

A Real World Example
Here’s a real world example . . . The other day I found an event web site that was selling a $20.00 Adult General Admission ticket to their event with a $2.50 convenience fee and a $3.50 handling fee - That’s 30% of the ticket’s value in service fees!  If you want to have your tickets shipped overnight, it costs $30 for handling. The way the service fee structures are set, people are being discouraged from buying tickets online.

Carefully Consider The Customer’s Viewpoint
There is an X-Factor involved with ticket price that you must always keep in mind - Most people won’t complain if your ticket price or service fee is too high . . . They just won’t buy tickets to your event.  Not enough event organizers consider the importance of presenting ticket price to the consumer.  They set it and forget it. You can't afford to make that same mistake.

Constantly consider how a ticket buyer thinks about the event price and service fees.  Based on experience and numerous conversations with event promoters and planners, I can confidently recommend you embed any ticket surcharge into one ticket price. If you have a service fee, include it in the ticket price.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Leveraging Huge Ticket Discounts to Drive Advance Tickets Sales
• How to Sell Even More Tickets to Your Event
• When to Start Selling Tickets for Your Event
• Charging a Premium Event Ticket Price
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early
  
  
• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

 

Ticketing Your Way to Lower Event Marketing Costs

If you want to lower your event marketing costs, you need to start collecting customer information immediately!

A HUGE Event Marketing Asset
Customer contact information (at a minimum name and email) is one of your greatest event marketing assets. If you have a recurring event, your customer data becomes even more important. It’s far less expensive to market your event to an established customer database.

Failure to Leverage Previous Customer Data
Oddly enough, far too many event organizers fail to collect customer information. Even worst - event organizers and promoters who fail to leverage their existing customer database. Are you making those same costly mistakes?

The easiest way to collect customer information is by selling you event tickets online. There are numerous ticket service providers that make online ticketing easy. When people purchase tickets online, they fill out their contact information. That information becomes massive marketing asset for your event. Think about it this way – “The person most likely to attend your event in the future is the person who just bought a ticket to your event.” Focus on the Lifetime Value of your event attendees!

Super Important Event Marketing Tip!
Regardless of the ticketing service you utilize - carefully read through their terms of service BEFORE signing a contract! It’s imperative that you own and have complete access to your customer database. Some ticketing companies own all the rights to your customer data . . . Not good! Regardless of how feature laden a ticketing service might be, it isn’t worth giving up ownership of your event customer data. The other problem with a ticketing company owning your customer data is that they can relentlessly market to YOUR list. That doesn't go over well.

“What if I don’t do online ticketing?”
You can still collect customer information even if you don’t use an online ticket service for your event. Here’s a suggestion if you have a physical ticket . . . Setup a web site specifically for attendees. Print the attendee web site address on the physical ticket with a strong call to action, e.g. “Make sure you visit XYZevent.com and sign-up for special event announcements.” You must have a strong call to action in order to get your attendees to sign up. Most important, after you collect event attendee information - focus on delivering relevant and valuable information about your event.

Even if you event is free, I recommend trying to collect attendee information online. This can be accomplished with online pre-event registration for free events.

Be Upfront with Your Customers
If you’re collecting customer information for marketing purposes, make sure you let people know how their information is going to be used. Customers should have the option to opt-out of from your marketing. Additionally, make sure you have robust privacy policy in place.

It’s imperative that you own and have access to your customer data. The usefulness goes well beyond trying to sell someone another event ticket.  Your customer data allows you to establish a relationship with your event attendees and collect event feedback. Make sure you aren’t squandering the massive opportunity of your customer data.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Event Marketing: Start Building Your List Early
• Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round
• Keeping Your Event List Engaged
• Don't Neglect Your Email List
• Event Marketing: Multiple Ways to Engage Your List
• Simple Customer List Building Suggestions
• Start Building Your List Early
• Late Event Promotion - Big List Growth
• Building Your List Above the Fold
• Are You Opting-In Above the Fold?
• Form Placement and Growing Your List
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

 

A "Must Follow" Event Advertising Strategy . . .

Over the weekend, a friend of mine told me about an advertising package a local newspaper had (pressured him into) sold him. The newspaper sales person convinced my friend to buy into an expensive advertising contract. The sales pitch focused around the notion of - "if you're advertising - you NEED repetition to connect with your audience." The signed advertising contract NOW ties my friend into an expensive long term contract. This isn't a problem if the advertising works, but if the advertising fails to deliver results . . . He'll have to pay for advertising that isn't doing squat!

How does the example above apply to your event marketing and promotion efforts?

When you buy advertising to promote your event, it's important to be savvy on how you negotiate the deal. You have the right to negotiate advertising terms. More importantly you have the obligation to say, "no thanks" if the advertising deal isn't good for you.

Yes, I have a gripe with most people who sell advertising. It seems like they are more interested in getting you to sign a contact - instead of making sure their advertising actually works. Honestly, when's the last time an advertising company said to you, "Our advertising isn't going to help you, so this probably isn't a good use of your marketing dollars."

You need to look out for yourself! Here are some simple suggestions you can use next time you talk to an advertising sales person. The suggestions below are applicable to both online and offline advertising . . .

NEVER Pay Rate Card!
First off, NEVER pay rate card for your event advertising! Rate card is the advertiser's rate they've decided to charge to run an ad. It's similar to MSRP - Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price. As the buyer, you can counter-offer the Rate Card. It's pretty simple - tell the sales person, "I'm not willing to pay X , but I will pay Y."  Obviously you'll need to finesse your negotiating message a little.

After your counter-offer, it's then up to the advertiser to accept or decline the rate you're willing to pay. The worst that they can say is "No," and that's just fine. Remember it's your event marketing budget. You're going to want to find advertising companies that are willing to get you results!

Using an Advertising Out Clause
Another very powerful event marketing strategy is negotiating a contractual "out clause." An out clause gives you the ability to try an advertising medium BEFORE you fully commit to a expensive or long term contract. There is nothing more frustrating than getting contractually tied into something that isn't directly benefiting your event marketing efforts. Even if you have to pay more for your advertising upfront, explore trying to negotiate an advertising out clause.

Online Event Advertising
Here's is an example . . . Lets say you're buying online banner advertising to promote your event. The contract term is for 90 days of advertising. When you're negotiating terms, you should ask for a 72 hour out clause to be written into the contract. This allows you to buy 3 days worth of advertising to see if it works. If the advertising doesn't work for driving traffic to your event web site or selling tickets, then you can option out of the contract. If you negotiate an out clause, you need to practice accountable advertising (tracking your results). If you can't track that your event advertising is work, why buy it?

Offline Event Advertising
You can also try to negotiate an out clause for offline advertising (television, radio, print.) With offline advertising your out clause needs to be a little long. The length of time is largely depending on how many times your advertising runs. You might need 2-3 runs of your ad before you can deem it's effectiveness. Again, you need to track the effectiveness of your event promotions.

In short, an out clause allows you to TEST and TRACK your advertising, BEFORE you tie yourself into an expensive or long term contract.

You as the buyer of advertising have ultimate say in what you pay or negotiate for advertising. Always try to negotiate the best event advertising deal possible. Don't just blindly spend money marketing your event.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Advertising and Marketing that Sells
• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• Simple Event Advertising Tracking with Google Analytics
• The Advertising of Your Event
• Money Saving Advertising Question
• Being a World Class Event Promoter (the P.T. Barnum Way)
• Ride a Winning Ad
• Hold Your Event Marketing Accountable!
• Drowning Your Event Prospects with Advertising Details
• Tracking The Effectiveness of Traditional Marketing with The Internet

Crank Up Your Event Marketing with List Segmentation

After you’ve built (or started to build) your event marketing house list - There are some simple things you can do to quickly ramp up the effectiveness of your email marketing . . .
Break Your List Down - Segment It!
If you want to increase the effectiveness of your event list marketing, you need to better target your list. A great place to start is segmenting your event marketing list - This allows you to focus your event promotions to a very specific target market. As a result, you’ll get better response rates.

How to divide your list is dependant on a number of factors. You should have different marketing funnels for people on your list. From event marketing perspective, the simplest way to divide your house list is into prospects and customers (new and previous). You’ll end up with three lists. Can you divide your house list down even further? Yeah, absolutely! But for now, just focus on making things simple. It’s easy to get OCD with list segmentation.

Your Prospect List
If someone has never experienced your event before, then your marketing approach needs to be different. When it comes to prospects - your focus should be on building trust and credibility. Remember, prospects have never been your event before. If you do what most marketers do and sale pitch people to death, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Concentrate on creating a value to sell sequence . . . Don’t try to sell the prospect list anything until you’ve front loaded the value of your event.

Think about segmenting your list throughout the marketing process. When someone from your prospect list buys a ticket (or decides to attendee your free event) they should be moved into a new customer list. First time attendees to your event require different information.

Your Existing Customer List
A great way to crank up advance ticket sales to your event is by focusing on your previous customer list. As the old adage goes, “your most likely customer is the person who just bought from you.” Offer your previous event attendees the BEST deal.  It’s a great way to say, “we value your business.” The best deal isn’t necessarily the biggest discount on price. Is there a value add or additional premiums you can offer previous event attendees on your customer list? You need to go that extra mile for customers! It will pay in advance ticket sales.

You might want to consider a VIP program as an upsell for your previous customers. If someone previously purchased only general admission tickets for your event, consider selling them into a premium event package. VIP programs or experiences are a great premium.

After Your Event
List segmentation is especially important AFTER your event. Be sure you send your attendees a survey after your event. A well thought out event survey can provide you with invaluable feedback for improving your event.

If you aren't using basic list segmentation (prospects & customers), I'd strongly encourage you to use it. When done properly you can significantly increase the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Event Promotion: Building Excitement for Your Event with Great Stories
• Keeping Your Event Promotion Emails Interesting
• Red Bull Air Race - Exciting Viral Video
• Event Marketing and Being Persistent with Email
• Front Loading Value for Your Next Event
• A Simple Formula to Pack Your Event
• Your Event & Video Testimonials
• When to Start Selling Tickets for Your Event

 

List Rental, Brokers, and Event Marketing - Advice

Yesterday, a coaching client asked me if they should pay $6,500 for a ONE-TIME email to a 55,000 person list. My first piece of advice to them was, "don't rush into things & be a healthy skeptic!" If a list broker wants you to pay a lot of money to rent their list, they should be more than willing to answer every question you have for them. What follows is applicable to both online and offline list rental.

Here's my concern with list rental to market and promote events . . . Not ONE event marketer I've talked to has had ANY notable success renting a list to promote their event. Let me be straight here, that doesn't mean renting a list WON'T work to promote your event. The reasons for failure could be numerous - including mistakes made by the event organizer. As an event marketer, you need to be knowledgeable on list marketing before you ever rent or buy a list.

List Rental (Partnering) Case Study
Let me give you a little historical perspective from my own experience - For the past two years one client has used partner lists to help market their event. These partner lists are essentially list rentals, minus the obvious expense. The demographic and psycho-graphic profiles of the partner lists were an ideal match for the client's event. A total of 23,000 people came from two partner lists and accounted for approximately 10% of the total revenue. The client's HOME GROWN list of 12,000 people accounted for almost 90% of the total revenue.

Vet the List!
Before you ever consider paying to use someone else's list - Don't be afraid to ask a lot of questions and vet their list. Many event marketers get duped by list size, don't do the same. List quality is much more important than list quantity. Check out "Event Marketing: Your Email List - Quality versus Quantity" for some simple list vetting questions.

Start with Testing a Small Segment of the List
You should never allow anyone to pressure you into mailing an entire list at once. You're better off paying more to test a small portion of the list. If you do anything with a list broker, start with TESTING a small segment of their list. If the test proves successful, then do another test. As you test and get favorable results, then scale up. Never get pressured into renting an entire list all at once.

Any good list broker should be happy to allow you to test. Additionally, your list broker should be a trusted adviser focused on getting you results. Here's why . . . If a list broker's database is "that good," why wouldn't they want to establish a long term relationship with you? Ultimately that means your success and more business for them.

The Ultimate Event Marketing List
Here's the bottom line, if you do decide to rent a list - please be sure to properly vet that list and start small. Test a small portion of the list, then scale up. Never jump into a list all at once.

My strong recommendation is to build your own house list of prospects and customers. In 2008, a client converted 31.0% of their 10 month old house list into paying event attendees. No list broker on planet Earth can top a smartly compiled HOUSE list.

Here are some list building articles to get you going:

• An Important Event Web Site Statistic for Promoters and Event Planners
• Shocking Event Web Site Stat - Most People Only Visit Once
• Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round
• Event Marketing: Start Building Your List Early
• Your Opt-in Offer and Using Specific Words
• Form Placement and Growing Your List

How (NOT) to Sell Tickets To Your Event

When it comes to pricing tickets for your event, there are a number of different strategies. Knowing how NOT to sell tickets to your event is as important as knowing how to sell tickets. What follows are two real world mistakes you want to avoid when selling tickets for your event . . .



Event Ticket Pricing
First, a quick primer on event ticket prices - this gets a little dicey, so bare with me . .  At it's simplest, the PRICE of your event ticket is directly proportionate to the VALUE your event delivers to your attendee. For the most part, the value of your event is an intangible . . . The higher the perceived value of your event (in the consumer's mind) the more you can charge. When it comes to pricing, I recommend the highest price a consumer is willing to pay. A FREE ticket is rarely the best way to attract people to your event. Here's why - If you charge nothing for your event, what value does your event have in the consumer's mind?  If you're thinking about ticket pricing, start by looking similar events to your own in the event industry.

Here are two devastating mistakes that I've seen event organizers make when it comes to ticket pricing and their events. Avoid these mistakes at all costs!

From FREE to Paid Because of Poor Planning
First - Don't go from a free ticket to a paid ticket in the same event cycle. Here's the scenario - an event organizer plans a free event - The event is advertised as being FREE. A few weeks later, the organizer determines they don't have enough budget to cover all their costs. As a result, they decide to charge a minimum amount per person to cover their costs. Poor planning on a event organizers part should never be taken out on their attendees. The previous example might seem unbelievable, but I've seen it happen a few times.  The end result - lots of pissed off people. If you're going to go from a free event to a paid event, do it from one event to the next event.

A Last Minute Price Drop
Second - Don't drop your ticket prices to drive last minute ticket sales.  Dropping ticket prices for your event, after people have ALREADY purchased tickets, is a recipe for disaster.  This happened years ago with a local not-for-profit. The not-for-profit dropped their ticket prices last minute as an incentive to get additional "butts in seats." How do you think attendees who paid full price felt when they found out other people got a huge last minute price break?  This is not a good thing when you run a recurring event.

If you're going to drop the ticket price of your event, do it as an early bird special - "Buy Early & SAVE BIG!" It's a great way to drive advance ticket sales.

Ticket pricing is a huge topic of discussion when it comes to event marketing and promotion. If you want to learn how to sell more tickets to your event . . . dig into the nuances of ticket pricing. Learning from other events is one of your best bets. Hopefully the suggestions above prevent you from making a potentially costly mistakes with your event.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• The Psychology of Ticket Prices
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience
• Recession = Opportunities For Your Event
• Satisfaction Guaranteed Events
• Leveraging Huge Ticket Discounts to Drive Advance Tickets Sales
• Smart Advance Ticket Strategies

• The Event Promotion System - Get 'FREE' Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Reviewing Your Event Marketing Strategy

After your event comes to a close, do you carefully review the effectiveness of your advertising?

A few years ago, a west coast event organizer confided to me that they didn’t know their most effective form of advertising. All they could do was guess.  That same organizer blindly spends almost $250,000 each year advertising their event - summing up their strategy with "that’s what we always done.” Seriously?!?!? Here’s the really scary part . . . most event organizers can’t identify their most effective form of advertising. At best it’s a complete guess. As a result, countless advertising dollars are lost forever.



Data Driven Decisions
What is the effective advertising? It’s advertising that drives ticket sales and people to your event. Knowing the most effective forms of advertising is even more important if you have a recurring event. It doesn’t matter if you spent $1,000 or $250,000 marketing your event. All of your event marketing decisions should be data driven decisions. One way to make data driven decisions is by utilizing surveys.

Here’s a Simple (Yet Effective) Idea . . .
A few weeks ago I sat down with a potential client to help them solve their attendance woes.  While going through a litany of questions, we uncovered an amazing piece of event marketing intelligence. There was a folder crammed full of simple paper surveys.  The survey included a series of checkboxes for each of the various advertising channels (television, print, billboards, Facebook, etc.) At the top of the checkboxes was the question “How did you hear about the event?” Event attendees were handed out the survey upon entering the event. In return for filling out the survey, people were offered a free can of pop (soda).

Was the survey scientific? “No way!” But some data is better than no data. More importantly, it gave the event organizers critical feedback.

The Survey Results
When all the data was compiled some very interesting insights were brought to light. One of the most fascinating findings related to billboard advertising.  Over 25% of the total advertising budget was spent on billboard advertising.  Yet billboard advertising was one of the least (second to last) checked boxes.

It isn’t as simple as concluding that billboard advertising doesn’t work.  There are a number of factors at work.  It could have been anything from a bad market to message match to poor billboard location. At least now the event organizer can ask, “Is it worth spending 25% of your advertising on something that isn’t helping people show up to our event?”  Maybe – maybe not.  Unless they had the survey data. But I think it’s fair to assume that they won’t be dedicating 25% of their advertising budget to billboards next year.   

Feel free to take the survey idea from above a run with it. If you don’t want to do a paper survey, try an online survey.  The survey can be as simple as “how did you hear about us?” You don’t want to guess on the most effective way to drive people to your event - quantify it! If you can’t quantifiably identify what advertising works to get attendees to your event - it’s like flushing good money down the toilet. If you have a recurring event, the information above is every more important.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Simple Event Advertising Tracking with Google Analytics
• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• Where to Advertise Your Event
• Ride a Winning Ad
• Did You Buy a Snickers Bar Yet?

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Last Minute Event Marketing and Promotion Strategy

Every few weeks I get a telephone call from a frantic event marketer looking for last minute event marketing strategies. The situations can be pretty heart-wrenching. Usually there isn’t much that can be done . . . But that doesn’t mean that I won’t try and help. One of the first questions I ask is, “do you have an email list?” Very few people respond with, “yes.” A house email list is about the closest thing to an event marketing silver bullet, especially when your event is right around the corner. If you don't have a list or a ton of advertising cash reserve, your last minute options are fairly limited.

Go to Your House Email
Your email list is one of the most lucrative places for ticket sales when you're down to the wire. Unfortunately, too many event promoters and organizers DON’T email their house list ENOUGH prior to their event. You can’t just send one email asking people to buy before your big event.

Email Reality - Not Everyone Opens Your Email (Even Those Interested)
It's important to remember that a majority of the people you're emailing WON'T open your email. Don't take it personally, it's just the reality of email marketing. How many times have you skipped over an email? If you’re getting a 30%-40% open rate on emails, which is typical, that means that 70%-60% of the people aren’t seeing your message. The easiest way to overcome the previous statistic is by sending more emails.  But you don’t want to copy and paste the same email. Find a happy medium.

Be Authentic and Balance
When you sell with email - write your sale pitch in a genuine and authentic manner. Gary Vaynerchuk (WineLibrary.tv) said it best in one of his keynote speeches, “people have awesome bull shit detectors.” Sell people using some end of the world scenario isn't the best of ideas . . . “If you don’t buy right now the Earth is going to EXPLODE and the Universe will fold in on itself.” Obviously you're not going to write that, but hopefully you get the point. Ideally you want to find the right amount of balance between selling and being authentic.

Send the Same Email (Basically) Several Times
There are several different ways to get people to buy other than, “Buy Now!” Consider using scarcity to let people know that advance sale tickets are going fast. Another angle you have at your disposal is “buy early and save.” But you need to spell out the benefits to your reader. Let them know how much they’re going to save if they buy now. If you have a deadline for advance ticket sales let people know that’s coming up. The idea is to mix and match your sales argument.  You don’t want to send the same email to people multiple times in a row. That being stated, you can still send the same basic message various ways.

If your time is ticking down . . . don’t be afraid to leverage your house email list.  Those last few days before your event is when you want to really sell to your list.

List Building Articles:

• Event Marketing: Start Building Your List Early
• Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round
• Keeping Your Event List Engaged
• Don't Neglect Your Email List
• Event Marketing: Multiple Ways to Engage Your List
• Simple Customer List Building Suggestions
• Start Building Your List Early

Shocking Event Web Site Stat - Most People Only Visit Once

A common misconception of event planners and organizers is that people are religiously visiting their event web site. As a result, event organizers continuously update their sites with new content . . . in some cases it becomes an obsession. In my humble opinion, their efforts and resources are being wasted. Don’t get me wrong, updating your web site with relevant and timely content is very important. Keep in mind - event web sites aren’t like news web site. People don’t come back multiple times a day to check for updates on an event web site. Consider the following . . .

Most People Only Visit Once
Recently I crunched Google Analytics stats for 11 very different web sites spanning a 13 month period. The web statistics were drawn from a variety of industry segments. (Three of the sites were event web sites.) Traffic numbers from these sites were anywhere from a few hundred visitors a month all the way up to 24,000+ visitors a month. After the data was compiled, there was one shocking statistic that stood out . . . 71.67% of people visited these web sites ONLY ONCE!  A stunning 86.11% of people visited these web sites THREE TIMES or LESS. There might be some slight variances to the previous statistics, depending on industry, but it’s something you should mind carefully. Most people are only visiting your event web site once. You don’t have to take my word for it! Take a look at your own web stats. Look under the Visitor Loyalty tab in Google Analytics and select the Loyalty link. Most event organizers never consider the visitor loyalty when they look at their web statistics.

What are You Doing to Capture Their Info?
If a majority of people are visiting your web site only once, you need to do something to capture their information. By capturing the user information of your target market, you have a powerful tool to lead people back to your web site. A qualified target list of prospects is also a tremendous asset for selling advance sale tickets to your event. The easiest starting point is attempting to collect a visitor’s first me and email address. Don’t focus on quantity, but quality. Take a look at the resources section below for additional information. 

Those Annoying Pop-Ups
You might want to test a pop-up to collect visitor information. A note on annoying pop-ups . . . they’re only annoying when you’re popping up information that’s irrelevant to the person visit your site. That was always to problem with old school pop-up advertising. Present a value based proposition that the visitor actually cares about and the pop-up stops becoming an annoyance.

Knowing that most people only visit your web site once gives you the opportunity to do something about it. My strong recommendation is to try and collect email addresses right on your home page. To many people the recommendation probably seems highly counter-intuitive, but it works amazing well. Building a targeted list of prospects and then market to that list is the closest thing to an event marketing silver bullet.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

Event Web Statistics:

• Web User Traffic Trends to Your Event Web Site
• The Timing of Your Event Promotion
• Hold Your Event Marketing Accountable!
• Reading the User's Mind and Then Doing Nothing About It
• Web Page Statistics - "Hits" versus Visitors

List Building Articles:

• Event Marketing: Start Building Your List Early
• Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round
• Keeping Your Event List Engaged
• Don't Neglect Your Email List
• Event Marketing: Multiple Ways to Engage Your List
• Simple Customer List Building Suggestions
• Start Building Your List Early
• Late Event Promotion - Big List Growth
• Building Your List Above the Fold
• Are You Opting-In Above the Fold?
• Form Placement and Growing Your List
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Get Great Ideas from an Event Marketing Field Trip

How much time do you spend looking to other events or industries for marketing ideas? Borrowing ideas from other events and industries is one of the quickest ways to add dollar signs to your bottom line. If you don’t spend much time looking outside your own event looking for marketing ideas, you need to start today.

Get Over It . . .
One large (self-imposed) roadblock that most people have to overcome is the “that won’t work for me” mindset.  How many times have you heard business people lament the “that won’t work, my business is different” line? Too many event planners and organizers fall into that same trap.  It’s like a broken record . . . “That won’t work because my event is different.” That’s a bunch of B.S.! Proven marketing ideas can be adapted and modified from one industry to another. In some cases adopting ideas can be unbelievably simple. 

60 Seconds for a $500,000.00+ Idea
Over the last three weeks I’ve attended the Rochester International Jazz Festival, Red Bull Air Race Championships (Windsor/Detroit), and two ethnic festivals (Ukrainian and Turkish). There were tons of great ideas floating around. One simple strategy I picked up put $500,000.00+ into an event organizers bank account,  months before a single person showed up to their event. Discovering the $500K+ strategy took all of sixty seconds with a few quick questions to the right person.  There is no reason why you can’t do the same.

Go Fish for Ideas
Make it a point to venture out and attend other events in and around your area.  Competing or complementary events to your own make for the best field trips. When at other events be on the lookout for things that you might be able to integrate into your own event.  The most observant you are, the more you’ll be able to take away. Find out who’s in charge of then event . . . are they on site? Most important - Don’t be afraid to ask smart questions!

Don’t be afraid to ask organizers questions. Keep it short and sweet.  Always remember to use a little couth . . . if an organizer is crazy busy at their event, you might need to follow up afterward. Follow up with them a week or so after their event. It's important to remember that you don't always need to speak to the actual organizer to get good information or ideas.

Validate the Information
One important point to remember . . . you’re going to need to do your homework and dig into details. It isn’t wise to take everything at face value. If something sounds too good to be true, do a little research to validate an idea or strategy.  Why should you do this? Even event organizers have egos that need to be stroked. As a result, they might exaggerate their numbers or certain claims. You don't want to integrate an event or strategy into your own event that has been proven to work.
  
Next time you go out to another event, bring your thinking cap, a small notebook (plus pen) and an insatiable curiosity.  Look for things that you can integrate and ethically borrow. Never dismiss another event's promotion idea(s) as irrelevant or stupid until you’ve dug into the details.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Event Planning - The Customer Avatar and Your Event
• When to Start Selling Tickets to Your Event
  
• A Negative Question to Create a Better Event
• Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round
• How to Get Them To Your Event
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Does Your Event Web Site Display Properly?

On Wednesday a friend called me up and asked me to check over their event web site. Over the last week they spent several hours updating their new web site and wanted a fresh set of eyes to look their web site over.

At first glance things looked pretty good.  Then they asked me to “Look at some of the other pages.” That’s when we discovered a BIG problem . . . there was no navigation bar on my screen. On my friend’s computer the navigation bar was showing up. So I asked him, “What browser are you using?” He said “Internet Explorer.” I was using Mozilla Firefox.  The reason no web navigation was showing up on my computer screen was a browser compatibility issue. 

The navigation menu my friend was using worked in Internet Explorer, but didn’t work in Firefox. Depending on the marketplace, Firefox can account for approximately 20-25% of your market share. In this specific case, 21% of visitors (according to Google Analytics) can’t navigate my friend’s web site – NOT GOOD!

A Completely Blank Page
A few years ago an event web site I was working on displayed properly in Firefox, yet was completely blank page in Internet Explorer. You don’t want that to happen when your money is on the line. It’s imperative that you make sure your web site works on the most common browsers. A few lines of code or a piece of multimedia technology could prevent a lot of people from being able to view your web site.

Browser problems usually creep up after a web site redesign. When the code on which the site is build is modified, check to make sure your web site displays properly.

Check in These Browsers
You need to make sure that your event web site works in the most common web browsers. These include Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera on the Mac and PC. Keep in mind that not everyone has the most up to date browser versions. You probably want to go back a version or two. The recommendation above should cover about 99% of the people visiting your web site. Depending on your target market you might want to consider creating a mobile version of your web site.

Here is a great web service you can use (for FREE) to check that your event web site is displaying properly on the most common browsers:

• http://www.BrowserShots.org

Aim for 98-98%
Don’t kill yourself testing your web site to ensure 100% browser compatibility. Experts recommend it, but from a practicality standpoint it’s extremely difficult to implement. It’s much more effective to make sure your web site displays properly 98%-99% of the time.

The information above might seem trivial . . .  But when you’re spending big bucks on advertising and marketing for your event it can make all the difference. Take a few extra minutes to make sure the event web site you’re directing people to actually works.

Become the Information Authority for Your Event

Here is a costly mistake made by many event organizers and planners - hiding details from their target market. Over years I’ve seen very smart event organizers foolishly hide information about their event. In their mind, the decision for not releasing certain event details is completely logical. The thought process goes like this . . . “It’s my event and I’ll give people details when I’m ready.” Let me come out and say it – hiding event details is a bad idea! Being secretive about event details has negative impact on your event marketing and ultimately your bottom line.

Look at politics! People have a high level of distrust with politicians because they feel like something is being hidden.  Nobody can ever give a straight answer. Don't follow suit. It is in your best interest to be as transparent as possible with your event details, both the good and the bad.

Trust and Instant Gratification
Today people go online and “Google” just about anything. Your target market is doing the same in relation to your event. The Internet adds fuel to “the instant gratification fire.” People want information and they want it yesterday. Social media further stokes the fire. In order to be successful with your event marketing you need to be first in the mind of your target market.  Your web address should be one of the first things that pops up in a person’s mind when they think about your event.

Your online marketing efforts hinge on people perceiving you (your web site) as the authority for information about your event. Establish your web site as the number one information authority for your event. The way to gain authority with your target market is by giving people the information they crave first. Be straightforward with people.

All your social media efforts like, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. should be considered ancillary information channels.  Put links on your social media posts back to your web site. 

How to Amp Up Authority
There is one information channel that trumps your event web site in terms of establishing authority, your house list of customers and prospects. Your house list represents the most passionate segment of your target market. They represent the people most likely to attend your event. Make sure you’re using your web site to constantly build your list. Create an insider list for your event. Allow people to sign up on your web site and get the inside scoop before anyone else.
 
If people remember anything from your event marketing, let it be your web site.  When people get to your web site, give then a compelling reason to give you their first name and email address. When they come to your site, let it be the best resource in the world for information about your event.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Event Promotions and Shortening Your Domain Name
  
• Your Domain Name and Television Advertising
• Your Domain Name and Radio Advertising
  
• Press Releases and Your Event Marketing
• The Press Conference Lesson on Event Marketing
• Be Vigilant About Your Event Details and the Media
• The User Attention Span

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

The Experience Must EXCEED that of Your Event Marketing

Today I’m going to rant a little on the importance of delivering an extraordinary experience at your event. When it comes to event marketing, there seems to be a gap between advertising promises and attendee expectations. The end result is event attendees who open their wallets, spend their hard earned money, and leave an event disappointed. Yes, I’m a big proponent of using hype and persuasion (ethically) in the marketing of your event.  But you can’t over promise and under deliver. Before you send out your next advertising campaign, do an objective review of your event marketing . . .

Your Event Advertising and Promotions
Is your event marketing overpromising on the experience your event can actually deliver? Spend some time thinking through the previous question. Look at your advertising and event from an attendee's perspective . . .  If someone were to read your advertising and attend your event – are you going to be able to deliver on all your advertising promises? If not, or even maybe not, take those points out of your advertising. I’ve seen first hand the problems associated with promising too much in event advertising. It isn’t pretty and is quickly followed by a slew of refund requests.

Using Jedi Mind Tricks (Responsibly)
Another avenue event promoters go down is using psychological persuasion into their event marketing . . .  Think advance Jedi persuasion skills (I’m not kidding!) If you haven’t already, read Dr. Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.” In the book Cialdini outlines his six “Weapons of Influence.” One of Cialdini's weapons of influence is scarcity. Using scarcity is a surefire way to get people buying event tickets in advance. As tickets are sold, you update the number of remaining tickets on your web site. As the available ticket supply counts down, ticket demand goes up. Unfortunately, some event organizers see fit to abuse scarcity.

Last year, a local event sold out their entire block of VIP tickets. In an effort to generate more revenue, the event organizer opened a new block of VIP tickets. Word got out about “previously SOLD OUT tickets” being on sale. That aggravated lot of people who already purchased tickets. You shouldn't tell people tickets are sold out and then put them back on sale again. Next time, people are going to be skeptical about buying tickets.

Like Peter Parker’s Uncle Ben said “With great power there must also come — great responsibility!” (Spiderman 1962). The value your event delivers to attendees must FAR EXCEED the hype used in your event marketing. This mindset is critical if you have a recurring event. People are going to come back to an event if they feel scammed. When you boil it down, it's pretty simple. Don't claim something in your advertising that your event can't deliver.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• A Satisfaction Guaranteed Event
• Advertising and Marketing that Sells
• Providing Massive Value in Your Marketing and Advertising
• P.T. Barnum on Advertising
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Event Marketing and Being Persistent with Email

Here is the harsh reality of event marketing with email – most of the people on your list will never open the email you’re sending. It doesn’t matter if you use a double opt-in process or have a completely house grown list. Having managed dozens of different campaigns for a variety of clients, I can tell you that the average email broadcast open rate is BELOW 50%. Low open rates even affect high quality lists.

There are some additional email marketing points to keep in context. Every day we are inundated with more email than we can possibly read.  Even if people want to you’re your email, they might not get around to it. You’re also up against voracious SPAM filters. Don’t take it personally or get discouraged!

My reason for telling you all of the above is to make sure you adopt the right email marketing mindset for your event. In spite of the challenges listed above, I’m still the same guy who believes your house list is your biggest event marketing asset.

Be Creatively Persistent
The key to still winning with low open rates is creative persistence. There is a thin line between being persistent and being a pest. Become proficient at sending the same sales message to your list multiple times. Please note: I didn’t say send the same exact email multiple times. Get good at rewriting emails that convey the same sales message. By sending multiple messages you're going to increase the chances of people actually reading your email.

Case Study
Last year I wrote an email marketing sequence that nudged people to buy tickets almost 60 days before the event. The first campaign email setup the ticket discount and built anticipation for the event with video. The next three emails were focused on sales.  Each sales email was written differently, yet emphasized the limited number of tickets available. As tickets were purchased we adjusted the available number of tickets accordingly. Ticket sales peaked at the beginning and at the end of the promotion. Over 60% of the total advance ticket sales came after the second email. The end result was over $20,210 in gross ticket sales, 58 days before the event.

Look at your event marketing with email as a multi-step process, not a one off event. You can’t expect to send one email and get everyone on your list to buy. Be prepared for opt-outs. “If you aren’t getting opt-outs, you aren’t selling hard enough.” – John Carlton. Get good at sending the same sales message to your event email list multiple times without annoying them.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Keeping Your Event List Engaged
• Don't Neglect Your Email List
• Event Marketing: Multiple Ways to Engage Your List
• Simple Customer List Building Suggestions
• Late Event Promotion - Big List Growth

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Event Marketing Research - Know Your Target Market!

Every aspect of your event marketing needs to start with a comprehensive understanding of your target market. In the case of events, your target market is represented by your ideal event attendee. I cannot stress this enough - Target market research is a big deal! People won’t buy tickets for an event (or attend a free event) that doesn’t hold their interest. A lack of interest is one of the biggest reasons that events fail. If you want to pack your event, the best place to start is with a hungry market!

You can find a hungry market by doing a little online research. If you have a new event, target market research needs to be your first planning step. Start by asking yourself, “What are my target market’s wants, needs, and fears as they pertain to my event?” When asking the question it’s really important to take your ego out of the equation. Focus on the market’s ego.

Use the Net to Do Free Research
There are a plethora of tools you can use to research your target market. Most of the tools are free. Start with a Google search that’s topically related to your event. Consider segmenting your search in Google by look at the blog, news, web, and video results. Look for the hot topics or trends. Pay particular attention to online user content such as comments or reviews. What are people saying? A hotbed for user content can be found in topical forums and blogs.

Don't Reinvent the Wheel
When it comes to events, there is little need to constantly "reinvent the wheel." Take a look at similar and competing events. Try to contact the organizer. Tell them who you are and what you're thinking of doing. It’s amazing how willing other event organizers are to share information.  One telephone call could make your event more financially successful or save you heartache.

Go Back to Your Customer List
If you have a recurring event, go back to your customer list. Consider surveying your customers. Find out what people thought of your previous event and what they expect from your next event. You can have a simple online survey setup in minutes with a service like SurveyMonkey. Don’t be afraid to ask tough questions like “What didn’t you like about our last event?” The idea is to give find out what people expect from your event.

Build a Profile
Use your target market research to compile a demographic and psychographic profile of your event attendee.  That profile represents your ideal prospect and should drive everything you do with your event web site and your event. The profile should also drive your advertising and marketing decisions.

I realize that target market research isn’t the most exciting activity, but its importance is paramount. There is zero benefit in planning or creating an event if people aren’t going to attend. Doing a little homework can upfront can save you a ton of money and agony down the road.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• A Negative Question to Create a Better Event
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience
• How to Get Them To Your Event
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early
• Leveraging Your Sponsor's Digital Resources

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Simple Event Advertising Tracking with Google Analytics

Ask most event organizers - “what’s your most effective form of advertising?” Nine times out of ten the response will be, “we have no idea!” Your event advertising needs to be an investment, not a blind expense. Every event organizer should know their most effective form of advertising. It's imperative that your track your advertising effectiveness. Thanks to technology, it’s getting significantly easier to track advertising effectiveness. One free tool every event organizer should insist on having on their event web site is Google Analytics. You can leverage Google Analytics' comprehensive statistics to help you track the effectiveness of your event advertising. Back in December, Google introduced the Annotation feature to their Analytics suite. Annotations allow you to add short notes to your Analytics data.

Use Google Analytics Annotations to Track Your Advertising
Here is what you can do . . . Use annotations to note television, radio, email marketing, or billboard campaigns. Ideally you'll want to track any form of advertising that drives traffic to your web site. You can annotate on a daily basis. Individual annotations can be up to 140 characters long and you can have multiple annotations on a single day. Below is an annotation example from a press conference to announce a local air show.

In the example above - annotations were created to note the date of the press conference to announce our local air show.  When you dig into the stats, you see the different types of advertising and publicity that drove various forms of online traffic. In the example from above, the press conference triggered various news outlets to feature news stories about the event. Almost every television station, radio station,
and new paper picked up on the event announcement.

Digging into the Data
A closer look at Google Analytics showed that 84% of all the daily traffic on March 16th was Referral Traffic (traffic from other web sites). Of that 84% referral traffic, 694 visitors came from one article on a local television news web site. The main reason for this is that the news web site prominently feature a back link to the event web site. (You need to strongly encourage you media partners to back link to your event web site - or else they won't do it.)

Fair Warning
Mining your Analytics data can be both a virtue and a vice. It’s important to be able to track traffic to your event advertising efforts, but don’t get too carried away. You can get easily lost in the countless data-points you have available to you.

Even though you can only annotate on a daily basis, there is a tremendous amount of information that can be analyzed. Here is one certainty - Using annotations is far better than the random guessing technique many event organizers use to track their advertising effectiveness.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• An Important Event Web Site Statistic for Promoters and Event Planners
• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• Did You Buy a Snickers Bar Yet?
• Hold Your Event Marketing Accountable!
• Web User Traffic Trends to Your Event Web Site
• The Timing of Your Event Promotion

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Do I Need to Redesign My Event Web Site?

One comment I hear often is “we want to redesign our event web site.” Before you start of thinking of a redesign, ask yourself, “Do I really need to redesign my event web site?” There seems to be this common belief that if you redesign a web site your fortune will instantly improve. Unfortunately that simply isn’t the case. Companies have spent countless dollars on web site redesigns with little ROI. Let me share a few event web site redesign stories for your consideration . . .

The Importance of Looking at Your Past
Recently a friend of mine insisted on redesigning their event web site. A driving factor was the desire to “re-brand” their online identity. As part of the initiative an in house hosting solution was setup and they built a custom content management system for the web site. Thousands of dollars were invested. Here’s the kicker . . . the previous four years of web statistics were for the site were never referenced during any part of the redesign. You should NEVER build a web site without carefully considering your existing web statistics.

“It Looks Like an Infomercial!” – Change it!
Here’s another story. Last year, a different event organizer insisted on redesigning their event web site. It had been a few years since anything was done with the design. Their reasoning was that the previous layout and copy “looked like an infomercial.” Looking good was the emphasis of the new design. The event organizer brought in a different web developer to redesign the site.  Almost every single sales (infomercial) element of the previous site was stripped away in the redesign. The end result . . . The “better looking” web site took a 69% drop in online ticket sales from year to year.

Great Web Site Fundamentals
A great event web site has little to do with design, layout, or graphics. People don’t visit your event web site because it’s “beautiful” or “looks cool.” (Sorry graphic designer people.) Visitors are coming to your event web site because the information you have for them is relevant to their needs. Take a look at Google, Craigslist, Wikipedia, etc. Their success is driven by text based content that’s useful to the user. Is a professional looking web site important? Yes, absolutely!  I’m not suggesting you should have an ugly looking web site.  I’d say that a highly informative web site is far more lucrative.

Here’s the bottom line . . . before you even think about redesigning your event web site, spend some time focusing on the simple things. Some of my most successful event promotion endeavors have been with web sites that were a few years old. Look at your web stats or consider improving your existing web site copy. The most cost effective upgrade you can do on ANY web site is providing your target audience with better information. Upgrading the information on your web site could be done for next to nothing, if anything at all.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• How Big Should My Event Web Site Be?
• Your Event Promotion and Marketing Strategy - Start Point
• Save Money and Time with an FAQ
• An Event VIP Experience Done Right - Red Bull Style
• Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round
• Getting Detailed Feedback To Improve Your Event

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

How to Use Words on Your Event Web Site . . .

Your event web site is the one place where your writing needs to be at its’ most compelling. In the case of event marketing and promotion you’re using words (copy) to persuade people to purchase a ticket and/or attend your event. Best selling author Neil Strauss summed it up like this "The highest goal of writing is NOT to have good grammar; it's to have meaning and impact!" For today I’m going to give you some simple suggestions to improve the impact of the writing you use to promote and market your event.

It’s Not About You!
One colossal mistake made on most web sites is too much writing in the first person. Stay away from using  “I , We, & Our” too often.  To illustrate the point, I encourage you to take a look at a few business web sites. You'll see a whole bunch of first person narrative. Here's the problem with too much writing in first person  . . . People aren’t visiting your web site so you can pontificate about yourself.  They are their to satiate their personal wants and needs. Thus you should concentrate on writing in second person. In second person you’re going to use “You” and “Your” in your writing. Does this mean you should never write in first person? No! You can still write in first person, but do so sparingly. It's hard to go wrong when you write to the ego of the reader and their interest.

Think In Terms of Value & Use a Conversational Tone
It’s hard to go wrong if you write in terms of value for the reader. When it comes to online information it's often said that “content is king.” In this case your writing is your content. Your copy should be written in a way that is valuable to your reader.  Write your copy in a way that gets the reader to say, "Wow, I want to do that!"  Your writing tone also has effect on the reader. Try to write in a conversational manner. Don't try and stuff high end vocabulary into your writing. Writing in a corporate-slick manner makes you come off as a stiff board. Add a little spice to your writing that's appropriate to your audience.

Below is text from an air show ticketing page that exemplifies the two suggestions from above . . .

"Get VIP Tickets and Experience the Air Show in an Extraordinary Way!"

As a VIP Ticket Holder you get:

• Access to the Exclusive VIP Guest Enclosure
• The chance to meet, get your picture taken with, or get an autograph from some of the best pilots in the world
• 4 solid hours of heart-stopping aviation excitement with two amazing jet teams!

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• The Content King of the Internet
• Advertising and Marketing that Sells
• Does Your Headline Grab Their Undivided Attention?
• Get Your Audience Involved Through Their Emotions
• Words with Pizzazz and Razzle Dazzle
• Web Copy Argument: Short or Long?
• Promotional Headlines for Your Event
• Keep Your Text Columns Narrow
• Is Your Text the Right Color?
• Proofing your Work On Paper

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

What to Do After You’ve Sold a Ticket to Your Event . . .

Many event organizers think of their attendee’s event experience occurring entirely at the event. An event attendee’s opinion of your event starts the moment they purchase a ticket from you.  They just gave you their hard earned money and have become your customer. What you do between the time someone purchases a ticket for your event and when they actually attend your event significantly impacts the opinion people have of your event. For today we'll focus on simple things you can do before your event to elevate the customer's overall experience.

Think About Them
Here is a simple question every event organizer or planner should ask . . . “What can we do to make our patron’s entire experience (from ticket purchase, until after the event) as enjoyable as possible?” Event attendee opinions are still in play after your event, but to a far lesser extent. Pretend you just purchased at ticket as an event attendee to your own event.  What are all the questions you’d have regarding the event?  Think in terms of being a helpful guide or great information resource to event attendees. Nobody is going to give you grief for providing them with great information.

Below are some simple examples you can easily integrate into delivering a tremendous event experience outside your actual event . . .

Leverage Your Customer Contact Information
Leverage your attendee (customer) list and their email addresses. Your customer list is one of your most powerful resources. Consider putting together a simple event guide (PDF) that event attendees can download and print from home before your event.  A few years ago I made the previous suggestion to a beer festival organizer. The event organizer quickly put together a simple downloadable map indicating where each brewery was located.  The downloadable map looked very unprofessional, but nobody cared! Attendees were hungry for the information. Anyone could download the map from the beer festival web site.  The map turned out to be not only an informational tool, but also a marketing piece. Anyone could download the map for free. As long as the information is relevant and timely, people will always give you a pass on how it looks . . . just look at Google's simplicity. It's all about the information.

Driving and Parking at Your Event
Another issue that challenges many events, especially big events, is parking. Are there parking or traffic conditions that event attendee’s should be aware of regarding your event? Last year a client received a few nasty-grams from unhappy event patrons that didn’t realize how difficult it would be to get to their event. Is it the responsibility of the event organizer to event attendees to plan for traffic? Some people might say yes, others might say no. Your focus should be on making it as easy as possible for people to get to your event.

Remember, the customer has just spent their hard earned money to buy a ticket for your event. You can’t afford to rest on your laurels. You need to expand your customer service experience. Use your event web site and other resources to further enhance the experience of ticket holders. It’s never been easier and so inexpensive to deliver information digitally. Focus on getting people information that will help them to really enjoy your event.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Save Money and Time with an FAQ
• When Do I Start Promoting My Event?
• A Simple Formula to Pack Your Event
• Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round
• Getting Detailed Feedback To Improve Your Event

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

 

An Event VIP Experience Done Right – Red Bull Style

If you want a killer model on how to run super successful outdoor events, you need not look any further than Red Bull.  Red Bull events attract millions of people across the globe.  They do everything from the winter Butter Cup (snowboarding) events to adrenaline packed heart-skipping air races.  In 2008, I was fortunate enough to participate in the Detroit Red Bull Air Races. It was an eye opening lesson in selling event exclusivity to the public. Red Bull events run the gamut from FREE admission to a super pricey experience. Today I’m going to dive into Red Bull’s high end model . . .

The Ultimate VIP Experience
Red Bull offers something called the High Flyer’s Lounge at their air races.  It is a high end experience that gets you up close to the action and pampers participants all day long. In the high flyer’s lounge you get to eat scrumptious food prepared by European chefs and access to a top self open bar. It’s also a great chance to mingle with the occasional celebrity who might be in attendance. My purpose for telling your all of this isn’t to sell you anything. It’s all about the idea of offering high end exclusivity at your next event. The High Flyer’s Lounge is a great model for anyone thinking of creating a VIP experience at their event.

The Red Bull High Flyer's Lounge (Video)

Watch the short video above to get an overview of the Red Bull’s High Flyer’s Lounge. There are plenty of ideas for almost any event planner or organizer to borrow.  Pay particular attention to third party endorsements (testimonials) in from people in the High Flyer’s Lounge. Red Bull is leveraging their customers to sell people on the exclusive experience.  

Collecting Big Bucks for a FREE Event
Keep in mind that Red Bull is selling premium exclusivity to an event that people can attendee for FREE! They don’t let the economy slow them down.  There are always going to be event attendees looking for the ultimate experience. You need to offer exclusivity at your event. Check this out . . . To purchase a two day High Flyer’s Lounge pass for the 2010 Air Race in Detroit, Saturday and Sunday, will cost you $1547.00 USD. In contrast a one day High Flyer’s Lounge pass (Sunday Only) costs $1158.00 USD. The High Flyer’s Lounge can accommodate a couple hundred people per day . . . 200 people a day (times) $1158.00 USD = $231,600. Even if it costs $100K a day to support, you’re still up $130K per day.

And Here's the Real Kicker
As part of my 2008 Air Race experience, I witness the most amazing thing . . .  A business man from Detroit paid big bucks to get into the High Flyer’s lounge. Because of high winds on Saturday the Air Race was canceled. In spite of no air races the business man was elated by his experience.  Here is what he told me . . . “It doesn’t matter that they didn’t race today. This total worth every dollar I paid. I was treated like a King and made a few great contacts that are going to be worth a mint to my company.” Any event organizer who can have their event cancelled and pull off a comment like that is a rock star in my book.

Take a careful look at how Red Bull Sells a high end experience.  There are plethora of ideas that you can borrow for your event.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Exciting Red Bull Video
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience
• P.T. Barnum on Advertising
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• How to Get Them To Your Event
  
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Trainin

Where to Advertise Your Event

Today’s advice is pretty straightforward – don’t advertise your event in places that don’t get good attention from your target market. You can create the most amazing event advertisement on planet Earth – but if you’re not using a good marketing channel, you’re doomed from the start. To some people the advice above might seem really elementary, but you’d be surprised how many event organizers burn tons of cash on poorly placed advertising.  Below are a set of simple questions I ask every event organizer who has a recurring event. Feel free to answer the questions as they pertain to your event advertising.

1. How much money do you spend on advertising your event?
   
   
2. Where do you advertise your event (television, print, radio, Internet, etc.)?
   
   
3. What was your most effective advertising channel for getting people to your event?

What’s really shocking is that not one event organizer I’ve asked over the years can quantifiably answer question #3. There are events out there that have a $250,000 advertising budget, yet have no idea which advertising actually gets people to their event. But wait, it gets better!!! Next question . . .“If you don’t know your most effective advertising channel, why are you still spending so much money to advertise?” The answer . . . “because that’s what we’ve always done.” Maybe it’s just me, but if you’re spending $250,000 to advertise an event, wouldn’t you want to know your most effective advertising channels? Advertising for your event should be an investment, not a “just because we've always done it that way” expense.

Track Advertising Effectiveness
If you want a brutally simple way to track advertising effectiveness, get a Google Analytics account. Analytics now allows you to annotate your data with notes. Make annotations for when and where you’re advertising started and stopped. Analytics isn’t the end all be all for tracking advertising effectiveness, but you’d be pleasantly surprised by the information you do get.

Do Your Homework
Before you do any advertising, do a little homework. Get demographic and psychographic information on the channels where you plan to advertise. Do the advertising channel profiles match up with your event target market profile? Also take the time to call or email some of the other advertisers where you are thinking of advertising and ask them, "Are you seeing a good return by advertising here?" A little homework on your part can save you a pretty penny down the road.

Look at Your Advertising Competition
If you’re looking at an advertising channel for your event, be conscious of how many other advertisers you’re competing against. Recently, a friend paid over $350 for a single run Sunday ad in the local paper. My friend’s ad was tightly grouped into one section of the paper with over 150 other ads. In the end he received two visits to his web site, zero telephone calls, and no business. Make sure that when you choose an advertising medium your marketing message isn’t getting drown out by other advertisers.

Beware of the "Awesome" Advertising Deal
As a side note - Be wary of the “awesome deal” advertising trap. Many advertisers just want to sell ad space.  Business is business, but I’m staunchly against taking someone’s money for services with zero chance of any return. In all my years I’ve NEVER come across anyone selling advertising who said “I don’t think advertising with us is going to do you any good.” It seems like people are more interested in making the sale as opposed to what's best for you.

Before you spend dollars on advertising your event, make sure you're advertising in the right place.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• David Ogilvy on Direct Response Marketing
• Advertising and Marketing that Sells
• Providing Massive Value in Your Marketing and Advertising

Leveraging Huge Ticket Discounts to Drive Advance Tickets Sales

Last weekend a colleague of mine was telling me about a simple ticket strategy that sells a lot of advance sale tickets. The crux of the strategy revolves around discount tickets for their event. Their advance sale tickets are discounted up to 50%. Year after year my colleague successfully leverages the same discount ticket strategy to drive advance ticket sales through the roof.

Currently it's late February and the event mentioned above doesn't take place until early August. They've already sold over $30,000 worth of advance sale tickets and the event is still six months away! As the event date approaches the ticket discount is gradually reduced until all tickets are full price. The discount ticket strategy works really well for the event organizer because most people wait until the days leading up to the event to buy tickets.

Don't Be Afraid to Discount Your Ticket
Too many event organizers are constantly giving excuses as to why they can't discount their ticket prices. Some of the excuses include “If we discount, we're giving up potential revenue.” or “That might work for some other event, but it's not going to work for us.” Yes, you're giving up potential revenue when you discount your ticket price. But if done properly - you can put boatloads of cash into your coffers before your event begins. Ticket discounts should be used early in your event sales process. Discount tickets should NOT be used anywhere near your event. If you're using discount ticket prices right before your event just to get people to show up - you've done something very wrong with promoting your event.

Block Your Tickets
One way to mitigate the “we're going to lose revenue if we discount” fear is by blocking your tickets. When you block tickets you only offer a certain number of discounted tickets.  When the ticket block is sold out the discount is ended.  You can also use promotion expiration date as an extra safety net. Below is sample copy you can use for doing a discount block ticket promotion . . .

“BUY NOW and get 50% OFF your ticket. Because of this HUGE discount there are only a limited number of tickets available. One last thing - The discount is only good through (Date) or until the limited number of tickets are sold out, so don't wait to buy your tickets and save BIG!”

Every event planner and organizer should take a long hard look at discount ticketing as a way to boost advance ticket sales. It might seem like you're giving up a lot of revenue at first, but when you see how the numbers play out, it's hard to deny the results.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Turn Your Event Into an Experience
• How to Get Them To Your Event
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early
• Leveraging Your Sponsor's Digital Resources
  
  
• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Constantly Go Back to Your Ticketing Well

When planning for any event, it’s very beneficial to think in terms of repeatability.  Ask yourself - "Can I turn my event into a recurring event?" Some of the most successful events in the world started very small and grew over time. This isn’t to say one time events can’t be tremendously successful, but if you can create an event that delivers an amazing experience for people . . . why just do it once?  Plus, there a number of benefits to recurring events.  One of the big benefits with recurring events is the potential for repeat customers. Just like in the business world - Your best potential customer is the person who just bought from you. Recurring events can take advantage of repeat customers.  Hence, your event planning should include a strategy for creating a house customer list. Just remember to keep your customer list and your prospect list separate. You're going to want to market to your event prospects and customers differently. Below are a few quick suggestions for building your house customer list . . .

Online Ticket Sales
When selling tickets online, it’s imperative that you collect and store as much customer data as possible. At a minimum get your customer’s name and email address. Thankfully most online ticket transactions require a customers email and mailing address to complete a purchase order. Be sure to make backups of your online customer list from year to year.

Offline Ticket Sales
If you’re selling tickets offline, come up with a way to get your customers to give their information to you. Try this . . . put a blurb on the physical ticket and drive people to your event web site.  On your web site, give people who already purchased tickets for your event some sort of incentive to “register online” and get additional event information. There are a tremendous amount of incentives you can give people in order to collect their information . . . best parking locations, a downloadable event guide in PDF format, an insider event schedule, etc. A simple opt-in form on your web site is the easiest way to collect ticket information.

If you want to sell a lot of advance tickets for your event, your customer list is your greatest resource. Advance ticket sales are made significantly easier by going back to your previous event attendees - especially if they were happy with your event. One important note on going back to your customer list - Don’t be afraid to offer your previous event attendees special incentives to buy for your next event. It could be anything from discount tickets to some type of value add. You can get a flood of advance ticket sales, by offering people incentives to buy early.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• When Do I Start Promoting My Event?
• A Simple Formula to Pack Your Event
• Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round
• Getting Detailed Feedback To Improve Your Event

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

How to Sell Even More Tickets to Your Event

Most people think that you just need a buy link and ticket description on your event page to sell tickets online. But there is a tremendous amount of benefit in being as descriptive as possible on your ticket packages. You should have a dedicated ticket page on your event web site. The ticket pages should be built like a long sales letter. Selling event tickets online should be thought of as a selling process. With any selling process you're going to have to deal with buying questions and objections. The more buying questions and objections you can answer the more event tickets you'll sell.

The Ticket Page with a Ton of Text
Let me give you an example of one air show that turned their ticketing page into a long online sales letter. The event web site used 1,500+ words to describe TWO different tickets for their event. The two purchase choices for the event were: a Reserved Seat or a VIP Chalet Seat. To give you some perspective - 1,500 words is roughly the equivalent of 3 pages of text in Microsoft Word. Most people would agree that's a tremendous amount of verbiage just to sell two event tickets.

When 1,500+ word ticketing page was shown to a few other people involved with the event, their initial response was . . . “Nobody is going to read all that text!” Fast forward to after the event . . .  A look at Google Analytics showed 38,796 unique page views on the ticket page. The average time spent on the ticket page alone (not the entire web site) was 2:05 per visitor. Regardless of interesting statistics - it comes down to dollar signs. The ticketing page generated $64,645.00 of advance sale revenue for the event.

Answer Their Questions and Sell More
What follows is a simple yet effective method you can use to create a killer ticket page for your event. In the weeks prior the event the air show organizer attempted to identify the people's most common ticket questions. A rough draft of the ticketing page was setup and posted to the event web site. Then, an email was send to the event’s house list regarding the release of ticket details. Hundreds of people of people on the list responded to the rough draft ticket page with their questions and concerns. The questions and concerns were then grouped into a few common categories with answers. Lastly, the most common questions and objections were answered on the “New and Improved!” ticket page.

Whenever selling tickets to your event really get into a selling mindset. A simple buy link with a brief ticket description isn't enough. Think of your event ticketing page as an online sales letter or your virtual sales person. If you use the strategy outlined above, you'll sell more tickets to your event.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Event Marketing: Do You have an Online Champion for Your Event?
• Online Comments About Your Event
• Advertising and Marketing that Sells
• Providing Massive Value in Your Marketing and Advertising
• P.T. Barnum on Advertising
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Getting Email Marketing Delivered for Your Event

Email marketing (done right) is a near silver bullet for event organizers and planners. Some of my biggest successes in promoting and marketing events come directly from email marketing.  If you can get a half way decent email list of qualified prospects, advance ticket sales come rolling in.

Unfortunately emailing marketing is getting increasingly more difficult these days. It doesn’t matter if you’ve double opt-in your list or the email is being sent from Whitelisted mail servers . . . Spam filters have become so voracious that they’re blocking even legitimate emails. In terms SPAM filters, they’re a good thing - but I can’t stand over zealous filtering of real email messages.

Try Text Based Emails & SPF Records
Here’s a simple strategy to get more emails through to your list – send text based email.  Typically when sending email you have the choice of sending the email as HTML, Plain Text, or both. I realize that text based emails don’t allow for any HTML formatting, templates, graphics, etc. You’re also at the disadvantage of not being able to track open rates for your email. But you can still track click through rates on text emails by using tracking links in each email. In my opinion open rates are highly overrated. If you’re doing email marketing for business dollars generated always trump open rates.

Why send plain text email?  Because plain text email is less likely to get tagged as SPAM. I know my text email suggestion might be a hard pill to swallow, so I have an additional suggestion . . . Do a limited test to your email list with just text emails. See if there is enough of a difference to justify all text emails.

Setting up a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record is another small thing you can do to ensure more emails make it through. SPF records give legitimacy to your email by legitimizing (non-technical description) your email server. The setup process is a little technical, so I suggest consulting with an IT person familiar with SPF record setup. You can do a Google search on SPF records for more information.  

Sobering Email Marketing Statistics from the Field
Regardless of you using HTML or plain text emails to market your event . . . A majority of people aren’t going to open your email, that’s the reality of email marketing. Of the hundreds of emails I’ve sent for clients over the last 5 years, including multiple events, it’s rare to see an open rate over 50% - even with a list of a few hundred people. If you send emails weekly or more often, you’re probably looking at a 20-30% open rate. I’m not trying to be negative here – but merely outlining realistic expectations for your email marketing.

Give plain text emails a try on your next email campaign and setup your SPF records. With spam filters stopping more emails, you're going to have to try different things to get the message to your prospects. Last, but not least, my thanks goes out to Bob Britton for bringing the topic of text email and SPF records back to my attention.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Keeping Your Event List Engaged
• Don't Neglect Your Email List
• Event Marketing: Multiple Ways to Engage Your List
• Simple Customer List Building Suggestions
• Late Event Promotion - Big List Growth

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Promoting Your Event with Too Much Email

A few weeks ago I sat down with a client to discuss their email marketing efforts. One question that constantly gets brought up when talking about email marketing is, “How often should I email my list?” My response is always the same to everyone . . . “Email your list as often as possible – provided you can provide them with high quality content.” The client’s response was “But I don’t want to SPAM people.” I completely agreed with his concern, but it’s important to understand the context of spamming. You run the risk of SPAMMING people when you distribute lousy content. It's no mystery - we hate to be spammed.

The Typical Email Marketing Sequence
Lousy content usually takes the form of sales pitching people right from the start of an email campaign. Most email sequences usually go like this . . . “Buy Now, Hurry up, Last chance, etc.” When people look at your opt-in box, they’re already thinking “I’m probably going to get spammed if I put my information in here.”  You need to break their preconceived notion by giving a subscriber great reasons to sign up to your mailing list and delivering high quality. Your success with email marketing with increase tremendously when you start by building trust and credibility.

Start with Your Opt-in Box
Your email campaign starts with a great opt-in box. Have a prominent opt-in box above the fold with lots of subscriber benefits. Don’t put up one of those lame first name and email address boxes (with no other incentives). Last year, a client cringed with horror when I insisted they put up massive an opt-in box on their home page. The huge sign up area contained a bunch of prospect focused benefits that their target market actually cared about and took up half the home page. The oversized opt-in box with lots of prospect focused benefits generated over 7,500 email sign ups in less than 60 days.

Think in terms of Insider Info
If you’re setting up an email marketing campaign for your event, think in terms of insider info.  Get your subscribers content that’s “not available to the public.” People have an insatiable curiosity that can only be fed by getting the inside scoop - use that to your advantage. Just make sure that you’re getting people information that’s important to them.   Many event organizers make the mistake of providing people with information they think is important, not what their target market actually wants.  Think about it this way - If your emails are full of great content are people going to say . . .“I hope I don’t get another great email from them again.” Heck no!

Not everyone is opening your Email
Realize that regardless of the size of your email list, most people aren’t going to open your emails. Typical open rates for a double opt-in event email lists ranges from 20-50%. Don't be discouraged by the previous numbers. The more often you email the lower your opt-in rate is going to be - it's the reality of the situation. Think about how difficult it is for your to get through your own email on a daily basis. The easiest way to counter low open rates for your email is by having quality content.

Build Their Interest First!
How many emails should I send out for my event?  For the campaigns I’ve managed the typical sequence was 10 to 15 emails. Unless it was an existing email list, I never sent a sales email until the very end of the campaign.  IMPORTANT TIP: It’s significantly easier to sell a ton of advance sale tickets when you have people really excited for your event. How long your tickets are for sale rarely translates into bigger advance ticket sales. If your haven't build up enough demand for your event, people won't buy early. Focus on building rapport and excitement with your list before you try selling to them. People aren't going to buy from you if they feel hustled.

If you marketing for your event try to deliver great content and insider information before hounding people to buy.  You want to tickle people’s interest in your event and amp up ticket demand. If you try and sales pitch people from the get go, without establishing trust and rapport, you’ll scare them off.  Your email list is your single best event market conduit, don’t blow it by sending crappy email.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Event Marketing: Start Building Your List Early
• Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round
• Keeping Your Event List Engaged
• Don't Neglect Your Email List
• Event Marketing: Multiple Ways to Engage Your List
• Simple Customer List Building Suggestions
• Start Building Your List Early
• Late Event Promotion - Big List Growth
• Building Your List Above the Fold
• Are You Opting-In Above the Fold?
• Form Placement and Growing Your List
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Did You Buy a Snickers Bar Yet?

Are you looking for advertising ideas for your business or event? Do yourself a favor and DON’T follow Super Bowl commercials as an advertising template. It’s my opinion that most companies advertising during the Super Bowl are wasting a tremendous amount of money.  Ask yourself the following question - Can you actually remember what the most entertaining ads were selling? If you ask most people the previous question - they’ll go all fuzzy on you.  The most entertaining Super Bowl ads are usually total flops for getting people to buy.

Focus on Selling – Not Entertaining
When it comes to advertising it’s important not to confuse advertising that entertains with advertising that actually sells.  This belief comes from spending way too much time (in a good way) with some of the best direct response marketers on planet Earth.  If you look, most Super Bowl ads are almost entirely judged on entertainment value. Yeah there were entertaining ads that made me laugh.  Honestly, did Abe Bogota and Betty White actually get you to buy a Snickers bar? Probably not. The reason that huge companies like Coke and Anheuser-Busch can get away with funny commercials is because they have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on advertising.  Most event organizers don’t enjoy such a luxury.

Great Advice From an Advertising Master
David Ogilvy, The Pope of Modern Advertising, is famous for saying "I do not regard advertising as entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information.” The purpose of advertising is to sell. Ogilvy believed that “Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything."  With Ogilvy, advertising was tied to bottom line results. The thing that constantly cracks me up is all the advertising agencies that revere David Ogilvy, yet completely ignore his most basic tenants.

Halfway Decent Ads
Looking back, the best ads were from Denny’s and Google. In my opinion, the previously mentioned companies created ads with a result in mind. Denny’s gives away free food as a loss leader. Last year, Denny’s Grand Slam Giveaway packed their restaurants. Do you think all those people are going to Denny’s and ONLY getting a FREE?  Consider this . . . “Every $2 coffee translates into something like $1.70 profit. If 1.5 million of the freeloaders spring for coffee, the revenues will hover around $2.5 million. Experts estimate that 2009’s giveaway generated roughly $50 million through free advertising.” (Source: “Denny's Free Grand Slam Breakfasts, and the Cost of Free Publicity by Bruce Watson - Daily Finance.com)  Google slyly featured all the neat little things their search engine can do for you. The Google commercial was clean and brutally simple – type something in, hit search, and get results.  Search results come up with advertising worth billions of dollars to Google.

Here is a quick update of Denny's Free Grand Slam giveaway as of 02/10/2010 from a Denny's Press Release:

• Denny's served approximately 2 million Grand Slams across the U.S. Some restaurants served more than 200 breakfasts an hour, however, this increase from last year was offset by bad weather across the country.
• There were approximately 49 million hits on Denny's website since the Super Bowl giveaway was announced; almost 24 million hits since Sunday's Super Bowl commercials.
• Average wait time for Grand Slams was approximately fifteen to thirty minutes.
• Tables were turned approximately every fifteen minutes.
• Denny's was a top ten trending topic on Twitter for Grand Slam Day and during the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl.
• Close to 300,000 have already registered for the new Denny's Rewards program. The first 500,000 people who sign up will receive a Free Burger and Fries.

Bottom Line Results
When advertising your event, regardless of medium, focus on selling your event.  Don’t make entertainment a goal of your advertising. Tie every ad for your event into bottom line result. Make your event advertising and investment, not an entertainment expense.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• David Ogilvy on Direct Response Marketing
• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• Advertising and Marketing that Sells
• Providing Massive Value in Your Marketing and Advertising

“There's a Sucker Born Every Minute”

Do you know who said, “There's a sucker born every minute”? Most people respond with, “It was P.T. Barnum” Yet if you do some historical digging, you’ll find out that Barnum NEVER said the infamous quote most attributed to him. It wasn’t until I read “There’s a Customer Born Every Minute: P.T. Barnum's Secrets to Business Success” by Joe Vitale that I was set straight.  Vitale points out that nobody has been able to directly attribute the “sucker” quote to Barnum. You won’t find the quote in any of Barnum’s writing or speeches.  It was also pointed out that the “sucker” quote was out of character with Barnum’s personal and business beliefs.

So where did the quote come from? The quote most likely came from one of Barnum’s competitors. Read more about the “There's a sucker born every minute” misquote over at HistoryBuff.com. I tripled checked the misquote over the telephone with Kathleen Maher, Executive Director, of The Barnum Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She empathatically insisted there is no evidence to support the supposed "Sucker" quote.

Staged Fights
Yes, Barnum did believe in hyping the heck out of his events. He even went so far as to stage fights during live performances. But Barnum also realized that the customer was always in charge.  If the customer felt that Barnum wasn’t able to deliver on his fantastic promises, they wouldn’t pay up or find something else to do. No event can afford to treat their attendees like suckers.

150 Years Later – You Have Just One Shot
Over one hundred and fifty years later, not much has changed in terms of the fundamentals of marketing and promoting events. Today you have just one shot to impress your customer with your event.  Delivering an extraordinary experience is especially crucial to recurring events.  If you don’t deliver a great event experience, people will find other things to do.  Don't forget the competition! Talented people are creating new events to compete with your event all the time. Don’t count on the competition slowing down (even during times of economic hardship).  Certain segments of the event industry have actually flourished during economic crisis. It is in your best interest to focus intently on creating events that leave your attendees satiated beyond belief.  You want your attendees leaving your event saying “That was amazing – I want to do it again.”

Focus on the Customer, Not the Sucker
The title of Joe Vitale's book "There’s a Customer Born Every Minute" sums up the mindset of the most successful event promoters and marketers. There are new customers coming into your marketplace all the time. In order for your event to thrive, you must find more effective ways to market and promote your even, plus execute a truly great event.

Below is a collection of articles outlining some of Barnum's event promotion strategies that you can integrate into the marketing of your event.

• P.T. Barnum on Advertising
• Barnum & Hyping Up Your Event
• Curiosity Advertising P.T. Barnum Style
• Your Event, Stories, and P.T. Barnum
• The World’s Best Event Promoter Is . . .
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience
• Online Marketing Like P.T. Barnum
• More Marketing Like P.T. Barnum (Part II)

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

The Media and Making Your Web Address Count

Is getting your company or event featured in an article enough to drive traffic to your web site? Probably not. Too many business people jump up and down with unbridled enthusiasm because they were featured in their local media. I call it the “Hey, look at us!” syndrome. Don’t get me wrong, publicity is great – especially free publicity. But you need to leverage publicity the right way. Let me put it to you this way . . . The end result of publicity is more important than the actual publicity itself.  You should constantly ask yourself, "What is this publicity going to do for us?"

Getting Featured Online and Off
Last week a client was featured in both the online and offline versions of our local newspaper. The feature article was very positive and included the client’s web address (but not as an active link online). According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations the local newspaper has a daily circulation of 124,987. Online the paper’s web site has an estimated 230,000 visitors per month according to Quantcast.com. With the previous numbers one would think having your web address included in a positive article would generate a decent web traffic burst. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. According to Google Analytics the client’s web site received just 10 extra visitors per day when the article was featured. Getting your name in the paper these days simply isn’t enough. You need to think about how your publicity is going to benefit you.

Realty – Most Web Users are Getting Lazier
It’s important to remember that the online attention span of the typical web users is getting shorter and shorter. If a web site doesn’t load in a few second or it isn’t easy to understand and navigate, the user usually bolts to a competitor’s web site. It's important to always keep in mind the User Attention Span. Just because your web address is included in an article, online or off, doesn’t mean people will visit your site. Remember that your consumers are bombarded with way too much advertising, yet still want instant gratification. You can't expect them to do something like copy and paste a web address from an article into the address bar. Focus on leading the user down a given path.

Make It Easy to Click on Your Address
There are two simple things you can do to get more way more leverage from your web address in the media. First, make sure any online reference to your web address includes an actual HTML link to your site. If you find an article online about your event or company that doesn’t include an actual link, get in contact with the publication immediately. A friendly telephone call can go a long way. For sake of immediacy, don't try to rely on email. Correcting media references offline is a little more difficult. Print is near impossible to change after the ink dries. Be proactive with print publications. Your best bet is to ask the publication to finish the article with “For more information about XYZ, please visit the XYZ web site: XYZ.com.” That one sentence can go a long way to driving tons of free traffic to your web site. In order to get publicity to work, you need to make it easy and compelling for people to find out more about you. A well positioned web address helps tremendously.

Check out the articles below for additional information on getting the most from free publicity.

• Press Releases and Your Event Marketing
• The Press Conference Lesson on Event Marketing
• Be Vigilant About Your Event Details and the Media
• The User Attention Span

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Event Promotions and Shortening Your Domain Name
  
• Your Domain Name and Television Advertising
• Your Domain Name and Radio Advertising
  
  
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• How to Get Them To Your Event
  
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Event Marketing: Your Email List - Quality versus Quantity

It’s slightly aggravating when I hear people bragging about email their email list size. You've probably heard the same from some local advertising or marketing firm. Here in Rochester, NY, we have a local advertising company that tries to impress everyone with their ridiculously large email list. Don’t be fooled by big email lists! The size of an email list is rarely related to your return on investment from that list. In many cases email lists are haphazardly thrown together. Internet marketing dude Frank Kern said it best, “It's not about the size of the list. It's about the quality of the relationship you build with the list.” You should strongly consider Frank's advice, he made over $150,000 in 20 minutes with an email list of less than 800 people.

If you’re using an email list to market your event, focus on building a high quality list that you can engage in meaningful conversion. The relationship you have with your list is huge factor in determining how many people actually buy. It’s also imperative that you vet any partner lists that you might use to market or promote your event. Below are a few ideas you need to consider . . .

Lessons from the Battlefield
My own client projects have helped to drive home the quality versus quantity ideology. Recently, one client sold $61,450 worth of event tickets in 6 just days with a house list of 3,100 people. Their list of 3,100 people was grown from zero, all online, in less than 2 months with organic traffic. Another client who focuses on establishing an online relationship with his list is doing amazing at quickly converting new list prospects into buyers. He’s able to convert over 40% of new subscribers to his list into buying customers in less than 30 days. The previous examples are not meant to brag, but merely to impress what one can accomplish.

• Ask yourself, “What can I start doing today to have a better relationship with my list?”

Joint Ventures/Cross promoting
If you’re considering a joint venture or cross promotion for your event, check some of the most basic metrics of your partner’s email list. Here are some simple questions you need to ask when marketing your event to another list:

• Where the names and email address collected online or offline?
• Is the list segmented? (leads versus customers) 
• Is the list single or double opt-in? (double opt-ins are better)
• What is the average open rate? (look for a minimum of 20%)
• What are the click through rate?
• How often is the list emailed?
• What are the average subscribe and unsubscribe rates?
• When an offer is made what are the conversion rates?

There are other important questions you should ask, but most people neglect to find out the basics. If you find out the answers to the above questions, you’ll be well ahead of the pack.

You Need Your Own List!
At the end of the day a high quality house list is the single best list for promoting and marketing your event.  I’ve seen a house email list of 3,100 people completely crush a partner list of 23,000. Both lists had very similar demographics and psychographic profiles. Another client promoted their event using a partner list almost twice the size of their house list. The client’s own house list generated 98% of total revenue. If you haven’t started your list for marketing and promoting your event, start one today! Check out the helpful resources below to get you started.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Event Marketing: Start Building Your List Early
• Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round
• Keeping Your Event List Engaged
• Don't Neglect Your Email List
• Event Marketing: Multiple Ways to Engage Your List
• Simple Customer List Building Suggestions
• Start Building Your List Early
• Late Event Promotion - Big List Growth
• Building Your List Above the Fold
• Are You Opting-In Above the Fold?
• Form Placement and Growing Your List
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

A Simple Formula to Pack Your Event

Over the last few years I've looked long and hard at killer tactics that sell out events. As an event planner or organizer, it's in your best interest to methodically look around your own industry and outside your industry for successful event marketing strategies that you can adopt. A casual look will show you that the simple things usually work better than the complex. Some of my best event marketing strategies (ideas that have made clients hundreds of thousands of dollars) have come from unrelated marketplaces. Through all my observations and experiences I've formulated a very simple formula that any event organizer can use to pack their event. Here is the formula:

 Hype + Massive Value = Monstrous Demand

The formula above might seem overly simplistic, but it works when you put into practice.

Hype
Yes, it's extremely important to hype up your event!  Hype is a strategy right out of P.T. Barnum's playbook. Barnum was a master at using the right amount of hype to pack his events. Unfortunately, most event organizers, planners, and marketers completely screw up how they leverage hype. In most cases events are under hyped. Don't be afraid to be loud and proud trumpeting the benefits of your event! Let people know what's in it for them. This next part is really important . . . if you're going to hype your event, you damn well better make sure you exceed your patron's expectations. Yes, it is possible to over hype, but only if you don't deliver on the promises you make to the consumer in your advertising.

+ Massive Value
Your hype needs to be followed up with massive value. If you hype your event and then fall short of the consumers expectations, your dooming your event. Focus on delivering massive value with your event by exceeding your customer's expectations. You know you've nailed it when most of your customers leave your event saying "That was amazing!" Don't forget that you can also create value for your event before it even begins. Can you think of ways to let people experience your event before they've even attended? For more info on delivering value beforehand, check out "Front Loading Value for Your Next Event." The Internet has made "front loading value" easy and inexpensive. Value is such a powerful factor in your event marketing and promotion that it can create its' own demand. If you do nothing more than focus on providing massive value for your event, it's hard to go wrong.

= Monstrous Demand
Here is formula's payoff . . . When you couple hype for your event with massive value, you create monstrous demand. My favorite example of monstrous demand is the World's Largest Disco in Buffalo New York. In 2009, the "Disco" sold out over three months before the event takes place.  That's 7000+ tickets selling between $50-$150 that nobody can purchase anymore. You know you've hit it when people are lining up to attend your event like a pack of ravenously hungry wolves. Do everything you ethically can to stoke demand. Ridiculously high demand is the key doing really well with advance ticket sales.

Recurring Events
A big key to seeing success with the formula above is having a recurring event. I understand for some people having a recurring event isn't possible. If you aren't going to have a recurring event, it's even more important to deliver value on the front end. If you have a recurring event, make sure you're collecting feedback from attendees. Here is a counter intuitive way to collect feedback, World's Largest Disco style. Give it a shot and let me know how it turns out.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Being a World Class Event Promoter (the P.T. Barnum Way)
• Front Loading Value for Your Next Event
• Event Promotion: Using Video to Front Load Event Value
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• How to Get Them To Your Event
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience
• Leveraging Your Sponsor's Digital Resources
  

• The Event Promotion System - Get 'FREE' Event Promotion & Marketing Video

How to Sell Out Your Event

If you want to sell out your event, you need to set the demand level for your event higher than your supply of tickets. The previous suggestion might seem like it’s straight out of the book “Thank You Very Much, Dr. Obvious!" But, very few event organizers and planners ever focus on creating a high level of demand for their event. When it comes time to sell tickets for their event, the ticket sales fall miserably sort of expectations. You need to find ways to set the demand level for your event as high as ethically possible.

The P.T. Barnum Way
One of the easiest ways to set the demand level for your event higher is by hyping your event.  The suggestion is straight from the playbook of P.T. Barnum. You’re event marketing should never be humdrum. You need to inject excitement and intrigue into all your event marketing and promotion. Get the target market so excited for your event that they're running to get their wallets and buy from you.

Let me give you a quick example from the air show industry. Which of the following event headlines is more likely to catch an air show prospect’s attention?

Example #1: “Come Out and Enjoy the 2009 XYZ International Air Show.”

- OR -

Example #2: “Experience Flight in a Way That Will Leave You in Awe! Come out and Enjoy 4 Hours of Aerial Spectacle & Heart Pounding Excitement, featuring the Best Pilots in the World.”

Don’t Make Your Event Sound Boring
How excited would you be to attend a BORING event? Too many event organizers promote and market their events in a boring manner. Don’t make the same mistake. Whenever you market or advertise your event, make it sound intriguing and exciting to your target market. I can’t remember who said it, but “the greatest sin in advertising is being boring.” Get your prospect to say to themselves “I want to do that!” If you're event organizer or planner, focus on your target market's wants and desires.

Balancing Event Marketing Hype & Delivering on the Promise!
If you’re really going to hype your event, the level of hype can’t be greater than your patron’s expectations or the level of service you can deliver. Over hyping your event and under delivering is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. It is very important that you do everything possible to under promise and over deliver.

Hype & Exceeding the Patron’s Expectations
If you exceed your event attendee’s expectations, regardless of the level of hype, the demand level for your event can go through the roof.  Just one happy event attendee will tell a number of other people about their great experience at your event. It's word of mouth advertising and it costs you nothing!

One Man = $17,500.00 in Advance Ticket Sales
Last weekend a Toronto businessman paid $175.00 to get access to an exclusive VIP Chalet at a FREE air show. The $175 dollars he and others paid got him access to a very nice chalet with open bar and all you can eat catered food. Before the air show finished the businessman was so satisfied with his experience that he inquired about purchasing 100 VIP tickets (at $175 each) for next year’s air show. That's $17,500 of advance ticket sales! The business man wasn't the only person to inquire about tickets for next year's air show. Since the show ended, more attendees have already offered to buy tickets for next year's air show and it's still a year away. If you can get people to your event and show them an amazing time, they'll line up in droves to come again. 

Below you will find a small collection P.T. Barnum posts that will help you with hyping your event. There is at least one good idea waiting for you to use with your event. Please take the time to read through a few posts:

• P.T. Barnum on Advertising
• Barnum & Hyping Up Your Event
• Curiosity Advertising P.T. Barnum Style
• Your Event, Stories, and P.T. Barnum
• The World’s Best Event Promoter Is . . .
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience
• Online Marketing Like P.T. Barnum
• More Marketing Like P.T. Barnum (Part II)

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Turn Your Event Into an Experience
• How to Get Them To Your Event
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early
• Leveraging Your Sponsor's Digital Resources

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training
  

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Getting Detailed Feedback To Improve Your Event

If you want to truly improve your event, you need to identify what people disliked about your event. At first thought the previous suggestion might seem a bit counter intuitive, if not scary. Too many event organizers and planners are apt to only be interested in positive feedback. Don’t be lured into the same trap! A few months ago I wrote a post “A Negative Question to Create a Better Event.” The post suggested a counterintuitive way of getting feedback for one’s event. You should honestly consider the advice outlined in the post. It came from a guy who sells out his event of 7,000+ people more than 30 days in advance. Last month, I had an opportunity to put into practice the advice from “A Negative Question to Create a Better Event.” Below is a brief synopsis of the surprising results.

The Negative Feedback Case Study – Not Expected
During the last weekend of May a local client held their annual air show. Immediately after the event, people started sending in their unsolicited feedback.  About 35 people sent in email feedback over a three day span. For the most part, the patron feedback was very positive and general in nature.

Four days after the event, I sent out a thank you email with a survey link.  The email included a link that brought visitors to a page with one simple survey question . . . “What DIDN’T you like about the event?” Below the survey question was a simple text box form.  In a little over a week’s time 375 people sent in their feedback. The survey results identified very specific issues people had with the event. That wasn’t the case with the unsolicited feedback. Here is something really interesting . . .  Even though the survey asked people what they didn’t like about the event, people still sent in a ton of positive feedback.  Because the event is recurring, all of the collected feedback can now be used to improve the event.

You Must Ask for Feedback
Here is one of the most important lessons I learned over the years regarding event marketing and promotion . . . you have to actively engage your patrons to send event feedback.  Never expect patrons to just email you feedback.  It never works that way. After two months only about 40 people sent in their unsolicited feedback. Compare that with the almost 400 people who sent into detailed feedback when prompted. If you’re truly dedicated to creating a great event (especially if it’s a recurring event) don’t be afraid to collect negative feedback.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• A Negative Question to Create a Better Event
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience
• How to Get Them To Your Event
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early
• Leveraging Your Sponsor's Digital Resources

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Getting More Opt-ins & Making More Money Online

A few weeks ago I was listening to an audio interview with Tim Ash.  Tim wrote an excellent book on Landing Page Optimization.  He’s an expert on getting people to take specific actions after they get to a web site.  During the interview, Tim gave one piece of very simple (yet highly effective) advice. His advice was especially important from a list building perspective.  Here is Tim's advice - "When you’re collecting information online, collect the minimum amount of information to complete the transaction." It’s important to think of Tim’s advice from the user’s perspective . . .

Remember – Upfront - They Don’t Know or Trust You!
Would you give a complete stranger personal information about yourself?  I’m guessing probably not. The previous question is directly applicable to collecting information online. A big mistake made when trying to collect personal information online is asking for too much information on the first visit. In most cases you have zero rapport with a prospect that just arrived at your web site. The more information you ask from a first time web visitor, the more difficult it is to collect information.  I’ve seen web sites that ask from full mailing addresses, fax number, and cell phone (all as required fields) up front.  As a result, less people are going to sign up.

Gain Some Trust
Your initial focus needs to be on establishing trust and credibility with your web site user. You can start to establish trust by offering your prospect something they perceive as valuable. It could be a free report, video, or audio.  You might offer some great articles for free or insider information. It is crucial to focus on the prospect’s wants and needs, NOT what you think is important to them.  The better you know your market, the better you can position information for them. The same advice rings true when planning an event . . . The best events are those built specifically for the target market – not for the event organizer’s ego.

Collecting Info Online - Where to Start
I suggest starting with the bare minimum for online data collection, first name and email address. Have any easy way for people to opt out of your list and have sound privacy policies in place. You can collect more information as you grow rapport with your prospect over time.  The best way to grow rapport over time is to give additional information that the prospect deems as valuable.

Seeing too many information can fields makes user apprehensive, regardless of those fields being required.  When collecting personal information online . . . Start with first name and email address, build trust, then go from there.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Simple Customer List Building Suggestions
• Start Building Your List Early
• Late Event Promotion - Big List Growth
• Building Your List Above the Fold
• Are You Opting-In Above the Fold?
• Form Placement and Growing Your List
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Event Search Marketing and Your Description Tag

When it comes to search engine optimization and event promotion, simple things can have big impact. Search Engine Marketing is critical in your event marketing and promotion efforts. Check out "Leveraging Your Event Promotion with SEO." One easy SEO improvement, with a high level of impact, is crafting a compelling description tag. The description tag is used to tell an internet searcher what a particular page is all about. Each page on your event web site should have its’ own unique description tag. 

An Example
Below is a shameless self-promotion example. The section highlighted in Red is the description tag.

If They’re Searching - They’re at Least Curious About Your Event
Keep this in mind when writing a description tag . . . Most people searching for your event web site are at least curious about your event.  When is the last time you used a search engine to look up something of no interest to you?  If a searcher finds a search listing for your web site in the search engine you want them to click on your link, not the competitions. A strong description tags helps in getting people to click on your web site link.

Make Your Description Tags Compelling to Click
Description tags shouldn’t be boring or mundane.  Think of your description tag as a way to get people to click on your link on the search engine results page.  Does your description tag give someone a compelling reason to click? The best description tags give internet searchers a compelling reason to click.

A Bad Example
Here is an example of a bad or inaccurate description tag for an event or business. It gives the reader almost no incentive to click. Be sure you're not making the same mistake.

Balance Click'ability and Search'ability
Some search marketing specialist might suggest that you try to include search relevant keywords in your description tag.  I would argue that the best tag for search relevant keywords is your title tag. Description tags don't carry as much importance as the title tags in search engine placement. Therefore keep your description tag focused on getting people to click on the link.  Think of your description tag as the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) for individual web pages on your event site.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Event Marketing and Search Engines
• Search Engine Optimization and Your Event Marketing
• Free Qualified Traffic For Your Site
• The Simplest SEO Technique
• Are You Targeting The Correct Search Keywords?

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Be Vigilant About Your Event Details and the Media

Do you have an upcoming event that could benefit from media coverage?  If you’re preparing to release information about your event publicly, you need to be extra vigilant right after information is released to the public.  All it takes is one little piece of inaccurate information to create a maelstrom of headaches.

Real World Example
Let me give you an example . . . A few months ago a client held a press conference to announce their upcoming air show.  In conjunction with the press conference, there was an official press release issued and great coverage by the media.  The press release contained one small inaccuracy (an event detail carried over from last year’s press release) that was no longer accurate. As a result, the media started reporting about the event with inaccurate information.  The local newspaper reported that the U.S. Navy Blue Angels were performing at the air show. In fact, the Blue Angels were not attending.  (When it comes to air shows, the Blue Angels attending an air show can make it or break it for event organizers.) The next day, local radio stations started to report the inaccurate information from the newspaper story. The radio station’s mindset was most likely . . . “If the newspaper is reporting it, it must be accurate.” One small piece of information created a tremendous amount of unnecessary stress for the event organizer.

Be Vigilant
When really important information about your event is released to the public (major performers, dates, times, ticket details, etc.) you must be extra vigilant. Despite the best efforts of everyone involved, honest mistakes can be made and information can be reported inaccurately. In today’s world of social media one inaccurate piece of information can get to the other side of the world in a matter of seconds.  You don’t need to go overboard, but a little vigilance can prevent hours or days worth of necessary headache. 

Quick Suggestions
There are a few simple things you can do to prevent inaccurate information from spreading through media outlets. The first place to start is to triple check any press releases that go out to the media. Have other people you know review your press release.  If you’re really invested in a project your objectivity goes down the more you look at something. In the example above, it was one simple sentence that resulted in a bunch of unnecessary stress. Get more info on - Press Releases and Your Event Marketing.

Online Champions
Another suggestion is to get members of your team to monitor the local media (television, radio, and print).  You might want to consider making use of an online champion.  Have your online champion (trusted team member) monitor the local media. They can let you know if there are any discrepancies in information.

Setup a Google Alert
You should also consider setting up a Google Alert regarding your event. Google Alerts allow you to ability to automatically monitor what's going on with your event in cyberspace. Get more information about - Google Alerts and Your Event.

All it takes is one small piece of inaccurate information and you’ll be left with hours or days worth of headaches. By putting some simple controls in place and by being proactive in the process you can prevent a great deal of stress in your life.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Simple Customer List Building Suggestions
• Start Building Your List Early
• Late Event Promotion - Big List Growth
• Building Your List Above the Fold
• Are You Opting-In Above the Fold?
• Form Placement and Growing Your List
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training

Leveraging Your Event Promotion with SEO

Search engine optimization is a critical part of your event marketing and promotion, especially if you have a recurring event. A properly optimized web site can drive tons of free traffic to your event web site. The more qualified people you have coming to your site the higher the user’s attention level.  Let’s face it . . . someone searching for “underwater basket weaving” isn’t going to show up to an air show event web site. A proper search engine strategy can also allow you to leverage your traditional marketing campaigns.  What’s more interesting is the interaction of search engine marketing with traditional advertising and promotion.

Here is a real life case study to consider. The event organizer spent in excess of $100,000 USD to advertise their local event. Their traditional advertising efforts included television, print, radio, and billboards. The brunt of their campaign started 30 days before the event date. For all of the money spent on traditional advertising, almost 50% of the traffic came as a result of search engine traffic. You can see a break down of the information below.

The graph above illustrates the importance that search engine optimization plays in your event marketing strategy. What’s even more interesting is that only about 28% of the traffic was a result of people directly typing in the domain name into the address bar. The event organizer put a tremendous amount of focus on driving people to the web site with their traditional advertising.  Additionally, the domain name for the event web site was very easy to remember. Yet, a majority of the people used the search engines to find the web site.

Below are some short articles to help you with search engine optimization ideas for your event web site.

• Event Marketing and Search Engines
• Search Engine Optimization and Your Event Marketing
• Free Qualified Traffic For Your Site
• The Simplest SEO Technique
• Are You Targeting The Correct Search Keywords?

Lost Opportunity - Seemingly Irrelevant Search Keywords . . .
Your event prospects aren’t always using obvious search terms to get to your web site. Check your web stats and see if you’re missing a search engine optimization opportunity.  One event planner that I recently started work with discovered that a large number of people were searching on a significant keyword that the event planner considered irrelevant. Seemingly irrelevant keywords are a huge opportunity cost. Make sure you optimize your web site for some of the valuable, yet obvious terms.

Your search engine optimization strategy is a crucial part of your overall event marketing and promotion strategy. If done properly, a well thought out search marketing strategy can significantly increase the effectiveness of all your traditional marketing.

Want to get more great info? Check out the articles below:

• Event Promotions and Shortening Your Domain Name
  
• Your Domain Name and Television Advertising
• Your Domain Name and Radio Advertising
  
  
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• How to Get Them To Your Event
  
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

• The Event Promotion System
  Get Your Free Event Promotion & Marketing Video Training