Outdoor Events & Advance Ticket Sales

Over the weekend I watched some advertising for a local event I really want to attend. The piece of advertising was a 30 second television commercial.  The television commercial illustrated the importance of keeping your marketing message, relevant, short, and easy to remember. One of the biggest mistakes event organizers and promoters make is trying to delivery the target audience too much information in one sitting.

Information Overload
The event promoter’s or event organizer’s mindset is usually, “How much information can I get into this one ad?” The end result is that so much information goes in to a piece of advertising that people get overwhelmed or just ignore the advertising.  Too much information can be as bad as too little advertising. Are event sponsors, dates, times, headliners, etc. important? Absolutely! Yet, if people aren’t at least interested in finding out more information about your event, they’re unlikely to attend. If your target audience is unlikely to attend all the previous information such as sponsors, dates, times, and your main attraction, risk becoming irrelevant.

Take Small Steps First
I’m a firm believer that if event organizers focused more on hitting people’s emotional hot buttons upfront, they would get more people interested in their event. When creating advertising for your event, regardless of the medium, concentrate on getting people interested in your event first. 

Keep your advertising simple, straightforward, and easy to remember.
Consider some of the ideas below:

• Create an attention grabbing headline or hook that hits their emotional hot buttons
  (their desires or fears). e.g. "The Heart Pounding Excitement of Flight!"
  
  
• What are the benefits the audience gets for attending your event? Use those in your advertising.
• A simple call to action, send them to your web site that has more information about the event.

Get Into Their Ego
When getting your marketing message across, focus on keeping things as simple and straightforward as possible. I can't recall who came up with the axiom, but you need to "get out of your ego and into their ego." In short, give the people what they want, not what you think they want. If you can get people to take a simple action, like visiting a web site, you’ll have a greater chance of selling them on your event.

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

• 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 Training