Outdoor Events & Advance Ticket Sales

Next time you’re in your favorite book store or grocery store, take a closer look at the magazine rack. There are more than a few good event marketing and promotion ideas waiting for you in the magazine section.  Pay specific attention to the cover of your favorite magazine. Notice all the various headlines on the front cover of magazines?  The purpose of a good headline is to attract your attention and get you to want more information.  In the case of magazines, it’s to get you to open up the magazine and hopefully buy it. You can use the same headline methodology to get people to read your various pieces of event promotion.

Reverse Engineering a Great Headline
Every event should have a compelling headline that draws in their target market. Are there any magazines in the same market as your event?  Could you take one of the headlines from an industry magazine and reword it (be careful not plagiarize)? 

Keep a Swap File
You might want to consider keeping a swap file of various headlines that could be used to advertise your event. A swap file is a physical or digital collect of great headlines that can be reworded for your own marketing purposes. One piece of advice, don’t just swap out words. Your new headline needs to make perfect sense to your target market. Too many people make the mistake of just rewording classic headlines. Make sure that the context of your new wording makes sense.

Test Your Event Headlines
If you really want to go the distance, test your headline with some people from the event’s target market.  If a test subject reads your headline and gives you good feedback, you’re reasonably assured that you have a good headline. Never assume that just because you think it’s great that your target market will agree with you. Always test your marketing!

Multiple Uses for Your Event Headlines
You could probably use your re-engineered headline for a number of various marketing materials for you event including: billboards, posters, online marketing, newspaper ads, etc. For all the cool technology we have in this world, words still sell. Having a great headline or two can really boost your event marketing and promotion efforts. If you don’t believe that headlines are that powerful, I invite you to Google something.  Google makes billions of dollars on its’ Adwords advertising engine. Google’s ads are predominately simple text ads.

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

• Promotional Headlines for Your Event
  
• Does Your Headline Grab Their Undivided Attention
• Advertising and Marketing that Sells
  
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• How to Get Them To Your Event
  
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

• The Event Promotion System
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