Outdoor Events & Advance Ticket Sales

  If you haven't already, please start here: How to Generate Leads & Sell Advance Tickets with Your Event Web Site - Part I


Getting Them to Opt-in
Lead generation on your event web site should take the form of a well-thought-out opt-in box. Put your opt-in box on the home page, above the fold. Your opt-in box needs to give visitors a convincing reason to give you their personal information. Consider offering exclusive ticket discounts, a downloadable event guide, or "Insider" information to entice sign-ups. Go beyond an opt-in box that just says, “Join our newsletter.” Offer a benefit with enough value for a visitor to give you their name and e-mail address. Use feedback you’ve collected from your target market as a key indicator as to what is important to them. A client of mine shared a previously unreleased event performer schedule with their e-mail list. This was a highly-effective incentive that drove opt-ins.

There is a big difference between an event web site and an event web site that lives up to its potential. A dedicated event web site is one of the best lead-generation tools in your event marketing arsenal. Heck, in many cases it’s better than any social media platform. Frank Kern, a top Internet marketing guru, summed up online lead generation like this: “Absolutely nothing can replace the significance, importance, and long-term profitability of having a good targeted list with which you have an excellent relationship.” Your web site is critical in lead generation.

Over the past ten years, I’ve witnessed the amazing results of well-executed online lead generation campaigns. In 2008, a client used their event web site to generate 4,000 brand-new leads. They were able to convert 31% of those online leads into over $100,000 of advance ticket sales. What follows is a brief outline of their simple strategy. You can use the same strategy to generate high-quality leads online, and then convert those leads into advance ticket sales.

If you haven't already and to get the most from this post, please be sure to start with reading these two post:

• What Nobody Will Ever Tell You About Promoting Your Event
  
• The 3% or LESS Rule of Event Promotion

To truly leverage The 3% or LESS Rule, you must couple targeting with tracking. That means that every single advertising, PR, or marketing piece for your event can be tracked to a quantifiable result via hard data.

What are results? The result needs to be a click to your website, an online lead generated, or somebody purchasing a ticket to your event. Media impressions don’t count!

Any event can use tracking to eliminate wasteful ad spending. If you cannot track marketing or advertising spend to a certain result, don’t engage in that activity. This might seem like a harsh recommendation. It doesn’t matter if it’s an offline or online medium. Over the last 18 years, I’ve seen millions of dollars and countless hours wasted on ineffective event marketing. As an event producer, you need to answer the following with absolute certainty: “What’s our most effective form of advertising? And can we quantify it with hard data?”

The 3% or LESS Rule

Here’s the continuation of What Nobody Will Ever Tell You About Promoting Your Event . . .

Ready for a mental event promotion challenge? Accepting that only 3% or LESS of your local population is predisposed to attend your event is a good thing. How so? If you and your event team focus on those most interested, you will significantly boost the effectiveness of all your advertising. Think of the 3% rule as a precision targeting method.

A critical component of targeting is channel selection. You need to identify which marketing channels provide you maximum impact for delivering your advertisements. Clients have run the same ad on two different channels with massive differences in response rates. Make sure you select only the best marketing channels.

What if there is a way to increase the effectiveness of ALL your event promotion and marketing overnight? That means record advance revenue and attendance, while saving huge amounts of time and money. You're probably thinking, "This sounds like one of those bad late-night infomercials!" Bear with me because you're about to discover a powerful marketing strategy used by some of the most successful businesses in the world. Most event organizers and producers aren't even aware of its existence.

Years ago, I discovered the world of Chet Holmes. He has been referred to as "America's greatest business growth expert." This title was earned through Chet's groundbreaking work with Fortune 500 companies like American Express, Warner Brothers, Citibank, Estee Lauder, and several others. He even managed nine business divisions for Charlie Munger (Warren Buffet's business partner at Berkshire Hathaway).1 Over the span of his career, Chet conducted a twenty-year study of consumer buying behavior. His findings concluded that only 3 percent of consumers are willing to "buy now, right now." This buying propensity is universal regardless of industry. It could be a piece of furniture, professional service or even office equipment. After digging into the study, I asked the question, "Are Chet’s findings applicable to the event industry?"

At an annual event convention, I attend every year, there is at least one dedicated education session on social media. The social media sessions are one of the most attended sessions at the convention.

One year at one of the social media marketing sessions, a woman by the name of Kerry Ward the single best social media marketing tip anyone could adopt: “If you do anything with social media make sure you track the effectiveness of your efforts.” Some people take issues with such simple advice. The irony is that not only is the advice simple, it is also amazingly powerful!