Outdoor Events & Advance Ticket Sales

Here's a recurring principal of mine and bears repeating. The irony of what follows annoys the heck out of event organizers, yet they don't have any good answers.

It is absolutely fascinating to ask event organizers the following question, "why do people buy tickets (attend) your event?" The answers are quite diverse, even within a given organization. Things get even more distressing when you compare the answers given by event organizers with actual event attendees.

How so? Because the answers given by event attendees are often diametrically opposed to the very people organizing an event. Which begs a pivotal question, "how can you effectively advertise and market your event, if you don't know why people attend?"

Failure to provide good answers, to the previous question, is the biggest reason for wasted advertising dollars. It's like trying to sell a juicy hamburger to a strict vegan ... good luck with that!

You can take the question above one step further and ask, "how can you grow your event if you don't know the biggest reason people attend?" I'm not sure if you can. Because eventually you'll run out of "one and done" attendees.

Most events fail because of their inability to objectively answer the questions above.

Next time you get the opportunity, even at your event, ask your event attendees, "what's the biggest reason you purchased a ticket to our event?"

Here are some additional articles on planning a successful event:

• The Importance of Market Research in Planning Your Event
• An Extremely Dangerous Event Planning Mistake
• Your Event Promotion and Marketing Strategy - Start Point
• Event Planning: The Customer Avatar and Your Event
• Two Amazingly Powerful Event Survey Questions
• A Killer Social Media Promotion Strategy for Your Event