Outdoor Events & Advance Ticket Sales

Bear with me on this one, because it's crucial to the advertising and marketing efforts of your event ... and it's not what you think.

Every year, at the International Council of Air Shows' Convention, there is a huge discussion about how "our industry is aging out!" It's followed by charts and graphs breaking down the demographic profile of people attending air shows.

Air show chart and graph data is compiled by a biennial spectator survey. This survey includes a series of demographic questions. Yet there is one crucial question that is missing from the survey. When a spectator is asked their age range, there is no follow up question of, "are you the one who purchased a ticket to the airshow?"

Any guesses as to why not asking the purchase question could be an issue?

Because the person giving their age range might not be the same person purchasing the ticket. In this case, there is an older demographic responding to the survey. It's also important to note that the survey is administered by volunteers. And the survey is usually asked of adults, not an equal distribution of participants.

It's critical that you focus on who is buying the ticket to your event. Because if you took an age sample of people within a Disney park, you'd end up with a high percentage of 12-17 year olds. That said, the 12 to 17-year-olds aren't paying for the high-priced Disney vacation. It's probably Mom, Dad, Grandma, or Grandpa. They might even be taking out a second mortgage on the house just to pay for the whole thing.

Who's buying tickets to your event determines where you're spending your marketing and advertising dollars. Think about it. Several marketing channels have distinct demographic and psychographic dispositions. As the marketing great Dan Kennedy says (paraphrased), "nobody reads newspapers anymore, unless your over 50 and have a lot of money."

Kennedy then takes the above insight and applies it to advertising and marketing, "you have the right to discriminate who you do business with." Precisely how and where you spend your marketing and advertising dollars.
Which leads to two important questions:

Do you have detailed demographic and psychographic profiles of your event ticket buyers? Are you laser targeting them with all your advertising and marketing efforts?

That means you want to discriminate your advertising dollars against people who aren't remotely interested in attending your event. By ethically discriminating, you can avoid a lot of wasted advertising dollars.

It's slightly aggravating when people bragging about email their email list size. You've probably heard the same from some local advertising agency or marketing firm.

Here in Rochester, NY, there is a local advertising company that tries to impress everyone with their massive email list. "Look at how big our list is, pretty impressive, right?" Um, nope!

Don't be fooled by email list size! The size of an email list is rarely related to your return on investment from that list. In most cases, email lists are haphazardly thrown together. Those tend to be "the big ones."

Internet marketing dude Frank Kern has some sage advice on list size. "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 fewer than 800 people.

If you're using an email list to market your event, focus on building a high-quality email list. I know this sounds horribly cliched. The quality of the relationship you have with your email list is a huge factor in determining how many people buy tickets to or attend your event.

It's also imperative that you vet any partner lists that you might use to market or promote your event.
Many client projects, both inside and outside, the event industry have helped to drive home the quality versus quantity ideology.

A Canadian event sold $61,450 CAD 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, mostly from Google. The only information collected was a website visitor's first name and email address. Oh yeah, there was zero budget for advertising.

Another non-event companies that focused on establishing a meaningful online relationship with their list did amazing at quickly converting new list prospects into buyers. Using an automated 4-email sequence, they were able to convert over 30% of new email subscribers into buying customers in less than 30 days.

You need to ask yourself, "What can I do to have a better relationship with my email list?" Again, horribly clichéd, but massively important.

Want to get more event list advice? 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

Almost every morning starts for me at the gym. It usually involves some audio or video training and taking notes with Evernote. If you ask other people at my gym, they probably think I'm addicted to texting. For the most part, I stay in my own zone. Basically, I tune everything and everyone out.

There is an occasional distraction. Mostly from a long row of large televisions set up in the gym. For the most part, I ignore what's on TV while working out. But this morning was different.

I have no idea why, but there was a commercial for Flonase. It's a product that's used for seasonal allergies. Various networks showed the same Flonase commercial at least twice in 10 minutes, maybe three times. I thought to myself "hmm, I can't recall the last time that was on and so often." Perhaps it's allergy season?

Sure enough, a top Google Search listing revealed, "Allergy season kicks off as pollen counts explode nationwide" -CBS News, April 19th
That's a lot of coincidences. My best guess is that GlaxoSmithKline, the pharmaceutical company that makes Flonase, is spending massive advertising dollars now that "pollen counts explode nationwide" in the United States.

What do a runny nose, sneezing, and your event have to do with one another? A lot!

Without knowing anything else about allergy medications, would you spend the bulk of your advertising dollars during allergy season or at some other time?

Last year, two clients ran almost identical ads with similar targeting. I was able to identify two to three days were the same ads went into ticket selling overdrive. There was one day in particular where the advertisement return on ad spend was 2x to 5x higher and occasionally approached 10x.

Again, same ad and targeting (placements). The only difference was when the advertisement was displayed. As a result, client 2019 advertising campaigns will be adjusted accordingly.

When you spend your advertising dollars can have a massive impact on your Return On Ad Spend. Every event is going to be a little different. Thus, your advertising approach is going to be unique.

Are you using an advertising timing strategy that is directly linked to your ticket sales? Can you back up your approach with absolute conviction and hard data?

The difference in advertising effectiveness, just based on when you run advertising is extraordinary. It could also save you a mint on your advertising spend. Or, turn your advertising into a bankable investment. Your timing is critical!

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

• P.T. Barnum on Advertising
• Online Marketing Like P.T. Barnum (Part I)
• Online Marketing Like P.T. Barnum (Part II)
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• How to Get Them To Your Event
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

Do you ever reuse advertising for your event? As humans, we have this drive to continually create something new. This frequently happens when it comes to advertising for events. We often try so hard to create something new that we forget to step back and to figure out what actually works.

I would argue that event organizers are better off rerunning an ad (or a web site) that gets a decent response. As opposed to trying to create something new for creativity's sake. The cost of creativity is usually your time and money.

A great success model to emulate is traditional direct response advertising. The magic of direct response ads are that they are rooted in great headlines and compelling body copy. Some of the most successful advertisements in history have been run for years without any changes.

Finding a winning ad has never been more straightforward. You can track advertising effectiveness with Google Analytics. Let's use print advertising as an example. Make sure that all your print ads include a powerful call to action that provides for your web address.

You might want to consider running different domain names for various ads. Specific domain names make it a little easier to test your ads. After the ads have run, go back to Analytics and see which ad drove the most people to your web site. The ad that drove the most people to your web site might be the winner. In short, you want to get the trend line to go up. The above example lacks specific details but should give you some ideas to start.

When advertising and marketing for your event, you a far better off going with something that you know works. Why mess with something that is going to help put "butts in seats"?

Countless dollars are wasted when event organizers regularly create new advertising and never track the results. Find the ad that works and don't be afraid to use it over and over. You can create a new ad when your winner stops paying you dividends.

One event client reused the same ticket sales page for over eight years. That same sales page sold more than $500,000 USD of VIP tickets to a free event.

As the old cliche goes, "don't judge a book by its cover." If you have an advertising piece that works, keep running it until it doesn't work. Forget people's opinions, go with what the hard data shows you!

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