Outdoor Events & Advance Ticket Sales

In case you missed the news reports ...

In mid-April, the "One World: Together at Home" virtual concert raised over $125 million USD. Online event proceeds are earmarked to help global healthcare workers and those affected by the Coronavirus pandemic.

If you haven't already, take a moment to visit Google News and read through a few articles.

Granted, you probably don't have a ton of music superstars on your speed dial. But, the "Together at Home" event is an excellent example of how event organizers are breaking the traditional event mold. If you can't hold your event live, technology allows you to take your event online.

Is it possible for every event to go virtual? Probably not. With that said, here's a suggestion.

Keep a watchful eye in the weeks and months ahead. And ask yourself, is their an idea or strategy that you can ethically borrow for your event?

As I've mentioned previously, event organizers are going to figure out how to weather this unprecedented storm. You're going to want to pay close attention to results and how those results were generated.

Want to get more advice on planning and promoting a great event? Check out the articles below:

• The BIGGEST Secret to a Successful Event
• Event Planning - The Customer Avatar and Your Event
• When to Start Selling Tickets to Your Event
• A Negative Question to Create a Better Event
• Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round
• How to Get Them To Your Event
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early

In his book, Ogilvy on Advertising, David Ogilvy divulges some of his most significant marketing and advertising secrets. He also had very blunt thoughts on the subject of advertising.

As Ogilvy put it ...

"I do not regard advertising as an entertainment or an art form, but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don't want you to tell me that you find it creative. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product."

Ogilvy's friend, Rosser Reeves, the guy who coined the phrase "Unique Selling Proposition (or USP) unapologetically drives home Ogilvy's point:

"I'm not saying that charming, witty and warm copy won't sell. I'm just saying that I've seen thousands of charming, witty campaigns that didn't. Let's say you are a manufacturer. Your advertising isn't working and your sales are going down and everything depends on it. Your future depends on it. Your family's future depends on it. Other people's families depend on it, and you walk in this office and talk to me, and sit in that chair. Now what do you want from me? Fine writing? Do you want masterpieces? Do you want glowing things that can be framed by copywriters, or do you want to see the god damn sales curve stop moving down and start moving up?"

Both Reeves and Ogilvy are considered by many to be some of the most successful advertisers in human history. Not because of their great looking advertisements, but because of their results. Even more impressive was Ogilvy's ability to track every ad dollar spent to client bank accounts, all before the Internet!

Your event advertising should be anything but an expenditure. The best course of action is to treat your advertising and marketing as an investment. If you do that, you should always expect a return on that investment.

In today's day and age, it is nearly impossible not to be able to track your advertising effectiveness. If an advertisement is not working, you change it or stop using it.

Here's my Ogilvy question for you:

Do you want to be known as the event with beautiful, award-winning advertising, or do you want to be known as the air show with record revenues and attendance?

David Ogilvy's advertising philosophies should carry with any advertising agencies or marketing vendors you might hire. Let a prospective firm know upfront to track the effectiveness of all your event advertising campaigns.

Want to get more event promotion info? Check out the links below:

• Advertising and Marketing that Sells
• A "Must Follow" Event Advertising Strategy
• Get Your Audience Involved Through Their Emotions
• Web Copy Argument: Short or Long?
• Promotional Headlines for Your Event Marketing
• Is Your Text the Right Color?
• Two Amazingly Powerful Event Survey Questions
• Proofing your Work On Paper

If you find yourself in self-isolation or mandatory quarantine, here's a way to turbo-boost your learning ...

Before the Coronavirus hit, I was fortunate enough to begin my mornings in the gym. In addition to trying to work out my dainty chicken legs, I also attempted to maximize my learning.

Knowledge absorption was accomplished by loading up my smartphone with audio interviews, podcasts, and videos featuring various subject matter experts. In total, hundreds of hours of content.

While working out, I was listening and taking copious notes. And occasionally annoying the next person waiting for a fitness machine. While working out, a man once asked me, "who the heck are you texting so furiously?!" I told him, "I'm writing a book." His reaction was priceless.

To date, there are over 3,000 notes on my smartphone and a couple of unreleased books. All accomplished in half the time of most people. Not because I'm smart, but because I was learning at twice the speed.

Here's how you can also learn at warp speed ...

Look up audio or video "speed changer" in your smartphone app store. There are specialized apps that will speed up anything you're listening to or watching without changing the pitch.

This suggestion also applies to YouTube. Next time you're on YouTube, take note of the little cog on your computer or the three dots (menu) on the YouTube app. When you click on the menu, notice the option called "Playback speed." Pick the speed of your choice, and you're off to the races!

Hopefully, the suggestion above will help you sharpen your knowledge saw much faster, while self-isolating.

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

• Some Sage Economic Advice . . .
• How to Create Your Own Luck
• The Client (Customer) Isn’t Always Right
• Don't Quit Your Day Job Just Yet
• Money Saving Advertising Question
• Thomas Edison and the Internet
• Expecting Success Online
• Discovering Web Site Ideas

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 with 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.

How can you target those most interested in attending your event? Fortunately, it has never been easier. Facebook's advertising platform makes demographic targeting easy.

One of the greatest target marketing secrets can be found in your previous customer database. Your customer database embodies the 3% rule. The person most likely to buy from you is a previous customer. It can also save you a ton of money on marketing. According to Lee Resources Inc., "Attracting new customers will cost your company 5 times more than keeping an existing customer."

And here's a shocker: Most events don't have a well-thought-out program for retaining and reactivating previous customers. Sending email is not enough.

Recently, one client discovered over 50,000 previous customers hiding in a neglected database file. These customers were the result of an initial advertising expenditure of $400,000+ that took place over ten years. Over those years, the client spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on “mass” advertising just to reacquire their previous customers.

Following this discovery, the client is now leveraging their entire customer database to develop marketing campaigns that specifically target previous customers. As a result, the client increased their year-over-year online ticket revenue by 38%.

An important note on re-engaging previous customers via email … be very careful! One email to the wrong person could cost you as much as $16,000 (or more!) in fines. Yes, that's per email. Make sure to look into the federal CAN-SPAM, CASL, and GDPR regulations. Additionally, please consult with an attorney who has extensive experience in Internet law before emailing previous customers.

Here is a tremendously powerful technique I learned from Dr. Wyatt Woodsmall in the late 2000s. It is known as success modeling.

One of the best things that you can do for your event is to model your marketing and strategies on other successful events. You'd be surprised how willing other event organizers are to share some of their proven secrets.

In 2008, I called up an event organizer in Buffalo, New York. I heard that he sold out 7,000 tickets to his fundraising event in very little time. He was gracious enough to give me 30 minutes of his time and shared the fantastic details. What he shared with me was an information goldmine.

When I asked if he consulted for a fee to other event organizers, he said that he was happy to share the information with anyone interested at no charge. You would be amazed at how many good people there are willing to share their event and event success secrets, but it's up to you to be proactive and ask.

Some of the biggest client success stories are a result of this type of modeling. Go out and find an event success story and quantify it.

If you're going to get in contact with another event or event organizer, be prepared to listen carefully and not over-judge their ideas. Way too many event organizers will arm themselves with logic about why they can't do something potentially beneficial for their event.

I hear it all the time. "We can't do that because [insert excuse here]." You might not hear what you want to hear. Be prepared to ask questions instead of focusing on the answers you want. Some of the best event organizers I've studied do things that others would consider to be highly counter-intuitive.

If you want a really successful event, you're going to need to lay down some of the preconceived notions you might have. What you hear might not make immediate sense. You have to decide what works best for your event, but at least consider trying something different.

Here are two modeling questions you can use:

- What is your most potent event marketing strategy?

- What are your biggest event marketing lessons (mistakes)?

It is also essential to validate the information. There are a lot of very audacious claims made in the event industry, whether it be attendance or revenue numbers. If possible, try to vet the data or make sure that the information you're getting is accurate.

There are successful event organizers out there willing to help you. Make it a point to try to speak to at least one a week. Taking 15 or 30 minutes out of your week to do this could revolutionize the way you run your event.

Right now, there are ambitious event organizers who are figuring out how to hold their next successful event. This includes changing how events are executed. Maybe even going from a live in-person event to online or virtual.

My recommendation is to keep a watchful eye on these ambitious and innovative event organizers. To be crystal clear here, I'm in no way suggesting anyone compromise the personal safety or health of themselves or others ... just to hold an event.

People are going to figure out how to hold successful events despite the circumstances. And those are the people you want to pay careful attention to.

As with all things you might read, see, or hear about a successful event ... be a healthy skeptic!

If it sounds too good to be true, do your due diligence. That includes verifying and quantifying! Someone is going to figure it out and you're going to want to know, "how did they do that?!?!"

Want to get more advice on planning and promoting a great event? Check out the articles below:

• The BIGGEST Secret to a Successful Event
• Event Planning - The Customer Avatar and Your Event
• When to Start Selling Tickets to Your Event
• A Negative Question to Create a Better Event
• Automatically Generate Leads for Your Event Year Round
• How to Get Them To Your Event
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• Getting Them to Buy Tickets Early

Last year, a friend was frustrated while fiddling with his mobile device. He was frantically tapping at his smartphone. When I asked him what he was doing, his response, "I'm trying to manage my Facebook advertising campaign."

This recommendation is straightforward. If you're managing any sort of online advertising or marketing, use a desktop computer (or laptop with an external monitor) and a mouse. The advantages of using a large monitor and mouse, go well beyond convenience.

Because mobile devices have such small screens, most mobile advertising management applications lack the features found on traditional desktop operating systems (Mac OS, Linux, and Windows).

In short, there simply isn't the screen real estate to display all the features. Which was the case with my mobile phone using friend from above.

A friend who manages up to $30,000 USD of online advertising uses multiple monitors and a desktop computer. At times my friend oversees up to half a million dollars of online advertising monthly. When that much money is on the line, he couldn't imagine trying to manage client campaigns from his smartphone or a table.

Depending on the size of your event, not everyone can justify purchasing multiple monitors. At a minimum, please make sure you manage any advertising and marketing projects with the largest monitor possible, or at least a laptop and a mouse.

When dollars are on the line, be sure to go big (smartly)!

Want more info on promoting your event?
Check out the articles below:

• Hold Your Event Marketing Accountable!
• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• Simple Event Advertising Tracking with Google Analytics
• Tracking The Effectiveness of Traditional Marketing with The Internet
• Radio versus Pay Per Click: Snapshot
• A "Must Follow" Event Advertising Strategy . . .