Outdoor Events & Advance Ticket Sales

The question: "How do I drive more traffic to my event website?"

Instead of giving you a specific tactic or advertising/marketing channel let me pass along a fundamental. This suggestion is universal across every marketing medium (online or traditional). Even better. It works with all humans on planet Earth, because it's based on human psychology.

In fact, it is something so simple, it's easy to dismiss and forget ...

What is it?

It is a compelling reason why!

A reason someone should visit your website, right now. That means if a person from your target market is driving somewhere, they feel the need to safely pull over and visit your site, immediately!

At a fundamental level, humans are driven by two powerful emotions, fear or greed. That said, can you ethically evoke fear or greed in all your advertising and marketing efforts? (Emphasis on ethically). For events, the emotional drivers of fear or greed could be embodied in a well thought out offer.

One quintessential point on any offer. Just because you think something is noteworthy, doesn't mean your audience feels the same way.

Build the incentive to visit your website around their ego, not yours!

If you're at a loss regarding a significant "reason why," here's a simple suggestion. Include the following phrase in every marketing/PR/and advertising piece you produce: "For more information, visit YOURWEBSITE.com"

That's it!?!? Yes!

And you'd be amazed how often that gets missed in advertising and marketing campaigns. Listing your website is not enough. Remember, tell them what they need to do right now, in no uncertain terms. Implementing the above suggestions is guaranteed to drive more traffic to your website!

Want to get more event promotion advice? Check out the articles below:

• Event Promotions and Shortening Your Domain Name
• Your Domain Name and Television Advertising
• Your Domain Name and Radio Advertising
• Press Releases and Your Event Marketing
• The Press Conference Lesson on Event Marketing
• Be Vigilant About Your Event Details and the Media
• The User Attention Span
• Using Mystery and Your Event Promotion

Today, I'm going to rant a little on the importance of delivering an extraordinary experience at your event.

There seems to be a gap between advertising promises and attendee expectations when it comes to event marketing. The result is event attendees who open their wallets, spend their hard-earned money, and leave an event disappointed.

Yes, I'm a big proponent of using hype and persuasion (ethically) in your event's marketing. But you can't over promise and under deliver.

Before you send out your next advertising or marketing campaign, do an objective review of your event marketing.

Is your event marketing over-promising on the experience your event can deliver?

If you're holding an event during a global pandemic, what are you doing to reassure your event attendees of their safety and expectations?

Spend some time thinking through the previous questions. Look at your advertising and event from an attendee's perspective.

If someone were to read your advertising and attend your event – are you going to be able to deliver on all your advertising promises?

If not, or even maybe not, take those points out of your advertising. I've seen first hand the problems associated with promising too much in event advertising. It isn't pretty and is quickly followed by a slew of refund requests.

Another avenue event promoters go down is using psychological persuasion in their event marketing.
Think advance Jedi persuasion skills. Be sure to check out Dr. Robert Cialdini's book "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion."

In the book, Dr. Cialdini outlines his six "Weapons of Influence." One of Cialdini's weapons of influence is scarcity.

Using scarcity is a surefire way to get people to buy event tickets in advance. As tickets are sold, you update the number of remaining tickets on your website. As the available ticket supply counts down, ticket demand goes up.

Unfortunately, some event organizers see fit to abuse scarcity.

In 2009, a local beer festival sold out all their VIP in a flash. To generate even more revenue, the event organizer opened a new block of VIP tickets. Word got out about "previously SOLD OUT tickets" being on sale again. That aggravated lot of people who already purchased tickets.

It is a bad idea to tell people tickets are sold out and then put them back on sale again. Next time, event attendees are going to be skeptical about buying tickets.

People are going to think, "they say tickets are going to sell out, but they'll put more on sale – just like last time!"

Like Peter Parker's Uncle Ben said "With great power there must also come — great responsibility!" (Amazing Fantasy (1962) #15, a.k.a Spider-Man's introduction)

The value your event delivers to attendees must far exceed the hype used in your event marketing. This mindset is critical if you have a recurring event.

People are going to come back to an event if they feel scammed or unsafe. When you boil it down, it's pretty simple. Don't claim something in your advertising or marketing that your event can't deliver.

Want to get more event experience advice? Check out the links below:

• Leading People to Provide Event Feedback
• This Event Crashed & "Burned" ... Badly
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience
• A Great Customer Service Example
• You Don't Want Your Event in the News for THIS ...
• Create a Better Event with Patron Feedback
• Collecting Real Time Feedback on Your Event

During an advertising project involving a client, we discussed setting up UTM tracking links for all the client's online advertising efforts. The client had mentioned that they had a series of online advertising buys that were scheduled to start, a week prior.

A quick look in Google Analytics showed that the scheduled advertising buys were not sending traffic to their website. The reasons for no referral-based traffic could be many. The simplest explanation is that the advertising isn't running.

In the end, I encouraged the client to call their advertising rep and let them know, "we do not see any traffic from you in Google Analytics. Can you please verify that our online ads are running?"

The wording above gives the advertising people a gentle nudge and lets them know you're keeping an eye on things. You can call it a diplomatic and data-driven approach.

More often than not, clients have paid for online advertising that simply wasn't running. It wasn't out of malice or deception, just that someone dropped the ball. That said, you must keep a watchful eye on your online advertising.

At the end of the day, it's your money. As my friend Phil Pacific is fond of saying, "inspect what you expect!" A simple check of Google Analytics is all it takes.

Want to get more info on tracking the effectiveness of your event promotions? Check out the articles below:

• Simple Event Advertising Tracking with Google Analytics
• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• An Important Event Web Site Statistic for Promoters and Event Planners
• Did You Buy a Snickers Bar Yet?
• Hold Your Event Marketing Accountable!
• Web User Traffic Trends to Your Event Web Site

Here's a little excerpt from page 88 of my Facebook book ...

One of the first things we do with any new client is a marketing and advertising audit. Almost every audit proves that events aren't tracking their advertising spend to ticket sales even at the most basic level.

Here comes some compassionately brutal advice. If you're not willing to properly setup and track your Facebook advertising spend to a ticket transaction, stop using Facebook. You can't break through all the Facebook noise if you don't pay to advertise.

But paying to play (paid advertising) isn't enough. By failing to track, you're subjecting you and your event team to a plethora of unqualified opinions about what is working without the hard data to back it up.

So, it's agreed that you're going to track all your efforts on Facebook, yes? Great! Because you'll gain a massive competitive advantage and profits galore when you spend money advertising on Facebook while meticulously tracking your results.

Before we get into tracking specifics, it is important to understand some basic marketing math. What is that? It involves a few key digital media metrics and their crazy acronyms. To be successful with your social media marketing strategies, you need to have a basic working knowledge of these metrics.

With traditional media, it was very difficult to quantify the usefulness of advertisements. The beauty of digital media is that tracking effectiveness has never been easier. Facebook has a straightforward way to setup and automate your ad tracking.

Here's a simple place to start, Customer Acquisition Cost (at least the basic version of CAC).

Let's say you spend 20,000 USD cash on advertising and marketing to promote your event. You know that 1,000 people attended your event. Sorry, you can't use the grossly exaggerated attendance numbers people love to tout to calculate acquisition cost.

Remember, bad data equals bad marketing intelligence. To get your customer acquisition cost, divide $20,000 in ad spend by 1,000 paid customers. The result is $20, so your "Customer Acquisition Cost" is $20.

Your customer acquisition cost determines what you can afford to spend on advertising and marketing. If you don't spend more than $20 per person to acquire a customer, you should always stay in the black.

Another advantage of digital media is that you can turn it on and off in a matter of minutes. Hence, if an ad is not working on Facebook, you simply turn it off. The same isn't possible with television, radio, or billboard ads.

This is a very basic measuring stick when you look at it from the top down with a bird's eye view. As we come down to a ground level view, customer acquisition cost becomes very important for digital media. It becomes microscopic at the social media level. Facebook allows you to track the customer acquisition cost to a single post or advertisement.

That is where Facebook provides you with a huge advantage and it's tracking at the microscopic level.

Track & profit!

You Must Play the Game Differently
If you want to take advantage of social media, you have to play the game differently. What follows are the most common social media marketing mistakes to avoid and simple corrections you can use. The suggestions apply to any social media platform. Click below and dive on in to the 5-Part Social Media Series:

1. Putting Your Social Media Mindset Ahead of Theirs
   
   
2. Focusing Too Much on Likes & Followers
   
   
3. Trying to Engage on Too Many Social Media Platforms
   
   
4. Avoiding Paid Social Media Advertising
   
   
5. Not Measuring the Results of Your Hard Work

Here are some additional social media resources you can use to market your event:

• Do You Make These Social Media Mistakes with Your Event?
• Measuring Your Social Media Event Promotion Efforts
• How to Leverage Facebook and Your Event Marketing
• Beware of the "Social Media" Event SMACKDOWN!
• Social Media, Your Event Marketing, and "Insider Info" . . .
• Social Media Comments and Your Event
• The Downside of Promoting Your Event with Social Media

Years ago, I had an interesting potential advertising experience.

At the time, someone tried selling me advertising in a local print publication. As part of the sales pitch, the salesperson gave me several compelling reasons to buy advertising from them.

After they finished their presentation, I asked a straightforward question, which quickly resulted in the salesperson getting upset and a lost deal.

Before sharing the question asked, let's start with a little context ...

No form of traditional advertising can provide you with guaranteed ROI. One of the most challenging tasks is being able to track the ROI of traditional advertising.

You can "key" your ads and track them! Unfortunately, the percentage of "keyed" ads for traditional marketing like radio or print is relatively low. The ultimate responsibility of effective advertising falls on the person purchasing the advertising, a.k.a. you. Help

If an ad doesn't contain critical elements, including a well thought out headline, offer, and call to action, the chances of success are low. It doesn't matter how many impressions a media channel can provide.

You can ask the following question for almost any type of advertising: television, radio, print, billboards, online, etc. Direct the question to the person trying to sell you advertising. It's the question that upset the salesperson from the story above.

Ask them, "can you please give me a few references of companies who advertise (or have advertised) with you selling similar products or services to my own?"

That's it?!?! Yup.

And for such a simple question, it's tremendously powerful. Most people trying to sell you advertising will be caught off guard. The best will happily and promptly oblige your request.

If a company can't provide you with a few promising advertising references, why buy advertising from them?

Want to get more info on tracking the effectiveness of your event promotions? Check out the articles below:

• Simple Event Advertising Tracking with Google Analytics
• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• An Important Event Web Site Statistic for Promoters and Event Planners
• Did You Buy a Snickers Bar Yet?
• Hold Your Event Marketing Accountable!
• Web User Traffic Trends to Your Event Web Site

During a 2020 Event Cancellation "Survival" Guide webinar, John Haak from EventSprout provided webinar attendees some great advice on dealing with event postponement, cancellation, and ticket refund scenarios.

John has ticketing experience with 2,500+ North American events. These events include the Indianapolis 500, Oshkosh AirVenture, and the Barrett Jackson Classic Car Auctions.

During the training, John provided and expanded on the following template for event organizers.

To have full context and benefit from the template below, you needed to be on the webinar. (If you missed the webinar, become a subscriber and request the link.)

That said, what follows should give event organizers a good idea of the recommended language and tone used if you have to postpone or cancel your event.

Disclaimer: What follows is educational and in NO WAY legal, accounting, or medical advice. If you use any of the following, please consult the proper professionals for your country.

----

Dear FIRSTNAME,

As a valued fan of our (event) we wanted to take a minute to inform you of some options that have been set up for the current situation with the (NAME OF EVENT).

As you have heard, the local health administration has banned any events comprised of more than 250 attendees. Our event certainly exceeds that number.

We are working hard to reboot and reschedule our event for the soonest possible date that we can offer the quality of show that you are used to attending.

We know this schedule change was not in your plans and honestly, it was not in ours either.

Asking thousands of friends to change their plans to join your party is painful for all involved. We have been able to succeed in the past in presenting a fantastic (event, concert, race, etc.) for the past XX years, and we are not going to let this break that record.

To do this, we will need your help.

We would like for you to consider donating your ticket price to the foundation for us to have the ability to plan the replacement event. Once we get everything set, we will send you a special thank you invitation and offer to represent more than your actual ticketed amount in participating in the rebooted show.

We certainly hope that you see the value in this offer, but If you do need a ticket refund, "fair is fair." Please reply to this email with "Refund" in the subject line. We will process a refund to the purchase associated with your email above. That refund will be processed within 24 hours of your request.

Thank you again for your support and stay healthy out there. We look forward to seeing you at our next event!

----

Let me know what you think of the above.

"A" writes the following in response to "About all those social media icons"

-------

hi - what if you consider that social media helps with awareness, but actual ticket sales do not reflect a click from a social media link

old school example - you have to advertise for months in magazines before there can be increase in sales attributed to magazine ads
continual subliminal and overt messaging on the subject

in this case the show that you want people to attend.
perhaps people click on the social media for more info
and then later to the website to buy tickets

good thoughts, good health!
A

-------

Thanks for reply "A!"

Good question on awareness in regards to social, including your "old school" example. The difficulty of "awareness" campaigns is that how do you measure effectiveness without tracking a specific action? Without some variable or valuation, it almost becomes arbitrary and subjective.

Thus, have a measurable call to action / tracking method in every single marketing and advertising piece in the marketplace.

There are tracking options for every medium, e.g. promo codes, unique URL, unique link on a URL, telephone number, etc. Most of the previous methods tracking methods are offered as part of automated services.

In the case of your magazine ad example, use a unique domain name for that specific magazine.

At the end of your magazine ad run, you can create a report and see how much traffic was generated by a unique domain name, promo code, link, telephone number, etc.

You Must Play the Game Differently
If you want to take advantage of social media, you have to play the game differently. What follows are the most common social media marketing mistakes to avoid and simple corrections you can use. The suggestions apply to any social media platform. Click below and dive on in to the 5-Part Social Media Series:

1. Putting Your Social Media Mindset Ahead of Theirs
   
   
2. Focusing Too Much on Likes & Followers
   
   
3. Trying to Engage on Too Many Social Media Platforms
   
   
4. Avoiding Paid Social Media Advertising
   
   
5. Not Measuring the Results of Your Hard Work

Here are some additional social media resources you can use to market your event:

• Do You Make These Social Media Mistakes with Your Event?
• Measuring Your Social Media Event Promotion Efforts
• How to Leverage Facebook and Your Event Marketing
• Beware of the "Social Media" Event SMACKDOWN!
• Social Media, Your Event Marketing, and "Insider Info" . . .
• Social Media Comments and Your Event
• The Downside of Promoting Your Event with Social Media

My friend Dan "Diggler" Proczko is also known as "The Duke of Data!"

Dan gave a presentation to a sold-out room of 75 marketers. During his presentation on campaign building and data strategy, he asked a straightforward question to the audience, "how many of you are using an analytics platform to track your marketing campaigns, like Google Analytics?"

"Come on Eugene, seriously! They're all marketers, of course they have something like Google Analytics installed, right?!?!" Dan was flabbergasted by the response.

In a room of 75 marketers, only 6 people had an analytics platform installed.

Without Google Analytics or a similar service, "you're flying blind!" Just like a pilot flying in clouds, in between mountains, with no instruments. That's a death sentence. And as a pilot, I can tell you firsthand, the last sentence is no exaggeration.

Yet without Analytics or a similar service, you have no idea what's happening on your event website. Including, at the most basic level, if your advertising or marketing is generating any results.

Want to get more info on tracking your event promotions? Check out the articles below:

• Simple Event Advertising Tracking with Google Analytics
• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• An Important Event Web Site Statistic for Promoters and Event Planners
• Did You Buy a Snickers Bar Yet?
• Hold Your Event Marketing Accountable!
• Web User Traffic Trends to Your Event Web Site

Has a friend ever tried to live vicariously through you? (To be fair, it might be a North American thing.)

Being one of the unmarried guys - I find my friends, usually the men, saying, "I want to live vicariously through you!"

It's a bit ironic. My friends are well aware that I what to settle down. But when they settle down (or for whatever reason), people tend to get incredibly bored. Don't get me wrong - There is nothing wrong with marriage and kids. But people still want some excitement in their life.

In the late 2000s, I attended Eben Pagan's GuruMastermind Conversion Summit in Los Angeles. During one of the sessions, Eben talked about how most people live incredibly dull lives.

He illustrated the point with a simple example: People wake up bored, they go to work bored, come home – watch some T.V. and then go to bed bored. The next day the same monotonous process starts all over again.

One could argue that Eben's example is a pretty harsh assessment. Yet the more I think about it, the more he might be right.

When I ask my friends, "why do you want to live vicariously through me?"

They usually respond with "because I've settled down and don't get to have as much fun anymore." You need to realize that most people are bored. If people are looking for a little excitement in their lives, give it to them!

It's never been so easy or inexpensive to capture the attention of your target market. The challenge is cutting through all the advertising noise.

A straightforward way to overcome the usual advertising glut is by injecting a little personality into your event promotions and marketing. Eben recommends being "edgy authentic."

Being "Edgy Authentic" is a great way to capture the attention of someone who might be bored. By being edgy, you cut through all the other pompous corporate-style marketing. Be authentic and genuine when you communicate with your target market. Because your target market will appreciate your candor!

Apathy, ambivalence, and indifference make the challenge of getting people to your event very difficult. The same goes for trying to sell a product or service.

You need to get your target market so excited that it's difficult NOT to buy from you. As Jeffery Gitomer put it "people love to buy, but they hate to be sold."

By applying an appropriate amount of edginess to your event marketing and promotion, you'll stand out from the crowd.

At first, you'll feel a bit uncomfortable. But with time you'll see the benefits of not being like everyone else in marketing. Don't be afraid to stand out! Be personable and interesting.

Here's how the late/great David Ogilvy summed it up:

"Tell the truth, but make the truth fascinating. You know you can't bore people into buying you product, you can only interest them into buying it."

And yes, everything above applies to every event. Think about it this way. When's the last time you spent your hard-earned money to attend an event in an attempt to be bored?

Here are some additional tips from one of the greatest event promoters (P.T. Barnum) of all time:

• P.T. Barnum on Advertising
• Barnum & Hyping Up Your Event
• Curiosity Advertising P.T. Barnum Style
• Your Event, Stories, and P.T. Barnum
• The World’s Best Event Promoter Is . . .
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience
• Online Marketing Like P.T. Barnum
• More Marketing Like P.T. Barnum (Part II)

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?!?!"

With COVID still impacting numerous nations to varying degrees, event cancellations are still an unfortunate regular occurrence.

On Tuesday, I ran across a prominent us event with the following message for every page of their website:

"The 2021 (EVENT) at (LOCATION) has been canceled."

I'm paraphrasing the above by obfuscating some event details so as not to embarrass any organizations. My goal is to pass along a critical tenet when canceling one's event.

Too many event organizers simply post a message to their website, social media, and perhaps send out a press release. The previous items should be considered a bare minimum.

It's imperative to have a plan in place that covers both short-term and long-term considerations.

A short-term consideration should be leveraging a dedicated team member to monitor and address social media comments regarding your event cancellation.

Two days ago, a renowned local arts festival canceled its 2021 event. That event is being eviscerated on social media with zero response (to date) from event organizers.

Long-term considerations include letting your event supporters know what they can expect in the future. e.g., not leaving your cancellation notice for six to twelve months after your event was supposed to occur. What's next and what should people expect? Give people a little hope for the future!

After months or years of work, canceling your event can be devastating.

How your organization handles the cancellation of your current event has a tremendous impact on the future of your event.

Make sure you have a well-thought-out process in place for both the short term and long term.

Here are some additional articles on planning and promoting 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

Pre-COVID, I had an insightful experience at a local beer festival. The same experience also occurred during an overseas trip to an event in Europe.

Both events had their attendees in scorching environments with people packed in elbow to elbow. And the event organizers had little to no control regarding temperature. Sometimes all the technology in the world can't overcome Mother Nature.

Usually, the recipe above (hot and packed) would result in numerous event attendee complaints and customer service issues. Ironically, that wasn't what occurred.

The question to ask yourself and your team, "regardless of circumstance, what are we doing to ensure the best customer experience possible?" (Both tangible and intangible)

Both the beer festival and European event excelled by making simple, yet effective, accommodations for their attendees. In both cases, regardless of the temperature at each event, hospitality won the day.

You'd be amazed at what something as simple as table service can do for your event.

Looking for more event promotion advice? Check out the articles below:

• Event Marketing: Do You have an Online Champion for Your Event?
• Online Comments About Your Event
• Advertising and Marketing that Sells
• Providing Massive Value in Your Marketing and Advertising
• P.T. Barnum on Advertising
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience

Clients have achieved extraordinary results with their email marketing efforts. To their credit, the way clients leverage email marketing is unique amongst their respective niches.

Last year, one client went from generating as much revenue in 23 minutes and 18 seconds as previously took them 263 days, all by using counter-intuitive email marketing strategies. To be fair, it took them five years of hard work to dial in their email marketing strategy.

Needless to say, you should be leveraging email marketing in ways that your competition is not. That said, here is a question I pose to every seasoned event organizer.

"What would you do if you were unable to send another email?"

And to add "insult to injury," the ability to send email just stops. Thus you aren't able to give your list notice or anything.

Yes, the above scenario might seem a bit harsh, but it's critical to have alternatives.

Want to get more info on marketing your event with email? Check out the link below:

• Keeping Your Event List Engaged
• Don't Neglect Your Email List
• Event Marketing: Multiple Ways to Engage Your List
• Simple Customer List Building Suggestions
• Late Event Promotion - Big List Growth

Before they became a client, a not for profit organization was spending over 25,000 USD a year on one advertising buy.

When it came time for them to decide on making a more substantial investment into my event promotion system, their question to me was "Eugene, how are we going to pay for your services?"

My blunt answer to the soon to be client, "stop spending $25K on advertising that you can't attribute to a single ticket sale."

Ultimately, the organization decided to hire me and did a stellar job of implementing the marketing system. More importantly, the client went on to increase their year over year ticket sales by over 35% without the $25K of ad spend.

It is my firm belief that had the client not hired me, the client would still be spending an extra $25K on ineffective advertising.

Today's recommendation goes along with the marketing meatgrinder email and concept of holding all your advertising ruthlessly accountable.

Before signing any advertising or marketing contracts for 2020, sit down with your team and carefully review the effectiveness of all your advertising and marketing.

Here' the irony of my broken record recommendation. For the hundreds of projects I've worked on over the years a grand total of two companies spent time reviewing their advertising and marketing investments.

What's frustrating is that given all data and tools at their disposal, clients still insist on spending money on wasteful advertising. As always, their event – their business.

I encourage you to be different!

Want to get more tips on tracking your event marketing and advertising? Check out the links below:

• An Important Event Web Site Statistic for Promoters and Event Planners
• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• Did You Buy a Snickers Bar Yet?
• Hold Your Event Marketing Accountable!
• Web User Traffic Trends to Your Event Web Site
• The Timing of Your Event Promotion

Years ago, a web design studio featured a client's event website in their portfolio. Here is a paraphrased portfolio description: "XYZ EVENT now has an exciting, fresh website design to excite a new generation of attendees with less text and more images on the site."

Did you notice the part about less text?

Yes, the website was visually stunning. It also cost the client at least $50,000 in lost online ticket sales. The problem was that the website relied so heavily on visuals and eliminated so much text that the purchase conversion rate dropped significantly.

The issue was brought to the client's attention several months before their event. At the time, the web designer stated that the event website needed more traffic. We attempted to explain that it was a conversion rate problem but nobody on their web design team understood that.

Remember that conversion rate is the percentage of people who go to your event website and make a purchase. Their feedback was, "If there was more traffic, more people would buy." So we went out and drove more website traffic.

A few months later, we were able to double the traffic to the client's website yet the conversion rate was still down. Doubling the traffic was great, but the significantly lower conversion rate meant far fewer people were purchasing event tickets.

The result? The client lost tens of thousands of dollars of revenue which was calculated by looking at their historical conversion and revenue data. When conversion rate was brought up to this highly prestigious web developing studio yet, again, they had no idea what we were talking about.

They questioned where our data was coming from. It came from the same Google Analytics account they set up! They took it personally because so much time was dedicated to creating a visually stunning website. They were so emotionally tied to their design that they couldn't see the bigger picture.

Finally -- or, somewhat, reluctantly -- they decided to update the air show ticket page. The update was the exact opposite of what the portfolio description said. Over 1,000 words were put back into the design-heavy ticket page. We also made some design suggestions to make it visually more straightforward for people to buy tickets.

The lead designer for the project said that the suggestions made to update the ticket page would "disrupt the rhythm of the page". What they failed to realize was that their design was disrupting the rhythm of revenue into our mutual client's bank account.

Thankfully, we were able to get most of the changes in place, the conversion rate went way up and revenue took off like a rocket ship.

Unfortunately, it took over six months to convince the web development studio to make the necessary changes. The opportunity cost was massive. This example also emphasizes the importance of knowing and tracking your marketing math!

• Beware: An Event Website NOT Designed to Make Money!
• Horrid Event Advertising Mistake: Confusing Art with Results
• A Persuasive Design Example for Promoting Your Event
• Watch Your Typography
• Web Usability: The Importance of Balancing Content and Graphic Design

"On a June afternoon in 1752, the sky began to darken over the city of Philadelphia. As rain began to fall and lightning threatened, most of the city’s citizens surely hurried inside. But not Benjamin Franklin. He decided it was the perfect time to go fly a kite.

Franklin had been waiting for an opportunity like this. He wanted to demonstrate the electrical nature of lightning, and to do so, he needed a thunderstorm."

Source: Gupton, Nancy. "Benjamin Franklin and the Kite Experiment" https://www.fi.edu/benjamin-franklin/kite-key-experiment

Do you have an outdoor event?  It can be anything from a sporting event, an ethnic festival, to a beer festival.  The weather forecasters try their best, but they are often incorrect in forecasting.

Outdoor events can lose obscene amounts of potential revenue because of a wrong weather forecast.  All it takes is the implication of inclement weather, and your event attendees won't show up, even if it's beautiful outside.

There are few things in this world that have as much indirect impact on your event as the weather. Even worse is a completely inaccurate weather forecast. Though you cannot control the weather or forecasts, there are specific actions you can take to minimize its impact.

One such action is using all your digital resources to keep your fans and event attendees better informed when the weather throws you a curveball.

As Benjamin Franklin put it, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

Using digital assets offers you the ability to disseminate information in a very rapid fashion. Compare and contrast a straightforward email broadcast to the time it takes to contact hundreds or thousands of people over the telephone.
 
There are multiple channels for contacting people via the Internet: your website, email, SMS, and social messaging services. The first place you can start to inform people is right on your event's home page.  A simple update to a web site might be all that is required if people know to check the web site for updates. One important caveat, regardless of medium, is making sure your message is easily understood.

Pro-activity, combined with technology, is a serious counterpoint to Mother Nature's unpredictability. Use technology to your advantage.  It can save you time and money. Plus, preserve the customer experience.

Finally, have a game plan in place before you have any weather-related issues. This seemingly obvious piece of advice has been missed often by the most seasoned of event organizers.

Want to get more event ticket strategies? Check out the links below:

• Smart Advance Ticket Strategies
• Leveraging Huge Ticket Discounts to Drive Advance Tickets Sales
• Why Buy Tickets For Your Own Event?
• When to Start Selling Tickets for Your Event

I assume that after every event you're sending a post-event survey. If you're not surveying your event attendees, you're missing a huge opportunity to improve numerous facets of your event.

A series of well-rounded survey questions should give you and your team information about event execution, operations and marketing insights.

Having reviewed numerous surveys for event organizers, there is one critical survey question often missing. And the survey question has nothing to do with your event attendees! It is asked of those who did not attend your event.

The question is, "why didn't you attend this year's event?"

Again, the particulars of your survey need to be set up a certain way to receive the best feedback possible. Obviously, you need a way to delineate attendees and non-attendees. That I leave up to you.

Want to get more info on event surveys? Check out the articles below:

• Two Amazingly Powerful Event Survey Questions
• Create a Better Event with Patron Feedback
• Leading People to Provide Event Feedback
• Event Marketing Research - Know Your Target Market!
• Event Marketing: Multiple Ways to Engage Your List
• A Negative Question to Create a Better Event

"A" writes the following in response to yesterday's email on social media icon placement ...

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hi - what if you consider that social media helps with awareness, but actual ticket sales do not reflect a click from a social media link

old school example - you have to advertise for months in magazines before there can be increase in sales attributed to magazine ads
continual subliminal and overt messaging on the subject

in this case the show that you want people to attend.
perhaps people click on the social media for more info
and then later to the website to buy tickets

good thoughts, good health!

A

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Thanks for reply "A!"

Good question on awareness in regards to social, including your "old school" example. The difficulty of "awareness" campaigns is that how do you measure effectiveness without tracking a specific action? Without some variable or valuation, it almost becomes arbitrary and subjective.

Thus, have a measurable call to action / tracking method in every single marketing and advertising piece in the marketplace.

There are tracking options for every medium, e.g. promo codes, unique URL, unique link on a URL, telephone number, etc. Most of the previous methods tracking methods are offered as part of automated services.

In the case of your magazine ad example, use a unique domain name for that specific magazine.

At the end of your magazine ad run, you can create a report and see how much traffic was generated by a unique domain name, promo code, link, telephone number, etc.

Let me know if the above helps.

Here are some additional social media resources you can use to market your event:

• Do You Make These Social Media Mistakes with Your Event?
• Measuring Your Social Media Event Promotion Efforts
• How to Leverage Facebook and Your Event Marketing
• Beware of the "Social Media" Event SMACKDOWN!
• Social Media, Your Event Marketing, and "Insider Info" . . .
• Social Media Comments and Your Event
• The Downside of Promoting Your Event with Social Media

This happened years ago, during a conversation with a client. During the client call, we discussed setting up UTM tracking links for their online advertising efforts. The client had mentioned that they had a series of online advertising buys that were scheduled to start, last week.

A quick look in Google Analytics showed that the scheduled advertising buys were not sending traffic to their website. The reasons for no referral-based traffic could be many. The simplest explanation is that the advertising isn't running.

In the end, I encouraged the client to call their advertising rep and let them know, "we do not see any traffic from you in Google Analytics. Can you please verify that our online ads are running?"

The wording above gives the advertising people a gentle nudge and lets them know you're keeping an eye on things. You can call it a diplomatic and data-driven approach.

More often than not, clients have paid for online advertising that simply wasn't running. It wasn't out of malice or deception, just that someone dropped the ball. That said, you must keep a watchful eye on your online advertising.

At the end of the day, it's your money. As my friend Phil Pacific is fond of saying, "inspect what you expect!" A simple check of Google Analytics is all it takes.

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

• An Important Event Web Site Statistic for Promoters and Event Planners
• Measuring Advertising Effectiveness
• Did You Buy a Snickers Bar Yet?
• Hold Your Event Marketing Accountable!
• Web User Traffic Trends to Your Event Web Site
• The Timing of Your Event Promotion

Before you think of me as some heartless bastard, I've had cancer take my Maternal Grandmother and my Father. No family should have to go through the ravages of such a horrible disease … let alone a child!

Now that I have your attention - let's get to the point. This might be the most important advice to date. It is also going to be brutally direct. If you're a not for profit event organizer, you need to pay careful attention to what follows! 

Years ago, I was told the following: "You need to buy a ticket to our event because we help kids with cancer." When I politely declined with a "no thank you." I was made to feel guilty. That’s not cool! Nor a way to approach someone about buying a ticket to your event.

Because if you think that 99% of the people are buying a ticket to your event to "help kids with cancer, raise money for scholarships, (insert something virtuous here)" ... you are grossly mistaken!

People are attending your event to serve their self-interest. Not who or what your event proceeds may benefit. The fact that you help a wonderful cause is the last reason someone buys a ticket to your event. You help no one if your event is not profitable!

"Eugene, you're such a heartless a$$hole! How can you possibly say that?!?!"

The self-interest motivator is not my opinion ... it's what the cold hard data shows. For the last 10 years, clients have received over 10,000 customer survey responses. Most responses were for non-profit events. The 10,000+ event ticket buyers were asked a simple question:

"What is the BIGGEST reason you purchased a ticket to this event?"

Ready for it? Less than 1% responded with anything along the lines of: "To help the kids … support the men and women in uniform … or, help raise money for scholarships." In some survey results, there were single digit (help the kids) responses – out of almost 2,000 responses!!! That massive disconnect between an event organizer and their attendees is a chronic problem. It is why event organizers fail to sell out their events. That disconnect is also the primary reason events die. They focus on the wrong customer buying motivations.

What's worse is that event organizers still insist on creating "help the kids!" advertising and marketing campaigns. All this despite years of their own attendee data. Then, wonder why their event is half empty. Simple answer. It's because you're not appealing to your ticket buyer's self-interest.

If you want to sell out your next event focus your customer’s real reason for buying. Not why you or your Board think they should buy a ticket.  After your attendee buys a ticket and shows up to your fantastic event. Then, you can remind them of the all good work that is accomplished (thanks to their support)!

If you've reached this point and are upset by the brutal advice in this email. I strongly recommended you ask your own customers "what was the BIGGEST reason you purchased a ticket to this event?"

Unfortunately, most event organizers don't have the spine to ask the question above. Don't be one of those people! Ask the survey question above and let me know what you find. Their answers will open your eyes to a whole new world, guaranteed!

Want to get more event marketing advice? Check out the articles below:

• Where should you focus to increase event revenue and attendance?
• Do you want 1MM or 20K people worth of event promotion?
• Why People Really Attend Fundraisers
• Why Well Planned Events Fail
• Turn Your Event Into an Experience