A small marketing budget shouldn’t mean big trouble for you. It’s completely possible to come up with creative ways to sell more tickets while spending less money and putting forth less effort.
In this post, let’s look at some tips to make the most of your limited budget and sell more tickets for your event.
People That Can Help Promote Your Event
Considering the average marketing budget of 24% that is spent on events, you should lean on not only your employees but also sponsors, partners, and previous attendees as part of your marketing team.
1. Previous Attendees
Do you want better leads than the previous attendees from your last event? Announce and offer them exclusive discounts and details in advance. They will feel appreciated by you, and this will increase the chances of them inviting other people to your event.
2. Sponsors, Partners, and Influencers
Don’t be afraid of turning to your sponsors and partners for help. They’re more than interested in gaining the most visibility possible.
The thing is, they are busy people, so you should facilitate their ability to help. One idea is to provide the email copy and discount codes for them to send through their newsletters and social media posts.
Don’t forget that you can also approach micro-influencers. After all, they deliver 11x higher ROI than traditional marketing. It doesn’t need to be someone with millions of fans, but someone who’s in sync with your event and who knows how to promote a brand.
3. Contests Within Your Company
You can also leverage your employees and promote friendly competition between them. The ones who sell more get special prizes, and it will encourage them to invite their contacts.
Smart Moves That Will Make Your Event Look Awesome
Here are a few tweaks that can boost your sales:
1. Multiple Ticket Options
By giving options to buy tickets for a single day, lecture, or workshop, you will lower the chances of being turned down by people who have a tight schedule. The larger the event, the more useful these options will be. You should also offer early bird pricing to encourage various attendees that wouldn’t consider going in the first place.
2. Anticipation
How about smaller events that happen a few days before the main event? It could be a get-together with one of the speakers, live streams, or workshops. Those are examples of what the main event is going to be like, and could be the defining moment for someone undecided about attending.
3. Scarcity
It’s also important to broadcast a sense of urgency as the event date approaches. Display a timer on your website or show how many tickets are still available. Special offers that last only for a few hours can also ensure sales from undecided leads.
Creative and Low-Cost Ways to Promote Your Event
When promoting the event, don’t forget to consider the following ideas:
1. Social Media Contests
There’s not a better use of social media than making people interact. Social media contests are a low-cost and fun way to acquire potential attendees. Instead of just creating regular tweets and Facebook posts, it’s better to instigate people by challenging their creativity and offering prizes for the winners (event tickets, t-shirts, etc.). Ask them to take a cool selfie, send funny videos, write a slogan for the event, etc. It will encourage word of mouth and allow you to share an exclusive hashtag for the event.
2. Promote the Location and the Cool Things
The place your event is going to be held must be part of the event promotion. A lot of potential attendees will decide to go because of the region, neighborhood, and attractions near the event. It’s also useful to get in touch with local business owners to get the best rates and discounts. How about the parties, pocket shows, and happy hours? If you’re going to provide small attractions at your event, you should promote them as well!
3. Call-to-action
Your website and social media pages must have banners that link to your event site. They should also show that your event is the main thing your company is focusing on right now. If it’s not, why would anyone bother coming?
4. Ad Campaigns
Consider running an ad campaign on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and/or Facebook. For B2B events, LinkedIn is the best place to promote because you can easily find a target audience that has a lot of interest in your industry.
As you can see, there’s a lot of room for you to promote an event without worrying about your budget.
Thanks for reading and let us know what you think!
