When your event is not selling as well as expected, there are several strategic moves you can make to boost ticket sales.
Many of these methods require a delicate approach, as you need to maintain public perceptions that the event will be a success. Any hint of desperation in your messaging could be detrimental to ticket sales.
Here are 8 contingency ideas to help you sell your tickets:
Contests and giveaways can create a buzz around your event. You can offer free tickets or VIP upgrades to the winners.
You can opt for a social media engagement competition where users are required to like, share and comment on a post to be in with a chance of winning. This can result in increased organic reach, resulting in more of your followers seeing a post. You could further boost the post to reach more of your audience.
Alternatively you could run a registration, where a user has to provide by minimum their email to be in with a chance of winning. If needed, you could offer everybody who entered a discounted tickets as a runner’s up prize.
With either format, the better the prize, the more engagement you will have. Opt for something that money can’t buy which resonates with your core fans.
Offering a limited-time discount can also spark interest. This creates a sense of urgency and can encourage potential attendees to buy tickets sooner rather than later.
Make sure to communicate this via your mailing list and run ads on social media targeting those who visited the ticket page but did not purchase. Consider excluding current ticket purchases as those who see a discounted ticket after recently purchasing may get frustrated.
We recommend running these campaigns for a limited time and around payday (normally the last Friday of the month). For example, you could run a 24% off for 24 hours payday offer. If you opt for this approach, consider how regular you run these promotions. If you do it every month, your audience may begin to anticipate it, and it could affect full price ticket sales.
You could also focus these promotions around other key events such as New Year, Christmas, Easter, International Friend Day etc.
Those who already have a ticket for your event naturally act as ambassadors in the public domain and will your most engaged audience segment.
Export buyers from your ticket platform and upload the opt in emails into your CRM. Contact them and encourage them to share the event with their friends, family or colleagues.
As an added incentive, offer them a discount on an additional ticket. This '+1' discount not only rewards your existing customers but also potentially expands your audience. This strategy can result in more ticket sales and a larger turnout at your event.
Make sure to put a limit on how long the discount is available for. If your ticket platform has a direct integration with your CRM which can trigger automations for new sales, you could set this up automatically so that those who purchased receive an email with the upsell a day later.
Offering discounted rates for group purchases can encourage more sales. This is especially effective if your event is likely to attract families, friends, or colleagues wanting to attend together.