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Tag: event marketing

24 Apr 2019

9 Mistakes Event Producers Overlook

People often settle for learning from their mistakes, but we believe it’s better to learn from the mistakes of others. Our team here at Sparxo understands how difficult it is to produce an event from conception to reality. There are so many intricacies and details to consider to ensure a successful event, which to us means a smooth and seamless attendee experience. So here’s a list of mistakes most event producers overlook from our founding team who has 20+ years of event experience combined: (You can thank us later!)

We’ve added a lot of meat to each section. Here’s an overview of the 9 points, feel free to skip to the section that most interests you:

  1. Lack of Marketing Expertise
  2. No Live Stream
  3. Poor Registration Process
  4. Not Planning Ahead
  5. Consciously Building Your Own Event Brand
  6. Not Thinking Through The Audience Experience
  7. Underestimating How to Structure Ticket Prices
  8. Lack of Communication Before The Event
  9. Not Having Event Insurance

(Written by: Rawia Abu Rabie)

  1. Lack Of Marketing Expertise

A successful sold out, viral event requires attention to marketing and advertising on social media platforms. It is estimated that 88% of millennials regularly use social media. You may have noticed that some events are everywhere on social media platforms and others can barely seem to be found. Great marketing and advertising for an event include knowing what content to create and when the best time is to post it.  Our research shows that you want to post on Facebook between 1 pm – 3 pm on weekdays and Saturdays. On average, the best time to post on Instagram is between 2 PM and 3 PM. Overall for Instagram, Thursday is the best day to post on Instagram not just at 3 PM, but also at 5 AM, 11 AM, and 4 PM as well.

All successful events rely on a strong word of mouth virality along with social media. Most of these events in today’s culture and with today’s technology are at everyone’s fingertips, so it makes it easier to advertise and put your event out there. Let’s take a look at Tomorrowland, one of the biggest electronic music festivals held in Belgium every summer. They do a phenomenal job in utilizing social media platforms to engage with audiences they otherwise never would have reached. Get ready for it … Each year Tomorrowland sells out on 400,000 tickets 40 minutes after they are released. To do this, Tomorrowland averages over 1.2 Billion social media engagements across Facebook, Instagram, and their Snapchat story was available in six different languages for users. One of their best strategies around digital marketing revolves around offering access to a live stream of their event to regions with strict government regulations on social media. Take notes here – if you can tap into untapped markets, you will be able to successfully ensure a sold-out event year over year by increasing your target market.

Tomorrowland is just one major example of how an international event continues to succeed and sell out their event year after year by strategically utilizing social media and digital marketing platforms. 

  2. No Live Stream

Not considering live streaming your event is one of the biggest missed opportunities event planners make. It’s a way for you to reach an audience who was thinking about coming or couldn’t come but will come next time. It’s also a way for you to have more information go viral by streaming fun content.  According to Julius Solaris, some of the best live streaming apps include Facebook, Youtube live, Periscope, Instagram Live, and Twitch. Don’t miss a chance to reach an audience who may decide to attend next time.  For example, Coachella, an annual musical festival held in California during the month of April,  its live stream reaches 41 million people.  That is the population of Australia and Cambodia combined! Moreover, the Super Bowl’s streamed event was watched across 7.5 million unique devices or the entire population of Hong Kong! One last statistic to blow your mind, the live stream of the red carpet of the Grammys has over 4.3 million views. Now, do you believe us? Live streaming of your event is a great way to engage with the otherwise missed audience and future customers. It helps create a higher demand for your next event and gives people a way to easily talk and share your event with their networks.

A successful sold out, viral event requires attention to marketing and advertising on social media platforms. It is estimated that 88% of millennials regularly use social media. You may have noticed that some events are everywhere on social media platforms and others can barely seem to be found. Great marketing and advertising for an event include knowing what content to create and when the best time is to post it.  Our research shows that you want to post on Facebook between 1 pm – 3 pm on weekdays and Saturdays. On average, the best time to post on Instagram is between 2 PM and 3 PM. Overall for Instagram, Thursday is the best day to post on Instagram not just at 3 PM, but also at 5 AM, 11 AM, and 4 PM as well.

All successful events rely on a strong word of mouth virality along with social media. Most of these events in today’s culture and with today’s technology are at everyone’s fingertips, so it makes it easier to advertise and put your event out there. Let’s take a look at Tomorrowland, one of the biggest electronic music festivals held in Belgium every summer. They do a phenomenal job in utilizing social media platforms to engage with audiences they otherwise never would have reached. Get ready for it … Each year Tomorrowland sells out on 400,000 tickets 40 minutes after they are released. To do this, Tomorrowland averages over 1.2 Billion social media engagements across Facebook, Instagram, and their Snapchat story was available in six different languages for users. One of their best strategies around digital marketing revolves around offering access to a live stream of their event to regions with strict government regulations on social media. Take notes here – if you can tap into untapped markets, you will be able to successfully ensure a sold-out event year over year by increasing your target market.  

  3. Poor Registration Process

Too often event producers and planners are focused on the event itself, that they forget about the importance of the check-in experience for their attendees and how that first impression depicts how their audience perceives their brand and the rest of the event.

For example, for those massive, sold out events where you know attendees will show up an hour or more before the event doors open, you should consider planning out the wait time experience. This might include 

  • Looking at the weather forecast! If it’s forecasted to be rainy, you should set up tents. If it’s blazing hot, you might consider setting up water stations outside and utilizing the opportunity to give out branded swag like sunglasses with your logo.
  • Putting up banner stands and fliers along the line sharing your IG handle/ FB handle and “slogans” that they can easily share or post.
  • Renting port-a-potties outside to ensure that guests don’t decimate the neighborhood or venue building.
  • Placing trash bins outside to keep the neighborhood/area clean/ the venue so neighborhood welcomes you back in the future.

You should want to make the experience pleasant for people waiting in line. You might consider planning out a few surprise experiences for guests while they’re waiting in line to start their event experience off on the right foot.

  • Waiting in line, is this a pleasant experience? What if it rains? Are there tents?
  • It needs to be clear what check-in is like, is it digital or printed tickets?  Do customers need to show their ID? Is it fast?
  • Check-in staff should be aware of the use of check-in devices, scanning, internet, what to do if someone doesn’t have a ticket? Is there a box office? Is there a manager they go to for help?
  • How are security dealing with the audience? Are they greeting them? Are they being nice?

Check-in is the first step your audience interact with your event, it needs to be pleasant and fast in order to get your audience excited about what’s next. Sparxo offers a great, free check-in application that scans digital and printed tickets. You can also sell tickets on other platforms and import lists into Sparxo so you have one seamless check-in experience. Plus, we offer a free POS (point of sale) system and box office set up as well!

 

 

  4. Not Planning Ahead

Planning an event is a lot of work from financial planning, registrations to looking for space. In order to not waste all this in prior work and maintain the success of the event, you need to think about all the possibilities that might happen in the day of the event. “What can go wrong and how can I prevent it or fix it?” That is why no matter how small the event is, it needs a lot of planning ahead

Thinking through worst-case scenarios ahead of time to prepare for them.  

Some worst-case scenario examples and how to prepare for them:

  • It suddenly rains on your event date – Do you have an indoor venue as a backup location to move the audience into? Do you have cover or water resistant materials to cover the stuff that cannot get wet? Do you need to reschedule?  Is Is the audience aware of the evacuation plan? That is why communication is super important with the audience prior to the event about event updates. Many cities have unstable weather conditions that fluctuate like the city of rain, London,  how the morning can be sunny and clear/ evening can be foggy and rainy)
  • Too many staff call in sick suddenly (broken car, got sick, etc) what do you do? Do you have extra staff prepared?
  • Power outage – what do you do? (how do you communicate this to the audience for rescheduling of event and/or still have an event?)
  • Your major artist or headliner speaker missed their flight/ can’t make it, how do you deal with it?
  • Does your event overlap with a major holiday? Should you reschedule now?

With Sparxo, event producers and organizers have access to brainstorming with Sparxo’s cofounding team of industry experts – for free! Sign up and set up your paid event tickets and you will automatically receive an email from our CEO!

  5. Consciously Building Your Own Event Brand

This is important to your success and future events. Often event organizers think only about the current event and its success, but don’t keep in mind how to use this event to launch future events. For example, electronic dance music events are well known for having memorable and sticky names such as (EDC) Electric Daisy Carnival or Coachella. Even major mainstream events have memorable, easy names such as the Super Bowl, the Grammy’s, the Oscars, and the Emmy’s to name a few.

How will your event brand be remembered?

The best event producers brand their event so that they can reproduce with ease. Or, an alternative to building an event-specific brand, is to brand your event production company and reinforce your company’s name throughout your marketing.

A specific way to brand your event or company includes having your own website such as www.yournameherepresents.com. Website template companies make is easy, fast, and cheap to have a beautiful, mobile-optimized website in no time. Our team particularly recommends Square Space.  It is considered a low expense and well priced as it is only a base of $12 per month billed annually. Having your own branded website, allows your audience to know where to go for future events and

gives them the idea that you produce multiple events. With this in mind, it is not in your best interest to put a link to buy tickets or register for your event on your website if it redirects your audience from your website to a different website such as Eventbrite or Brown Paper Tickets.


Don’t kill your brand. Instead of making yourself dependent on these third-party ticketing companies, we urge and encourage you to leverage them instead. Don’t make that mistake most event producers overlook when selecting their ticketing company. If you find that you need help with marketing and promotions to sell extra tickets. Why not post your event on their platforms anyway just to see if anyone new finds you through them? The goal then is not to promote their ticketing link, but to convert anyone who finds you from those sites into fans of your own website and brand.  You can do this by sending them an email recap after the event thanking them for their support and to check out your website for future events.

This is why our founders are pretty awesome. They designed Sparxo to allow you to post your event and sell tickets for your event anywhere you’d like. Sparxo has an easy to use way to import your guest lists and sales lists from other systems into Sparxo. This way you can aggregate all of your customer data for data analytics like identifying repeat attendees and have one seamless check-in system. Plus, our platform really does let you integrate it directly into your website with no redirects – all for free. You keep 100% of your ticket price!  

  6. Not Thinking Through The Audience Experience

Picking a venue, hiring a DJ and getting people to your event is not enough to make your event a success. Too many event producers forget to think about the details in the experience of their audience and how important their experience at the event is for the future of their other events. (We know this sounds a lot like something we mentioned above, but it’s not. We promise.)

A majority of the negative experiences attendees experience can be mitigated by simply having a training conversation with all of your event staff before the event begins.

For example,  here are some questions our team encourages you to think through before the event:

  • What is the experience like when the customer first enters the event? Are they greeted by rude security guards? Or do they enter an event with awesome lighting, music, and clearly marked bars to buy alcohol?
  • What is the experience like at the bar? Are your bartenders slow? Are they bias or not treating everyone equally? Is your event wheelchair accessible?
  • Security – what actions are and aren’t allowed in scenarios like people who are throwing up? There need to be clear instructions on how security can deal with situations.
  • How are staff interacting with the audience, do they greet? Are they nice? Do they smile?
  • Are bathrooms constantly cleaned? Are cleaning staff regularly checking them? Are trash bins regularly emptied?

These examples support the fact that there needs to be an outline of how to think through working with your onsite event staff prior to the event. Training and foresight in preparing your event staff on how to handle situations and have clear guidelines on what to do is a huge part of deciding your success. We hope you don’t make this mistake most event producers overlook.

With Sparxo, event producers and organizers have access to brainstorming with Sparxo’s cofounding team of industry experts – for free! Sign up and set up your paid event tickets and you will automatically receive an email from our CEO!

  7. Underestimating How to Structure Ticket Prices

Most of the time event producers don’t put too much effort into thinking about their ticket pricing structures. It is important to always keep in consideration that you will need to offer discount pricing and VIP or other complimentary tickets. It’s just part of generating support and advocates or promoters of your event. It’s important that they feel taken care of. Every complimentary ticket or discount ticket offered takes away from the total event capacity and the ability to sell full priced tickets. All of this needs to be taken into consideration when thinking about reaching your target revenue.

The industry standards often require you to give out complimentary tickets to special and influential people like media or influencers or sponsors for event partners. Discounts are often needed to give to event partners, friends, and family to incentivize them to buy tickets and come and “make them feel special.” Taking these complementary and discount tickets into consideration affects the price of the actual marketed price of the ticket.

Here’s an example:

Event expenses: $10,000

Target Profit: $10,000

The goal in sales: $20,000

Venue capacity: 500

An inexperienced event planner might think they should sell 500 tickets at $40 each. ($20,000 divided by 500 capacity = $40 per person ticket) This is not accurate.

To take into consideration what it takes to sell 500 tickets, you also need to consider offering ticket sale tiers, presale tickets as well as complimentary tickets and discounts.

To break this down, it might look like:

Two months of ticket sales and marketing

Presale Tier 1 for the first month of sales: $20 with a maximum of 50 tickets (goal is to generate word of mouth in selling out the first tier quickly)

Presale Tier 2: $30 with a maximum of 100 tickets

Presale Tier 3: $35 with a maximum of 100 tickets

Presale Tier 4: $40 with a maximum of 100 tickets

General Admission: $60 at the door

Offering complimentary tickets to 50 people

        And a 20% discount to friends and family off of the GA price.

With Sparxo, event producers and organizers have access to brainstorming with Sparxo’s cofounding team of industry experts – for free! Sign up and set up your paid event tickets and you will automatically receive an email from our CEO!

  8. Lack of Communication Before The Event

Event producers should always communicate with their audience about logistics for the event prior to the event. This contains information about the times in which doors open and directions within the venue.

It is always useful for your guests to know how to move around throughout the event. Can you imagine not knowing where the exit is during a time of an unexpected emergency? Thus, you should always Include the following:

  • Location of  parking garages in the area
  • Spots that have access to public transportation
  • Bathroom locations
  • The check-in station
  • Menu for food and drinks
  • Payment methods
  • ATM locations
  • Emergency exits

Moreover, making clear for staff if they have access to outlet sources to plug devices in or if they need to bring extra power packs and cables on hand to keep devices charged. Having all this clear prior to the event is highly efficient and effective.

Event producers should assure that everything is clear for their audience prior to the event because miscommunication can lead to some memorable hiccups in the experience your audience has with your brand and event.  For example, if your audience isn’t aware of the limited number of parking garages, they may not find parking or wait in long lines to park their cars, causing them to miss the opening of the show. While parking isn’t your responsibility, it is in your best interest your audience has the smoothest experience possible associated with your event and brand.  Another example would be making sure all audience are aware of the dress attire, so no one comes for a business event in a flip flop for example. Having great communication with the audience prior to the event makes your audience’s experience much better and easier. This will reflect terribly on the company’s reputation resulting in a decrease in sales for future events.

The great thing about Sparxo is that you can set up automatic messages to specific ticket holders beforehand using their Custom Email Confirmation section and/or their Email Message Specific to the Purchase of a specific ticket level.  Sign up for a free, no-obligation account today! This is an easy way not to make this mistake most event producers overlook!

  9. Not Having Event Insurance

Many event producers make the common mistake of not having event insurance. And, trust us, event insurance won’t break your bank. It could, however, save you from going bankrupt! We recommend checking out Event Helper, a 10 years old event insurance company. We did the work and checked pricing for you. For a thousand person event, event insurance through Event Helper would cost less than $200.

For large events, event insurance is a must. It protects you from all sorts of liabilities you wouldn’t have ever thought could happen at your event such bodily injury to attendees or property damages to the venue. Event insurance generally also covers any third party damage including the venue or vehicles rented especially for the event or for catering. And if you’re selling alcohol, liquor liability is something to think about for attendees who night overdose or be so intoxicated they require EMTs.

Some other examples of why you should consider event insurance might include if you are hosting an event in the inner city and a car crashes through your event, disturbing your entire event experience and shutting it down early.  Do you refund all guests? Who covers the cost of your staff and expenses? Or, perhaps, you’re hosting a concert with thousands of people and it happens to be incredibly hot that day or the air conditioning in the venue breaks down. What do you do when someone faints of dehydration?

 

CHECK OUT OUR OTHER BLOG POST ARTICLES:

SPARXO CHECK-IN, A FREE GUEST LIST APP FOR EVENTS

SPARXO MAKES IT EASY TO ADD AN EVENT CALENDAR TO YOUR WEBSITE

LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE WITH ATTENDANCE BREAKDOWN

WHERE SHOULD YOU POST YOUR EVENT? EVENTBRITE, MEETUP, OR FACEBOOK?

5 SUREFIRE WAYS TO SELL OUT TICKETS

7 UNIQUE WAYS TO MAKE YOUR EVENT VIRAL

A MEATING OF MINDS — HOW THIS COMPANY IS CHANGING THE WAY MEAT IS CONSUMED

5 SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2019

LEARN WHAT TICKETING COMPANIES ARE HIDING – A COMPARISON

EVENT PROMOTER’S ULTIMATE GUIDE TO EMAIL PROMOTIONS

9 MISTAKES EVENT PRODUCERS OVERLOOK

3 WAYS TO BUILD YOUR FOLLOWING

HOW CREATIVE STARTUP LABS COMPLETELY SOLD OUT THEIR SECRET UNDERGROUND POP-UP EVENT USING SPARXO

TOP 5 BIGGEST EVENT PLANNING FAILS IN HISTORY

QUIZ: WHAT’S YOUR EVENT PLANNER PERSONALITY TYPE?

HOW THE NIGHTWOOD SOCIETY TOOK CONTROL OF THEIR EVENT EXPERIENCE

THE ULTIMATE EVENT PLANNING CHECKLIST

TOP 5 STEPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL POP-UP

2 Apr 2019

Learn What Ticketing Companies Are Hiding – ...

Hundreds of ticketing companies start up each year. Don’t get taken advantage of by fine lines or small print. Find out who has hidden event ticketing fees.

 

It’s decided, your company will be hosting an event in a few months. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big event or small event, its success lies in good planning and preparation. Immediately, you do a quick Google search for the different event ticketing and registration platforms out there that can help you with event registration… and you come back even more confused than you were before you began.

Why? Because just like everything else out there in the market, you have to wade through paragraphs of marketing mumbo jumbo and then scroll till the end or jump a few pages more to see what fine print you might have missed — and even then, you still might not be getting the full story. Wouldn’t it be nice if companies just told you up front what you were getting and how much it would cost, no hidden fees or stipulations and all? Ah, the ideal world.

Well, we’ve done the research and here we are to break it down to you in easy, bite-sized morsels of information, you know, so we save you time on hiring a mathematician just to calculate ticketing fees!

Brown Paper Tickets

Brown Paper Tickets advertises a really eye-catching fee of $0.99. Whoa, you say, only 99 cents? That’s a steal! Yes, well, as with a lot of other things, make sure you check the fine print!

On their Pricing page (https://www.brownpapertickets.com/pricing.html), you’ll see this little table:

*Update 4/10/19: Brown Paper Tickets has since increased their fee to $0.99 + 5%

First of all, the fee actually is $0.99 + 5%, not just a flat rate of $0.99. Also, if you use a popular credit card processor like Paypal of Stripe, you won’t get to charge the total fees to your customers, because you will need to pay your credit card processing fee (which is normally 2.9% + $0.30) and Brown Paper Ticket’s fee ($0.99 + 5$). This essentially means that you’re paying Brown Paper Tickets at least 5% out-of-pocket of your ticket price while you pass on the $0.99 fee and the credit card processing fee to your customer. That’s knowing you have additional costs on your end before you even sell a single ticket!

They do make it sound very nice though, that they are giving you money to offset your costs… and well, that is until you realize you’d have to pay way more than what they are “giving” you to cover your credit card processing fees!

Another fine print that’s important to consider is this:

Should you ever need to cancel the event, you are charged $0.99 + 5% if using their credit card processor, or if you’re using your own processor, $0.99 + 5% PLUS the fees from your own credit card processor.

While these fees aren’t exactly hidden — they’re stated clearly on their pricing page — a little math does seem to be needed when you realize you’re not exactly getting the $0.99 good deal you thought you were getting. So be an informed customer and consider these factors when using Brown Paper Tickets.

Eventbrite

Eventbrite offers two different tiers of pricing for normal events (they also have a custom Premium option for super large complex events) — their Essentials package is 2% + $0.79 per ticket and their Professional package is 3.5% + $1.59. You can see what they offer in each package here: https://www.eventbrite.com/organizer/pricing/

However, a quick look at their Frequently Asked Questions pertaining to pricing also reveals this little info bit:

This means that while they say they let you pass the Eventbrite fee to your customers, what they mean to say is they ONLY let you pass the Eventbrite fee to your customers. At the end of the day, the credit card processing fee will still come out of your own pocket; there is no way of passing this fee to your customers.

What’s more, Eventbrite is mum about their maximum fees, while from our research we’ve found that their maximum fee in the last year alone has fluctuated from $19.95-$24.95!** Update on their maximum fee as of July 2019: They removed their maximum fee and no longer cap out. This means their rate is applicable for the entire ticket price with no maximum fee. That’s a whole whopping load of fees! Always check with the event ticketing site you’re considering what their maximum fees are, so you and your event goers don’t receive any “surprise” fees!

Finally, one drawback of Eventbrite is even though they claim to allow direct integration to your website, unless you are one of their major clients or unless you follow a strict list of rules, really all it does is redirect your customer to their website.

This is something to take into consideration especially because most companies would prefer to keep their online traffic on their site alone. This also means that embedding Eventbrite will not help your SEO if all of your customers are redirected to Eventbrite to complete their purchase. Your bounce rate will be high and retention rate low, while Eventbrite will maintain a low bounce rate and high retention rate increasing their own SEO. In the end, you will simply be helping Eventbrite’s SEO and branding, not your own.

Sparxo

The Sparxo pricing page is so simple we couldn’t even be bothered with tables! It’s just so straightforward — $1 for tickets under $25, $2 for tickets priced between $25 and $50, and $3 for tickets $50 and above.

One really great thing to note is this:

“The maximum Sparxo convenience fee is $3.00 + 2.9% + 0.30 per ticket. This fee includes the Sparxo application fee and the credit card transaction fee. The whole fee can be passed onto the customer or internalized or split.”

The whole fee! Yes, this means you can pass ALL your fees onto your customer — not only the Sparxo ticketing fees but also the credit card processing fees.

So essentially the math equation would be: $3.00 + 2.9% + 0.30 + all fees passed to customer = you keep 100% of your ticket price! We don’t know about you, but we believe 100% sounds just about right to us!

Also, in comparison to Eventbrite, Sparxo event registration does not call for any sort of redirection whatsoever. You maintain and control the entire brand experience with your customer. With Sparxo, you increase your retention rate, decrease your bounce rate, and boost your SEO all by doing exactly what you’ve already been doing.

Another plus to the Sparxo platform is if you find yourself having to deal with the sometimes-unexpected refund and/or cancellation situations. Well, you can put your worries away. Need to refund? Your customer’s get their Sparxo fees back too. Need to cancel? Pay no cancellation fees either.

To sum it up, you can refer to this simple table:

*If you are a major client fo Eventbrite’s or you follow this specific list of rules, then and only then can you directly embed Eventbrite into your website with no redirects:

1. You must use Eventbrite payment processing.

2. Your website must be secure with an HTTPS certificate on your website.

3. You can only sell tickets in the following currencies: USD, CAD, GBP, AUD or EUR

4. Does not work for events with multiple dates or times available.

5. Does not work when group registration is turned on.

6. Does not work with using “additional items” for sale for things like t-shirts.

7. Does not work when your event is password protected.

8. Does not work with the “Will Call” feature.

9. Does not work when adding multiple embed codes on the same page for the same event.

Note: For major festivals or large events, event ticketing sites typically offer special deals or integrations. The table above is what is offered to the general public and average event organizer or event producer.

We hope that we’ve made it easier for you to see which event ticketing platform offers what and at what cost so that you can find the best one that suits your needs! We wish all companies and ticketing systems were as transparent and upfront as Sparxo. Since that isn’t the case, we hope you found our research valuable. Happy event-ing!

Try a no obligation, free account with Sparxo today! www.sparxo.com 

5 Mar 2019

7 Ways to Use Your Website to Sell More Tickets

Written By: Carl Diesing

Events are a big deal and so is your brand. Find out the 7 ways our team has discovered how to sell more tickets using your website. Whether your company hosts a few casual professional meetups, an annual fundraising gala, or even multi-day MICE events, we’re talking a substantial investment of money, time, resources and effort from your event team. And for every event you organize, you want to see some form of ROI – sales, donations, new leads or contacts, conversions down the sales funnel, customer loyalty, or even just creating awareness in or making a positive impression on your market or community.

But maximizing the impact of your event is not something to be left up to the last minute, or a single task to be scheduled right in between ordering brochures or sorting seating arrangement. To get the best out of your event, you need to plan early, and the key, really, is to start milking your resources for every ounce of audience engagement you can get. One amazing resource that you own entirely and which you fully control – is your website. All you need to learn is how to harness the power of your online tools to create maximum impact on your potential attendees. Keep reading for 7 ways to use your website to sell more tickets!

  1. Integrate, integrate, integrate

In today’s markets, information is king, and being able to work with your data will always translate into more opportunities and more potential. Ever heard the saying “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing”? Yup, that’s not a situation you want for your company to be in.

Integration across platforms, therefore, has become a growing need when it comes to a company’s back-end systems. In planning any event, you’re looking at utilizing a whole host of tools such as a registration and ticketing platform, marketing tools, CRM platform, website management tools, social media tools, database and contact tools, event planning and management tools, logistics tools… Imagine the chaos if all these separate tools and entities didn’t speak the same language! Your data needs to flow seamlessly across platforms so that at one glance you know all you need about Mr. John Smith, for example, in order to market directly to him.

When you’re planning your event, you shouldn’t have to worry about things like identifying repeat customers, identifying which marketing tools are working best for you, or how to export your attendees into your CRM system. Sparxo allows you to automatically track engagement data and gain real-time insights into the effectiveness of your event marketing and promotion efforts. Sparxo allows you to directly integrate it’s event registration and ticketing platform directly into as many webpages as you’d like so that you can track exactly where your attendees find you. Sparxo also allows you to aggregate your data across other platforms by importing your sales lists into Sparxo. Sparxo will combine that imported information and pinpoint who is a loyal fan and who is a firsttime attendee. This also lets you use one check-in system for everything.

  1. Simplify.

How many clicks does it take for an interested person to sign up for your event? It’s a little bit like playing golf – the less, the better! When you’ve sparked a little bit of interest in someone – even if it’s just the tiniest instance of a spark – you certainly do not want to lose them thanks to some clunky user interface or weird domain redirection. No! You want to make it as easy as possible for them to sign up for your event. Thankfully it’s pretty easy to achieve this. You want your event hosted on your own website, you want it embedded into your social media pages, and you want to make registration a breeze. With Sparxo, all this is possible.

  1. Content marketing

SEO is a buzzword you’ll see everywhere, but it stands for search engine optimization, which is boosting your visibility online. And you can certainly boost your event’s reach and impact by marketing relevant content to your target audience. This is the value add you offer as a company. This is how you engage your audience and win them over. Here are some things you can do:

* Write and publish a few blog posts about your event. You can cover a different topic every week, from conducting interviews with the people involved, to offering behind-the-scenes looks into your planning process. Get people excited about your event taking shape. Hook them with teasers while capturing their curiosities.

* Make use of cross-platform marketing. Reach out to relevant other online publications in your industry or locale. Ask them to post about your event and link it back to your website. Get your event’s corporate sponsors in on the online promotions. Get the word out as much as possible amongst the community.

* Startup engaging conversations with your registered attendees on social media. Generating these types of organic interactions will boost your event’s visibility as well as create hype and excitement for the event.

Everybody is curious, so use it to your best interests. Create valuable, interesting content that revolves around your event to not only grow your potential audience but keep your registered audience captivated and looking forward to your event. Sparxo uniquely allows you to do this. Enabling you to engage directly with your audience is a core foundation of Sparxo’s philosophy. The longer you retain your audience on your webpage, the better your organic SEO. 

  1. Reach out to industry influencers

Just like the point before this, social media influencers can be extremely effective partners for promoting your events. They are well-connected, have a good following, and are usually credibly regarded when sharing their personal and/or professional insights, depending on their background. Find out who the worthy influencers are for your sector or locale and reach out to them. Finding a mutually beneficial way of working together can work well to boost the reach of your event by a digital mile.

  1. Research your registered attendees

Now that you know who is signing up for your event, what can you do with that information? With Sparxo, you get full data breakdowns including their background and history of engagement with your organization. This helps you identify certain individuals for networking purposes, for example. Knowing your attendees means being able to identify your opportunities better and solidify strong strategies that work for these individuals.

  1. Offer a pre-sale option

Why give up a chance to make a sale before you even get your customers in a room to give them the official sales pitch? When registering for your event, you can give customers the option to purchase certain “add-ons” that are relevant to your event. For example, you might have a casual lunch-time networking event in between conferences. You might also offer merchandise or premium packages for your products and/or services for pre-purchase, or the possibility to purchase the books of one of the speakers at your event. Not only does all this generate extra revenue, but it continues to interact with your attendees and keeps the event fresh and exciting for them.

  1. Make the early birds feel special

It’s up to you to give them the worm! Early bird promotions can drive ticket sales in the lead-up to your event. You could offer coupon codes which people can share with their friends, create tiered packages or early bird packages with extra perks or at lower price points, or offer free merchandise or useful bonuses to a certain amount of first-in online registrants. Whatever it is, making your early registrants feel special isn’t that difficult or too expensive, and it can certainly go a long way in converting your attendees into loyal customers down the funnel!

With a combination of all these tips, you can develop an amazingly effective event marketing and audience engagement strategy that works for your unique event and your company’s needs. Here at Sparxo, we understand the importance of your brand and brand experience. That’s why we developed a white label, no brand event ticketing and registration platform focused on giving you tools to build your brand, directly connect with your audience, and analyze the right data. And, you keep 100% of your ticket price with us! Sign up for a free, no-obligation account today! Happy eventing! We hope you enjoyed this article on how to sell more tickets using your website!

 

About the Author:

Carl Diesing, Managing Director – Carl co-founded DNL OmniMedia in 2006 and has grown the team to accommodate clients with on-going web development projects. Together DNL OmniMedia has worked with over 100 organizations to assist them with accomplishing their online goals. As Managing Director of DNL OmniMedia, Carl works with nonprofits and their technology to foster fundraising, create awareness, cure disease, and solve social issues. Carl lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife Sarah and their two children Charlie and Evelyn.

 

25 Feb 2019

A MEATING OF MINDS — How This Company is Cha...

As a local company, you have something important to offer to your customers and the community; and it’s not just your products and/or services. It’s knowledge. Yes, it’s that age-old, wisdom-laden, ever-elusive and highly-intangible thing that makes you who you are, and makes you stand out from the crowd. Learn how this company is changing the way meat is consumed.

And knowledge comes in the bucket loads, when it comes to our event partner Portland Meat Collective. With a motto and philosophy that’s all about how to “keep meat real”, Portland Meat Collective is undoubtedly your go-to school on the West coast for hands-on classes revolving around one area of goodness — yes, you got it — meat. They know it best, and figured they were sitting on a gold mine of information that needed to be shared with the world!

You see, it all started way back in 2009 when a then- magazine editor and food writer by the name of Camas Davis embarked upon a little idea to find out how pork is sourced, you know, literally from the farm to the table. That took her on an incredible journey to France, where she studied the entire process first-hand from farming to butchery to charcuterie. It was an intensive and involved process that begun with growing the grain that feeds the pigs, up to the part where every single part of the animal was carefully and economically turned into wholesome food to be enjoyed by knowing customers. The meat was eaten with a reverence and respect that Camas had not experienced in the States, and she was determined to bring it with her as she headed back home.

Camas Davis

So began Portland Meat Collective as the local platform to highlight the processes behind your pork. The idea was that by bringing the community into the hands-on process of whole-animal butchery and charcuterie, consumers can truly come face to face with sourcing good, clean, fair meat, and just how important sustainable farms and humane meat production and processes are.

PMC founder Camas Davis teaching a pig butchery class @FeastPDX

 

And just how are these revolutionary ideas transposed onto consumers? Why, good old-fashioned education!

Portland Meat Collective has something to say and to give their ideas a voice, they have partnered with Sparxo to offer highly interactive classes and workshops to the community.

If you’ve ever been curious about just what goes into and around turning a pig into a sausage or bacon, for example, or you’ve wanted to try curing your own dried meats such as pancetta right in your own home, or you’d love to be able to break down a whole pig into beautiful and amazing cuts, with your own two hands — or it could be simply that you’ve never heard of the word finocchiona before and you’re immediately intrigued to learn that it is (a type of salami that hails from Tuscany) — whatever it is, Portland Meat Collective has a class specially designed for you.

A wide range of instructors work with Portland Meat Collective to get all that solid information to you — butchers that have studied old-world curing in Italy, to farmers who double up as beekeepers, and make their own soap. Meanwhile, Sparxo works hard with Portland Meat Collective behind the scenes to handle all their events and customer registration experiences, so they can truly focus on what they do best: keeping meat real.

A PMC class which includes a light meal as well

Now it’s time for your voice to be heard. What message does your company have to share with your community? Let us here at Sparxo make your company events effortless so that you too can focus on sharing the good stuff, the stuff that truly makes you – YOU.

We understand and value the importance of your brand and brand experience. That’s why we developed a white label, no brand event ticketing and registration platform that you can use for free. You keep 100% of your ticket price with us! Sign up for a free, no-obligation account today!

 

CHECK OUT OUR OTHER BLOG POST ARTICLES:

SPARXO CHECK-IN, A FREE GUEST LIST APP FOR EVENTS

SPARXO MAKES IT EASY TO ADD AN EVENT CALENDAR TO YOUR WEBSITE

LEARN MORE ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE WITH ATTENDANCE BREAKDOWN

WHERE SHOULD YOU POST YOUR EVENT? EVENTBRITE, MEETUP, OR FACEBOOK?

5 SUREFIRE WAYS TO SELL OUT TICKETS

7 UNIQUE WAYS TO MAKE YOUR EVENT VIRAL

A MEATING OF MINDS — HOW THIS COMPANY IS CHANGING THE WAY MEAT IS CONSUMED

5 SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2019

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