Let’s face it: Your event is unique, but it’s not the only one in town.
At Eventbrite, our unique event creators put on five million events every single year.
With all these cool experiences begging for attention, making your event stand out can be tricky. Well, don’t sweat it — we’re here to guide you.
We’re all for supporting our quirky and wonderful creators to make their events pop — and sometimes the best way is to create a bold marketing strategy that engages your potential customers on all fronts.
Read on to find out how to market an event, and take a deep dive into some of the best ways our creators have promoted their event without breaking the bank.
How to market an event: do your homework first
First thing first: you’ve got to do some market research. Get to the core of “why” your event is unique, and make sure you know who you’re targeting and what goals you need to set.
Identify your target audience
To market your event effectively, you’ll need to conduct some research on where your target audience is hiding online.
Start by assessing competitive event types online and look at the types of people who are engaging with these accounts. Take note of recurring demographics, interests, shared followers, or influencers who keep popping up.
If you need some inspiration, look no further than event creator Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.
While botanical gardens may not be traditionally known as a haven for cool young people, PR and marketing coordinator, Jonah Holland, knew there was a demand and appeal for such unique events; she just had to find the right audience.
That involved being proactive on social media platforms like Facebook and working to connect with younger audiences through trial and error. In the end, they increased their ticket sales by using Eventbrite’s Facebook integration, getting a 61 x return on investment (ROI) — and they’ve ended up with a huge group of younger followers that regularly engage with their events.
Set event objectives
Before you can start marketing your event, you need to set goals and get familiar with what exactly you want to achieve.
For example, maybe you’ve got a tangible revenue goal, like selling 500 tickets. Or you could opt for a less tangible goal, like creating a sense of community or building awareness for a cause that’s close to your heart.
No matter what your goals are, document them and constantly refer back to them as your content marketing plan unfolds.
When Secret Movie Club started using Eventbrite, one of their main goals was to scale their operations on a budget so they could create bigger events without spending a lot of money.
By keeping that goal at the front of his mind, founder Craig Hammill and his team doubled attendance and quadrupled the number of shows they put on — all without breaking the bank.
WHAT?!! LESS THAN 20 TIX LEFT! Yes to tonight's THE RAID & THE RAID 2 (both 35mm!) two of the greatest 21st century action movies. Fri 9/8/23 730p, SMC Theater. GET TIX OR REGRET IT THE REST OF YOUR LIFE:https://t.co/KUBYGBiY4e pic.twitter.com/ypUKBBZZMT
— Secret Movie Club (@secretmovieclub) September 8, 2023
Create an event marketing strategy
Your marketing strategy helps to make your goals achievable.
It should include an event marketing timeline that pinpoints what you plan to do and how and when it’ll get done. It should also include information about the platforms and resources you plan to use as well as your event marketing budget.
Need inspiration? Sierra Nevada chose to develop their event marketing strategy around social retargeting and were able to reach their target audience and achieve a 10 times return on ad spend and sell out their event quickly.
By reaching their target market, Sierra Nevada now has its event marketing down to a science — and we love to witness their growth.
9 bold and unique ways to market an event
Now you have your target audience, you’ve set reachable goals, and developed a marketing strategy, it’s time to brainstorm which marketing tactics to include in your strategy.
Below are some of our favorite ways to make a bold statement and reach your target audience each and every time.
1. Encourage some healthy competition
Incentivize engagement by getting people to think and talk about your event before and after its launch.
You could create a pre-event social media contest encouraging people to send in user-generated content. You can then hand out an award for your favorite creation based on data or your team’s opinion.
For example, you could set up a costume contest and award free drinks to the best-dressed guest — or set up a photo booth and award those with the best pictures after the event has finished.
That’s what River North Fests did for their recent Sangria Fest event. This strategy also ensures your event stays fresh in your guests’ minds long after their attendance.
💡Pro tip: Keep your competition relevant to your market and event type. For example, you probably won’t get a lot of engagement promoting your music festival by asking followers to send in photos of their favorite book.
Interested in improving your ROI?
2. Launch a digital scavenger hunt
Scavenger hunts are a brilliant way to boost engagement and build excitement around your upcoming event. They also showcase your brand’s personality and create loads of opportunities for social tags.
You could team up with an augmented reality (AR) smartphone app to create a hunt around town — or even go analog and print out QR codes and pin them in the neighborhood around your venue to help potential ticket holders get familiar with the area.
💡Pro tip: Incentivize participation for entering your scavenger hunt by offering a prize like a 20 percent off promo code for whoever reaches the end of your hunt.
3. Let influencers do a social media takeover
A social media influencer takeover is when an influencer temporarily runs a brand’s social media account. The goal is to increase brand visibility, reach more people, and introduce fresh content. It’s commonly used on platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, and Facebook.
Collaborating with influencers in your area allows you to leverage their huge following to create some hype and authenticity around your event.
Influencers tend to be more cost-effective than traditional marketing methods, like press advertising, to generate more traffic to your event page for less.
A great example of best practice is event creator Pretty Princess Parties. They utilize social media influencers, which helps them reach their target audience faster and cheaper than other marketing methods.
💡Pro tip: Contact influencers you naturally align with. For that, you need to follow them for a while and pinpoint influencers whose values align with yours and your event.
4. Pop-up around town
Digital marketing is cost-effective, but you can’t deny the effectiveness of face-to-face interactions in building awareness and forging connections with potential customers.
Set up a pop-up on your local main street, a local fair, or even right outside your venue. This will showcase your event and allow you to clear up any hesitations people might have before completing the event registration process. It’s also an excellent opportunity to connect with your customers.
💡Pro tip: To attract passers-by, combine some event entertainment into your pop-up shop.
For example, if you’re hosting a concert, get one of your musicians to perform an acoustic set. This will give ticket holders a taste of what they can expect by attending your upcoming event.
You can even sell tickets to upcoming events while you’re chatting with people at your pop-up by using Eventbrite’s Organizer App.
Want to sell tickets at your next pop-up?
5. Create buzz with an event playlist
We associate music with experiences — and creating a Spotify playlist is a brilliant way to get ticket holders excited in the run-up to your event.
The right playlist will increase your organic reach when happy listeners are sharing your playlist. Need some inspiration?
Take a look at George Washington University and how they created a playlist on Spotify to set the tone for their last graduation ceremony. If that’s not celebration music, we don’t know what is!
💡Pro tip: Conduct some market research before creating your playlist. After all, there’s no point in promoting a playlist your potential attendees won’t enjoy. Create an online poll or post a tweet to find out what your customers and previous attendees like before you choose songs.
6. Organize a special preview
Everybody likes to try it before they buy it, right? That’s why you should organize an exclusive preview for fans or social media followers.
This could take the form of a taster night the week before your event — or you could take a page out of OASIS’ book. In the run-up to their upcoming Rocky Horror Show, they stage a special preview night where attendees get the full show at half price.
💡Pro tip: Unless you’re opening the doors up to a full dress rehearsal, you might not want to give your whole show away.
Try to condense your event program down to about a quarter of its full runtime. That’ll tease ticket holders with a taste of your performance and make them want to come back for more.
7. Boost engagements with social giveaways
Social media giveaways are a sure way to drive engagement and increase your follower count across social networks. Plus, social media drives a quarter of all traffic to your event page.
Offer a pair of free tickets to your event, a VIP upgrade, or a drinks package. The organic spread of your giveaway posts should drive interest (and sales) for your upcoming event.
Brooklyn-based nightclub House of Yes often uses visuals from previous events to promote new giveaways through caption contests — with the prize often including tickets for future events.
💡Pro tip: Boost engagement further by encouraging your followers to tag friends by including ‘tag someone who’d love this’. You should also be upfront about the rules and post an update with the winner to build trust that your giveaways are legitimate.
8. Reward your community
Your previous attendees are your loyal fanbase and deserve some love!
Creating promo codes and sending them out to people on your email lists creates a sense of exclusivity around joining your subscribers list that can turn casual customers into loyal fans. Promo codes are also an excellent strategy to track what platforms your customers use most, so you can collect this data and apply your findings to future event promotions.
For example, EEEEEATSCON promotes special deals and presale discounts to social media followers that you won’t find anywhere else online. This gives eaters a reason to follow the creator on social — while the amazing content ensures followers stick around for the long haul.
💡Pro tip: Create a content capture form, and embed it on your website so that you’ve always got a horde of email addresses waiting for exclusive deals. With a captive group of leads at your fingertips, all it takes is a 10 percent off promo code to kickstart your ticket sales.
9. Create a 3D tour of your event space
Instead of creating a preview show for potential attendees, why not create a virtual tour of your event space?
By doing a quick run through your venue, you can clear up any questions event attendees might have regarding space, layout, design, etc. You can even create shareable assets like videos or maps that users can share organically to drive traffic to your event page.
💡Pro tip: If you’re not sure where to start, there are a lot of virtual platforms that specialize in creating affordable drone flythroughs and 3D tours. Alternatively, if money’s tight, do a video walkthrough yourself and post it on YouTube.
Don’t forget: traditional digital marketing drives ticket sales
It’s fun to grab potential attendees’ attention with bold and edgy tactics — but when it comes to event marketing, you can’t afford to ignore the more traditional channels like paid ads and email marketing.
Use paid ads and retargeting
When you set up social media ad campaigns, you can target viewers based on characteristics like age, relationship status, whether they’ve got kids, location, the pages they’ve liked, and just about everything in between.
But even your best fans aren’t going to click on every ad — that’s where retargeting is an outstanding opportunity.
It’s a dynamic way to target digital window shoppers by following them across the web after they’ve looked at your event page. This increases your odds of pulling them back in to complete a transaction.
With Eventbrite’s marketing tools, the retargeting process is simple. All you’ve got to do is set up a pixel and add it to your event page.
From there, you can control the timing, frequency, and platform where visitors will see retargeted ads for your event.
Email is (still) king
Email marketing has been around for a long time, but it’s still one of the most effective event marketing tools at your disposal. Email marketers reckon that optimized marketing comms can produce an ROI of $42 for every $1 spent sending them.
Not only that, over 90% of marketers say that email is vital to their business success. That makes sense, given how many times a day most of us check our inboxes.
Don’t let that opportunity go to waste. Build an email database of past attendees (or set up a content capture form so new users can register), and use it to promote your brand and events, and build up the excitement as your event approaches.
With Eventbrite Marketing Tools, you can fast track your email marketing campaigns with automatically refreshed subscriber lists and easily customizable templates that are specially designed to grow your business.
Ready to start marketing your event?
Creating a foolproof event marketing plan begins with finding your target customers. People are tired of feeling like they’re being sold something 24/7 — instead, use the above tips to make your potential attendees feel part of a community and an experience.
Fostering a life-long relationship requires time and patience, and we’re here to support you. With Eventbrite, you can set up event listings, create promo codes and VIP tickets, produce social media ads, control your email marketing effort, and everything in between.
