You’ve put a lot of work into crafting the ultimate music event. Now, it’s time to pack the house out. That’s where a smart promotional strategy will make all the difference.
An effective marketing strategy allows you to connect with your existing community, stay front-of-mind for event-goers, and target music lovers who are interested in events just like yours.
It’s a lot to think about. At Eventbrite, we know a thing or two about promoting successful events and are here to help. We’ve worked with more than 800,000 event organizers, supporting them with our industry-leading marketing suite.
Analyzing the best promotional tactics on our marketplace has given us a unique perspective on what it takes to have the most impact with your marketing. We’ve pulled together 18 top tips on event promotion to help you throw your most successful music event yet.
Ready to see your ticket sales skyrocket? Let’s get started.
💡Pro tip: Organizers who use Eventbrite’s marketing tools sell 63% more tickets per event.
18 ways of promoting events
Get the ball rolling on your event promotion strategy. These tips will help ensure that you bring in attendees who are fully engaged and excited about your event.
1. Hone in on your target audience for event promotion
What to do: Think like your event-goers. Who are they? Why are they likely to attend your event? What does your event have in common with others they’ve been to? Where do they spend their time online?
Building a profile of your target audience will help you speak more directly to their wants. You can do this by looking at past attendees or even those returning for more than one event. With more accurate targeting, you can get much more impact from the same advertising budget.
When to do it: At least six months from your event. The sooner you know who you’re speaking to, the more time and money you’ll save.
2. Connect with your audience
What to do: Once you know who your audience is, connect with them on a personal level. Event-goers don’t want to feel like they’re constantly being sold to, so it’s time to engage with them on a more personal level to build community and connection.
Authenticity is essential nowadays and is the benchmark that all brands are being tested against. You can achieve this in a variety of ways, so learn more about building your events brand here.
When to do it: Implement this at every stage for a consistent brand tone.
💡Pro tip: Music festival pros Bar Pop are experts at creating intimate immersive experiences their attendees love. Learn more about them here.
3. Take advantage of Facebook event ads and event discovery sites
What to do: Sometimes, the clearest solution is right before you. Eventbrite research shows that over half of event-goers look to neighborhood guides for things to do. In-the-know fans also turn to more targeted sites to discover events. You can also use paid social ads to target people based on their interests and location.
When to do it: Start three to six months before your event. Early ticket sales come from fans anticipating an event for some time.
💡Pro tip: Use social ads lookalike targeting to appeal to fans of similar artists and genres, like Crust Nation.
4. Enable native checkout
What to do: Make it as easy for people to buy tickets to your event without leaving the page they found you on. Too many stages means people are at risk of becoming distracted from making that final purchase.
Event distribution is a simple way to reach various platforms and sell tickets directly on their sites. It entails making your event visible on multiple platforms so that as many people as possible hear about your event.
When to do it: Throughout the process. Keeping this function available during the life of your ticket sales ensures event-goers can commit whenever, wherever.
💡Pro tip: Our new industry-leading TikTok integration means users can purchase tickets without ever leaving the social media app.
5. Harness the power of email
What to do: Categorize your email lists by previous event ticket purchasers and demographics within your target audience, then write email campaigns that speak to those smaller groups.
First, create an email list of people who have bought tickets in the past. They’re more likely to register for your next events if they enjoyed the last ones.
You can speak more directly to their wants and needs by creating separate email lists for these different groups. Past attendees might want to know what another event can do for them, whereas a person who’s never attended before would need a more initial overview of what you can offer.
Use email and event ads together. By targeting the same audience with both and using unified messaging, you can increase the likelihood of the key people you’d like to target, such as past attendees or interested demographics, attending your event. You can even use email copy templates to optimize your text and get more people to sign up.
When to do it: Throughout the event-planning process. There’s an email for every type of buyer. Plus, reminder emails cut back on no-shows.
💡Pro tip: Use our marketing tools to quickly and easily send emails to your community with no contact limits and up to 10,000 daily sends. Our open rates are 59% higher than the industry average. Our essential event email marketing tips can help you to increase open rates.
6. Leverage the right social media channels
What to do: Social media is one of the most powerful event marketing channels out there, if not the most powerful. If you’re not sure which platform might work best for you, experiment!
Think about where your audience might be most active, and meet them there. Then all you’ve got to do is present your events as truly unmissable. Sounds easy, right? Check out our social media guide to events to help you get started.
Then, you can focus your social media event advertising there to get the most bang for your buck. After all, social media advertising is popular among younger audiences, with a majority of Gen Z (57%) and Millennials (51%) preferring them to traditional website ads.
When to do it: One to two months from the event. Keep your event fresh and relevant in the feeds of social media users.
💡Pro tip: Sell more tickets with Eventbrite’s industry-leading TikTok integration. You can now add event links directly to your TikTok videos and share them straight from the platform.
7. Content marketing is a must
What to do: Content marketing covers everything from blog posts to infographics and videos. Build a strong brand image for consistency across your output, whether in colors, fonts, or tone of voice.
When to do it: Throughout the process. Even post-event content reminds your fans of the great time they had, builds relationships, and makes them more receptive to future communications.
8. Maximize online advertising
What to do: Online advertising delivers results. For direction along the way, Eventbrite can help across all sectors of online promotion, from defining the target audience to algorithms and A/B testing.
Hone and refine your social media and Google Ads to make the most impact with your ad budget. Then, watch the work pay off.
When to do it: One to two months ahead of your event. Use online advertising as you would a social media ad. When using powerful tools like Eventbrite’s marketing suite, the more data collected, the better. Get started early to know where and how you should advertise.
💡Pro tip: With Eventbrite Ads, you can promote your events with sponsored listings on top spots across the platform. Eventbrite Ads campaigns get 14x more impressions than events with no promotion, and 30% better CTR (click-through rate) compared to Facebook Ads.
9. Don’t forget about your event ad’s copy and design
What to do: Good copy and design catch the attention of event-goers. On top of that, promotional content is the first image potential attendees will see. Make it fun or dramatic, and include an eye-catching design and clear copy. Use pictures of real people—not stock photos—and give your writer examples of what your authentic voice sounds like.
When to do it: Six or more months before the event. This is the kind of work to outsource—give artists and writers reasonable deadlines before content is ready for publication.
💡Pro tip: Writer’s block? Try Eventbrite’s AI tool, which generates event descriptions at the click of a button.
10. Retarget event-goers who expressed interest
What to do: You’ve seen retargeting technology in action. You search for something online; then you see ads for it on another site. Give people who weren’t ready to purchase tickets the first time a second chance.
When to do it: Two weeks from the event. This is a great tool to get last-minute buyers on board without flooding their feed.
💡Pro tip: Eventbrite organizers have seen an average of 6x return on investment using ad retargeting.
11. Invest in professional photography
What to do: Set the tone for your event ads with quality event photos that tell people what to expect. From advertising to email, photos come in handy across all elements of your marketing efforts. When sourcing a photographer, be sure to look at their previous work to confirm theirs is a style you’re after, and remember to brief them thoroughly to let them know what you’re looking for.
When to do it: Throughout the process. Hire your photographer for pre-event hype and on the day of the action, then use the photos for follow-up and future events.
💡Pro tip: Eventbrite Organizer The Great Northern has fantastic event imagery, which captures the eclectic mix of events they host.
12. Create an event website
What to do: An event website becomes a hub for anything related to your event—the video content, photography, copy, and design all come together. Best of all, a unique link is easy to promote across platforms and share among friends.
Having a great event listing can also open up the opportunity for a different kind of event ad: You can link to the event page instead of going straight to checkout. That’s easy to do with Eventbrite event pages, which give you the space to describe your event details while making it easy for visitors to move on to register when they want to.
When to do it: Three to six months from the event (as long as it’s ready by the time you advertise it).
Create your next event page in a few minutes
13. Look for similar audiences
What to do: You have a solid list of people who previously purchased tickets to your events. You want to find more people just like that. With Eventbrite, it’s easy to figure out who your most likely attendees are and ensure they see your ads so you get the most registrations to make them even more effective. You can do this audience targeting with different tools on different sites, like Facebook’s lookalike audiences, or across many different platforms with Eventbrite’s marketing tools.
When to do it: Throughout the process. This continuously provides a useful perspective, from before creating the event to the final sales report.
14. Enlist a social media influencer
What to do: Working with influencers is about more than just exposure, you need to transform your target consumers from potential customers to actual attendees.
You don’t need to look to influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers. Micro-influencers—who have between 10,000 and 100,000 followers—understand their audience, have high levels of engagement, and are cost-effective.
When to do it: Start sourcing micro-influencers around two months from the event, and plan activity using their expertise. You want to give your content enough space to perform and find your audience, while not launching too early that the content is not relevant.
💡Pro tip: Want to learn more about working with micro-influencers? Download our guide.
15. Make a video to tease your event
What to do: If you want to market your event well and tap into FOMO, invest in video marketing. Video has the unique ability to showcase the vibe of your event and evoke an emotional response in people, leading them to engage with your brand and buy a ticket to your next event.
Video is crucial for social media, but is also effective across email campaigns and websites, too. Done well, a smart video strategy can lead to higher engagement, awareness, and conversions.
When to do it: One to two months before the event. Consider dropping a video at different stages of sales to raise interest.
💡Pro tip: Check out our guide to TikTok marketing for events to learn more.
16. Social media ticket giveaway
What to do: Contests build buzz and help gain more followers. Try enter-to-win sweepstakes or a playful TikTok challenge. From sweepstakes to caption contests, here are plenty of social media giveaway ideas to inspire you.
When to do it: One week before the event. This works well for unconvinced attendees.
17. Create a unique event hashtag
What to do: Launching a special event hashtag before your event helps your event reach potential attendees. Read our ultimate guide to event hashtags to learn the dos and don’ts and get inspiration for ones to use.
When to do it: Three to six months. Build your hashtag presence even before tickets go on sale.
18. Follow up after the event
What to do: Everyone loves a debrief. Give your event a lasting impression with photos, videos, and a newsletter. Send it out for all to see—even those who didn’t attend (to generate some old-fashioned FOMO).
You can format this in a number of ways, like a thank you message or a post-event survey. These have several effects: They raise your brand awareness, make those who didn’t attend wish they had, and make the people who did attend feel more valued. They can also act as advertisements for the next event you host.
When to do it: Within one week after the event. Ideally, you would follow up with a thank you message within 24 hours.
Maintain the momentum until you’re sold out
The path to a sold-out music event is paved with carefully planned advertising and marketing efforts. From using the power of email and social media, trying out content marketing, investing in professional photography, to saying thank you after the event, each step is important in making the best event you can.
Remember, it’s not just about promoting an event but about creating an engaging, memorable experience that resonates with your audience. If you want to truly make your event special, make the lead-up as exciting as possible with a targeted and personalized event campaign using Eventbrite’s marketing suite.
