Has the stress and chaos of event planning taken complete control of your life yet?

Are you worried about filling your event and making it a success?

Do you want your event to be bigger and better than the last one?

For most event organizers, especially those planning new events, the biggest challenge is to reach your ideal target market, capture their attention and get them to buy tickets.

I’ve organized events myself, so I know the fear of “will anyone turn up?” and “will it be worth my time & money?”.

For you, it seems like a no-brainer that people would love to come to the unmissable event that you are putting on.

So why is it so hard to attract people to your events and get them to buy tickets?

You are competing for their two most valuable assets; their time and their money.

And you’re up against some pretty stiff competition who want either their time, their money or both. And it’s not just other events, it’s friends, family, hobbies, work, bills and holidays to name just a few.

So how do you get people to buy tickets to your event?

First of all, you need to create awareness about your event, the reasons why people cannot miss this event, then you need to convert this awareness into demand and finally convert this demand into customers.

The Old Pay, Spray & Pray Method Most Event Organizers Are Still Wasting Money On

Traditionally, most event organizers placed expensive ads on radio or newspapers to broadcast their event out to a mass general audience who, for the most part, won’t be even slightly interested in your event.

What’s worse is that it’s usually the same boring radio advert repeated again and again that people blank out from or a boring newspaper advert that in the same position every week that’s always occupied by adverts so the readers glance over them without paying any attention.

And once these adverts are out to a mass audience, that’s it, you’ve no control over their performance, you’ve no way to alter them, optimize them or try different approaches based on performance.

Trying to monitor performance is a total minefield.

Unless you’re using a specific discount code, how do you know where your customers are coming from?

Did they hear an advert on the radio, see one in the newspaper or see a poster in a shop window?

Where should you continue to invest your advertising budget?

Should you increase your spending on radio ads or newspaper ads?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Your advert is created.

Your budget is spent.

Fingers crossed, something will happen.

Broad generalized advertising that you can’t measure and have no control over?

Sounds like a good idea, eh?

Facebook Advertising Offers a More Targeted, Cost-Effective, Easy to Monitor & Scalable  

On the other hand, you could create highly targeted adverts, across Facebook, Instagram & Messenger where you have your ideal audience’s attention, with complete control over your budget, the ability to test thousands of variations and the ability to scale high performing adverts according to specific metrics and direct actions that you can monitor.

Plus, you could start advertising from as little as €5/day until you have some bums on seats and cash in the bank.

You have additional benefits like the free referral advertising you will receive from people sharing your posts, tagging their friends and posting that they’ve just bought tickets to your event.

You also have a much easier customer journey.

At the click of a button, people can click on your advert, pop in their card details and have their tickets to your event booked.

When they hear a radio advert in a car or see your advert in the newspaper they cannot purchase directly. They might be driving in the car and by the time they arrive at their destination, they’ve completely forgotten about your event.

But remember that mass audience they keep telling you about? It’s declining rapidly.

Spotify, audiobooks and podcasts are becoming the mediums of choice for commuters and people who want to listen to something while they travel, work or go to the gym.

Newspapers have never sold less than they do today. Especially to people under 40. Where do people get their news now? Social media.

Did you know that an R.O.I. Study showed that it generally takes seven interactions with a brand before a customer makes a purchase?

So what about the person who was interested in your radio or newspaper advert but didn’t purchase straight away?

How are you going to reach them again, build up those interactions & demand and get them over the line?

It’s going to be the luck of the draw really.

Another major advantage of digital advertising is the ability to track, monitor and remarket to people based on their actions through the use of website tracking code.

Remarketing campaigns involve creating specific adverts to people who’ve visited your website, specific pages on your website or engaged with your business on social media.

Remarketing campaigns give you the ability to continually interact with interested people, educate them about your event, enhance demand and convert them through different sales tactics depending on the type of interaction they have taken.

These campaigns are ALWAYS the highest return on investment and without them, you are wasting so much money and burning through your profit margins.

With paid Facebook Advertising you can create a sales ecosystem that allows you to streamline and control your marketing in a way that traditional advertising doesn’t allow. You can start with small budgets and increase as you get closer to the event. You can continually advertise and engage people who have shown an interest in your event but have not yet purchased. You can structure and system the journey from the point of awareness to the point of purchase.

Now doesn’t that sound much more effective than those expensive radio and newspaper adverts?

CLICK HERE to see some case studies from some of our event marketing campaigns