Planning a live event can take a lot of work. Although virtual and online events take a lot of planning, selling tickets for a live in-person event takes a different type of effort.
Live events are essential to the growth of your business as an entrepreneur and it is very effective for building a loyal community. Live events are so powerful that many business owners are using them as a means to scale their business.
In order to have a successful and profitable event, you have to be able to market your event properly. Most events fail due to the lack of an event marketing plan.
Being able to fill seats for your event is a top priority. The key is being able to fill them with the right people.
Let’s discuss 3 things you must avoid if you want to create an impactful and profitable event.
1) Flooding Social Media With Your Event Flyers
It’s very important to share your flyers for your event, but constantly posting them and telling people to click the link in your bio is not going to sell out your event. You will probably lose a lot of followers and mainly just annoy people.
You have to be strategic when posting about your event. The goal is to give people a reason to click the link in your bio or visit your event page rather than telling them to.
Tips
- Share the experience of the event
- Create engaging captions for your posts
- Discuss what your attendees will gain
- Share past event photos and videos
- Share past testimonials
- Create video content
- Share information about speakers and topics
2) Waiting Until The Last Minute To Offer Discounts
Don’t wait until no one is registering for your event to start offering discounts on ticket sales. This should be done in the early stages of promotion. It sucks for those who purchased their tickets on time while the latecomers are offered an incentive for late registration.
Be sure to have multi-level ticket options. Create an early bird ticket option to create urgency for people to purchase their tickets in advance. The more sales you offer early on the higher chance you have to sell out your event in advance. Make sure that you create deadlines so that people know how long they have to register before the price increases.
3) Not Utilizing Event Marketing Platforms to Promote Your Event
Setting up a sales and event page on your website for your event is great and a proven strategy to fill seats, but it shouldn’t be the only place your event can be seen. People are searching for events to attend every day. Putting your event on platforms such as Eventbrite increases the SEO for your event and can drive more traffic to your event.
Don’t limit yourself. Use other ticketing, registration, and event platforms, and be sure to track the sales on each.
4) Hosting Premium Price and Signature Events Without Prepping Your Audience
Premium-priced events and signature events are golden! Especially for increasing your profits. However, you have to prepare your audience for these types of events. You can’t just spring out a 2 Day conference priced at $997 when you’ve only been selling $97 services. Your audience is comfortable and able to pay you $97, but you have to let them know why your premium event is priced much higher and what makes it different from your other services.
Make sure that the premium event is actually what your audience needs. The last thing you want to do is create a high-tier event that no one needs. Survey your audience and ask them what their pain points are. What are they currently struggling with and where do they want to be in the next 12 months. Now you have an event that they can’t resist and that they are willing to invest in. Create valuable content that will give them a taste of what they will experience at your event so that they know you are able to deliver on your promise.
5) Looking to See How Everyone Else is Planning and Promoting Their Event
Every event and business is different. What you see working for others may not necessarily work for you. You also only get to see some of what they publish online. You don’t know the behind-the-scenes work they are putting in to make their event a success. You don’t know who’s on their team helping them and their skillset. A lot of the work I do to sell out my events and my client’s events is done behind the scenes. Some are strategies that don’t involve social media. It isn’t something you can search.
So please don’t mimic and mock what you see others doing hoping that it will work for you. Spend time creating an Event Marketing Plan to successfully and effectively promote your event. Here’s a guideline of how much promoting time you should delegate to executing your plan.
Meetup- 2 to 4 weeks
Workshop- 4 to 8 weeks
Conference- 3 to 12 months
Share in the comments your event struggles or any questions you may have.
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