Hosting an event can be an immensely stressful but rewarding experience. Whether you’re hosting a free online webinar or a paid event at a local convention center, there are many ways you can promote the event without going over budget. Here are just some of the many efficient and cost-effective ways you should use to boost ticket sales and measure expected attendance.
Promote the event on Facebook
Did you know you can sell tickets from a Facebook Event page? This option is typically more effective when combined with a tracking pixel for Facebook from your events site (such as EventBrite), so you can keep track of your marketing efforts and analyze data more accurately during and after your event promotion.
Once you set up your tracking pixel and Facebook Event page, you can easily promote it by paying to boost your page, inviting people to your event, and sharing the event details on your brand or business’ usual page so your followers can sign up before it sells out!
Host a contest
Everyone loves free stuff, especially if that involves free admission to an event they would’ve paid to attend anyway. You can host a contest on virtually any social platform, though Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are the most ideal for events due to their wide reach and localized targeting options. If your event is more geared towards the professional crowd, then LinkedIn might be a better option.
Free admission or branded swag generally make for the best prizes, but you don’t have to limit yourself to one grand prize or boring text entries, either. To generate maximum hype for your upcoming event, encourage users to share content (photos or text-based stories) using a branded hashtag as their entry to your contest and pick winners on a weekly basis to keep social users interested in coming back for additional chances to win.
Hire a micro-influencer
Whether your event is a small, local gig or a massive bonanza that will attract people from all over the country, hiring someone from your industry – who has their own dedicated bunch of followers – to promote your event could work wonders when it comes to boosting your attendance figures.
By hiring a micro-influencer, you’ll get the word out in an organic way (social users are most likely to follow the recommendations of a friend or family member, after all) and you’ll get access to a base of followers that might have otherwise ignored your sponsored ads.