It’s getting harder to reach and market to potential event attendees; traditional marketing channels are getting more crowded and customers more discerning about how they spend their time and money. Learn how to leverage facebook and LinkedIn marketing, your own website, and other online channels to efficiently sell out your next event. Pro tip: facebook can work for corporate events, it's just about getting your targeting strategy right.

1. How To Sell Out Your Event with
Smarter Marketing
Presenters:
Sabeha Mohamed
Thomas Knight

2. 2
@EventbriteUK | fb.com/eventbriteuk
eventbrite.co.uk/blog

3. Agenda
3
● Introduction
● Marketing Tips & Tricks To Maximise Registrations
● Look Beyond Promotion: Registration Site
Efficiency
● Questions

4. 4
Music Festivals + Consumer Events Sports Conferences + Universities

5. 5
Why are we here today?

6. Ever felt like this?
2 weeks before the event
Only 50% sold out
You need to sell out the
event
So….

8. Additional Registrations
Sold?
8
Additional Registration
Sales
2
8

9. 500,000 email blasts but only 2 more registrants...
EMAIL??

10. There’s a Smarter Way To
Do Event Marketing

11. And it’s called...
Smarter Marketing For Your
Events

12. We have limited time so we’ll
dive into specifics

13. We promised you Advanced Level
Strategies…
Well we’re starting with the basics.

14. The 4 Ps of Marketing & Selling Out Your Event
PRODUCT PRICE
PLACE PROMOTION

15. It takes 3-5 touches for
people to do, think, feel, what
you want
- Herbert E. Krugman,
Theory of Effective Frequency
Not all marketing
touches are equal

16. The marketing trifecta: earned, owned and paid media
Earned media most powerful, owned media easiest - but most people think first about paid medi

17. 17
01
Promotion - getting
more visitors
1. Facebook advertising
1. Advanced targeting methods
2. Building an effective funnel
Too much to cover every possible way of doing this, so instead we’ll focus on the area where most organisers want to
know more - social media advertising, specifically Facebook.

18. 18
Corporates aren’t on facebook?!

19. But facebook doesn’t work
for the corporate industry
Our audience isn’t on
facebook….

20. Today we’d like to open it up
so you can see the potential
of how to use facebook to
target corporates by using
the right targeting strategy

21. Why Facebook advertising?
- 2 billion active users. Your audience is
here
- Only pay to reach the people you want
- Organic reach is becoming saturated
Google Adwords are important, and you should be doing that too. But they only work for customers who are already searching for you.
We’ve found Facebook to be really effective at driving latent demand - which is particularly relevant for events

22. Why targeting matters
2 important reasons
- Facebook’s targeting makes it the most powerful ad
platform available. Proper targeting drives real
revenue
- Facebook uses Relevance Score to determine how
much to charge you for the ads. More relevant ads =
higher score = lower cost.
Therefore the better your targeting the cheaper
your ads will be.

23. Poll:
Have you ever used the
‘boost this post’
button on facebook?

24. It starts with Facebook Business Manager

25. Get your Ad Manager in shape
● The Facebook Pixel
○ The pixel allows you to:
■ Create audiences from people that visit your website(s).
■ Set up conversion events to measure the success of your ads by
recording what actions people take on your site after clicking through
from an ad (e.g. buying a ticket).
○ Without the pixel, you cannot run effective Facebook ads.
● You can use Eventbrite’s integration with the Facebook pixel to measure
the performance of the ads you use to drive ticket sales on Eventbrite.

27. Saved audiences
● Use FB’s in-built targeting functions e.g.
location, age, gender, demographics,
interests, etc.
● Pros:
○ Pretty granular.
○ Good for large target markets
● Cons:
○ Needs a detailed knowledge of what
your target audience looks like.
○ Weak for niche markets.

28. Custom & Lookalike
● Uses your own targeting data
● Pros:
○ Pretty granular.
○ Good for large target markets
● Cons:
○ Needs a detailed knowledge of what
your target audience looks like.
○ Weak for niche markets.

29. Custom audiences & retargeting
What causes high traffic / low conversion
campaigns?
People don’t buy on the first interaction, they
need nurturing.
If you’re not retargeting your website visitors,
you’re WASTING money.
Custom Audiences are what give you the
ability to target people who have visited your
site.
Website visitors are
more likely to convert
through a retargeting
campaign
CPCs are on average
lower for retargeting
campaigns
80%
43%

30. Example: “All Visitors to mysite.com in the
last 30 days”
More targeted: “only target people who
visited certain pages” (such as your speaker
or programme page)
Even more advanced: excluding anyone who
reached your “registration-complete” page.
Combining this with the above would mean
you target all visitors who are interested in
your event, BUT haven’t already bought a
ticket!
Example: How to define your custom audience

31. Recap: custom audiences and retargeting
With Custom Audiences & retargeting,
you’re targeting people who are already
interested in your event.
So they’re more likely to click on your ad
(which makes your ads cheaper!) and they
are a massive
70%
more likely to register for your event.
Remember, people don’t buy on the first
interaction - they need nurturing and
reminding to make sure they come back and
convert, and that’s what retargeting is about.

32. Lookalike audiences
Custom audiences are great for converting people who are already visiting your site.
But how can Facebook help you bring new people to your site?
This is where Lookalike audiences come in.
Why is this good for me?
Uses your proven customers or website visitors
as the starting point for this lookalike audience list.
Therefore, Lookalikes help us target people who
look just like our current customers, but without us
having to know exactly who they are
What is a Lookalike Audience?
An audience of users you can target who are
similar to one of your Custom Audiences or
the fans of your page.
Examples:
- Your website visitors
- Your email subscribers
- Your existing customers

33. How to use Lookalike audiences
A large audience of “fresh” people with
similar interests, demographics and
behaviours to your existing customers.
Which is an ideal audience to market
your event to.
More reliable than saved audiences,
because they don’t rely on you
guessing what your target audience
looks like - Facebook does it for you.
You can then layer over standard
targeting criteria (e.g. age, gender,
location, interests etc.) to get even more

34. Lookalikes - a recap
Facebook generates audiences that are
similar to your custom audiences.
Therefore, they let you target people who
are very similar to your existing customers
...But without you having to know what
they look like (unlike Saved Audiences)
Therefore, when we
can’t target our
custom audiences,
Lookalikes give us
“fresh” audiences to
target.
=

35. 1. Use the Facebook pixel.
1. Always be as targeted as possible.
1. Funnel it, don’t force it.
1. Build, measure, learn, repeat.
Remember

36. 36
02
Place
1. Conversion rate optimisation
2. Mobile
3. Ticket buying behaviour
4. Distributed commerce

37. [Placeholder
graphic]
What if instead of focusing on
driving more views of your ticketing
page…
.... you focused on turning more
page viewers into attendees?
We all focus here
(get more traffic)
Opportunity is here.
Can your visitor buy
a ticket quickly and
easily?
Small increase in conversion = Larger increase in ticket sales.

39. 1. How many of your site visitors turn into
attendees today?
(Ticket Sales Site Conversion
Rate)

40. Questions to ask, to find out if
you’re losing ticket sales
(inefficiency) on your website
(place)

41. 41
United Kingdom
61%
Source: Comscore
http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/
Percent mobile
share of total digital
minutes

42. 7%
Source: Aberdeen Group
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2012/12/04/fast-sites/#676b441853cf
42
Every second delay in page load time
= 7% decrease in conversion

43. 43
Eventbrite traffic - desktop vs mobile
Mobile pageviews per hour
Desktop pageviews per
hour

44. Practical example:

45. 45
Sell where your
customers are
Distributed
commerce

46. 46
Seamless
purchase
experience

47. Simple ways to increase conversion and sell more tickets
1. Understand your audience and plan marketing accordingly.
○ Who are they? When do they buy?
1. Be where they are.
1. Use images and rich content to paint a picture of your event.
1. Design your event website with the most important information clearly visible.
○ Reflect your brand & use negative space
○ Date, time and price clearly visible
1. Ensure it’s easy to buy tickets on mobile (test it).
1. Make sure your checkout flow is smooth and short.
1. Make sure your ticketing page is fast and reliable.
1. Test it as a customer. If you struggle, so will they!

48. When do people buy tickets?
● 45% of people at a free event buy tickets on
the day vs 18% at a paid event.
● Paid events should have sold at least 80% of
tickets before the day.
● The more expensive the event, the earlier
people buy. For festivals:
○ 7% buy on the door (unless sold out)
○ 26% buy 1 month out
○ 44% buy > 3 months out
The earlier you sell the better!

49. Who’s buying?
● Women are slightly more likely than men to buy
in advance.
● If you audience is >45, the key period is 3+
months.
● For 16-24 year olds it’s 1-12 weeks.
● For 25-44 year olds it’s under a month, with
many booking on the day or day before.
● People with children are more likely to buy on
the door.
● People in relationships are 30% more likely than
singles to buy tix 3+ months in advance.

50. 50
06
Summary

51. Tips To Sell Out Your Event
● The 4 Ps of Marketing Are Still Important - particularly place (online ticket selling)
● Facebook Advertising can be your secret weapon to ticket promotion - understand the basics
and how to unlock the platform.
● Conversion Rate Optimisation - Know Your Numbers, sometimes you don’t need to focus on
doing more..
● And remember data ≠ insight. It’s only as smart as your interpretation of it, so look at it
critically and think through what story it’s really telling you.

52. Top tools for event marketing (that we use)
● Google Analytics
● Asana
● Hootsuite
● Buzz Sumo
● Social Jukebox
● Hemingway
● Grammarly
● Lumen5
● Canva
● SurveyMonkey
● Mailchimp
● Eventbrite!

53. More resources

54. 54
@EventbriteUK | fb.com/eventbriteuk
eventbrite.co.uk/blog
eventbrite.co.uk/own-your-event