Event planning is a tough job. You spend countless hours and sleepless nights, working to make sure every last detail is perfect and the event (or series of events) goes off without a hitch. You’ve taken care of the venue, the vendors, supplies and logistics.
Don’t forget about the tickets! You’ll need some means of exchanging dollars for admission with your guests. If you’re like most event organizers, you’re probably looking for ways to maximize your revenue and sell more tickets to your event or venue.
In that department, we’ve got you covered. Events that follow these tips bring in more revenue and are able to better serve their guests with exactly the right type of admission or access to their events. Read on for four tricks to selling more tickets.
1. Sell Online
This one might seem obvious, but you might be surprised by the number of venues that rely on cash sales at the door the day of their event. Even if you’re running a popular, highly anticipated event, you’re leaving money on the table if you only sell tickets at the door.
Customers spend significantly more on average when they’re purchasing tickets in advance versus at the door. That means they’re more likely to add on a T-shirt or a ticket upgrade if you offer them.
Online sales can help make your job easier, too! When you know in advance how many guests purchased tickets to your event or venue, you can better plan your staffing needs, concessions, merchandise and other resources.
2. Create A VIP Line
Imagine it’s a busy Friday night, and you arrive at an event you’ve been waiting for weeks to attend, maybe with a date or with a few friends. The entrance is mobbed by a huge line of folks waiting to get in, and your group starts to settle in for a lengthy wait. But you whip out your pre-purchased VIP passes and walk your party right up to the front. You’re a hero!
VIP or front-of-line passes don’t just make your guests feel special, they can help you increase your revenue, too. Whether you allow these guests to skip the general admission line or offer upgraded seating, a lot of fans are willing to pay a little extra money to get through the door faster or sit closer to the action. VIP passes will work for almost any type of experience.
3. Consider All Access Passes
Depending on the type of event you’re hosting, All Access might mean season passes that admit fans into every game your team plays, or unlimited bites at a local food festival, or even admission to every concert hosted over the course of a weekend.
Either way, unlimited admission has fan appeal because it gives your customers the flexibility to decide how they want to experience your event as it happens. They don’t need to decide in advance what their schedule looks like or choose what foods they’ll want to eat weeks in advance. But, it’s a chance for you as the event organizer to secure guaranteed revenue, even if your guests don’t end up using the full value of their passes.
Learn more about bundled tickets and season passes.
4. Encourage Social Sharing
Everyone wants to see their event being shared on social media; to go viral. But it’s a tricky code to crack. How can you get your customers to tell their friends about you?
The secret is to offer guests a meaningful incentive to share your event.
With Passage, you can offer an immediate discount to your customers for sharing your event on their Facebook or Twitter pages. You set the discount, and you can even auto-populate a sample tweet or post to make it easy for fans to tell their friends that they’re headed to your venue. A $1 discount could help you get out to hundreds or even thousands of their friends and followers. Social discounts are easy to set up, and you can change them on-the-go whenever you want!
Do you have a tip for selling more tickets? We’d love to hear it! Share your thoughts with us in the comments.