5 proven tactics to increase event ticket sales and sell out your next event

If you are an event host or planner (and don’t happen to be a member of Oasis), you’ll know that selling event tickets can be a challenging endeavor — especially in today's competitive landscape.

Event organizers often face hurdles such as nail-bitingly slow sales, limited reach, and difficulty reaching the right audience. In order to rise to these challenges and maximize ticket sales, it is essential to employ tactics that resonate with your target audience.

In this article, we will explore five powerful and proven ways to help you sell more event tickets — from creating buzz with a teaser campaign to implementing impactful early bird offers, utilizing countdown timers, aligning content with your sales funnel, and meticulously planning your ticket sales journey.

5 proven tactics to increase event ticket sales

1. Create a teaser campaign to generate hype

Building anticipation for your event is key to driving ticket sales and avoiding the disappointment of snail-pace ticket sales when you first release them to your audience.

A well-executed teaser campaign generates excitement and buzz, leaving your target audience itching to get their hands on the tickets by the time they are released!

Here's how to do it:

1. 🕛 Start early: Begin your teaser campaign several weeks before tickets go on sale. This allows you to build momentum and reach a wider audience.
2. 💧 Drip-feed information: Gradually release details about your event over time. This creates a sense of mystery and keeps your audience engaged. Drop teasers about mystery artists, new features, surprise guests etc
3. 🫣 Create intrigue: Drop hints about things your audience will find intriguing, such as mystery artists, new stages or cutting edge technology. Let them know you have exciting news that you can’t share just yet!
4. 📱 Use social media: Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Tiktok are perfect tools for sharing teaser content. Use captivating visuals, short videos, and engaging captions to pique interest but don’t give the game away just yet!
5. ⏳ Create a countdown: A countdown timer can create a sense of urgency and encourage people to act quickly when your ticket sales launch.
6. 🎀 Offer exclusive perks: Provide limited discount codes to the first X number of people who comment on a post, run competitions that require your audience to tag and share, offer VIP packages, or limited-edition merchandise to incentivize people to buy tickets early and share your event among friends.
7. 🎫 Encourage priority ticket signups: Gauge early audience interest by encouraging people to sign up for exclusive early access offers before your sales start.

By following these guidelines and incorporating your source text, you can create a compelling teaser campaign that drives ticket sales and ensures the success of your event.

2. Craft effective early bird ticket offers

Early bird discounts are a powerful tool to boost ticket sales, generate excitement for your event and reward those ready to commit early with lower prices and enticing perks.

By emphasizing the limited availability of this deal, you’ll create a sense of urgency that will encourage people to purchase tickets.

Attendees will always prefer to pay less for a ticket, and for those who fear the commitment of planning ahead too far, there are ways to make your offer even more enticing.

Here's how to make the most of early bird offers:

1. 🎯 Set clear goals: Determine what you want to achieve with your early bird offer. Are you aiming to secure a certain number of sales, create buzz, or generate early revenue?
2. 🪝 Incentivize with a compelling offer: Offer a significant discount or an exclusive perk that is truly enticing to your target audience, and make it clear just how much they will be saving by buying early!
3. 🦜 Offer a super early-bird: Give loyal followers and attendees the chance to access super early bird tickets, and promote this on social media to create intrigue and make your tickets even more desirable.
4. 📆 Set a clear deadline: Establish a specific end date for your early bird offer and communicate it clearly. This creates a sense of urgency and encourages people to act quickly.
5. 🎫 Limit the number of tickets: By limiting the availability of early bird tickets, you create a sense of scarcity and exclusivity that attendees will find hard to resist.
6. 🎁 Offer exclusive perks: Consider offering early bird buyers access to exclusive events, merchandise, or VIP experiences to make early commitment a no brainer!
7. ⚡ Consider flash sales: Promote a very limited extension to the early bird offer just after the official deadline has closed, with a flash sale.

Example early bird offers:

• Discount: "🚨 Enjoy 20% off your ticket purchase when you buy before [date]."
• Exclusive perk: "🎁 Early bird buyers receive a free VIP upgrade and exclusive access to the after-party."
• Super early bird: “🦜 Pssst! Prior attendees, check your email inbox for your exclusive private ticket link”

3. Create urgency and impact with countdown timers

Countdown timers are incredibly powerful tools that can be used at multiple stages of your ticket sales journey. They create a sense of urgency and encourage people to take action.

By consistently reminding your audience of the limited time remaining on offers, you establish strong visibility and drive sales.

🚨 High impact daily reminders leading up to key releases are especially important in a world where many of us have multiple options vying for our attention. Countdowns will ensure you stay on your audience’s radar!

How to effectively use countdown timers:

1. Start early: Incorporate countdown timers into your pre-event marketing campaign to build anticipation and create a sense of excitement.
2. Use them on multiple platforms: Include countdown timers on your website, social media pages, and email marketing campaigns.
3. Create a sense of scarcity and time pressure: Emphasize the limited availability of tickets to encourage people to buy quickly, strongly emphasizing the time limit.
4. Emphasize the consequence of missing out: Make it clear in your communications that ticket prices will be rising after this time -limited period.
5. Use throughout the sales process: Continue to utilize countdown timers at each key phase of the ticket selling process, from the pre-sales campaign to pre-event flash sales.

Example countdown timer message:

• Social media post: "⏳Only [number] days/hours left to SAVE! Don't miss out on this incredible experience."
• Email subject line: "🚨Time's running out! 24 hours left to get your tickets before prices increase."

4. Plan content that aligns with your sales funnel

Tailoring your content to the marketing funnel is essential for attracting and converting your target audience. By understanding the different stages of the funnel and creating content that aligns with each stage, you can increase audience engagement and further drive ticket sales.

How to tailor your content to the marketing funnel:

1. 🧐 Awareness stage:
   • 🎯 Goal: Introduce your event and generate interest.
   • 💡 Content ideas: Captivating videos, eye-catching images of previous events or artists/speakers, intriguing behind-the-scenes teasers, interviews with organizers.
2. 🤔 Consideration stage:
   • 🎯 Goal: Provide valuable information and address potential concerns.
   • 💡 Content ideas: Detailed descriptions, testimonials, expert opinions, blog posts, downloadable resources, ‘ask us anything’ social media posts and live Q&As.
3. 💳 Conversion stage:
   • 🎯 Goal: Create a sense of urgency and encourage action.
   • 💡 Content ideas: Limited-time discounts, highlight unique benefits, clear calls to action, flash sales, ticket bundles, clear instructions on how to purchase tickets.

By creating content that aligns with each stage of the marketing funnel, you can effectively guide your audience through the buying journey and increase the likelihood of conversions.

💡 Content ideas
A fantastic content idea for the consideration stage is to use your social media platforms to host ‘Ask us anything’ days.

It’s a highly effective way to find out what matters to people, what excites them and what might be putting them off buying a ticket — enabling you to strategize your ongoing campaigns even more effectively!

5. Create a roadmap for your entire ticket sales journey

OK — not the most rock-and-roll tactic, we admit — but a solid ticket promotion roadmap is essential for ensuring a successful ticket sales campaign.

It will also alleviate stress by helping you stay organized and consistent as pressure increases nearer the date of your event.

Here's how to create a comprehensive schedule:

1. Identify all key milestones: Outline all the important dates leading up to your event, including ticket sales launches, offers, promotions, and the event itself.
2. Plan content: Even if it’s high level at first, plan out the kinds of content you intend to post at each phase of the plan.
3. Plan in countdown campaigns: Count backwards from each key milestone to schedule in your daily countdown notifications
4. Set a posting frequency: Determine how often you'll be posting on social media. Consider factors such as your available time, target audience, and the amount of content you have to share.
5. Utilize scheduling tools: If your time is pressed, consider the use of social media scheduling platforms like Hootsuite or Buffer to plan and automate your content.
6. Be clear on roles: Ensure there is no confusion as to who is responsible for creating/posting/sending content and updates throughout the campaign.

1. Flexibility is key: While a schedule is essential to a successful ticketing campaign, be prepared to make adjustments as needed. Unexpected events or changes in your marketing strategy may require modifications to your plan and as we know, the ticket sales journey can take many twists and turns!

By following these steps and creating a detailed schedule, you can ensure that your ticket sales campaign runs smoothly and effectively.

How to sell your event with Checkout Page

With its dedicated event page functionality — which offers an array of user-friendly features like customizable ticket tier and grouping options — Checkout Page is the perfect choice for event hosts who want a variety of customizable options and features and who are committed to offering customers a friction-free purchasing experience.

Let’s jump straight in and take a look at how simple it is to create an impactful event page that you can share from anywhere you promote your event, and embed on your landing page or website with ease.

Step 1. Create your event checkout page

Select an event page type, give your event a title, add a date range, location, and currency:

Step 2. Add your ticket types

Add as many ticket types as your event requires, assigning them a price and quantity to ensure you don’t over book your venue’s capacity:

Step 3. Choose your page type

Select different page layouts, as well as either a hosted page option or embed code for a website:

Step 4. Add a description to your page

Add a description for your event that will grab people’s attention and give them a flavor of what to expect if they buy a ticket.

Step 5. Add images to your page

Add an captivating image that represents your branding and does justice to your event!

Step 6. Adjust page colors to suit your branding

Checkout Page allows you to customize various elements of your page, so you can tailor it to your brand and set the right tone for your event!

Step 7. Preview your page

Checkout Page shows a preview panel throughout the creation process. When you are happy with the feel and setup of your event page, you are ready to share it with your audience!

Step 8. Set up your confirmation & emails

Checkout Page enables you to customize the confirmation page after your customer has purchased a ticket, and the confirmation email they receive:

Step 9: Share your event checkout page

Finally, when you are ready to share your event with the world, select from a hosted payment link, embed code for your website and a QR code option too for posters, flyers and more.

Conclusion

🎉 Congratulations! You've just armed yourself with some highly effective tools to increase your event ticket sales and alleviate the stress that comes with watching ticket sales move at a snail’s pace!

🚀 By implementing these five strategies effectively and layering them to boost their power even further, you'll be well on your way to a smooth ticket sales journey and an event worth celebrating.

Want to know more? Check out our step-by-step video guide on setting up event pages: Sell event tickets with Stripe - Eventbrite alternative - No ticketing fees!!!

If you’d like to take a deeper dive into event ticket sales, check out our blog articles:
How to sell event tickets online: the ultimate guide
Create your own event page - no ticketing fees!

Ready to take your event to the next level? Why not sign-up for our 7-day free trial and get an event ticket page setup in minutes with our event template.