4 clever ways to sell last-minute tickets online
Your event is in one week, tickets sales have gone well but it would be great to have a sold out event. This is how you can use online avenues to push last minute sales for those few remaining tickets.
Google Adwords is like the friend with the vast social circle who always knows someone who might be able to help. Word will spread quickly from a trusted source. Choose your wording carefully, and target those in close proximity who won’t be put off by having to make travel or accommodation arrangements at the last minute. It’s not a free option, but it will certainly offer a return on investment.
Blogger affiliates are an effective, yet often overlooked way to use target advertising. There are a couple of good websites that collect data on bloggers such as Blogmetrics and Alltop and offer a selective list of blogs by category. Use these to create a list of those that could have the closest target market for you event and ask them to advertise for you. Remember that they don’t owe you this, and they will need an incentive to even consider doing so. Ask a few of them but never send a bulk generic email. Make sure you follow them on social media and ask nicely, giving them a reason why it would be a mutually beneficial agreement.
Retaining event information is a risk that could pay off well. Music festivals often use this tactic to boost last minute ticket sales. Organisers will offer the incentive of cheap tickets for a short period of time to get people booking early, without revealing the full line-up of events – including the headline act. Ticket prices then go on sale at normal prices with organisers slowly releasing information about new acts that have been added, often holding back on their main act with just a few weeks to go to push their last minute ticket sales.
Usually this works very well for well-established festivals and events, but if yours is a once-off or new event then you could consider adding a well-known speaker or other late incentive for people to attend your event. Never offer tickets at discounted prices to get rid of them a short time before your event, people will remember this if you decide to host another one and may hold out on buying tickets until the last minute in the hopes of getting them at cheaper prices.
Social media should have been part of your event promotion strategy from the beginning, but you can also use it effectively for last push for ticket sales. However, only do this as part of an existing strategy. Whatever you do don’t suddenly create a Facebook Event or Twitter account a week or so before the event. This will only come across as desperate and damaging to your reputation at worst, and have zero effect at best. Competitions that will win people tickets to your event at the last minute through sharing or use of your event hash tag will be good for promotion as well as increase the possibility of increasing ticket sales. So push your event through social media by starting and ending with the really big incentives to sign up and share your content. If you don’t have social media then rather ask other businesses or guests or speakers with accounts to promote your event for you.
These are just a few ways to sell tickets quickly at the last minute, but this kind of stress can easily be avoided with a good online sales strategy that is put in place even before tickets are available. Anticipate the fact that you may need to do a sales push to sell tickets near the date of the event, and make provisions for this from the beginning. Be aware that any cracks or deviations in your marketing strategy could damage people’s trust in your brand, and winning that back is a lot harder than selling tickets to your event.
