Tips for Promoting Your Event

SimpleTix provides a full-featured and easy to use solution for e-ticketing.  However, when conducting an event, your job doesn’t stop at providing a way to purchase tickets. Potential customers have hundreds of options to choose, so it’s important to make your standout from the masses. For your event to be a success, it is critical that you take an active and progressive role in promotions to maximize interest and ticket sales.

What are the best ways to attract customers? Here are a few tips from SimpleTix to help you promote your event and make it a success.

Event Website

Maximize the value of your event website and online store. Every SimpleTix site features a home, contact, product, event and unlimited content pages. Each time you create an event in SimpleTix, the platform automatically creates an event page. Obviously, your SimpleTix online store can sell tickets – but it can do much more.

Make your site engaging with rich content like news articles, photos and even video using SimpleTix’s unlimited content pages. You can also sell related products using event pages. If visitors are entertained and informed when they visit you event site – in addition to being able to easily purchase tickets and  select seats – they are much more likely to recommend your site and event to friends or become repeat customers.

Social Media

Use social media to promote your event. Social media is hot, so why not leverage it to promote your events. Let attendees help spread the word about your upcoming event using the SimpleTix integration with social media platforms like Facebook. The event and product pages of SimpleTix sites feature social bookmarking that allows user to add your event to their Facebook page with just a couple of clicks.

In addition to social bookmarking, SimpleTix’s e-ticketing solution provides a live RSS feed that includes every event on your website. As events are added or modified, SimpleTix automatically updates your RSS feed and notifies subscribers. You can also publish the feed to you social media site, and keep your followers up to date on your latest events.

Shared Event Sites

Publish your event to shared event sites. Web 2.0 has given rise to social event sites such as Eventful.com and Upcoming.org. Take time to publish your event details to these sites and to local online event directories like Guide Live to drive additional traffic to your event site and increase customer visibility.

Many of these event directories allow you to specify event dates, times, pricing, venue and website address and most are free.

Promotions, Discounts and Social Couponing

Offer discounts and promotions. Discounts and promotions are a great way to improve interest in your event and “create buzz.” SimpleTix supports creating promotional codes and discounts for an event or a specific event performance. The promotions can be used in newsletters, ads, email marketing, on your site or as incentives to previous customers. In many cases, customers will communicate the promotions on coupon sites or to friends via social media increasing your event visibility even more.

SimpleTix also supports wildly popular social coupon sites Groupon and Living Social right from the platform’s administrative screens. Used daily by millions, social couponing has allowed SimpleTix customers to see an explosion in ticket sales.

Email Marketing and Invitations

Contact and follow up with customers via email. Each time someone purchases a ticket to an event, SimpleTicket stores the email address. The stored email addresses can be used to execute marketing campaigns or to maintain a regular dialog with customers whenever you choose. SimpleTix’s administration tools also support robust filtering functionality so that you can easily see customers that bought tickets to specific show and target communications to only those customers.

Website Widgets

Cross promote your site. SimpleTick supports creating HTML widgets that display all your events. Once a widget is created, you can include it within any website that allows HTML content. Visitors can easily click from the widget into the event pages and purchase tickets immediately.

There are many more promotional strategies you can use to promote your event, but using these tips are sure to get you off to a good start with your event.