How to drive ticket sales

Updated 10 months ago by Robyn Marais

When planning your event, it's important to understand your intended attendees, how many you're looking to attract and how to attract your audience to buy tickets to your event.

It's always beneficial to sell tickets well in advance of your event to know exactly what to plan for.

We understand how difficult it can be to sell tickets to events. This is why, we've outlined some of our tried and tested strategies below.

If you're looking for a more complex and specific strategy and marketing implementation, we recommend contacting a marketing agency to assist you.

To drive the most conversions through social media, make sure to promote your Howler ticketing page rather than your Facebook event page.

Know the trends. Handling thousands of events per year means we’ve got the inside scoop on how customers act, and when, at the various stages of events. We conducted some market research and found – across 15 South African events – that ticket sales experienced a spike around the launch date, and then another, even higher spike, in the 3-week period leading up to the event.
Take advantage of these two critical points by basing your marketing efforts around them.
Run a pre-registration campaign. One of the benefits of choosing Howler as your ticketing platform is access to customer data. You can generate hype for your ticket launch as well as build a marketing list and understand your audience better by creating a pre-registration event for your customers to sign up to receive exclusive access and notifications of your first phase ticket sales.
You can promote your pre-registration event ahead of your ticket launch to gather customer data and interest. We recommend a pre-registration period of 1-2 weeks.
Remember to use our marketing tools to send out an email and/or sms to these customers to direct them to your ticket launch when tickets become available to buy. You can also use this data to target ads at customers who pre-registered but did not buy tickets.
View this HelpDoc for instructions on how to create a pre-registration event. You'll need to request Account Assistant access for Active Admin.
Run a special. Create a “Buy 3, get one free” promotion or introduce table tickets. This encourages your customers to buy in bulk or bring their friends. The more the merrier! Set a minimum number of units per order to ensure that your customers are buying the right amount of tickets.
You can set this up yourself. It’s easy! See how in this HelpDoc.
You can also use custom ticket type links to promote your special. This HelpDoc explains how to use custom ticket type links.
Run a loyalty program. The easiest customers to convert to ticket sales are the ones that have alreay been to your event. Show customers that you value their loyalty by offering exclusive discounted ticket prices to customers from previous events. You can use Howler's Marketing tools to send a promo code to your previous event attendees.
This HelpDoc explains how to issue promo codes. You'll need to request Account Assistant access to Active Admin.
Use sales reps. If you’re not included in the target audience of your event, you’re not alone. Many organisers aren’t. Sure, marketing becomes a lot more efficient when you know exactly what your customers like, dislike and how to reach them – but there are other ways of reaching groups that you’re not part of.
Need an example? Rage Festival. One of Rage’s annual challenges is ensuring they’re keeping up with the same trends that high-schoolers are. No easy feat. But they manage, and they manage well. How? With Rage agents – also known as “ragents.”
With Howler, you can do the same using our dedicated rep feature. This means you’re able to assign rep roles to specific people for your event. You get access to their unique network and they get commission from ticket sales. It’s a win-win.
You can assign rep roles to people and check up on their sales. Check out our rep-oriented HelpDocs to find out how.
Utilise your event network by incentivising exhibitors, vendors and performers to sell tickets.
Run a competition. Social Media is your most powerful tool when promoting ticket sales to your event. Reach your target audience by building a social media presence well before you plan to launch ticket sales. Make sure to use your event network to echo your message and increase your reach. Include a press pack for your artists, partners and sponsors to share across their social media.
To further build your audience and reach potential ticket purchasers, you can run a competition to win free tickets. Encourage customers to tag their friends, share your post, and comment to stand a chance to win tickets. This engagement organically boosts your posts reach, driving awareness for your event.
Once you've chosen winners, issue complimentary tickets using the Howler Organiser Portal.
You can also issue complimentary tickets to influencers, media and press who can promote your event on their platforms to drive more ticket sales.
Ramp up your digital marketing. Our awesome promo tools allow you to contact your customer base directly via email or SMS, so if you’ve had past events with us – great! Let your database know, loud and clear, about your upcoming event.
First event with us? No existing customer base? No worries – they’re out there. And you can still reach them. How? Through paid advertising. We’re talking about Meta. Don’t worry – it’s easier than it seems! If you haven’t already, set up Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel tracking to build an audience of interested customers. Then, serve these customers digital adverts on Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Google.
Set up these digital marketing tools using these HelpDocs that guide you every step of the way.
Door sales. Door sales and staff don’t have to be a package deal. Simply print out a few QR codes that link to your ticketing page and post them near your entrance. To avoid an inflated price, customers should buy beforehand – but there’s always a few on the fence. Up your price when your doors open and make up for any slow sales.
This HelpDoc explains how to create a QR code that directs to your online ticketing page.
Use this QR code for physical branding to drive tickets sales ahead of the event with posters and table talkers at key local venues.