10 Ways to Successfully Sell Tickets Online
The day and age of old-fashioned ticket booths outside of event venues have been long gone. Now, the innovation of online ticket selling platforms eases the purchase of event tickets.
But selling tickets effectively is still a task for every event organizer. On the digital route, there are plenty of ways to amplify your ticket sales.
How to successfully sell tickets online
1. Build your own website
One of the most profitable ways to sell tickets online is to sell them through your own website. This way, you don’t have to share profit with any other ticket seller. Having your own website is great for sale as you can include whatever information you want in whatever way you want!
All information about your venue, event, ticketing and purchasing can be mentioned.
There are various online ticketing platforms available today that you can connect to your website to make ticket selling and purchasing more streamlined.
2. Promoting events
Social media plays a huge part in our daily life.
Most people use social media daily, and you can use it to promote your events. It will give your event more exposure and make you sell tickets fast.
Promoting events on social media is going to drum up interest and make people want to find out more about the event and tickets. Interest is the key in selling tickets, and social media helps you generate exactly that.
Tips for promoting events on social media:
- Include a link to tickets in bio and/or posts
- Create competitions like ticket giveaways
- Post quick videos, highlights and stories
- Find out what platform your target audience uses (FB, Instagram, TikTok, etc.)
- Post consistently, but don't overdo it
- Be as creative as possible! Plan your posts or videos
- Run an ad with links to ticket sales
- Partner with sponsors or partners involved in the event and have them promote on their pages
3. Offer promotions
Everyone loves offers and discounts!
Offering discounts like early bird specials, promo codes, and multiple tickets offers can encourage people to purchase.
Promotions are an effective way to get new customers and reward the running customers.
4. Email campaigns
Emails are one of the best ways to reach-out to leads online.
It can aid you in contacting the specific people that you want to reach. Notify them about special deals through their email, upcoming offers and events directly, and information about the ticket buying process.
Email campaigns are great for targeting a specific subset of people and motivate them to buy event tickets.
Tips for creating email campaigns:
- Include consistent branding, logos, etc. to match the business and/or event
- Use buttons (CTAs) throughout, linking to tickets
- Be short and to the point
- Don't spam people!! Give them the option to unsubscribe
- Research the best times to send out your email (s) based on your audience's online activity
- Use an email marketing tool with reporting to track open rates, clicks, etc.
5. WhatsApp and Telegram groups
Word of mouth is the best advertisement, and messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram are great for spreading the word about your events and tickets.
It lets you reach the people that might not be aware of the event.
*** Consider using an sms tool for sending short messages with ticket links directly to smartphones and devices.
6. Sell on mobile
More people are online through mobile than desktop. So you must use mobile ticketing apps and make purchasing tickets mobile-friendly. This will also enable interested users to purchase tickets on the go.
7. Simplify the process
Think user-friendly! Ease of process guarantees better conversion. If users have to struggle with buying tickets, most probably they won’t complete the purchase.
The goal is to keep ticket buying to a 2-3 click process and keep buttons visible and clickable on every device size.
Tips for creating a user-friendly experience:
- Mobile friendly (smartphones, iPads, laptops, etc.)
- Consider your site speed and SEO
- Use contrasting colors
- Create an easy to use navigation system
- Keep the amount of pages to a minimum
- Use a integration to embed the ticket registration directly onto the website (ticket widgets)
8. Do not over saturate
Scarcity increases the value!
Don’t put out all the tickets you have at once. Release tickets in phases or in small amounts. Creating scarcity is going to make people want to buy them. It is important to take the time and not over-saturate the market with event tickets all at once.
9. Referral programs
Have you ever been referred or suggested a product or service to try by a friend or coworker? This would be a referral.
Starting a referral program or word-of-mouth encouragement is a fast way to get people to purchase tickets. But how? Well, according to Sujan Patel, 92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know and word-of-mouth is directly responsible for 20-50% of purchase decisions. In the end, people are just 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend because they trust them.
10. Tracking sales and retargeting ads
The last and most important thing is to track your users and retarget them.
Optimize your ads based on sales and the information you collected. Target your ads better to get more sales. Retargeting can get you better conversion and boost your ticket sales online.
Learn how to set up an ad retargeting campaign for your event.
Not many events need to follow all these steps necessarily. So analyze smartly to figure out what will work best for your event.
Author: Deepak Panwar
Deepak is the founder of Classiebit. He has been fascinated with codes since 2013 and has spent most of his waking hours creating websites and web apps. His goal is to make life easy and help businesses generate more revenue with high-quality websites and tools.
