Social Media Marketing for Events – Drive Ticket Sales Online
In today’s fast-moving world, businesses need to utilise social media marketing for events to be successful.
They need to be super-quick in communicating everything about the event.
And this applies particularly when hosting an event.
In the hospitality industry, especially bars, pubs, nightclubs, and restaurants, you need to be on your toes to catch up with the right prospects at the right moment to thrive.
That said, events are a great way to build your brand and grow the customer base.
While there are multiple ways to boost events, social media is an oft-opted and lucrative means.
With its diverse features across various channels, it’s a powerful tool for marketing and drives online sales of tickets.
Read on to delve into how you can leverage social media marketing for events and boost your revenues.
7 simple ways to leverage social media marketing for your events
1. Understand and focus on your target audience
2. Craft an amazing yet promotional page
3. Use polls to assess the audiences’ interests
4. Create PPC ads for social media
5. Create a sense of excitement
6. Leverage influencers, artists, and performers
7. Monitor your results
1. Understand and focus on your target audience
As a bar, restaurant, or nightclub owner, you certainly cater to specific categories of audiences, each with their unique tastes and preferences.
The rule of thumb for any marketing strategy to be successful and derive the necessary outcomes is to focus on the target audience.
That said, understand who you are targeting to get the best results from social media marketing for your events.
For example, in the case of a Valentine’s Day party at your restaurant, it will be teenagers and adults in a specific age group.
You may also organize different events in different banquet halls, for instance, to serve people from different local locations.
The crux is to segregate your customers, in other words, the target audiences, smartly and focus on their choices.
2. Craft an amazing yet promotional page
Social media offers a variety of options to present your views or convey messages effectively.
One of the best ways is through pictures, videos, or compelling images.
Create the best poster or image of your upcoming event with its features, details like timing, venue, fun-filled or special activities, and anything captivating to bring more traffic.
Don’t forget to include a clear and catchy headline, a great yet brief narrative, and a compelling call to action.
Facebook events are a popular tool that most businesses use to boost their events on social media.
And do provide a QR code or link for interested customers or prospects to book the tickets online.
3. Use polls to assess the audiences’ interests
You may be fully prepared to conduct an event.
But gauging the interest levels and willingness of your target audience to attend would help you further.
You can thus cut down your expenses on certain segments or reconsider and plan your budget accordingly.
In today’s age of social media, reaching your large target audience takes just a few seconds.
Use Bloc, Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest to share the details of the upcoming event and leave the decision to the audience.
All you need to do is just offer them the voting or polls to share their opinion on the event on social media.
While you need not necessarily cancel what’s been planned, you can stay open to special requests, any major changes like a change in the date itself, etc.
Initially, this may appear disheartening; however, you may boost sales and attract more customers, considering their opinions, which is certainly the ultimate objective!
4. Create PPC ads for social media
When you are pretty confident of the minimum headcount for the event, you can further boost it by creating PPC ads on social media.
PPC ads are a highly cost-effective means to promote events on social media, and they help drive ticket sales online.
Focusing on targeting and retargeting, these tools boost your social media marketing for events by letting you craft an enticing headline and attract prospects aggressively.
This will force the interested or potential parties to click on the ad; even if they aren’t interested, they will share, comment, or like it.
5. Create a sense of excitement
With stiff competition in the hospitality industry – whether a pub, restaurant, or nightclub business – you must use your full ‘might’ to attract traffic.
To boost your upcoming event, it’s a great idea to create a lot of buzz and excitement among the audience on social media.
Craft and post exciting posts, imagery, funny videos with some thrill, snapshots of artists or performances planned, and such.
Blogs, posts, infographics, testimonials – any form of content that creates an enigma will keep audiences engaged and make a move towards reserving the tickets.
6. Leverage influencers, artists, and performers
Social media marketing for events is certainly a fantastic strategy. However, to use it full-throttle, there is a lot of potential to unlock.
Influencer marketing can boost your events significantly, letting you amplify your brand credibility on these networks.
As people believe something “straight from the horses’ mouth”, influencers are those with a loyal following on social media, and your events will garner a lot of attention when endorsed by them.
Partner and collaborate with influencers and co-create content targeting your audiences on social media.
By coordinating with these professionals, you gain a wider outreach, and your marketing efforts will turn into conversions as more people buy the tickets.
7. Monitor your results
To evaluate the effectiveness of any marketing strategy, you must measure and monitor the outcomes.
And this holds good for social media marketing for events as well. Use tools on channels like Google Analytics and Facebook Analytics to understand how your content is performing and where you need to improve.
You must analyze metrics like clicks, impressions, and conversions on social media.
This will enable you to figure out which types of content on which social media platforms are getting you the best results.
Additionally, leverage tools like Hootsuite and Buffer to optimize your social media campaigns and plan your posting and reposting frequency.
Wrapping up
There are countless ways to use social media marketing for your events and bring in more customers.
Some of the effective ways that will significantly drive online ticket sales are outlined in the blog.