“How can I grow my event?” is a common question for event organizers. Sometimes, customers ask if they can pay us to send an email blast to other event’s attendees, or place an advertisement on another event’s website. The simple answer is no, that doesn’t comply with our data policy (you own your attendee data, not us).
But it’s actually more than just a data policy. We looked at the data around how attendees find events and evaluated claims around so-called event marketplaces. And our conclusion is simple: marketing is more effective than a marketplace. If we want our customers to reach new attendees, giving them free marketing tools is more powerful than selling them ads.
What is a Marketplace for Events?
An online marketplace is a single website where buyers can find goods or services from a variety of proprietors. You’ve almost certainly used one before: think of eBay, Etsy, or even Craigslist. It’s not unusual to find ticketing companies like Eventbrite that proclaim they are a marketplace for finding events. The problem? People don’t seek out events the same way they seek out a couch. There are few things that make event searches inherently different:
- Events are local. While you may occasionally travel for a specific band or festival, the majority of events you are going to attend are ones that are close to home.
- Events are deeply personal. It’s rare to just be looking for any event: you’re looking for a concert (of a specific genre), a race to run, or a farm with a pick-your-own pumpkin patch.
- Events are social, and highly influenced by word of mouth. If you’re going to try out an event you’re unfamiliar with, most likely it’s because someone asked you to come (or recommended it).
The Negative Impacts of a Marketplace Strategy
A strategy to build an event marketplace can negatively impact the events in the marketplace. Negative outcomes include:
- Forcing audience growth. A marketplace doesn’t exist if it’s just sellers. Recently, Eventbrite has ramped up efforts to get event attendees to download their app to access their tickets in an effort to get attendees to see their calendar. This makes the process of pulling up tickets clunky and slow, sacrificing the experience of your event in exchange for potential marketplace customers for Eventbrite.
- Spam and ads. The results of a ticketing platform promoting events in exchange for money costs both attendees and events:
- Too much (untargeted) email. Your attendees want email from you! Instead, they are sent a lengthy event list that is not relevant to their interests.
- Distracting Ads. Sure, your ads will appear on another event’s site, but other event’s ads will also be on your ticket site. And you don’t have control over the type of ad shown: we’ve seen everything from adult events advertised on the ticket page for children to an ad for the same type of event on the same date, in the same city.
- Pay to Play. The unsaid part: you’re paying for these advertising activities, and you’re paying if you don’t want other events shown ahead of yours. Getting out of that “marketplace” environment gives you back money to actually grow your event.
What the Data Says About How People Find Events
In 2022, Eventbrite noted that 30% of paid tickets were “influenced by Eventbrite”. We have a couple of sources we use to determine how people are landing on our customer’s event pages. These include Google Analytics GA4 and TicketInsights, our own built-in analytics engine. Looking first at a few TicketInsights stats from 2023:
- 17% of traffic is from Email sent by RunSignup | TicketSignup.
- 22% of traffic is from Affiliates, or event lists that automatically pull in upcoming events from RunSignup | TicketSignup.
Looking at those sources alone, that’s 39% of all transactions in 2023. If we widen the lens and look at traffic sources as attributed by Google Analytics GA4 for July 2024, we see that:
- 36% of traffic is Direct: people who know they’re looking for your event
- 24% of traffic is from Organic Search: people looking for your event on Google
- 11% of traffic Organic Social: people seeing your event shared by friends on social media
We know that some of that direct traffic is likely misattributed emails and events with standalone websites that point to TicketSignup. But what stands out here is the Organic Traffic and Organic Social numbers. What’s really important for people to find your events is good SEO for your website and encouraging people to share your event on social media.
Marketing Tools to Grow Your Event
So what should you do to market your event? Put your free marketing tools into action to build your brand, instigate word-of-mouth marketing, and track the results of your marketing activities. Learn more with our 6 steps to a better marketing strategy.
Step 1: Build Your Brand with a Free Website
Every event on TicketSignup gets a free event website. You can use this as a free, comprehensive website for your event or keep it simple as a ticketing website linked to from your main website. Regardless, your TicketSignup website operates as an extension of your brand.
Key Benefits of Your Free Website:
- Custom branding. Your website can be branded with your logo, colors, images, and favicon. This builds trust with potential purchasers, making it clear they’re buying tickets from you (not some random ticketing company).
- No ads. Your event website is your event website. We’ll never take attention away from your event with ads or promotions for other events.
- Unlimited content. Just need a simple page for ticket sales? We can do that (in fact, we build it automatically from the details you enter in the Ticket Event Wizard). But we can also do more than that! With our easy drag-and-drop website builder, you can add unlimited content pages for all your event information.
- Cross promote your own events. Organize a number of events throughout the year? Add an event calendar to your website to promote all of your upcoming ticket and endurance events.
Step 2: Spread the Word with Free Email
Email works. In 2023, 17% of all transactions on our platform came directly from our email platform (and that doesn’t even include all the transactions from other email platforms!). Use TicketSignup’s free email to re-engage previous attendees and reach out to potential new audiences.
Key Benefits of Free Email:
- Free and unlimited (really). TicketSignup’s integrated email is always free – no matter how many contacts you upload or emails you send. That’s a savings of $4+ million annually for our customers!
- Integrated data. When you email from TicketSignup, we already know who has bought a ticket (and who hasn’t). This makes it simple for you to segment your email sends!
- Personalization. That integrated data has another perk, too: personalization. Replacement tags make it easy for you to personalize your emails with everything from a name to ticket purchase details.
- Easy email builder. The TicketSignup Email Builder is a simple, point-and-click builder that makes it easy to create professional emails. Want things to be even simpler? Pick one of our pre-built emails with recommended details and replacement tags and you can get your email out in minutes.
- Email beyond your event. It’s not just your event that gets free email, it’s your organization. With standalone Organization Email, you can promote your events to your full database, year round.
- Build your email List. The value of email is tied to the quantity and quality of your email list. We have tools to help you build your list, including an email capture pop-up for your website and a Waiver App that collects emails on-site.
Step 3: Promote Family & Group Friendly Pricing
Pricing can be more than just a way to recoup your costs. Implemented strategically, pricing can be a tool to motivate action, lock-in attendees, and encourage social sharing of your event.
Key Benefits of Family & Group Friendly Pricing
- Per-cart processing fees. While Eventbrite and many other ticketing platforms charge a per-ticket processing fee (such as 6.6%+$1.75 per ticket), the TicketSignup fee is per-cart (6%+$1 per transaction). This means the per-ticket cost actually goes down when more people buy together!
- Discounts by tickets purchased. Further encourage people to buy together (and grow their group) with pricing that decreases when more tickets are bought. For example, sell a single ticket for $25, and a pack of 5 tickets for $20/each.
- Use time-based incentives. Every procrastinator knows that sometimes waiting to do something (like buy a ticket) means not buying one at all. Use price increases and time-limited coupons to promote purchases (fast).
- Referral rewards programs. Boost your word-of-mouth marketing by implementing a referral rewards program that offers a ticket purchaser a refund if they successfully recruit a set number of additional ticket purchasers. Refunds are automated, and the ROI on this one is through the roof (5262%).
Step 4: Customize Your Image on Social Media
Your online image goes beyond just your website. Customize the language and images displayed when enthusiastic attendees share your event with their social network!
Key Benefits of Customizing for Social Sharing:
- Consistent imagery & language. By uploading your own custom social sharing image and editing the language displayed when your event is shared, you ensure your event is represented in it’s best light.
- A prompt people to make people want to share. Not only can you customize what is shared, you can customize the prompt that encourages sharing. Reinforce the potential to earn a referral reward or simply remind people that attending together is more fun!
- Customize by ticket group. Options to customize your social sharing options by ticket group mean you can highlight the specifics of that option. Have a ticket group for VIP tickets? Include your VIP merch bundle in your social sharing image.
Step 5: Go Old-School with Signage
Print signage like flyers, yard signs, and billboards may seem retro, but for that reason they can sometimes work. Break away from the noise of online promotions with some tangible advertising.
Key Benefits of Old School Signage
- Expand your reach. For most events, your target audience is (fairly) local, and has identifiable interests. Rather than hoping the algorithm shows the right people your digital advertisements, put some of that money into physical ads. Then, use those ads in places where your fans are likely to be: at a Halloween store for a Haunt, on a busy restaurant row for a food festival, or at local daycares for a family-friendly fall festival.
- Know the results. This is sort of cheating, since it’s addressed in the section below…but using QR codes with source tracking on your signage enables you to know exactly how many people visited your website (and signed up!) from your printed signage.
Step 6: Understand & Adjust Your Spend
Sure, you can pay a ticketing company to “advertise” your event, and then trust that the are accurately reporting the results of your spend. Or, you can use tracking information to follow the source of every ticket purchase and make smarter decisions about your spend.
Available Analytics for Your TicketSignup Site:
- TicketInsights. Our built-in analytics engine tracks the source of every page view, purchase, and donation on your event site.
- Custom Source Tracking. Take TicketInsights to the next level with detailed tracking of specific marketing activities. Generate unique URL’s and QR codes that track every ticket event website view, ticket purchase, and donation attributed to that marketing activity.
- Google Analytics GA4. Add your Google Analytics GA4 tag to your ticket website to track traffic and conversions. If you have an separate website, cross domain tracking allows your to follow traffic from your main website to checkout.
- Tracking Pixel. Pixels for Facebook, Tiktok, and Foundee provide additional options for tracking actions on social platforms.