How do you reach the target group of your event as optimally as possible? A good online marketing strategy is essential. Be visible on the social channels where your target group is active, connect seamlessly with your content on the platform and reach your potential target group through targeted behavioural and interest targeting. Eventix has asked Boest to share exactly how you can give your ticket sales the right boost with online marketing.
The organic and paid strategy go hand in hand to get the most out of the social media channels. By using a three-step funnel (awareness > consideration > conversion) you ensure that you attract the target group to the conversion more easily. Suppose you are a techno event organiser, then you want to show someone who already knows your concept a different message than someone who often goes to festivals, likes techno, but does not know you yet. You always ensure that the funnel is personalised based on behaviour and interaction with the advertisements.
In the awareness stage, you want to reach users who don’t know you or are not up to date with your new event. You can use social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok or reach out to your past clients via email. If your budget allows, you can retarget the past visitors on your website or your client base with ads - to do that, you will need to connect your advertising pixels to your website and get all the information you need from your users.
To optimise your marketing strategy, consider asking for email, country, gender, date of birth, etc. You can use this info to customise your approach or retarget.
Make sure you only collect the data that really helps you optimise further and identify better the users and don’t ask for info for the sake of it. For example if you are not going to use SMS as a communication channel, there’s no need to request the mobile phone as it might hurt the conversion rate.
The consideration stage reaches a user when he knows about you, but he is not sure if he wants to buy just yet. The best technique is to retarget users who have interacted with your business before (either website, they have attended events, they have seen previous video or image ads).
The conversion stage is for those who are ready to buy. Every ads tool allows hyper-targeting through advanced optimization techniques. For example, on Instagram, you can create a purchase conversion event (based on your pixels' signals that have been installed on your website) and tell the algorithm to look for people who are likely to buy. It works very well as long as there are enough conversions in the algorithm so that it learns.
At the same time, you can create an audience based on your highest-quality customers: lookalikes or similar audiences. These represent statistical twins of your buyers and will generally be your go-to audience.
The success of your strategy starts with tracking. Eventix allows you to connect all the marketing pixels and GTM to your ticket shop, offering the chance to track full funnel data in your dashboard. The conversions triggered in this point offer the base for retargeting and custom audience building.
By focusing on different types of video content, visuals and other creative assets in each phase of the funnel, you draw your targeting audience further into the funnel, allowing them to convert into a ticket buyer.
Each stage has its own type of content and best practices. Some examples of best practices include:
Longer videos capturing the vibe at past events, after movies, testimonials. Consider using music or voice overs for the background. Using close up human faces has been proven to be effective as well.
Aftermovies
Short video content
User generated content
Shorter videos (6sec to 20sec) focusing on some specific parts of your event. Don’t try to communicate a lot of different messages in one video or over complicate the visual with more than 3/4 elements. Have a good hook in the first 3 seconds of the video as those are the thumb stoppers (can be a sound, a visual effect etc.)
Short video content
User generated content
Line-up
DJ's & Artist promo's
Behind the scenes
One of the most effective techniques is to create urgency. Keep videos short and use clear call to actions (what do you want the user to do - BUY)
Visuals from the event
Urgency time & availability
Relevancy
Call-to-actions
A general piece of advice is to think about the videos/images mobile first, considering the consumption of mobile devices, and to send your message through both visual elements and sound elements (independent of each other).
For example for videos in Youtube or Tiktok it is very efficient to use voice over, while for Facebook or Instagram you need to create the video with a sound off mentality.
For images consider using big contrasts between background and elements and a maximum of 3, 4 elements. Keep messages short or clean without creating too many story streams.
A difficult choice considering how many channels there are today... which ones should you be present on? It is important that you know who your target group is and that you also take this into account in your marketing mix. Through the connection between GTM, your website, Eventix allows you to visualise all the data in the same dashboard while offering a full view on the buying behaviour of your users. Just sit tight and view your data flowing in your reports.
Being aware of your data will allow you to understand your audience better, who are your buyers and what channels and creatives are performing the best in your mix. There’s no one size fits all in marketing so you’ll have to discover what is the best for your event.
Pushing your event on Facebook while your target group is between 18 and 24 years old? Not smart, then it is better to shift your focus to channels such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram; both in your organic and paid marketing. You should not forget that your creatives / content must connect to the channel. The super fancy video you push on Instagram most likely won't work on TikTok at all. Don't forget to continuously test with different advertising formats. Nowadays everyone screams 'video, video, video', even though this does not have to be your best-performing creative format. For some people a carousel is better, for others static and for someone else video. By continuously rotating and testing, you ultimately want to find out what works best for you.
In addition to the format, it is important to also see what type of content works: is that the aftermovie, visuals with your line-up, influencer content from artists, user generated content from your target group? There are endless content options to use for your event. Don't underestimate the power of offline.
Ultimately, you want to develop the optimal marketing mix possible, and everything can reinforce each other. There can be a lot of value - even in this digital age - in wild-pasting, for example. Suppose you are walking through the city and you see a poster of an event. As long as you know your target group and who you want to focus on, you can decide which channels you want to use.
Do you want an even simpler way? Create Eventix tracking links in the dashboard in two clicks and add them to your campaigns.
Making decisions on what works best requires a full data overview and breakdown on all the marketing tactics. In the Eventix overview you can get all the information from click to tickets sales/revenue and segment that for each channel, audience group (e.g. demographics), etc. Only by having full and real-time data can you make smart decisions and improve your strategy.
One of the biggest advantages of online marketing is the advanced targeting options on the channels. From demo and geographic targeting to more advanced targeting focused on interest and behavioural targeting. Do you want to reach someone who goes to festivals more often, is interested in techno, and lives within a radius of 10 km around Amsterdam, between the ages of 18 and 24? No problem! Apart from the targeting options from the platform, online advertising is ideal for various retargeting options; following up target groups that have already performed some form of interaction with you.
Splitting up your target groups is essential for optimal funnelling in your retargeting campaign. Someone who has watched a video for 75% is a lot more interested in your event than someone who watched the video for only 2 seconds and then scrolled through. By tailoring your communication to the level of involvement that someone has shown with you, you ultimately stimulate conversion much more. Consider breaking down the percentage of video views, segmenting days when someone has been to your website or engaged with your Instagram, and thereby have shown interest.
Lookalikes and Custom Audiences (now available in all ad networks) allow you to target the users based on their online behaviour - visiting websites, buying, abandoning cart etc. While custom audiences are used for retargeting (e.f users who have viewed your ad), the lookalikes are prospecting audiences that will target who you asked them to (e.g similar users to the ones who have purchased tickets). The rule of thumb - the closer the percentage to the seed audience (1%) the closer the resemblance of the “twins” will be and better the performance.
Based on the tracking you have set up with Eventix, you can create an audience for each conversion point. Your strategy can be as complex as your funnel. For example you can retarget people who have abandoned your ticket shop and persuade them to finalise the buying. Alternatively, you can create a lookalike audience based on the people who have purchased VIP tickets and target those to enlarge your reach with quality people.
A good example of where a successful online marketing strategy has been applied is Verknipt during the Amsterdam Dance Event. With 22,500 visitors and 5 sold out editions, it was a great success to look back on. Verknipt, founded in 2012, is now a household name in the Netherlands and an indispensable part of the techno landscape. From the big techno DJs to their own residents who get a boost for their career with Verknipt.
Because we have been working with Verknipt since 2017, we know the target group well, we know what works and what doesn't and - not unimportantly - we have built up a wealth of data. Thanks to this solid foundation of data and insights from the advertising platforms and Eventix insights, we were able to immediately start with a well-thought-out campaign structure. Based on our best practices and the target group, we used the channels Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and the Google Ads network.
In the awareness phase, Verknipt and we mainly focus on the broader target groups, such as people with an interest in techno and lookalike audiences of Verknipt data. Our goal is to reach the target group as efficiently as possible and, above all, to let them experience the atmosphere of the event through video content. As soon as people interact with us, watch the video or click through, we follow these people up with new creatives and try to further convince them to buy a ticket. Here we show, for example, line-up content, the artists, etc. Here, we mainly optimise exploratory actions: clicking through to the event page and carrying out social interaction. For the top two layers of the funnel, we mainly focus on the Instagram, TikTok and Facebook channels.
In the final phase of the funnel - the conversion phase - we focus on the warmest target groups. These target groups have shown their interest in the event several times and have interacted with our campaign several times, or these are target groups that have already had interests in the past ( have entered the ticket shop but have not yet converted, have been to the past events). In the conversion phase, we mainly focus on the Instagram and Facebook channels. The Google search network is also important to us in this phase because it accommodates the people who are actively searching for Verknipt.
In the case of online marketing, data and measurement are not entirely unimportant. You want to be able to measure the campaigns from A to Z and know how efficient your campaigns and channels are in ticket sales for your events. There are several options for how you can arrange this with your ticketing party, for example via the Google Tag Manager. By linking certain triggers to pieces of code from the marketing platforms, you can ensure that you can see exactly what a Meta or Google, for example, yields.
Do you work with Eventix? Then you're in luck, thanks to their marketing integrations and data connections it is easy to implement and we know exactly what works and what doesn't. Online marketing is ultimately a matter of continuous analysis, optimization and A/B testing in order to get the most out of your campaigns.
So... make sure you know your target group well, know what they scroll through on their phone every day and what they like and, based on those insights, ensure that you develop the ideal marketing mix. So make sure that you always measure everything carefully so that you know what your channels deliver, and on that basis, you can better divide and test your budgets. There is no standard success formula; you must always tailor your event to your target group. Need advice or help? At Boest, we are always ready to help you make your event a success.
