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Guest post by Sophia Vaccaro for EventbriteVendor negotiations. Last-minute cancellations. Meetings that cut through lunch. Sometimes your schedule just doesn’t allow for the aggressive marketing plan of your dreams. Even so, you don’t need to blow major budget dollars or stare at a screen for hours a day to sell more tickets to your event. In just fifteen minutes a day, you can establish a strong marketing foundation to build on for the long-term.For your first week’s plan, keep reading. Soon enough you’ll be mastering the art of marketing before you’ve finished your morning coffee.Day 1: Set yourself up for word of mouth promotionWord of mouth has always been the dream of event creators. In fact, 63% of event creators named it as their top sales driver in Eventbrite’s 2019 Pulse Report. Darrah Brustein, Founder of Network Under 40, has this advice for event creators hoping to inspire word-of-mouth fervor: “Hand-select a group of ‘hosts’ or ‘ambassadors’ who get free entry to your event — along with two free tickets to give away to their friends.”15-minute task: Like Brustein advises, spend 15 minutes finding and reaching out to influencers on social media. You can speed this process up even more with a word-of-mouth sales program on Verve.Day 2: Choose the right social media platformsYou can get really lost down the rabbit hole of social media marketing. Streamline your efforts and make the biggest impact by focusing on the platforms most relevant to your events. For example, your book club audience is probably more active on Instagram (#bookstagram, anyone?) than LinkedIn.“To get the most impact in the least amount of time, use the platform of your choice to its fullest potential,” advises Nicole Giordano, founded StartUp FASHION. Her team uses the platform to share posts, stories, and live video to 12.5k followers.15-minute task: Use this quiz (and your own common sense) to determine the best social media platform for your events. Forget the rest for now.- Extra credit: For most events, Facebook Events is a powerful driver of ticket sales. Create your Facebook Event in minutes and enable sales directly in the Facebook app by publishing it directly from your Eventbrite account.
- Add a form to your website
- Set up a text-to-join option and add the number to all your printed promos
- Add a sign-up link to your standard email template
- Collect sign-ups through Facebook, using a Facebook Lead Ad
- Use a straightforward name that describes your event clearly. A beer festival should contain the words “beer” and “festival.” (By the way, the keyword “beer festival” is searched 3,000 times a month on Google.)
- Include your event’s location and date in every description.
- If possible, choose a domain name that includes your target keywords (likely your event name).