From our experience with clients there are a few major marketing tactics that our clients have found major success with. Whether you are already implementing these strategies or not our hope is that if you go through these you will still find some extra tips that you have not been using in your strategy.
(One example would be if you already are showing ads to your past customers that after you got through this you will not only be doing that but also be using Facebook’s algorithm to advertise to a ‘Look alike Audience’ two potentially double your customer base.)
This will be a mix of both Tips within your Afton Tickets portal and outside of your portal using 3rd party app/programs. Our clients have found the most success with setting aside a day or a night after work where they can take a few hours and run through the below list to make sure they are marketing to their full potential. Even if you are not able to do it all at once you can always just knock it out in sections as you have time.
1. The first thing that we ask our clients is if they exported their list of past purchases from their Afton Tickets portal. This seems like a basic questions but a lot of clients just assume that all the same people are going to purchase again for their next event. This is not always the case so we recommend downloading that past purchasers list from their Afton Tickets Portal. For the full breakdown of how to do this check out our walk through and video HERE.
2. The next thing we ask our clients is how they are using their list of past purchasers. The first thing we suggest you use the list for is promotion on Facebook. Facebook makes things very easy when it comes to uploading the past purchasers list (.CSV file). We have made a full walk through and video that you can follow along with HERE.
The other use for the Past purchaser list is just an old fashioned email campaign. A lot of clients cherish their long term customers that come back to events year after year. Though sometimes those customers wait until very close to the event to purchase or possibly forgot. A nice way to ensure that the customers purchase in advance is to incentivize them to come back with a discount. A good starting off point is usually 5% or 10% off the ticket price. You can create those within your Afton Tickets portal or you can reach out to your Account manager for assistance. Once you have it created you just drag and drop that customer list into the email program that you use (Mail Chimp, Constant Contact….etc) and then you email the customers letting them know what the promo code is.
3. The next thing we ask clients about is if they are using our Rewards program yet. Lets be honest a little help can go a long way and that is exactly what the reward program is. It gives your customers the ability to be ticket sellers for you. The way it works is that when a customer buys a ticket they are then given a rewards program link, so if they share that link and a customer purchases from it they get a partial refund on their ticket. The best part is that you are in full control of the amount they are refunded. Lets say that you have a $50 ticket and you set the incentive amount at 5% then each time the customer creates a sale from their link they are refunded $2.50 of off of their ticket price. You can even set the max refund amount as well. This means that you can make it so no matter how many new customers they generate for you their ticket can only be refunded by 50% (if that is what you put the max refund amount).
You can set this up within your Afton Tickets portal by logging into your account and heading to ‘Marketing Tools’ from their just click on ‘Rewards Program’. You will then see a ‘Create Campaign’ button. It will then walk you through the whole setup process. On paper it seems like you are just giving a way money with this but if you think about it those new customers that are generated might never have bought a ticket or even heard about the event until they were referred to it. So you might be refunding half of a full priced ticket but in turn you are getting potentially 10 new customers that purchased. Our clients have seen huge success using this tool.
4. Next up we ask clients if they are using the ‘Affiliate Links’ tool within their account. This is used for multiple reasons. The first is to generate sales. Say you have some fellow event organizers that host an event that is similar to yours but it is at a different time of year (making sure you are not competing with one another) you could create an affiliate link for them that in turn they would share to their audience. This affiliate link will track the number of people that purchase through that link. That way you can keep track of the total number of new purchasers. Some clients hire 3rd party companies to help promote their event and pay them based on sales they generate. That is why the affiliate link is great because you will know exactly how many sales they bring in so that you can pay them out correctly.
The second thing reason why affiliate links are great is for tracking internally. Say you’re a company that has multiple campaigns going. One television campaign, one Facebook ad campaign and a another campaign that is just from your social media followers. You could create a separate affiliate link for each campaign. That way at the end of the event you will have the total number of sales for each to see which method brought in the most sales. This will make things a lot easier for your next event that you put on because you will be able to know where to allocate your funds to produce the most sales.
If this is something that you think you would be interested in you can head HERE to see a full walk through on how to create an affiliate link.
5. The final tool that we ask clients if they are using is the ‘Abandoned Cart’ feature. This is an extremely helpful tool that can help generate sales. Lets be honest there are always some customers that procrastinate when it comes to purchasing a ticket. In some cases they will see an ad, hear about an event…etc and make their way all the way to the Afton Tickets website, add a ticket to their cart and then just leave the website. This is where the ‘Abandoned Cart’ feature is so helpful. If the client has this setting turned on then a customer will then get an email reminder that they left their tickets in their cart. So make sure to check with your account manager to make sure that is turned on for your account.
6. The final step is putting some of these tips together and running a Facebook ad. Maybe you have ran a Facebook ad in the past but don’t know how to use your custom audience list or your look alike audience with an ad. If that is the case then head HERE to check out a full walk through and video on how to setup your ad.
Those are the main tips that we have had clients use to ensure the success of their event. In most cases if you are implementing some of the above tips you will likely see great results! If you are interested in taking a deeper dive into some more tips please read below.
1. The first thing we will go over in our Deep Dive section is about tracking. There is something called a Facebook Pixel that everyone with a Facebook ad account has that you can add to your Afton Tickets portal that will help with tracking. Click HERE to see a full walk through and video that goes over how to find your Facebook Pixel.
Once you are done with that you can click HERE to see where to paste in your pixel within your Afton Tickets portal so that everything will be tracked correctly.
2. The next section is on how to setup a Facebook Business account. Most people just have an add account setup but if you are a business that operates multiple pages, runs ads for multiple clients or just want a better general experience on Facebook it is beneficial to setup a Facebook Business account. Click HERE for a full walk through on how to set that up.
3. The last section is just a general deep dive on how to better understand your Facebook results. This is for once you have set everything up and ran some Facebook ads. Sometimes clients are a little confused at the results as Facebook does not do the best job on explaining what the information means or what parts of the information is more important than other sections. You can check our that full walk through and video HERE.
We hope that our marketing handbook was helpful to you and that you will be able to use some of these tips to ensure a successful event!