proven strategies to increase ticket sales

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3 Proven Strategies for Increasing

Ticket Sales Revenue

Sabeha MohamedNick Lawson

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Password: wifi4077

WiFi: etcvenues

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@EventbriteUK | fb.com/eventbriteuk

eventbrite.co.uk/blog

Agenda

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9.00-9.30: Breakfast

9.30-10.30: Presentations

10.30-11.30: Question and networking

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Advanced Facebook Advertising for Events

Nick LawsonSocial Media & Community SpecialistEventbrite

Agenda

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1. Why Facebook advertising?

2. What you’ll learn

3. Core principles

a. Why targeting matters

b. Getting your ad manager in shape

i. Pixels and Conversions

ii. Campaign Structure

4. Targeting

a. Saved Audiences

b. Custom Audiences

c. Lookalike Audiences

5. Creating a complete ad strategy that drives

revenue at good ROI.

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Why Facebook advertising?

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Why Facebook Advertising?

● 2 billion active users - your audience is

here.

● Only pay to show to your target

audience.

● They give you a lot of good tools to reach

that target audience.

● Organic reach is falling.

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What you’ll learn

● How to set up your ad manager so you can

effectively capture data and measure your

success.

● How to create highly targeted custom and

lookalike audiences using Facebook’s most

sophisticated features.

● How to use the above to create and implement

an effective ad strategy that converts customers

at a good ROI.

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Core Principles

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Why your targeting matters

● 2 Important Reasons

○ Facebook’s targeting features make it the most powerful ad

platform out there. If you want to drive real revenue from

Facebook you need to use the targeting tools properly.

○ Facebook uses Relevance Score to determine how much it

charges you for you ads. It will give you a higher score, and

therefore lower cost, the more relevant your ads are to your

audience.

Therefore, the better your targeting, the cheaper you ads will be.

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Get your Ad Manager in shape.

● The Facebook Pixel

○ The pixel allows you to:

■ Create audiences from people that visit your website(s).

■ Set up conversion events to measure the success of your ads by recording

what actions people take on your site after clicking through from an ad (e.g.

buying a ticket).

○ Without the pixel, you cannot run effective Facebook ads. You can learn how to

set it up correctly here.

● You can use Eventbrite’s integration with the Facebook pixel to measure the

performance of the ads you use to drive ticket sales on Eventbrite.

○ There’s help on how to set up this integration here.

https://www.facebook.com/business/help/952192354843755

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/support/articles/en_US/Multi_Group_How_To/how-to-create-a-tracking-pixel-with-facebook?lg=en_GB

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Get your Ad Manager in shape.

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Targeting

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The 3 Types of Audience

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Saved Audiences

● Use FBs in-built targeting functions e.g. location,

age, gender, demographics, interests, etc.

● Pros:

○ You can get fairly granular.

○ Good if your target market is large.

● Cons:

○ You have to have a detailed knowledge of

what your target audience looks like.

○ Not good for niche markets and b2b.

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Custom Audiences & Retargeting

Ever been in the situation where a campaign has driven loads of

great traffic to your site… but then hardly anyone converts?

People don’t buy on the first interaction, they need nurturing.

If you’re not retargeting your website visitors, you are WASTING

your money. Still not convinced? Here’s some stats

Custom Audiences are what give you the ability to target people

who have visited your site.

Website visitors were

more likely to convert

through a retargeting

campaign

CPCs are on average

lower for retargeting

campaigns..

80%

43%

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How to create a Custom Audience

1. Head to your ad manager, and select audiences from the menu in the top left

2. Select create new audience, and then custom audience. At the menu that appears, select Website traffic.

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How to define your audience.In this pop up you can set the criteria for the which of your website visitors you want to build an audience of.

There’s a variety of combinations of rules you can set, from basic to advanced.

For example, a commonly used audience is “All Visitors to mysite.com in the last 30 days”

However it’s often good to be more targeted and, for example, only target people who visited certain pages (such as your speaker or programme page)

You could then get even more advanced by excluding anyone who reached your “registration-complete” page. Combining this with the above would mean you target all visitors who are interested in your event, but haven’t already bought a ticket!

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How to target your custom audience in ads

1. Set up your campaign with the goal of “increase website conversions” (make sure you’ve got your pixel and custom conversions set up).

2. At the Ad Set stage, under audience just type in the custom audience you want to target.

3. You can then “layer over” additional targeting criteria in this section to further refine your audience.

For example if your event is targeted at women, you may want to exclude any men that got picked up in your custom audience because they were on your site.

Remember - always be as targeted as possible, as this will increase your CTR and decrease your cost, and therefore improve your ROI.

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Recap - why should you be using Custom Audiences & Retargeting?

By using Custom Audiences & retargeting, you are targeting people who are already interested in your event.

That means they’re more likely to click on your ad (which makes your ads cheaper!) and they are a massive

70%more likely to register for you event.

Remember, people don’t buy on the first interaction - they need nurturing and reminding to make sure they come back and convert, and that’s what retargeting is about.

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Lookalike AudiencesSo custom audiences are great for converting people who are already visiting your site. But how can Facebook help you bring new people to your site?

This is where Lookalike audiences come in. Lookalikes sound complex, but the idea is actually very simple.

Why is this good for me?

You are using your proven customers or website visitors as the starting point for this lookalike audience list.

Therefore, Lookalikes help us target people who look just like our current customers, but without us having to know exactly who they are

What is a Lookalike Audience?

Facebook generates an audience of users you can target who are similar to one of your Custom Audiences or the fans of your page.

i.e. you can create a custom audience of your website visitors, your email subscribers or your existing customers, and then create an audience of people that are similar to this.

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How to use Lookalike AudiencesLookalikes give you a large audience of “fresh” people who have similar interests, demographics and behaviours to your existing customers.

This is therefore an ideal audience to which to market your event too.

Lookalikes are more reliable than saved audiences, because they don’t rely on you guessing what your target audience looks like - Facebook does it for you.

You can then layer over standard targeting criteria (e.g. age, gender, location, interests etc.) to get even more targeted.

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How do I create a Lookalike Audience

Creating a Lookalike Audience is a simple process.

1. Head to the Audiences page in your Ads Manager.

2. Select the tick-box of the Custom Audience you wish

to create a Lookalike of, and the select “Actions” and

“Create Lookalike”.

3. In the pop up select the region from which you’re

audience will be created.

4. Select how wide a match you would like. The smaller

the range, the closer your match will be.

5. Click create!

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Lookalikes - A Recap

Facebook generates audiences that are similar to your custom audiences.

Therefore, they let you target people who are very similar to your existing customers

...But without you having to know what they look like (unlike Saved Audiences)

Therefore, when we can’t target our custom audiences, Lookalikes give us “fresh” audiences to target.

=

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Creating and Implementing Your Ad

Strategy

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Funnel & Build, Measure, Learn

Custom Audiences and Lookalikes are fantastic and unrivalled tools,

but their real power lies when used in conjunction as part of an

effective Facebook Ads strategy.

We’ll show you how to do this, and create a build-measure-learn

process whereby you are continually improving and refining your

campaigns to keep increasing your ROI and revenue.

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FunnelRemember we said earlier that no one buys on the first

interaction? What’s the point then of advertising to lookalikes?

Lookalikes enable us to generate awareness and cheaply grow

our Custom Audiences, through which we then drive

registrations.

How does this work?

1. We drive targeted traffic to our site using Lookalike

audiences, and in doing so we create awareness and

interest in our event.

2. We use the Facebook pixel to add everyone who visits

our site to a Custom Audience.

3. We then retarget using this Custom Audience and

convert them.

Create Awareness and Interest

Convert

Targeting with Lookalikes

Retargeting with Custom

Audiences

The basic funnel

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Funnel

Why do we need the funnel?

People don’t use Facebook to search for conferences and

other events to attend. They use it to socialise.

Therefore Facebook advertising requires more touch points

than say, Google Adwords, as you have to create that initial

interest in your offering before coming back to close and

convert them.


Convert



Audiences

The basic funnel

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What goes into my funnel?The shape and size of your funnel will vary depending on your resources, and the type of event you run.

Events with higher prices will require longer funnels to convert, whilst events that pitch to multiple types of people (e.g.

startup founders, startup investors) will require segmentation within the funnel.

Create Awareness and Trust

Decision

&

Convert

Consideration


SEGM

ENT 1

SEG

MEN

T 2

Convert

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The basic principles are:

● Use Lookalike audience targeting to run ads with light,

awareness type content (e.g. Videos, blog posts such as

“9 reasons to attend ‘Event x’”)

○ This will generate a good volume of inexpensive,

yet targeted traffic to your site/content.

● Use your Facebook pixel to capture these website

visitors in a Custom Audience, and then target this

audience with ads that communicate why the need to

register right now.


Convert



Audiences

The basic funnel

Funnel - Recap

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Build, Measure, Learn - the secret behind creating great ROI.

At the Ad Set and Ad level, always create several variations of your targeting and ad design respectively to test against one another.

E.g. Website Visitor, Age 25-34 vs. Website Visitor, Age 35 -44And Ad Design 1 vs Ad Design 2

Measure how different ad sets and ads perform against each other.

What to look for? Cost per conversion, CPC, CTR, Relevance Score.

Switch off the ad sets and ads that are performing badly and driving up your costs.

Focus on what’s performing well, and then create variations of it and start this process again.

Build Measure Learn

Start small and test with your most targeted audience, and measure your performance.

As you learn what works, start to scale up, but keep experimenting.

No one created the perfect campaign on day one. Effective campaigns require attention.

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Bring it all together

Build

MeasureLearn


Convert



Audiences

Campaign

Ad Set 1

Ad Set 2

Ad 1

Ad 2

Ad 1

Ad 2

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And remember

1. Use that pixel2. Always be as targeted as possible.3. Funnel it, don’t force it.4. Build, measure, learn, repeat.

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Thank you

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/blog/master-facebook-advertising/

(p.s. Check out EventTribe, our recently launched

community for event organisers.)

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Optimising Your Marketing ROI with Real-time Data

Sabeha Mohamed Nick Lawson

Agenda

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1. Where to look

2. What to look for

3. Foundations of success

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Where to look1

Toolkit: Google Analytics

1. Audience - Determine What Is Your Current Reach (Traffic)

1. Acquisition 2. Audience3. Behaviour4. Conversion

Tool: Your Eventbrite Dashboard

2. Acquisition - Who’s discovering and buying your tickets?

3. Behaviour - What Are They Talking About & Engaging With?

Toolkit: Social Media Analytics

4. Conversion - Understand What Drives Business Revenue & $$ Per Customer

Toolkit: salesforce / CRM system

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What to look for2

Next, look for pages with high traffic / low conversation - then use conversation rate optimisation to improve your ticket sales.

Then go for the inverse - pages with low traffic but

high conversions, and focus on driving more

traffic to them.

Last but not least, look at how your conversions are doing across different devices, operating system and traffic sources. These all provide valuable information on where you should be focusing your resources, where there might be leaks, or opportunities to

increase ticket sales.

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Foundation of success3

1. Set up Google Goals!

2. Integrate tracking pixels with your Eventbrite dashboard

www.eventbrite.co.uk/blog/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mediapartner1

3. Make sure you’re tracking your

campaigns with consistent UTMs

4. Or with unique tracking codes if

you’re an Eventbrite user.

In conclusion

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1. To improve your marketing ROI, you first need to

track everything effectively (and correctly);

2. Then you need to find what’s moving the needle,

and do more of it!

3. Only then should you start digging round for leaks

and missed opportunities;

4. And finally, remember that data ≠ insight! It’s only

as smart as your interpretation of it, so look at it

critically and think through what story it’s really

telling you.

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eventbrite.co.uk/blog

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Increase Sales ≠ Spend Sabeha Mohamed

In our live webinar audience:

● 47% send an email blast

● 32% post frequently on social media

● 16% offer a discount or promotion

Poll: What’s your current go-to move to increase ticket sales?

[Placeholder graphic]

What if instead of focusing on

driving more views of your ticketing

page…

.... you focused on turning more page

viewers into attendees?

We all focussed here

(get more traffic)

Opportunity: But what could happen if you focused here to increase ticket sales?

Agenda

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1. 4 questions to ask to find out if you’re losing

ticket sales

2. Simple ways to sell more tickets

3. Future of ticket buying

How well do you know your event’sticket purchase process ?

4 questions to ask to find out if

you’re losing ticket sales

1. How many of your site visitors turn into attendees today?

2. How difficult is your ticket purchase process?

Danger signs:

● Many steps during check out● CAPTCHAs● Required login● Hidden fees

Top Tip: Once you’re ready to make your event live, go through the purchase process yourself (on both desktop and mobile!)

1 in 10interested buyers drops off for

every additional fieldin the purchase form

1 in 4interested buyers drops off if

an account loginis required for purchase

Is it as easy as possible to buy tickets to your event?

Making it easier to buy tickets is the most effective way to drive more ticket sales

[Placeholder graphic]

3. What’s your purchase process like on mobile?

160%lift in the percent of visitors who

buy tickets with

mobile optimised purchase processes

Mobile is bigger than

desktop.

4. How much time and money go into your other strategies to drive more sales?

You could spend more time and money on another marketing campaign to sell more tickets…

… or you could make it easier to buy tickets and see sales skyrocket, no additional investment necessary.

Practical example:

Agenda

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ticket sales



Simple ways to sell more tickets

Use visual content and rich language to paint a picture of your event

● Set the mood in your title & description● Show them what to expect with images &

video ● Think about transportation

Design your event website with the most important information clearly visible

● Think about how you use space to display information

● Bring the date, time, and price of your event front & center

● Move any text off images

Design your event website with the most important information clearly visible

Make sure it’s as easy as possible to buy tickets on mobile

Streamline your checkout experience

Every additional step = ticket sales drop off

Streamline your checkout experience

Choose a ticketing partner who simplifies purchases:

● Additional steps in the checkout process cause 10% of people to quit

● Required account logins cause 23% of shoppers to not buy

● Hidden fees at the last minute dissuade customers

Make sure your ticketing site is fast and reliable

● 40% of online shoppers abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load

● Just a 1 second delay decreases customer satisfaction by about 16%

● Slow page load times can cause a 7% drop in transactions

● If you’re expecting a big onsale, you can’t risk your site crashing

Test, test, test

● Optimising your site for sales is a journey, not a destination

● Think about the power of marginal gains● A/B test everything if you can

Agenda

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ticket sales



The future of ticketing, anywhere

your customers are

On your event website

On social media

Across the web

Graphic TBD from Tamara

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1. Focus on website conversion

2. Optimise for mobile first

3. Be where your customers are

Summary

The end result of all this simplification?

A better experience for your attendees, faster purchases and more revenue in your pocket.

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proven strategies to increase ticket sales

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