The aim of the game for any event organizer is to sell out their event. It’s a no brainer. In order to make this a reality you need to ensure your utilizing your most effective promotional tools. Well guess what? Your audience might just be your best ticket to pushing more tickets.

Once upon a time we lived in a world where newspaper print ads, commercial radio spots, expensive television advertising, and downtown billboards seemed like the only real way to penetrate the market with your marketing messages. Of course, word of mouth amongst friends was still a prominent thing but it has its own limitations; namely the reach without assistance of instant messaging and a wide spread of ‘followers’.
Enter 2016, the year that witnesses global social media penetration of 31% (2.34bn users) with predictions for 2020 sitting at 2.95bn users. That will result in a 205% increase in social media users since 2010. The point being, if you’re not utilizing these channels to maximize ticket sales, now is the time to start.
Let’s take a look at 4 tactics that utilize one of your biggest promotional tools – your audience.

Social Sharing During the Purchase Journey

It’s no lie that people are influenced by their peers. The term FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) is often used and describes that internal pressure we put on ourselves to never miss out on the fun things in life, particularly events. So as an event organizer, you should capitalize on this modern day buzzword and provide your attendees with the tools to reach their network of friends easily across social platforms.
Does your current ticketing platform allow your attendees to celebrate their ticket purchase with one simple click? Facebook and Twitter are the two obvious choices here and it should be mandatory. Do not settle for less! Although a wider friend circle (i.e. audience) can be reached on Facebook and Twitter, sometimes the message can be diluted due to abundance of content streaming through the platforms. Step in, WhatsApp! This direct messaging service allows groups of friends, not acquaintances, to communicate directly with each other, which will have a much bigger impact on influencing a purchase. Is this an option from your current ticketing service? If not maybe it’s time to look around.

Provide the Content to Make their Job Easy

As mentioned above, there is an abundance of content available on social media so the only way to cut through is by providing something that is actually worth sharing. You need to strike the ‘nostalgic bone’ with your current attendees so that there is an organic reaction to share this content with their friends and followers. After-movies are a great way to achieve this as they instantly strike a chord with the attendee who desperately wishes they were back in their happy place, your event! The next action that takes place is the need for this attendee to let their friends know what they missed out on! In the lead up to your event, beautiful imagery is still king. Ensure you are investing in professional photography that provides you with a gallery of images you can test on your audience. Use analytics to determine which images gain the most interaction with your audience so you can focus on turning these interactions into ticket sales. If you can do your part in providing unique, interesting content, you can sit back (a little) and let your attendees spread the word.

Limited ‘Fire’ Sale

Nothing gets social media communities excited quite like a limited time sale. Use twitter as a platform to announce a 1 hour only sale where a limited number of tickets will be available at a heavily discounted price and provide a hashtag for the consumer to repost and get friends and followers onboard. Tease your followers with a series of tweets, building up to the limited ‘fire’ sale so that excitement starts to bubble amongst your direct followers, before seeding it’s way to their followers when they can’t help but retweet and tag friends in this exclusive offering. When the time comes, post your hidden URL ticket link and watch the sales roll in. Only create a ‘fire’ sale around a particular event or holiday as to not devalue your event (e.g “Exclusive Christmas Sale”). Keep the tickets limited so you don’t damage your bottom line and think about the marketing budget you just saved by opting for a simple (and FREE) tweet over a traditional (potentially expensive) marketing campaign.

Turn Attendees into Reps

Why not incentivize your audience by providing the opportunity for individuals to become reps for your event. You can easily provide the rep with a tracked link which they can then share across their social networks to gain interest from friends and family. As long as the new ticket buyer uses this tracked link to go on to purchase a ticket, the rep will be recognized as successfully selling a ticket and you can then proceed in rewarding one of your new brand ambassadors. An incentive could be a free ticket if they can sell five tickets through their social network, or even an exclusive experiential reward such as back stage access at your event, or meet & greets with the talent.

In Conclusion

It’s important to remember that you have one of your strongest, most influential promotional tools through attendees and their vast social networks. You can easily gain help from those who are already loyal to your brand and are willing to spread your sales messages with a simple click. Ensure you do your part by providing the content and incentives to make their job as easy as possible to sell more tickets.

As the number of events with cutting-edge technology and elaborate activations continues to grow, so too does the need to push the envelope when it comes to your own event technology.
As one of the mobile innovations emerging in the event space, iBeacons (Apple’s location-based technology) can enhance virtually any attendee touch point, with the goal of differentiating your brand and maximizing user engagement. Yet as Event Organizers and Marketers start to recognize the value of beacons in improving attendee experiences, the full potential for beacons has yet to be tapped into.

More Efficient Networking

Networking in particular can be greatly improved by using beacon networks to show users a mobile view of other attendees, as well as venues and sessions in the area. Combine this information with tight LinkedIn integration and in-app messaging and attendees are armed with the insight and tools to initiate the right conversations with the right people.
Aimed at inspiring more meaningful connections, leveraging hyper-local beacons to sync the right people has the potential for creating more memorable events. At larger events where attendance can be in the hundreds of thousands, it’s valuable for honing in on the most relevant users. Providing deeper context, apps can now show which LinkedIn contacts are in the vicinity and which of those have similar session favorites.

Keeping Attendees Up To Speed

Most conference attendees and festival audiences now rely on an event’s official app to plan and maximize their experience. It’s an effective way to personalize their schedules, prioritize their time, and get to where they need to be.
Adding another layer to real-time attendee updates, beacon-enabled alerts reach the right attendees based on their location. Inevitable scenarios such as session changes or last-minute ticket releases can now be pushed out as alerts to nearby attendees, making it easy to manage an event’s moving parts and communicate these changes in the most relevant way.

Driving Real-Time Participation

While session-level discussion and participation often rank high as indicators of event engagement, they can also be challenging to achieve. The key to harnessing the commonality of interest in a specific topic can be as simple as providing a way for attendees to check in to sessions at a given venue.
Beacons make this possible by recognizing attendees in a room or venue, prompting them to check in with the event app, and letting them join ongoing conversations with other users at the same session, enabling a new level of interaction. Tapping into this engagement, organizers can also run in-app polls in real time and drive survey responses from those same users.

Removing the Friction From Event Activities

Larger, more complex events are inherently more of a logistical challenge for attendees. From navigating massive trade show floors to dealing with extensive queues, these mandatory’s can take away from the overall experience.
To streamline badge pick-up, beacons can be used to serve up the required information to arriving attendees in the registration area. Often the first interaction at an event, a fast-tracked registration process ensures a solid first impression and allows attendees to make the most of their time. Smart phones including the Apple Watch also work with beacons to display tickets or codes on the watch with zero effort, delivering a new level of convenience and ease.
Beacon-enabled way finding enables users to navigate vast indoor spaces such as exhibitor areas, providing attendees with routing and turn-by-turn directions, and event organizers with behavioral data and visual heat maps on real-time occupancy and dwell time. This unprecedented level of real-time insights can be invaluable for managing crowd control and helping organizers plan and optimize future events.

Amplifying Brand & Building Engagement

As use cases for beacons continue to emerge at leading events, its overall value is apparent to marketers seeking unique ways to showcase their brands. Some of the world’s stellar events have already seen real-world successes, pioneering different approaches for implementing and taking advantage of beacon capabilities.

In Conclusion

Building on its role as a communication platform for targeting users and reaching users with relevant content, beacons in an event-based setting shifts the focus from messages to enhancing the attendee’s experience. Its ability to reshape how attendees interact with brands, sponsors, and each other is expected to transform the event landscape – providing you with the next mobile innovation you should consider weaving into the fabric of your own event.

The world is on high alert and security and safety of our attendees is a major concern. Here are 10 key topics every event planner should be discussing with their venues.

In today’s multi-billion dollar sports, events and entertainment industry, event security is the number one concern. From minor incidents to worldwide terrorist attacks, every event planner is uneasy and the landscape is ever-changing. Safeguarding today’s stadiums, venues and arenas requires a proactive mindset along with focused, concentrated efforts and checks. The significance of ongoing training, resources, and the integration of technology to improve safety within our event spaces cannot be ignored.
Here are 10 vital areas event planners need to discuss with their venues and the security team in advance of their event. Asking these questions can reduce the threats, challenges and vulnerabilities and ensure you prepare for and deliver the best duty of care to your guests.

6. Threat and Vulnerability Assessments

   Venue owners have a responsibility to limit and manage threats and to do this they need to regularly assess, review and take steps to increase safety and security. Countermeasures can be identified and put in place to lower the levels of risk and avoid areas of weakness.
   Questions to ask:
   How often do you conduct a thorough top to bottom view of your stadium/venue/arena?
   Can you give some examples of measures and upgrades that have been put in place as a result of an assessment?

7. Person and Bag Checks and Searches

   Many venues have technology in place for security checks of bags and individuals, similar to technology used at airport security. Other venues do manual bag checks and pat down individuals.
   Questions to ask:
   What is the procedure in terms of bag checks?
   Are airport style scanners available to check baggage?
   What is the procedure in terms of person checks/searches of people?
   Are the checks for everyone? Or done at random?
   What are you checking for?

8. Alcohol and Beverage Control Program

   Alcohol related incidents are common at venues licensed to serve alcohol so putting a policy in place is wise. Measures often include limiting the amount of drinks purchased in a single transaction, ID checks and only serving alcohol in certain areas to reduce harm and incidents.
   Questions to ask:
   Do you have an alcohol and beverage control program in place?
   What training is given to staff?
   Is knowledgeable staff available to identify intoxicated patrons in the space?

9. Active Shooter and Workplace Violence Situations

   Terrorist attacks and active shooters are on the increase and being prepared for such a situation could save many lives.
   Questions to ask:
   Have you prepared your staff for what to do in an active shooter situation?
   As event planners what do we need to know?
   In such a situation how would the event team, venue and security work together? What are the responsibilities of each?

10. Crowd Control

    Understanding and monitoring the movement and density of the crowds will enable you to be proactive if you need to be before any situations of overcrowding arise.
    Questions to ask:
    How do you space patrons entering the stadium or venue?
    How do you monitor and control crowd density?
    How are you doing your best to prevent bottlenecks and choke points from forming?

In Conclusion

Safety is the number one priority for event planners and the world of event security is ever changing. Managing the ebb and flow of crowd control, dynamics and demographics in this space takes effort. By taking the time to contemplate, educate ourselves, research, and share best practices with one another we can ensure that our venues and events are safer. Asking questions concerning these 10 key areas are a great starting point to discuss with your venue the measures, checks and procedures in place for managing safety and security effectively at your event.