Event Marketing Tips for Boosting Online Ticket Sales

Apr 28, 2025

Make your event unmissable:

Provide Different Pricing Options
The Early Bird Gets The… Better Deal
Monitor Your Most Successful Messaging
Create Social Buzz with Giveaways and Contests
Get ‘Em Before They’re Gone
It’s Great to Collaborate
Use Online Outreach When Selling Events

From small venues to sports stadiums, promoters need to prove theirs is the hottest ticket in town. Concerts, sporting events, museum outings, and special events are fun ways for visitors and residents alike to enjoy their time in a city. But event marketing can be a challenge. Selling tickets to events involves getting creative to reach the right demographic.

Thankfully, with today’s technology, there are many ways to evolve your marketing strategies for ticket sales and connect with people who are interested in your event. From grabbing a spot in Groupon’s “Things to Do” category, to offering a variety of ticketing options, you can be creative and successful in your online event marketing strategies.

Provide Different Pricing Options

Selling tickets to an event at just one price might not be enough to entice people. Some potential customers might want to enjoy a few little perks – and be prepared to pay more – while some might just want to pay a little less, even if it means a seat in the nosebleeds.

Tiered ticketing is one of the most recent developments in event marketing. Offering different variations of the same experience at various tiers can help move more tickets to those looking for an incentive to reach for their credit card.

VIP tickets could include better seats, free dinner, or drinks, and even meet-and-greets with the stars.
On the other hand, cheaper tickets might mean parking a little further away from the venue, or limited choice on seating.

Note that planning your event with these kinds of incentives in mind can help you budget better for the event itself, in money as well as time.

The Early Bird Gets The… Better Deal

The sooner you sell out your event, the sooner you can be confident of a successful outcome. Relying on the bulk of your tickets to sell on the door is a huge gamble. Anything from bad weather to a last-minute cancellation by an announced act or guest could virtually kill your gate on the day.

One way to increase your chances of advance sales is to offer discounted tickets for a limited period following the event announcement. “Early bird” ticket prices were first trialed for a Scottish music festival called T in the Park. ¹ Now they’re a mainstay of marketing strategies for ticket sales. If you can instill a feeling in potential attendees that it’s worth the risk to buy now so they don’t regret it later, you’ve harnessed one of the biggest emotional decisions there is in business. And be sure to make it a limited offer – another crucial decision-making factor on whether to take the plunge is that feeling of not having long to decide!

Monitor Your Most Successful Messaging

So, you’ve announced your event and have turned to the usual channels to promote it – local Facebook groups, social media and your own website. You might even have drummed up a budget for some paid search promotion.

It’s important to monitor the effects of advertising on each channel, so that you can see where you’re succeeding and where you’ve struggled to reach new customers. Save money and time and put your energy into where it’s working most. Measure social mentions, retweets and ‘likes’, as well as visits to your blog posts and who’s landing on your site from paid search.

Test different calls to action in your emails and see which drives more visitors to your website.

See when and where your social posts with the most engagement happened, and on which platforms, and be sure to send future promotional posts in the same way.

Spend proportionate amounts of time and money between channels. A smaller number of email recipients might be more meaningful than a larger number of Instagram followers, so don’t spend too much in search of those ‘likes’ when a number of read and clicked-on email links could be worth so much more.

Create Social Buzz with Giveaways and Contests

Get people talking about your event by offering a lucky winner the chance to be there for free. Social media contests can help you:

Grow your brand and its online following
Raise brand awareness
Increase website visits
Grow your email base for lead generation. ²

Depending on entry requirements and the rules and regulations of the social media platform in question, entering a contest can be as simple as giving you a ’like’ and a ‘follow’. You might find that having the chance to grow your social media presence is well worth the cover price of a couple of tickets to your event – plus it means you’ll reach even more people the next time you announce one.

Get ‘Em Before They’re Gone

Generating scarcity is another effective way to get those fence-sitting potential attendees through the door at your event. Everyone from online ticket sellers to clothing brands uses a thing called ‘social proof’ to tempt you to join the rush. If you’ve ever seen a message on your favorite clothing store’s website that says, “50 other people are looking at this right now” or “only 3 remaining”, you’ve been shown social proof in the hope that you’ll pull the trigger on a purchase.

One way to create your own social proof is through Facebook and other social media that allows followers to get updates about events. Limiting the number of tickets sold — and then sharing the number of sales at specific intervals — triggers the old “fear of missing out“. Create a call to action (CTA) to get people to learn more about the event, purchase tickets, or tell their friends. It’s important for marketers to tell people what to think; it may seem strange, but most people want instructions. By helping them, you are helping your event as well!

It’s Great to Collaborate

There’s no reason to take on the burden of promoting your event alone. Today’s most successful events see a natural pairing of companies where there’s overlap between key demographics or core values. A football game is a natural pairing to a sports apparel brand. Delegates attending a business conference could almost definitely use a little ‘me-time’ with a wellness break in a yoga class or a guided meditation session.

If you’re prepping a package for VIP users, try and get a luxury brand interested in supplying some swag for a goodie bag. Or approach businesses to donate to a good cause with some prizes for a raffle basket, like gift certificates or fancy chocolates.

You could even use your partnerships to drive interest in your event ahead of time. Co-marketing partnerships are the most effective way to increase email subscribers, according to 34% of marketers surveyed. ³ Trading spots on your email newsletters is a great way to attract new interest. By partnering with other businesses, you are able to leverage marketing outreach by reaching both your regular customers and theirs. Sponsorships are another option that can underwrite your event while also increasing exposure.

Use Online Outreach When Selling Events

A 2019 survey revealed that, even in the always-online era, 75% of all movie tickets ⁴ are bought at the box office in person. It’s not all doom and gloom for your online event promotion, though – you can still reach that elusive 25% in advance of an event.

By implementing our marketing strategies for ticket sales and becoming a Groupon Merchant, you can reach a wider audience with your next event. Whether it’s their first time in town, or they’re a local looking for something new, Groupon is an experience marketplace that connects fresh events with new customers.

Event marketing can feel risky because it can require a large initial outlay to run an event before you can start to recoup the costs. That’s why you can feel reassured your tickets will sell with smart outreach. By combining technology and planning, you’ll be able to have a successful event – and make new valuable contacts to boot.

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