Canada plays host to an exciting roster of entertainment, cultural, and community happenings year-round. But the competition for registering attendees and selling out tickets continues to ramp up. For anyone organising events professionally or simply as a passion project, it comes down to leveraging creative and strategic promotion tactics.
With some smart marketing and awareness building across virtual and real-world channels – you can rapidly sell-through your event’s available capacity.
Build FOMO with Social Media
Widely broadcast your event highlights and reasons for popularity in real-time across major social networks. For music acts – share rehearsal glimpses and new songs added to setlists. For festivals – show off art installations or innovative themes. Engage followers with backstage views, countdown graphics, and a steady stream of hype-building posts.
Run Paid Social Campaigns
Beyond organic posts, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat ads featuring videos, testimonials, guest names, and scarcity copy, dialled into localised custom audiences, deliver a major attendance lift. Consider boosting known music influencers covering the event on their channels to supercharge interest in attending.
Seed Local Publications
Distributing event details, logistics, and feature stories tailored to local newspapers, entertainment blogs, and community sites gains exposure to massive on-the-ground readership. Cultivate relationships with city press through previews, access to performers, and exclusive performances. Strong coverage in native outlets spurs wide word of mouth.
Amplify with Out-of-Home
Posters, transit ads, bar screens, mall displays, and wild-posting campaigns coat nearby neighbourhoods – all driving awareness with creative prompting ticket look-ups or purchases. Such out-of-home soon becomes impossible to ignore or miss! For one-off annual events think big – banner street poles, eye level murals, even light projections on popular buildings.
Incentivize Early Buying
Tactics like tiered pricing, buy 3-get 1-free, loyalty codes for return attendees, and discounts for those purchasing months in advance, fuel impulse and urgency to buy even before robust promotion gets rolling. Keep early bird specials short and sweet, building energy toward sell-outs.
Leverage Niche Brand Ambassadors
Well before opening sales, on-board relevant micro or celebrity influencers are excited to promote your event to their engaged niche groups with special access in return – VIP treatment, featured appearances, meals etc. Their exclusive content and endorsements hold major sway reaching buyers you could not alone.
Deploy Email Marketing
Collect attendee emails right from registration and continuously keep them updated on special guest additions, schedule announcements, and unique activations through event date via interactive messages with open rates above 50 percent, leveraging mobile platforms. Email enables critical final week sales momentum.
Tap Community Groups
Efficiently announce your event’s arrival across outlying neighbourhoods and towns through digital newsletters, posters, and personal pitches at venues, rec centres, festivals, schools, places of worship etc. Think beyond downtown city lines to maximise exposure. After all, mass transit makes your occurrence accessible to all.
Advance Retargeting
Remarketing by serving event ads across social, video, search, and display channels to visitors who have shown interest via website views or existing promotions but not yet bought keeps your brand front of mind until conversion. Craft messaging tailored to evidenced behaviours for maximum re-engagement.
Partnership Opportunities
Inviting corporate sponsors from complementary industries to supply samples, prizing, brochures, signage, and on-site activations in return for logo visibility, opening slots for keynotes, and verbal mentions from the stage drives immense value from mutually beneficial relationships while heightening awareness.
The above 10 methods form a promotional blueprint based on new-age digital tactics and old-school feet-on-the-ground hustle. Pulling them off both early and in a sustained fashion ensures fast sell-outs and satisfied attendees ready to register again next year.
Takeaways
Seed anticipation and urgency to buy through social media magnetism, incentivized pricing, influencer branding, and consistent customised messaging across channels online and on location. Where the focus lies, tickets sell!
