Event Marketing: When do people buy tickets?

TL;DR Key points:

1. Understand the ticket sales cycle and how it will most likely look for you, given the specifics of your event.
2. Make use of historic data from similar past events, to try and get an accurate idea of how your sales cycle will look. Get a clear understanding of when people buy tickets, so you can effectively plan your event marketing.
3. Be aware of where you are in the cycle and how your ticket sales are looking in comparison to your forecasts. Are you on course to hit the ticket sales target you set?
4. Develop an event marketing strategy that includes a number of activities to drive sales during the leaner period between on-sale and the run up to your event.

What is the ticket sales cycle?

When looking at event marketing, one of the key tools you should be making use of is the ticket sales cycle. Put simply, the ticket sales cycle shows your ticket sales over time; from when tickets go on sale to the start of your event. You can use it to forecast sales numbers and check progress against your tickets sales target. Traditionally, the sales cycle will look like some variation of the following:

Phase 1: Launch spike

When tickets first go on sale there tends to be a sharp spike as the launch event marketing kicks into gear. Customer databases are emailed, press and media coverage goes out, social media announcements are made, all of which drives initial interest and early ticket sales.

What happens next will largely depend on the type of event. For the majority, there tends to be a sharp decline in sales as initial coverage and exposure wears off, leading to the second phase. Of course, there will be some events that don’t experience the drop and simply continue until they sell out — Glastonbury Festival for example. If you’re lucky enough to see that trend, then you’re doing something right with your event marketing.

Phase 2: The hard yards

Much like a marathon runner, coming down from the high of starting the race only to find the finish line is well in the distance; the standard ticket sales cycle follows the same, often gruelling yards after the launch spike. During this phase, ticket sales will tend to trickle in, however as the launch exposure fades and customers lack the urgency to book, sales will largely be slow and steady. It is during this crucial time that many organisers will be nervously keeping an eye on sales, trying to work out if their ticket sales are on target.

Phase 3: Sprint finish

Then we come to the final stage — the sprint finish. Ticket sales will start to increase, curving upwards gradually at first before the graph gets steeper and steeper in the final days before an event. At this point there are a few factors that come into play.

Firstly, there is now more of an urgency for customers to book — for one, if they don’t, they won’t be going.

Secondly there’s now the fear of missing out (FOMO), as there may only be a few tickets remaining and the event could soon sell out — this drives many into action.

Finally, especially in cases where there is more than one occurrence of the event, other factors like press reviews and word of mouth from previews help spread the word and boosts ticket sales. This then, is the standard ticket sales cycle. There may be fluctuations for each event and variations on how large the on-sale spike is, how late the sprint finish starts etc will vary from event to event.

What affects when people buy their tickets?

If there is the fundamental desire from the customer to attend the event, i.e. they have an interest in it and the ability to attend, then there are a few factors which will influence when they buy, and that will therefore change your tickets sales cycle graph.

Factors such as ticket price, type of event and perceived scarcity will impact how your sales cycle will look — resulting in greater or fewer sales in each phase.

Price

A key component of any event marketing plan will be how you price your tickets. Unsurprisingly, the price of the ticket will have a great impact on when people buy.

Higher priced tickets will see more sales early after on-sale, whereas cheaper tickets will tend to see greater sales much closer to the start date.

Broadly, if the ticket price is under £10 or so, you can expect anywhere up to half of your ticket sales to come in the final few days, including on the day of the event itself. The lower cost requires less emotional commitment and therefore less planning ahead — making a last minute decision to attend more likely.

Higher priced tickets, over £50, tend to require substantially more investment and planning to attend. This has the opposite effect on the ticket sales cycle, with the majority of sales happening more than 2 months before the start date. So for those hosting events at the higher price level, they should be well on the way to their sales targets with less than a month to go. It is therefore important that tickets go on sale as early as possible to ensure a long lead time in the build up to the event.

Type of event

As you can imagine, the type of event will have an impact on when people buy tickets. Events like a conference or large theatre show are likely to see greater sales at the beginning of the sales cycle compared to an open mic night at a comedy club. When developing your event marketing plan, it is important to consider the type of event you are hosting and how that is likely to impact the ticket sales cycle.

Scarcity & FOMO

Those who have managed to build a brand around their event, where it becomes public knowledge that tickets sell fast and can sell out, receive massive benefits from the FOMO effect — the Fear Of Missing Out.

Organisers of FOMO events are able to pre-announce the date that tickets will be going on sale, and due to customers’ fears that tickets will sell out quickly, buyers are forced into urgent action and book as early as possible.

In many ways, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy as the event brand being associated with selling-out drives customers to book early, resulting in the event selling out — a perfect situation for an event organiser. Your goal, as part of your event marketing should be to grow your brand to a point where you are able to benefit from the FOMO effect — “XYZ events are great, they always sell out”.

Are you on-course to meet your ticket sales targets?

Now that we’ve covered what the ticket sales cycle is and some of the factors that can influence when people book, it is time to ask the important questions: Are you on-course to meet your ticket sales targets and if not, what can you do to sell more tickets?

It is very useful as part of your event marketing plan to try and forecast your tickets sales and set your tickets sales target. This will factor-in the number of tickets you need to sell to break even versus your capacity per event. Tickets sold above your break-even mark equal profit margin and, it goes without saying, the goal of your event marketing is to drive your tickets sales above break even.

Once you have set your targets, the first question you need to have a clear understanding on, is where are you in the sales cycle and how should your ticket sales be looking at that stage? As we have discussed above, if you are selling a higher priced ticket then with less than a month to go you should be well on your way to reaching your target. However, if you are running an event like a comedy club night with a low priced ticket, then the final few days before the event is your prime selling window.

If you have run similar events in the past, then a great action to take is to review your ticket sales cycle or movement summary for previous events to see when you made your sales as it is quite possible your current event will follow a similar sales cycle.

Once you’ve done that, all being well, you will hopefully be on target. If you’re not — what can you do to sell more tickets?

What can you do to sell more tickets?

When you look at the ticket sales cycle, the key area of focus when identifying ways you can sell more tickets, is Phase 2. It is clear that taking action and implementing an event marketing strategy aimed at driving up ticket sales during this period, will result in greater overall sales.

You should therefore be looking at ways to change the graph line at that period from being relatively flat, to one that includes a series of miniature spikes. Doing so requires actioning a number of marketing activities which enable you to reach as wide an audience as possible and drive them to buy there and then. Each activity should be designed to deliver a sales boost, so your ticket sales cycle graph ends up looking something like the following:

Event marketing activity

What actions can you take to sell more tickets?

Your event marketing strategy should include a number of activities to drive bookings and ensure you maximise your ticket sales. Here are a few ideas for marketing actions you could take to help get those mini sales boosts:

• Run a lottery — get customers to enter a draw for exclusive or discounted tickets and put a time limit on how long the winners have to book their tickets. An added benefit of a lottery is you also have the contact information for non-winners where you can offer them a consolatory discount.
• Seek some local or specialist press coverage — is there anything new about your event not covered in the original press release which is news worthy?e.g. a special guest announced, some relevance to current affairs or a human interest angle? If there is any way you can position your event to get some press coverage during Phase 2, then you should be doing a press release to try and get some new exposure. As ever, ensure your press releases are concise, relevant and contain something that is news worthy to the audience of the publications it is going to.
• Social media competition — harness the power of social media by running a competition. Benefit from the virality and exposure boost, plus you can also implement a time-restricted element such as a discount for everyone that entered but didn’t win if they book before a certain date. What’s more, the great news for event marketers is more people than ever prefer ‘experiences’ to physical products when it comes to prizes — making ticket giveaways and discounts, the perfect incentive.
• Google and Facebook retargeting — use tracking pixels to target ads at those who have visited your website previously. This will ensure your events stays at the forefront of their mind and encourage them to return and book.

Conclusion

The ticket sales cycle will help you understand when people are most likely to buy their tickets for your event. It is a useful tool to harness and maximise ticket sales and should be part of your event marketing plan.

The key takeaways from this article that will help you sell more tickets are:

1. Understand the ticket sales cycle and how it will most likely look for you, given the specifics of your event.
2. Make use of historic data from similar past events, to try and get an accurate idea of how your sales cycle will look. Get a clear understanding of when people buy tickets, so you can effectively plan your event marketing.
3. Be aware of where you are in the cycle and how your ticket sales are looking in comparison to your forecasts. Are you on course to hit the ticket sales target you set?
4. Develop an event marketing strategy that includes a number of activities to drive sales during the leaner period between on-sale and the run up to your event.

Hi, I’m James and I look after all the brilliant event organisers who use

Line-Up to sell tickets. We believe the customer experience starts the moment they go to book a ticket, so we focus on delivering Beautifully Crafted Ticketing to ensure your customers get the experience they deserve.