From print to radio, from television to the internet, the medium for selling event tickets seems to be ever evolving. While the internet appears to be the frontier of the future, the focus has shifted from traditional web advertising. Promoting your event tickets through a web site is still essential, yes, but now it’s a part of a larger movement, that of social media marketing.

            Aside from being fairly easy to implement, social media marketing is also extremely inexpensive.  No matter the cost, though, you want to get a return on your investment, be it money or time. Here are a few aspects to focus on when using social media marketing to sell your event tickets:

·      Frequency

·      Interaction

·      Quantity vs. Quality

·      Integration

These four items are key to being successful as you jump into the world of social media.

Like Clockwork

            Part of the appeal of using social media platforms for marketing is the frequency with which you can send out your message. Web users are constantly looking for new information, and sites like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter allow you to give them that information. You need to mention your event tickets as frequently as possible, so your promotion doesn’t get lost in the constant information stream.

            Remember, all news is important in the social media world.  If you’ve just designed your event tickets, mention it online. Even if you’ve just started considering what your event tickets should look like, bring that up. Frequent updates engage your audience and make the process more personal, no matter how tiny the detail might be.           

A Part of the Team

            The internet allows you to interact with your audience like no other medium and social media sites take this to the next level.  That germ of an idea for the design of your event tickets? See what your audience thinks. Invite them into the process. You don’t have to listen to their suggestions; you just have to ask for them. The simple act of listening to your audience will draw them in.

            Get them talking. Allow comments on your posts on sites like Blogger and WordPress. Create a posting board. Encourage discussion on every aspect of your event, from the aforementioned event tickets to reviews afterwards. Getting them to come back for updates is great, but getting them to come back because they want to interact is even better.

Playing the Odds

            When promoting your event tickets online, try to cast as wide of a net as possible. Networking can spread like wildfire, as one connections links you to another who links you to another and so on. Your target demographic for event tickets is simply your first audience, but they are certainly not your last. Once you connect with them, you can expect your message to spread.

            If you’re creating compelling content about your event tickets, your updates will get passed along from person to person, and suddenly a link to your site is popping up everywhere. This makes up your expanded audience, those who end up visiting your site and investigating your event tickets because they saw a link somewhere.

            It’s the grapevine of the 21^st century!

Headquarters

            It is absolutely essential that, while promoting your event tickets, you have all of your online interactions point back to your web site. Your latest status update may be interesting enough to gain you new fans, but unless they are following you back to your web site, it won’t translate into event ticket sales.

            The process works both ways. It easier than ever to imbed your social media updates into your web site. You want to make sure that anyone who comes to your site directly can also follow you through other sites. Once they add you as a friend or a follower, they indirectly become a part of your marketing team!

            Social media marketing is a cost effective, high traffic way of selling more of your event tickets. With just a little bit of time and effort, you can receive a big return on your small investment!

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Frank Zappa once said, " Music, in performance, is a type of sculpture. The air in the performance is sculpted into something." When you're selling event tickets for a fundraising event, you're also making a type of sculpture, bringing folks together into one place to work together for a common creative goal. Why not put  music at its center? You could plan a small choral performance, a full-on music festival or perhaps the ultimate in participatory events: A battle of the bands!

 

Unite your community, listen to great local musicians, sell more tickets, raise funds for a cause, and share prizes. From beginning to end, picking a venue, guests judges, and prizes and even choosing and printing event tickets, a battle of the bands can take a lot of preparation. Many elements must be considered when planning this type of event, but the final product is well worth the effort.

 

Plan a safe and fun event for everyone—If you want to have a good time and raise funds for your cause, make sure you appeal to a broad audience. Plan a family friendly, safe event that everyone can enjoy. You'll want to print event tickets that reflect this and help to manage the flow of people into and out of your venue.

 

Create a clear set of rules for participants—Make sure the rules of the battle are clear beforehand. Let acts know what kind of music you would like to showcase. Will the winners be picked by judges or the audience? Will bands play one song or a short set? What prizes are winners eligible for?

 

Choose judges from the community—If you plan on having judges choose the winners, consider recruiting popular figures from the local music scene. When printing event tickets and other promotional materials, make sure to include this information, so you can further peak  attendee interest.

 

What kinds of prizes will you offer?—Will you simply offer winners bragging rights or something more tangible like cash or other coveted rewards?

 

Will you rely on sponsors to help?—Sponsors can be a great resource when organizing your battle of the bands. They can help provide funding for equipment or the venue, advertise for your event or defray the cost of event ticket printing. If you're fundraising for a special cause like providing money for local school music programs, you may find sponsors lining up to help. You can add their logos to your event tickets for greater publicity.

 

Pick an appropriate venue—Once you're ready to host a battle of the bands, you'll want to choose a venue for your event. Make sure the space is the right size and will accommodate your equipment. Check to make sure that you have the right permits to host the event, if you need them.

 

Plan your promotion—Promote, promote, promote! With your initial planning done, it's time to get the word out, so that you can get your attendees together to rock out! The internet is a great resource for free promotion. Social networking and event planning sites help you to advertise and sell more tickets. Contact local radio stations about your cause and get your sponsors involved.

 

Pick promotional collateral and print event tickets that are well designed and reflect the nature of your event. Using an online event ticket printing site can make this easy. You can choose the type of collateral you would like to use, choose your designs and customize them using an event ticket template. Professional y printed event tickets can really raise the profile of your battle of the bands.

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Ready to write your own ticket? Some event promoters are born; others are promoted.

If you fall into the latter category, planning events because it’s your job, rather than your passion, you may find yourself throwing programs together with less and less enthusiasm, and, as a consequence, see your attendance wane. Your guests may simply be bored with the same old party, in which case you won't be able to give event tickets away.

For instance, consider the case of one after-school program for teens. In a pinch, the organizers would throw together arts and crafts party until every kid in the community was tired of arts and crafts, and indeed, no one wanted a free ticket. Taking this event to the next level breathed new life into it. The arts and crafts party became a Surrealist Soiree.

*  Event “A” Becomes Event “B”: Taking an arts and crafts afterschool program and turning it into something unique, fun, and special started with event tickets. Teens earned tickets to the Surrealist Soiree by completing tasks such as reading a book. An online event ticket template allowed organizers to print surreal tickets that included a puzzle piece: a clue for a game during the upcoming event. Images, such as the melting clocks in surrealist artist Salvador Dali’s painting, The Persistence of Memory become a part of a game where teens matched the clue on their event tickets to the correct painting to earn a prize.

*  Surreal Snacks: It wouldn’t be a party for teens without food. At the Surrealist Soiree, the event tickets were also clues to one of the snacks at the party: Random Cupcakes. Take a basic cupcake to the next level by adding random objects to the top. The teens matched the images on their event tickets with a detail from a cupcake to earn a prize. Or try Picasso punch using ice cube molds of noses, hands, and mouths to create a Cubist beverage.

*  Surreal Games: “Pin the Ear on Van Gogh” is a unique recharge of the popular party game, “Pin the Tail on the Donkey,” which furthers the surrealist theme of the branded arts and crafts party.

*  Surreal Crafts: Inkblots were a huge success. Using an eyedropper, teens dribbled India ink onto thick paper and folded it to create an inkblot design. The teens then performed the Rorschach test on one another, earning points and prizes for the most surreal and creative descriptions of the inkblot. This continued into mini surrealist poems, or an Exquisite Corpse game, where a piece of paper was passed around and each teen added a line to make a very surreal poem.

*  Event Tickets: Another function for the event tickets can be a raffle at the end of the party. You can print separate raffle tickets online, or just use the numbers on your event ticket stubs. Crown the winners King and Queen of the Surreal with a gift basket of wacky and toys and candies for the prize.

Creating something new and exciting turned an ill-received event into a popular, well-attended one. The custom designed event tickets were easily created and printed, and provided a special air: the event could only be attended by select teens who earned a ticket.

Recharge a tried-and-true event that has run its course: get creative and take that tired event to the next level.

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It’s murder most intriguing! Themed events, beloved of churches, libraries, schools, and radio stations, can highlight your products and services while helping you raise funds, and the Mystery Dinner Theater is a popular theme that can help you sell more event tickets. As a librarian, I created and hosted several successful Mystery Dinner Theater events, and you can too.

Our events were free and functioned as a way to highlight the library’s place in the community, while also spotlighting the mystery book collection. For cost effective purposes, I got creative and wrote my own plays, casting them with local actors and teens in the community, as well as a few librarians. Ready to try? Here’s a step by step guide:  how to create this deadly exciting event.

• Theme of a Theme: Decide on a theme for your play. While the event itself is mystery-themed, it helps to create the play and the promotional materials with still another theme, allowing yourself the creative license to combine appealing elements. For example, in one of the plays, Harry Potter was found dead and the X-Files’ Scully and Mulder were sent in to solve the crime, with the help of the audience, of course. Once you have your theme down, you can create compelling event tickets using online event ticket templates.

• Figure Out Your Cast of Characters: Think of what characters you will need (and consider how you will cast them) before you begin writing the play. After you’ve figured out the characters, the plot and clues will come easier. Your event tickets can even incorporate an image or symbol that may give your audience a clue about the characters.

• Write Your Play: The play can begin with pure brainstorming; just get a plot going and begin to think about clues that would be appropriate to use in that plot. Of course, the plot should include a crime with clues, as well as a resolution. The resolution, however, should not be totally realized in the play itself. It will be the audience’s job to use the clues you set out in the play to solve the crime.

• Cast Your Play: Send out a casual call to community actors and teens in the community who enjoy theater. If you do this, you will invariably get a large response from enthusiastic amateurs. Your event gives them exposure as well.

• Promote Your Mystery Dinner Theater: I created posters in Microsoft Publisher to publicize my MDT, or you can print posters online. Create event tickets and make small postcards or bookmarks to hand out to customers. Your promotional material should include What, Where, When, as well as a clever title and tagline. For example: Solve a Mystery at Your Library: The Case of the Murdered Magician.

• Create Event Tickets: You can create and print fun event tickets online. Using a ticket template helps you include all relevant event information, and perhaps a logo or image appropriate for your event’s purpose. Playing with the template, you can use mystery imagery like magnifying glasses, caution tape, and, in the case of a library, a stack of mystery books.

• Something Extra: Even if your event is free, you may desire to have a raffle at the event for a door prize. Find raffle tickets templates online and sell chances for a small fee if you’re raising funds, or just use the stubs from the event tickets. Give away a prize that relates to your overall theme like a stack of Agatha Christie novels, some mystery DVDs and some popcorn.

• Have a Successful Event: Proper planning and organization, dedicated rehearsals with your actors, and the right publicity ensure a fun and successful event!

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