A guide to how you can market your events more effectively

1. Smarter Marketing for your Events
Marino Fresch
Marketing Director for Eventbrite UK
@mfresch

2. Events are changing

3. £4 Billion
Tickets processed each year
#1
First in the world by
number of events
180+
Countries
3
The event industry runs on Eventbrite
50+ Million
Active ticket buyers

4. 4
Music Festivals + Consumer Events Sports Conferences + Universities

5. The 4 Ps of marketing
PRODUCT PRICE
PLACE PROMOTION

6. The marketing trifecta: earned, owned and paid media

7. It takes 3-5 touches for people
to do, think, feel, what you
want
- Herbert E. Krugman

8. 8
01
Promotion
1. Facebook advertising
1. Advanced targeting methods
2. Building an effective funnel

9. Why Facebook advertising?
- 2 billion active users. Your audience is here
- Only pay to reach the people you want
- Organic reach is becoming saturated

10. Why targeting matters
2 important reasons
- Facebook’s targeting makes it the most powerful ad
platform available. Proper targeting drives real revenue
- Facebook uses Relevance Score to determine how much
to charge you for the ads. More relevant ads = higher
score = lower cost.
Therefore the better your targeting the cheaper your
ads will be.

11. Get your Ad Manager in shape
● The Facebook Pixel
○ The pixel allows you to:
■ Create audiences from people that visit your website(s).
■ Set up conversion events to measure the success of your ads by
recording what actions people take on your site after clicking through
from an ad (e.g. buying a ticket).
○ Without the pixel, you cannot run effective Facebook ads.
● You can use Eventbrite’s integration with the Facebook pixel to measure the
performance of the ads you use to drive ticket sales on Eventbrite.

14. Saved audiences
● Use FB’s in-built targeting functions e.g. location,
age, gender, demographics, interests, etc.
● Pros:
○ You can get fairly granular.
○ Good if your target market is large.
● Cons:
○ You have to have a detailed knowledge of what
your target audience looks like.
○ Not good for niche markets.

15. Custom audiences & retargeting
Ever been in the situation where a campaign has driven
loads of great traffic to your site… but then hardly anyone
converts?
People don’t buy on the first interaction, they need
nurturing.
If you’re not retargeting your website visitors, you are
WASTING your money.
Custom Audiences are what give you the ability to target
people who have visited your site.
Website visitors are
more likely to convert
through a retargeting
campaign
CPCs are on average
lower for retargeting
campaigns
80%
43%

16. In this pop up you can set the criteria for which of your website
visitors you want to build an audience of.
There’s a variety of combinations of rules you can set, from
basic to advanced.
For example, a commonly used audience is “All Visitors to
mysite.com in the last 30 days”
However it’s often good to be more targeted and, for example,
only target people who visited certain pages (such as your
speaker or programme page)
You could then get even more advanced by excluding anyone
who reached your “registration-complete” page.
Combining this with the above would mean you target all
visitors who are interested in your event, but haven’t already
bought a ticket!
How to define your custom audience

17. Recap: custom audiences and retargeting
By using Custom Audiences & retargeting,
you’re targeting people who are already
interested in your event.
That means they’re more likely to click on your
ad (which makes your ads cheaper!) and they
are a massive
70%
more likely to register for you event.
Remember, people don’t buy on the first
interaction - they need nurturing and
reminding to make sure they come back and
convert, and that’s what retargeting is about.

18. Lookalike audiences
Custom audiences are great for converting people who are already visiting your site.
But how can Facebook help you bring new people to your site?
This is where Lookalike audiences come in.
Why is this good for me?
You are using your proven customers or website
visitors as the starting point for this lookalike
audience list.
Therefore, Lookalikes help us target people who look
just like our current customers, but without us having
to know exactly who they are
What is a Lookalike Audience?
Facebook generates an audience of users you
can target who are similar to one of your
Custom Audiences or the fans of your page.
Examples:
- Your website visitors
- Your email subscribers
- Your existing customers

19. How to use Lookalike audiences
Lookalikes give you a large audience of “fresh”
people who have similar interests, demographics
and behaviours to your existing customers.
This is therefore an ideal audience to which to
market your event too.
Lookalikes are more reliable than saved audiences,
because they don’t rely on you guessing what
your target audience looks like - Facebook does
it for you.
You can then layer over standard targeting criteria
(e.g. age, gender, location, interests etc.) to get even
more targeted.

20. Lookalikes - a recap
Facebook generates audiences that are
similar to your custom audiences.
Therefore, they let you target people who are
very similar to your existing customers
...But without you having to know what they
look like (unlike Saved Audiences)
Therefore, when we
can’t target our custom
audiences, Lookalikes
give us “fresh”
audiences to target.
=

21. Custom Audiences and Lookalikes are fantastic and unrivalled tools,
but their real power lies when used in conjunction as part of an
effective Facebook Ads strategy.
We’ll show you how to do this, and create a build-measure-learn
process whereby you are continually improving and refining your
campaigns to keep increasing your ROI and revenue.
Creating and implementing your ad strategy

22. Remember we said earlier that no one buys on the first
interaction? What’s the point then of advertising to lookalikes?
Lookalikes enable us to generate awareness and cheaply grow
our Custom Audiences, through which we then drive
registrations.
How does this work?
1. We drive targeted traffic to our site using Lookalike
audiences, and in doing so we create awareness and
interest in our event.
2. We use the Facebook pixel to add everyone who visits our
site to a Custom Audience.
3. We then retarget using this Custom Audience and
convert them.
Create Awareness
and Interest
Convert
Targeting with Lookalikes
Retargeting
with Custom
Audiences
The basic funnel
The marketing funnel on Facebook

23. People don’t use Facebook to search for festivals and other
events to attend. They use it to socialise
Facebook advertising needs more touchpoints than Google
Adwords.
You have to create that initial interest in your event before
coming back to close and convert them.
Create Awareness
and Interest
Convert
Targeting with Lookalikes
Retargeting
with Custom
Audiences
The basic funnel
Why do we need the funnel?

24. The basic principles are:
● Use Lookalike audience targeting to run ads with light,
awareness type content (e.g. Videos, blog posts such as
“9 reasons to attend ‘Event x’”)
○ This will generate a good volume of inexpensive,
yet targeted traffic to your site/content.
● Use your Facebook pixel to capture these website
visitors in a Custom Audience, and then target this
audience with ads that communicate why they need to
register right now.
Create Awareness
and Interest
Convert
Targeting with Lookalikes
Retargeting
with Custom
Audiences
The basic funnel
Funnel - recap

25. 1. Use the Facebook pixel.
2. Always be as targeted as possible.
3. Funnel it, don’t force it.
4. Build, measure, learn, repeat.
Remember

26. 26
02
Place
1. Conversion rate optimisation
2. Mobile
3. Ticket buying behaviour
4. Distributed commerce

27. [Placeholder
graphic]
What if instead of focusing on
driving more views of your ticketing
page…
.... you focused on turning more page
viewers into attendees?
We all focus here
(get more traffic)
Opportunity is here.
Can your visitor buy a
ticket quickly and
easily?
Small increase in conversion = Larger increase in ticket sales.

28. 7%
Source: Aberdeen Group
https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2012/12/04/fast-sites/#676b441853cf
28
Every second delay in page load time
= 7% decrease in conversion

29. Eventbrite
29
Competitor ££ £££ £££ £££ £££ £££ £££ £££
The effects of a difficult buying experience
1 in 10
interested buyers drop off for
every additional step beyond 3 in the
purchase flow
1 in 4
interested buys drop off
if an account login is required

30. 30
United Kingdom
61%
Source: Comscore
http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing-analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/
Percent mobile share
of total digital
minutes

31. 31
Eventbrite traffic - desktop vs mobile
Mobile pageviews per hour
Desktop pageviews per hour

32. Practical example:

33. When do people buy tickets?
● 45% of people at a free event buy tickets on the
day vs 18% at a paid event.
● Paid events should have sold at least 80% of
tickets before the day.
● The more expensive the event, the earlier
people buy. For festivals:
○ 7% buy on the door (unless sold out)
○ 26% buy 1 month out
○ 44% buy > 3 months out
The earlier you sell the better!

34. Who’s buying?
● Women are slightly more likely than men to buy in
advance.
● If you audience is >45, the key period is 3+ months.
● For 16-24 year olds it’s 1-12 weeks.
● For 25-44 year olds it’s under a month, with many
booking on the day or day before.
● People with children are more likely to buy on the
door.
● People in relationships are 30% more likely than
singles to buy tix 3+ months in advance.

35. 35
Sell where your
customers are
Distributed
commerce

36. 36
Source: www.MOZ.com
Company Domain Authority
Eventbrite 95/100
BBC 100/100
Google UK 96/100
Amazon 94/100
Search rankings matter

37. 37
Seamless
purchase
experience

38. Simple ways to increase conversion and sell more tickets
1. Understand your audience and plan marketing accordingly.
○ Who are they? When do they buy?
2. Be where they are.
3. Use images and rich content to paint a picture of your event.
4. Design your event website with the most important information clearly visible.
○ Reflect your brand & use negative space
○ Date, time and price clearly visible
5. Ensure it’s easy to buy tickets on mobile (test it).
6. Make sure your checkout flow is smooth and short.
7. Make sure your ticketing page is fast and reliable.
8. Test it as a customer. If you struggle, so will they!

39. 39
03
Price
1. Pricing models
2. Tips and advice

40. 40

41. 41
Cost based pricing vs value based pricing

42. 42
Don’t let cost determine the price, let price guide the cost
1. Research your competitors; understand your audience’s willingness to pay and price accordingly.
2. Offer multiple ticket types with different prices and benefits.
○ Early bird
○ Special access
○ Bundled add-ons - merchandise, food, autographs, etc
○ Group discounts
○ Etc
3. Focus on tickets that either:
○ Create a lot of value with little added cost (e.g. special access)
○ Reach customers with lower perceived value, without harming margin (e.g. no gift bag ticket)
Learn more:

43. 43
04
Data & insight
1. Where to look
2. What to look for

44. Toolkit: Google Analytics
Acquisition - determine your reach (traffic)
1. Acquisition
2. Audience
3. Behaviour
4. Conversion

45. Audience - who’s discovering and buying your tickets?
Toolkit: Eventbrite dashboard

46. Behaviour - what are they talking about & engaging with?
Toolkit: social media dashboard

47. Conversion - understand what drives revenue
Toolkit: CRM system

49. Next, look for pages with high
traffic / low conversion.
Then use conversation rate
optimisation to improve your
ticket sales.

50. Then go for the inverse -
pages with low traffic but high
conversion
Focus on driving more traffic
to them.

51. Last but not least, look at conversion across different devices, operating systems and
traffic sources.
These all provide valuable information on where you should be focusing your resources,
where there might be leaks, or opportunities to increase ticket sales.

52. Remember
● To improve your marketing, you need to track everything correctly.
○ Use UTMs, Google goals, Facebook pixel and Eventbrite pixel
○ Track offline activities with promo codes
● Find out what is working and do more of it!
● Only then start digging around for leaks and missed opportunities
● And remember data ≠ insight. It’s only as smart as your interpretation of it, so
look at it critically and think through what story it’s really telling you

53. 53
05
Tools

54. Top tools for event marketing (that we use)
● Google Analytics
● Asana
● Hootsuite
● Buzz Sumo
● Social Jukebox
● Hemingway
● Grammarly
● Lumen5
● Canva
● SurveyMonkey
● Mailchimp
● Eventbrite!

55. More resources

56. 56
Thank you
Marino Fresch
Marketing Director for Eventbrite UK
@mfresch