Event tickets are projected to generate $77.53 billion in revenue in 2023. To capitalize on this, you need a marketing strategy that helps you sell your concert tickets at scale.
On average, event marketing begins three and a half weeks in advance and this can span over six weeks depending on how large the concert is.
You also need to find the right people, create a ticketing system that makes it easy to book tickets, and promote your concert — all of which make up for a memorable concert.
While there are multiple components to hosting a successful concert, today we’ll discuss the essential one — selling concert tickets.
Setting up ticketing for your concert
The first step to selling concert tickets is setting up the ticketing system. There are three ways you can do so:
1. Your Website
Hosting your concert ticketing system on your website is the fastest way to future-proof your marketing efforts. Here’s why:
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Growing email lists: Every concert attendee becomes part of your email list. No matter how the search and social media change, this list can be marketed when hosting new concerts.
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More data: You get access to user journeys and preferences by diving into the analytics data. This also allows you to improve the customer journeys and experience on your site for a seamless ticketing experience.
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Lower costs: Allowing people to purchase concert tickets directly on your website can lead to lower costs compared to using a third-party ticketing system.
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Full customizability: It’s easy to customize your concert landing pages to match the theme.
If you have a Shopify website, you can also use Evey to create fully customized tickets for your concerts. Here’s how you do it:
1. After you install the app on your Shopify store, Evey presents you with a screen to create a new event.
2. Click Create event and set up the concert details including the name, the dates, the ticket pricing, and the number of tickets available. Add the location so it’s added to the website. Once done, Save event
3. Next, click on the Tickets tab and go to Customize.
4. Start designing your ticket with the simple drag-and-drop template designer. Edit the colors and the layout of the tickets as you prefer. You can also add a QR code that can be scanned at the concert to confirm attendance. Evey offers free Android and iOS apps to scan tickets on site.
5. Once you’re done, click Save at the top right corner and then hit Exit.
Your ticket template is now created and it will be automatically sent to customers who purchase the concert tickets.
Customizing your tickets gives an overall exclusive feel to your concert which is difficult to achieve with a third-party ticketing platform. However, these platforms cannot be completely disregarded.
2. Ticketing platforms
Ticketing platforms have a major advantage — audience. Their strong presence in the ticketing space gives you access to people who are browsing the site for new concerts and events.
Listing your concert on these platforms helps your concert get discovered and builds up the initial traction. Some of the major ticketing platforms include:
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Eventbrite
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Ticketmaster
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RSVPify
These platforms boast substantial organic traffic. That gives you an opportunity to test different concert images, titles, and ticket prices to see what converts best. You can then use the data to optimize your website.
3. Social media
Facebook events is the perfect platform for discovering new concerts and events happening around. While Facebook does not let you directly sell the tickets, redirecting traffic from here to your ticketing page can be a good way to tap into a larger audience.
Go to the Facebook events page and create an event that links back to your ticket purchase page. But simply listing the concert here will not result in traffic. Facebook events is only a discovery platform so you still need to promote your concert.
11 ways to promote your concert and sell more tickets in 2023
Once the ticketing platform is set up, it’s time to move to the final phase of selling your concert tickets — marketing. Concerts have large audiences depending on the performing artist. So we need scalable strategies.
1. Build Hype on Social Media
Build hype like how Marvel does with their movies. It starts with subtle hints that make followers curious and gets the discussions started. You can drop hints for your concerts riddling your audience about the performing artist without revealing the name.
Then gradually, begin dropping teasers. A short video from the artist talking about an album they’ll release at the concert is an excellent way to keep fans on the edge.
Concert promotions can begin two or three months in advance. Here’s BTS’s concert promo that’s a month ahead.
You can work on creating the concert landing pages on your website, adding the concert to multiple ticketing platforms, and then using the same on social media for gaining traction.
In the end, the more hype you create, the better your chances for a successful concert.
2. Use FOMO
Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) is creating a sense of scarcity about your concert to boost sales.
You can do this by limiting the number of seats or even offering better seats to early buyers with a ticket counter on your website.
When people feel they might miss out on something special, they’re more likely to act fast. The same is the story for buying a ticket to an exclusive concert before it’s too late.
Done right, FOMO can push people to make quick purchase decisions instead of putting them off for later.
BTS is wildly popular and the 4,000 tickets are very small for their fanbase. The scarcity of tickets is real and people jump to buy as many tickets as possible.
3. Perks to fans
To boost early sales, incentivize the top fans. For instance, BTS let the ARMY members purchase presale tickets which gave them certain perks over the regular tickets.
Find what are all the perks you can offer for the artist’s fans and bring them over in your marketing and promotional messages.
4. Run ads for specific locations
Since the concert will happen at a particular location, it’s more profitable to run ads around those locations or time zones. This ensures that you are not wasting ad dollars on people who may not be able to attend due to the location.
Facebook, Instagram, Google, and most ad platforms can help you split your audience based on time zones. Once these ads are set up, you can allocate a smaller budget to worldwide ads to all the fans.
5. Sponsor other concerts
Sponsorships give your concert visibility in front of other engaged audiences. If you are hosting a smaller concert, start by sponsoring other related concerts happening within a few months of your concert launch.
You can even run cross-promotions if both the concerts are equally small. Through such sponsorships and partnerships, you can expose audiences and fans to each other’s concerts, and combine the fan base leading to an overall larger audience for each individual partner.
6. Collaboration with influencers
An existing influencer or artist talking about your concert will convert at least 1% of their followers to buy your concert tickets.
If one with 100,000 followers promotes your concert, you should expect at least 1000 people to buy the ticket
Imagine talking to 10 such artists, and you now have a potential 1,000 guests for your concert.
7. Promote over emails
If you have an email list, send regular emails leading up to the concert. You can send out a variety of promotional emails here.
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Hype emails: These introduce the concert and make your email list aware of it.
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Agenda: You send out an email with the artists performing at the concert or the agenda
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Offers: Share offers and interesting facts about the artists, attendees, or the location of the concert to keep the buzz.
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Speaker list: If you’re bringing speakers onboard, send an email out to introduce them.
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Nurture sequences: After someone buys tickets for your concert, run an email series that talks about the concert, shares details, shares teasers, and more to keep the audience engaged. Also, you need a concert ticket that can be shared with the customers. You can use Evey to create fully custom tickets with QR codes for attendee tracking.
If you don’t already have an email list to promote your concert, you can run sponsored ads in other email newsletters.
8. Affiliate marketers
Getting affiliates to promote your concert is a win-win-win situation where:
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the affiliates get a commission
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you get a customer
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the customer finds a new concert
And because the data is owned by you, it is easier to run paid ads to target those who came to your concert page but did not buy a ticket.
You can recruit affiliates by connecting with other artists or influencers who like the genre of your concert. Search influencer marketing hub for the top influencers within your category.
Alternatively, you can connect with top influencers through their media handles which you can find on their websites.
9. Create unique and memorable hashtags
A unique hashtag lets you tap into the audience of your speakers and attendees. When they talk about your event using the hashtag, people who follow them will take notice, which, in turn, helps you get better visibility for your event.
All Elite Wrestling uses the hashtag #AEWDynamite which thousands of people used
Get creative with the hashtag for your concert. It’s common to see the name of the brand or artist followed by the year in these hashtags too. Try a combo that works best. After all, what matters is that the hashtag is quick to type and easy to remember.
10. Run a competition
The hashtag and concert page you create need to be shared around and one way to do this is through competitions. Start by finding something that your audience can relate to.
The BTS band hosts competitions often for their new album releases or concerts. The one above, for instance, got 4.7k retweets which brought the competition in front of the followers of those many people giving it a much wider audience and reach.
11. Sell exclusive access
Limited and exclusive passes are all the rage when it comes to concerts. Fans are crazy about getting the bests seats, having exclusive backstage access, or getting called on the stage. This BTS concert offers early tickets to the BTS ARMY for better seats.
This incentivizes fans to officially become part of the ARMY and get those exclusive tickets too. They also offered special tickets to a few people where the ticket holders got to take AR photos with BTS and a random photo card box at the concert.
You can get creative with your access passes and create multiple tiers based on the time of purchase, add tiered prices, and more.
Create a buzz and sell out your concert tickets
Promoting a concert is an entirely different ballgame. An existing fan following or community can make it easy to spread the word about your upcoming concert. Afterall, you only need to drop hints and clues to engage the community until the final reveal.
Add a sense of exclusivity to every ticket sold for your concert by creating special access passes, VIP tickets, Gold passes, and more. To create fully customized tickets and manage the members, try out Evey, the event ticketing and attendee management app for Shopify websites.
It helps create a seamless ticketing experience for a smooth purchase. Simply install the app, customize the tickets per your concert theme or brand colors, and set up your concert page to start selling tickets.
Whichever platform you use, remember this: Keep it easy for yourself and your audience to purchase and manage tickets.