Ultimately, it all comes down to ticket sales. You can have the most innovative social strategy, a forward thinking and enticing lineup, excellent vendors and well oiled infrastructure, but if you come short on your ticket sales, the event is going to fail and you’re going to be shouldering a significant burden. There are so many different ways to sell tickets nowadays, and there are an increasing number of vendors, all claiming to offer better solutions than their rivals. But ultimately, you should be combing over the small print and making sure that you are getting the best deal. Away from those agreements, there are a number things that you can do that will significantly improve your chances of selling out your event and making sure that you achieve the most crucial metric for success in the festival industry.
Give yourself time to sell
It’s generally accepted that a festival needs at least six months to sell tickets. You have to consider the landscape and the competition around you, and understand that the average person will only commit to one, possibly two festivals in the calendar. It’s always advisable to have some cheap tickets in reserve for the super fans who buy tickets for next year as soon as they get home, but by having a good tier system over a drawn out period of at least six months, with several prices and options, will ensure that you’re giving yourself the best chance to sell out.Commit the customer and you commit their friends
A 2014 study found that 84% of millennials don’t trust traditional advertising and rank their friends highest in terms of trust. Ticket advocacy programs from companies like StreetTeam have proved that there is a lot of leverage to gain from harnessing the strong voices in groups of friends. By identifying who your brand advocates are you can incentivize them to sell tickets to their friends, by either offering VIP upgrades, free tickets, or onsite packages. In an era of laser pointed advertising and subversive data gathering, a trusted friend selling you on an event is worth considerably more than any aftermovie or lineup.You can also offer ticket giveaways on Facebook or Instagram by asking fans to tag friends, thus bringing awareness to the event within tight knit crews and former festival fams. A handful of tickets are a small price to pay for a significant increase in awareness.Find our how peer-to-peer sales helped @Dancefestopia grow to a 30,000 people event! https://t.co/xk4gN0EWUB pic.twitter.com/Urx9aPQgJ6
— StreetTeam (@StreetTeam) November 5, 2016