You have an event coming up. Your talent is booked, your event landing page is created, and you have tickets set up. Now, you need to get those tickets sold and get customers through your door. That’s where marketing and advertising comes in.
I oftentimes see venues and events blindly posting information with no true strategy. They’re handing out flyers, posting messages on social, and doing promotions to one mass audience without any tracking measures in place. Sound like you? Don’t worry — you’re not alone, and there’s a fix.
Let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane. In the past, marketing and advertising was done exactly like I described above. It was a one way street of communication, with businesses blasting messages and hoping someone hears it. It was nearly impossible to track results, and didn’t foster interaction with customers. So, when businesses started to sink, marketing and advertising were the first departments to get cut. But not anymore.
In today’s digital landscape, not only can you track each and every marketing effort you do, but you can also tailor your message to each individual customer (read more on that here). This drives results. This drives sales. And this drives the understanding of what does and doesn’t work so you have even more success in the future.
Here’s what you need to do.
1. Create a trackable link for each and every channel — Facebook, Twitter, third-party media, digital ads, every staff member, etc. Every channel needs its own link.
2. Provide your links to the appropriate people. In other words, make sure your staff is using their link when they promote your event so they get credit. This means they use their link on their own social channels, through texts, in their emails, etc. On our system, they can also sell tickets through a mobile device for in-person transactions using their login, and be tracked that way as well.
3. Use your marketing links when you’re posting. Doing a Facebook ad? Use your Facebook link. Have an post on a third-party media outlet? Send them your media link. Each individual link should be used on its individual channel.
4. Track results. Find out how many leads and purchases you received from each of your channels and each of your staff. What worked, and what didn’t? Stop doing the activities that didn’t drive any business, and put more effort behind the ones that did. That’s how you make sure your marketing dollars are working for you and isn’t just being tossed down the drain.
Vēmos automates the affiliate link processes, so you can save time and energy with the manual labor of creating and tracking each individual link. The results are track within your dashboard and show marketing channels and which staff members are bringing in not the most guests and the most sales. This in turn allows you to understand how your venue is performing and what efforts are actually working for you. Contact us to learn more about how we can help your event.
Whitney Larson is the president and director of marketing at Vēmos. Contact her at whitney.larson@vemos.io or fill out the form below.
