To growth hack events is to use low cost and innovative alternatives to traditional marketing to radically sell more tickets.
Eunice Cheng, the founder of Indiependence Growth Consulting shares five steps you need to take first to set yourself up for a foundation for growth.
1. Build a community. Find your audience and decide which channels to focus your outreach to.
2. Start thinking about public relations. Forge relationships with trade media and relevant influencers within your industry or interest group.
3. Develop and curate content that will be relevant to your audience.
4. Make a mailing list, and use it wisely. It’s old school, but intimate. You could turn past attendees into advocates through exclusive updates via your mailing list which in turn gives them a sense of ownership over your event.
5. Build a healthy foundation for growth. Implement sensible analytics to track and review performance of your digital marketing efforts.
With these moving pieces in place, you can then try these five growth tactics to get people from interested to paying for a ticket to your event.
1. Make fear of missing out (FOMO) your friend with pricing tiers, cut-off dates, testimonials and reviews.
2. Create “in-the-know” promotions. Offer preferential pricing to your mailing list subscribers, partner’s communities, and referrals by existing ticket holders.
3. Leave breadcrumbs. Drop “behind-the-scenes” content in the lead up to your event. Engage your followers with polls or surveys to give them a stake in your event’s content. Offer incentives for participation like vouchers and promo codes to your next event.
4. Optimise your social channels. Ensure your events tab is prominently placed on your Facebook page. Tag all partners and sponsors to get the post on their radar, and encourage them to cross-promote to their following too. Create a catchy, easy to remember hashtag to drive conversation about the event.
5. If you have some money, advertise. Familiarise yourself with Google Adwords, Facebook ads, and remarketing to retarget website visitors who did not purchase.
View Eunice’s deck in greater detail with examples in the Slideshare below:
Eunice was a speaker at Backstage Pass, Peatix’s community event for organisers. Join in on the upcoming 18th edition of Backstage Pass on Design Thinking in Event Planning where you’ll participate in a hands-on interactive workshop led by a user experience consultant. You will learn about design thinking’s five stage approach and how you can use it to craft innovative and engaging events that’ll hit the sweet spot with your audience.
Get limited early-bird tickets at $12 today!
