If you are planning to host an event, concert, or festival, the ticketing process is probably a major, if not one of the most important, factor on your endless company to-do list. This element of planning and organizing an event can often be what either makes or breaks the experience. It can also be the part of the process that is the most time-consuming, stressful, and has the most potential to go wrong and ultimately impact your overall earning from the event. You are likely reading this if you have done ticketing before and it did not run as smoothly as you would have liked, or you are a first-time event organizer, or maybe you have done this before and it went well for you but you would still like to see how to optimize your ticket sales. 

Whatever your reasoning for being here, this discussion will hopefully apply to and benefit you in your next ticket-selling endeavour.

What Are Ticket Sales and Why Do They Matter?

Tickets that are sold for the entrance to an event or festival usually make up the bulk of the revenue for the organizers. The tickets are the means of access for a user to enter the said event and one ticket generally means one admission. Nowadays, most ticket purchasing is done online before the event. 

Initially, with the birth of online ticketing, came issues around ticket fraud as well as ticket identity transfer troubles and technical glitches as a result of the ticketing system becoming overwhelmed with an influx of orders. However, with recent technology and event ticketing and marketing service providers anticipating these issues, online ticket sales are now a far more efficient and less risky process. However, for the event coordinators, the process of selling tickets can be slow and so means to boost sales is needed.

Run an Early Bird Special

One of the surest ways to boost initial ticket sales is to create a limited-time period sale of early tickets at a discounted rate. For instance, if you are selling tickets for a music festival, offer a promotion where if you buy your tickets before a certain date, the price will be 10% cheaper. Or offer a bonus such as full-price tickets, but a free case of one of your sponsors’ beverages. Otherwise, you could run a promotion for all of your followers that subscribe to your newsletter mailer, offering them a promotional code that they can use at check out. 

Decide on your strategy and create a buzz and demand for your event so that when the ticket sales do open, there will be a rush to get one of the discounted or promotional options. If this is the strategy you use, remember to warn your followers in advance about when ticket sales will open, including your early bird option, to create a countdown and hype.

Offer Discounted Options for Group Purchases

Another way to increase sales and numbers is to offer a discounted rate for group tickets. Therefore you could offer a promotion that if you buy 10 tickets, the 11th will be 50% reduced or something along those lines. This way you incentivize bulk purchases and, in turn, will speed up sales. The only potential issue with this technique is that you could have ticket scalpers or touters praying on this and buying up tickets to resell. Scalping or touting is when tickets are resold to events by individuals looking to make a profit. However, we have just the way to curb this possible problem below.

Only Allow Purchasing from Your Official Ticketing Company

It is advisable to use a ticketing event marketing company to do your ticketing. These companies make it that users may only purchase tickets from the original source of tickets, and thus remove the room for potential ticketing fraud issues. This way you can also offer a legitimate way of transferring the identity of the ticket holder from someone who can no longer make the event but chooses to transfer their ticket to someone else. This emphasizes the benefit of employing a company that specializes in ticket event sales and has the necessary technology and systems in place to deal with all ticket-related details and issues.

If you are in the business of organizing and hosting events, be it for sports or music, or art purposes, you will almost certainly encounter the process of ticket sales. This process can be seamless and speedy if managed effectively. There are several ways to speed up ticket sales, and companies one can employ to assist with the smooth navigation of this process. If this conversation is relevant to you, then hopefully you now will have a better idea of where to begin when looking to sell tickets for your next event.