5 sure-fire ways to boost your festival ticket sales

Create incentive with early bird tickets 

Discounts? They’re great. We reckon you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who would turn one down. 

If you’ve booked a top-tier DJ for your event, you’ll want people to flock to the listing page. So, why not increase the chance of that happening and boost sales with an early bird discount?

Experienced promoters: you’ll know what early bird tickets are. But for those who don’t, it’s a pretty simple concept. Early bird tickets are a small amount of tickets offered at the beginning of the sales cycle at a lower price.

We hear you: it feels counter-productive to sell tickets at a lower price than they’re worth. But the key here is to create incentive. With the knowledge that they can get into your event at a lower price, people will have more of a reason to buy early, and they’ll want to ensure they don’t miss out on those sweet, sweet, discounted tickets. This should give your ticket sales a boost.

Give your attendees exclusive access

One thing we’re seeing at the moment is the appetite for VIP deals. 

It makes sense. People choose their events carefully when money is tight. In the past, they might’ve attended one large-scale event every month and gone out to smaller clubs each weekend. Now, they might only attend the large-scale event, purchase VIP seats and get the most from the experience. 

It’s all about offering something exclusive to your attendees. We’re thinking exclusive content from the event, meet-and-greets, VIP viewing experiences or luxury camping options; things that heighten the overall experience and make the event feel special. 

Create urgency with limited-time offers

While early bird discounts can create incentive, flash sales and limited-time offers can create urgency. 

When you’re promoting a festival, you want to make the prospect of missing out on tickets feel like the end of the world. Clever marketing and smart lineup choices will go a long way in creating this feeling, but there are other techniques you can use. 

Limited-time discounts are one way of creating urgency. You can set them up in The Promotion Centre, make a social media post and tell your followers that the first fifty people to like the post will receive a discount on tickets for your event.

With this tactic, you’re offering a discount to something of value (your festival) and it can only be activated in a limited amount of time. That is likely to give your ticket sales a boost as potential attendees have to act fast. 

Raise value with bundle deals

Eventgoers can be enticed with offers that promise them other goodies on top of their ticket. 

Deals like this are helpful when engaging with a loyal following. For example, you could offer limited-run merchandise in your ticket bundle, giving customers more value for their money. It could be separate from your main line of merch, heightening the exclusivity factor and the chance of customers choosing this option. 

But bundles don’t have to be limited to merch. You could offer drink deals, offers on food, discounts at certain vendors or early access to certain stages. 

Whichever offer you choose to create, it’s all about offering as much value as you possibly can. 

Boost future sales with post-festival content

Boosting ticket sales doesn’t just happen in the sales cycle.

The work that you do after the festival finishes can help you sell more tickets for future events. 

One way you can do this? By getting insights from your attendees. Promotional videos where customers speak about how much of a great time they had at your event can go a long way. After all, when people buy tickets to an event they’ve never been to before, an idea of what they’ll experience will make it more likely for them to buy. 

With a festival, you’ll want to intersperse your customer insights with shots of the crowd and your stages so viewers can put themselves in the shoes of the audience, get a feel for your event and hopefully buy tickets.