Kick starting your marketing well in advance ensures that activities such as resource allocation, promotion, and engagement is performed more effectively resulting in higher conversion. Marketing coupled with a proper strategy will further catapult you to higher engagement levels and even sold-out events! Here are 5 ways to use targeted event marketing strategy for your events! Here are 5 ways to use targeted event marketing strategy for your events and make maximum profit by selling event tickets online.

1. Make yourself easy to find

Not only should you post online content regularly, but you must also make it easy to find. You can share content by bundling with different content on your website or social media channels. For instance,  if you have 3 or 4 events lined up for the month of May, then you can promote it as “Upcoming events for May 2018” on a single page and promote it on social media as well as different channels, which will make it easy to find your events in a single location.

You can also create a hashtag for your event and while posting anything related to that event, you can post using that hashtag. Make sure to use a hashtag which is unique, so that recollection is easy and your attendees can then follow your event updates.

2. Promote events using paid ads

Social media platforms are making it difficult to reach your attendees organically. According to a recent update by Facebook, they have implemented changes in their algorithm. Priority is now given to content from the user’s friends and families over the content from businesses and news websites.

This is not only about Facebook, it is also about other platforms like Twitter and Pinterest. They are going to give more preference to paid ads over organic content generated by companies. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter costs less compared to other traditional ad platforms like TV or print ads. Additionally, they give you better options of targeting attendees based on user location and interest. So, in order to reach your attendees, create ads and promote using mechanisms like Facebook Pixel. Yapsody gives you the option to easily integrate your Facebook Pixel, which helps to promote your events to individuals who are more likely to purchase.

3. Be in touch with your event registrants via email

You need to keep engaging with your event registrants. The best medium to stay in touch with your audience is email marketing. According to a research, 73% of in-house marketers worldwide said that email marketing provided a strong ROI.

Therefore, you must leverage email marketing but keep in mind that you need to send personalized emails in order to improve effectiveness. To evaluate the effectiveness and success of your email campaigns, you need to keep track of the “open rate” and “click through rate” of emails and also check the conversion ratio – recipients who are reading your email and purchasing tickets. All these parameters can be tracked through Yapsody’s upcoming “Email Marketing” feature.

4. Improve SEO of your event landing page

SEO is the 2nd most effective medium for marketing after email marketing. Investing in SEO takes a lot of efforts, but the effects are long lasting. You need to work on both on-page and off-page SEO activities to get your event at the top of the page rankings by search engines.

Yapsody provides SEO customization for your events, which helps you to edit on-page SEO elements like title, meta description and meta keywords of your events thereby helping your events rank higher by search engines.

5. Create a buzz around your event

When it comes to your event, your performing artists and special guests are the primary stakeholders. If you want your event to be a success, make sure that your primary stakeholders leverage their popularity and power to influence by creating a buzz around your event on social media platforms. This is the most organic and effective way to promote your event, since it attracts potential attendees who pursue those performing artists and special guests on social media as well as keep your event registrants engaged.

Start early

To make your event a success, you need to start doing these promotional activities in advance. Email marketing and SEO are the primary channels you should use to target your attendees, as they have better ROI compared to all other medium. Implementing these tips will help you stay in touch with your attendees, and get the most out of your targeted event marketing strategy.

The post 5 Tips to Kickstart your Targeted Event Marketing Strategy appeared first on Yapsody.

For all of you who have come in contact with the world of Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization is not a new term. But, if this is the first time you’ve heard about it, let me give you a little glimpse of what it is and how it can help an event presenter.

When you perform (SEO) for a website or webpage, you basically work around the content in such a way that your website or webpage ranks higher in the results of search engines like Google. This way, you increase the “organic” or “free” reach of your event’s page and reach out to a larger potential audience. SEO can be achieved through various parameters, which we will discuss further in this post.

But first, let’s walk through the process of carrying out SEO for your Yapsody Page.

Step 1: Create a new event or if you have an existing event, ‘Edit’ it.

Step 2: Once you are on the editing page, you shall see various tabs like Event Info, Pricing, Customize, etc. Select the ‘Marketing’ tab.

Step 3: Under the ‘Marketing’ tab, you shall see tabs like SEO, Text link and Button. Select ‘SEO’. You shall see the configuration window for SEO under this tab.

Once you are on this window, you shall be able to change the different parameters and see them getting reflected in the Search Result Preview at the top. Now, let’s delve a little deeper into these different SEO parameters.

Meta Title

This is the title of your webpage that will be the first thing that gets displayed in the search result. Consider this to be the heading of the search result. Whatever keywords you use in your meta title have to also appear in your event page’s content for maximum optimization. Keep it as relevant to the theme of your event as possible, while ensuring that it contains the kind of keywords your potential audience is most likely to put in as their search terms. Also, keep the title length less than 60 characters because titles having more than 60 characters are truncated by Google and shown with an ellipsis (…) at the end of the title.

Meta Description

This is a short summary of your page that will be displayed in your search result. Again, it has to be keyword-rich, informative, and attention-grabbing so that people are compelled to click on the search result after reading the meta description. Keep it less than 160 characters because Google will most likely truncate it if it exceeds that limit. When you are writing your meta description, think of it as an advertisement and make it very compelling and engaging. Be very specific with your keywords and include them at the beginning of the description.

Meta Keywords

If you have noticed, the above two fields both pointed out the significance of ‘keywords’. These keywords are phrases or terms that are very specific and relevant to your event. For example, if you are having a performance by the comedian Jeff Foxworthy in your casino that’s in Pendleton, your keywords could be: comedy, standup, Jeff Foxworthy, Pendleton, casino events.

Please note that if you type and save anything in the above fields, it will override your default SEO metadata created by Yapsody.

This feature is only accessible by the user who has the Event Management permission. Also, we want to inform our presenters that we are offering the SEO feature for you to better control your Event’s SEO. However, for specialist advice and guidance, we suggest that you consult an SEO expert.

Happy Ticketing!

The post Search Engine Optimization (SEO) For Your Yapsody Event Page! appeared first on Yapsody.

Growth Hack focuses primarily on gaining growth for the company at an accelerated rate; all the marketers, engineers, SEO guys get into their tasks to find out all possible roads to achieve success in quick time. Let’s check out how you can bring out successful events using this tool.

An Attractive Website

How does your website look? Is it appealing enough to woo your audience? Your website should have rich content with good use of videos and images, easy to navigate, simple yet well-designed, and an easy registration process. The overall look and feel of the website should be amazing enough that it draws the audience to your site at a glance.

SEO is a Must

No matter how good or informative your webpage is, but if it does not make it into the top positions of search results, all your efforts can go waste. Improve ranking of your website on search engine through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and get your website noticed. A strong SEO can increase traffic to your site and bring more ROI.

Email Marketing

Most of our business communication happens on mails. So, why not make the most out of email? Email Marketing may be a little traditional form of event marketing, but it is still very effective. Bring out the long list of email contacts stacked in your database, and start mailing. But, before shooting out mails, ensure that your mail is visually attractive with less text and a call to action button.

Be on Social Media

In today’s time, if you are not present on social media, then you are doing horribly wrong to your business. It is a platform where you can do extensive campaigning of your event, and increase your brand awareness. Be active where your audience are. Make your posts shareable by updating it with engaging content.

Guest Post

Identify blogs relevant to your event and request for a space on their site. Getting your content published on an influential blogger site will attract you new audience, plus boosts up your brand exposure, ultimately, leading to the growth of your business.

PR Role

PR can make the right buzz for your event. Bring out all your media contacts and ensure that your event get as much coverage as possible. Prepare an interesting content piece with images and informative text and send it out to journalists to get your events featured on their publications.

Listing Sites

Most of the people search for events on popular listing sites, so making your presence felt there means you will have a greater audience reach. It will save your time and money; you can make it more location and category specific, thus improving SEO visibility and increasing sales of event tickets online.

The post How to Growth Hack Your Event and Achieve Quick Success appeared first on Yapsody.

Link it up

With social media event marketing, it’s crucial to link it up. Attaching links in your blog posts aid in generating traffic, and give more info about what you do. Shorten the lengthy link using URL shorteners such as Goo.gl or Bitly. This link shortener also tracks the number of clicks your shortened links have earned.

Using Appealing Pictures

The picture speaks a thousand words; it draws more attention than text. Use striking pictures to grab attention to your posts and link them up before posting. Also, adding text to the images make it more engaging.

Time your Posts

No matter how good your content is, sharing it at a time when your audience is not active loses its value. Try to figure out the time when the target audience becomes active. They mostly are active during the weekdays and office hours. Weekends are not a good time to share something big as most of them go offline.

How to Use Twitter

Use keywords relevant to your business in your tweet.

Know who to follow. Following people just for the sake of it will yield no great results. It’s about having followers who are genuinely interested in your service.

Increase the frequency of tweeting as Twitteratis may miss out.

Limit your tweets under 120 characters for followers to retweet without editing.

Be where your audience is

Being present on every social media platform won’t help. It will waste your time and you won’t be able to chart out proper casino marketing strategies for effective marketing. Be active where most of your audience is. Focus on not more than two or three social channels. This will also give you time to interact with them.

Appropriate Hashtags

Almost, everywhere be it Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, or Pinterest, you see hashtags being attached in every post. Using hashtags blindly in every update may not be a good idea. Do some keywords research to understand the trending ones but relevant to your business. You can also create a new, simple, short and informative hashtag to promote your campaign.

Building Relationships

Social media is about building relationships. When your fans share your posts, appreciate their gesture. A simple ‘Thank You’ will do a lot of good for your brand. Strike a conversation with them to get feedback about your offerings, do it consistently, and be answerable. Having a strong base of followers on social media will also boost your SEO.

Do a Google Analytics before and after using these tactics, and you will see the remarkable difference between the two.

The post How to Crack Social Media Marketing for Casino Events 2020 appeared first on Yapsody.

Impressive Profile

Begin your Twitter journey with an attractive profile. You can’t overload with information in the limited space of the ‘Bio’ section but wise use of it can make it look very impressive. Structure your intro using catchy keywords relevant to your business and using some creativity. After creating your profile, ask yourself – will it invoke interest in readers? If it is yes, well done, you are good to go ahead.

Content Power

Now, take a look at the nature of the content you are going to share. Is it powerful enough to engage readers? If your tweet lacks quality, it is not worthy of reading. No one will visit your profile if you continue to share boring content. Keep a tab on your competitors and target audience to understand what type of tweet works on Twitter. Include links, event videos and images to grab more attention.

Making Connections

Devote a little time and make connections with users. You can start by following them, liking and retweeting their tweets, joining Twitter chats; and if they have a query, respond to it. This is how you can communicate and build a relationship with the audience. You know this is a good marketing strategy.

Increase Tweeting Frequency

Twitter is a fast-paced medium, where countless tweets keep popping up regularly. There’s every chance that readers may have missed out on what you have just tweeted. To make yourself noticeable, keep tweeting consistently – increase the frequency of your tweets. There shouldn’t be a long gap between your first and the second tweet of the day. Schedule your tweets using social media scheduling tools so that readers get the impression that you are active on Twitter. But, don’t forget quality control in all your tweets.

Promote yourself

Leave no room to promote your Twitter profile because that’s how one will start noticing your presence on Twitter. Share your page with all your email contacts. Use Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Pinterest to promote your Twitter profile. Provide Twitter handle in the business cards, company’s websites and most importantly, in your blogs so that interested readers can follow you.

Well, these are some ways to increase the count of Twitter followers organically but earning followers is a time-consuming process.

Signing up with Yapsody comes with a lot of perks for the event marketer, so come on board and elevate your event marketing.

The post 5 Ways To Increase Twitter Followers Organically For Your Event appeared first on Yapsody.

Even paid marketing tools, like PPC, can prove to be terrible investments if they’re not dealt with appropriately. You may end up overspending and yet not receive desired results. This only leads to one conclusion – no matter how much you spend on marketing tools, your conversion rates eventually lie in your own hands.

This particular blog post will help you understand the most popular PPC model, Google AdWords, so that you can improvise on your AdWords campaign and get maximum returns out of your investment.

The first step towards understanding Google AdWords would be to understand the definitions of the metrics involved:

1. Impressions and clicks inform you about the number of people who have viewed your advertisement and how many have actually clicked on it.
2. Click-through rate (CTR) measures the number of clicks against the number of impressions. Basically, it tells you how many people, out of the ones who viewed your advertisement, also clicked on it.
3. Cost-per-click (CPC) is the average amount per click that you’re paying for your ad. This cost depends on three factors, namely bid, competition, and quality score, which will be discussed later.

What is Quality Score?

Quality Score, or QS, is Google’s algorithm to calculate the strength of your keywords, based on which the position of your advert in the results pages is determined. Lower your QS, higher will be the price you’ll pay. QS is measured on a scale of 10, and it’s at this score that you get the cheapest price per click. You can increase your QS by improving the relevance of your keyword to the ad and landing page. A good score might fetch you the top 4 positions in the search results.

The Significance of Account Structure

AdWords follows a Hierarchial Structure and you need to understand its significance before you start investing in advertisements. If your account structure isn’t clearly defined, your entire strategy might fall apart.

The first step is to have a crystal clear idea about your purpose. You might actually want to write down the key demographics of your target audience and what kind of keywords they might enter in their searches. For example, if you’re hosting a non-profit event, your target audience is likely to search for “non-profit events”, “charity events”, “fundraisers” etc.

Next, divide your account into campaigns and ad groups that follow an understandable nomenclature. This makes things easier for your future reference and also for your teammates if they’re going to be accessing the account, too.

What kind of keywords?

While reading the previous section, you might have lingered over the words – what kind of keywords they might enter in their searches. Even though you’re focusing on your target audience, pointing out the exact keywords that they’re likely to use can be quite a feat.

The best thing to do would be to fall back on Google’s autocomplete suggestions when you search for the keywords. Also, when the search results are displayed, scroll to the bottom of the page to find related searches and voila, more keywords!

Know Thy Competition

Yes, know them very well, especially their keywords. Compile a list of all your competitors and note the search terms they’ve been advertising for. Analyze their adverts to discover their choice of keywords. You could use SEMrush to get an insight into what’s working for your competitors.

Apart from SEMrush, also try the Google Keyword Planner that gives you keyword ideas if you input a landing page. Simply paste one of your competitor’s web pages in the tool, refine the results using the category filter and get blown away by the results. Give yourself a minute to come back to senses and put together the huge amount of information that’s at your disposal now – volumes per month, level of competition, and the suggested bid for every keyword.

Define Your Niche

Don’t just be restricted to everyday keywords, instead, find longer-tail keywords (which consist of more than 4 words) and ensure that your ads get displayed for these searches. There are two primary advantages of using longer-tail keywords: less competition and increased precision, both of which directly imply reduced cost and increased conversion rate.

Fix a Budget

When you’re defining a budget, make sure you’re taking into account everything. And by ‘everything’, I mean EVERYTHING. The smallest of internal allowances have to be accounted for before you actually go ahead and start spending on any kind of advertising, including AdWords. Keep a few factors in mind when you are formulating the budget, for example, the price at which you selling your event tickets, whether you’re aiming for a break-even or actually wanting to earn profits, how much profits are you thinking of, and so on. Knowing the answers to these questions will help you discover your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).

Know Your Worth

More like, know the worth of your keywords. Your CPA is your budget limit; it helps you set the maximum bid for your Ad Groups and also allows you to tweak the performance of an individual keyword.

If your cost per conversion surpasses your CPA, you might want to straighten out a few flaws:

• Your choice of keywords is poor
• You’ve incorrectly used keyword match types
• There’s a lack of negative keywords
• Your QS is very low
• There’s a Keyword to Ad copy mismatch
• Bids that are too high or too low

And so on.

It’s not about the Money

If your ulterior motive is not really to earn profits, that gives you all the more a reason to clearly define what you wish to gain from your event. Your Call to Action could be aimed at gaining more subscribers or increased social engagement; in any case, you need to have a tracking system in place. Rely on Google Analytics and setup conversion tracking. These goals can then be imported into AdWords and assigned a value and category wherever necessary.

Now That You’re Done…

Let’s begin!

That’s right, you’ve got your AdWords campaign in place, but where exactly are you going to drive all the traffic to? That’s correct – your landing page!

NOT your homepage, folks, your landing page.

If you’re paying a large sum for paid searches, it won’t make sense that these direct to your homepage because it just makes the user frown and give up. Your landing page should fulfill certain requirements, and these include:

• The message displayed on your landing page should align with your advertisement.
• Use headings, sub-heading, and bullets to keep the message brief and understandable.
• Eradicate all other distractions (menus, other CTAs, pop-ups and so on).
• Elaborately describe your offers and USPs.
• Testimonies and reviews act as good supports.
• Make sure your CTA isn’t vague and ambiguous.
• Make it crisp, elegant, and fast.

Be Friendly

It’s almost a ‘moo’ point (if I were to go all Joey-like here), but you need to understand that I mean mobile-friendly and not just friendly-friendly. Your adverts have to be optimized for mobile devices as well as desktop because Google’s search algorithm prioritizes mobile optimized results. AdWords allows you to create mobile-friendly adverts, and you could actually dedicate a separate Ad Group to mobile only. Always keep an eye on mobile vs. desktop performance and keep making changes accordingly. Use conversion tracking for the same.

Call Me Maybe?

If your campaign is aimed at taking bookings or enquiries over the phone, use click-to-call ads, where a phone call is triggered directly when a user clicks on the ad and he will be saved the trouble of visiting the website and fetching your number. This saves a lot of time, you provide a good user experience, and you can also expect better conversion rates with this simple tactic.

Test the Waters

Before you dive in right away, it’s always better to check the temperature and measure the depth.

Your assumptions about the campaign could go horribly wrong because, let’s accept it, we’re dealing with people and people can be very unpredictable at times. So, keep testing everything: keywords, synonyms, and related terms. Test different landing pages, different ads in the same ad group, basically everything you can.

Also, Google’s default setting prioritizes spending money by attracting most clicks. But, you’re more focused on getting better conversions and ROI, so always set it to “rotate indefinitely” even if AdWords warns you against it.

The Beginning

This is a taste of what it’s like to actually plan out an AdWords campaign and by now you know that you can’t get done with it simply by paying the amount. Yes, there are a lot of other things to factor, other measures to take, other plans to carry out to make sure you’re actually getting good returns from investing in PPC, but that doesn’t mean you should get scared and not give it a try at all. It may look like a hassle at first, but once you start working on it and carry out one campaign successfully, you’ll have the framework registered in your mind and the subsequent times won’t be as difficult. Remember to start slow, start small, and plan out every step. Focus on your most important conversion first and expand only after you’ve achieved success. Make sure your landing page is relevant to your advert and refrain from using your homepage.

In conclusion, I’ll just say that it’s okay to make mistakes as long as you’re learning from them and doing better the next time. All the best!

The post Kickstarting Your Google AdWords Campaign for Online Events in 2020 appeared first on Yapsody.

Has your business still not reached the heights you feel it deserves? It could have something to do with the customer service you’re providing. There are a few ways of attracting a customer to your business; here are a few of them-

1) Do you have an online presence?

Given the fact that all communication and interaction seems to take places online in the present generation, customers are going to judge you by your online presence. Are you available on social media? What would be the first thing customers see when they google you? All of this matters and they play a key role in ensuring the popularity of your company. Unless you give them something that they like, your customers wouldn’t even give you a second look. As they say, the first impression (in this case, your digital presence) is the last impression.

2) Have you optimized your website?

If you’re a company that’s largely dependent on customers, you need to make sure that your website is search engine optimized? Where does your website feature if someone looks up a product or service you provide? You must understand something, customers are pretty ruthless.  Also, they would rather visit websites that feature near the top and appear trustworthy. That is why you need to pay special attention to SEO and ensure that you make it to the top of the list. If you haven’t done this already, you now know why you’re missing out on customers.

3) Are you on popular social media?

Seldom will you come across customers who do not have an account on social media? All of you out there must be pretty active on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram or even SnapChat. Now if you look at the other companies around you, you’ll see that they all have pages and groups on social media. You too need to make a move as soon as possible, if you haven’t already. Attractive images, relevant blog posts, impressive posts- these are things that will appeal to your audiences. The logic is pretty simple nowadays- more the number of likes, the more popular a page is. Cruel and unfair, yes, but true no doubt.

There you go. In a nutshell, the easiest and the most popular way of attracting customers today is to widen your reach online. You need to make sure that customers do not have to scour every nook and cranny of the World Wide Web just looking for you. If customers acquisition is your main goal, you need to start nurturing the online presence of your company.

The post How to Attract Customers to Your Business? appeared first on Yapsody.

Sadly, not every sales executive comes up with the best of the performance. There is always up and down in the sales graph. In such a situation, the company should take a note of what it can do to get the maximum out of their sales team.

Well, here are some sure-shot methods that will help you reap the best from salespersons:

How good you are as a motivator

When you don’t get the desired result, gushing out fiery smokes from your ears and yelling on top of the voice won’t help. Calm down and provide your team the much needed support. Sit with them and look into the areas where they have gone wrong and need help. Instil confidence in them. Give them a proper briefing of the event; involve them from the beginning. Bringing them into the picture at the last hour with little planning will yield no result. Encourage your sales team with attractive rewards, incentives, bonus, trips, or a dinner with the company’s big boss.

Breaking out from the four-wall closed room

Sometimes, having a discussion in a four-wall closed room freezes your mind and stops the free flow of ideas. Break this norm and take the team out from this closed environment. A friendlier and relaxed atmosphere means less pressure; there will be more exchange of ideas that will always work to the benefit of the company.

Time is Precious

Don’t waste the valuable time of your salesperson. We often see that many sales representatives are occupied in entering data, finishing some insignificant admin work, resulting in a waste of time. The organization must find out ways to minimize the wastage of time. Understanding target audience thoroughly; providing sales team with a support staff to do all the admin work; equipping them with handy tools; and options of quick communication should be explored to save their precious time and increase productivity.

Exploring Online Marketing

Making best use of online marketing can be helpful in meeting the required targets. However, getting maximum ‘register now’ button clicked is not the only way to gauge the success of online marketing. Keep the sales group updated about the latest digital marketing tools. Limiting them to tools such as Google Adwords, SEO, Newsletters will restrict them from earning more revenues, especially when the market is really competitive. Feed them with regular social updates on trending business mantra, familiarize them with time saving and business friendly applications. Allow them to use social sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, and Google+ to run sales campaign and generate more leads and conversion.

Utilize these simple and easy methods, and maximize the revenue.

The post Your Sales Team can do much better, believe it! appeared first on Yapsody.

Online searches:

Gone are the days when people got leaflets to register for conferences, these days’ organizers create event pages for their conference putting it up on the Web for interested people to register. The conference goers too, search the internet for conferences that they are interested in. Unless you are making use of the SEO strategy, it is unlikely that your conference will get noticed above the hundred others. SEO will make sure that your event tops the list of searches. The interested people once they notice your conference will visit your event page and try to learn about it. People generally tend to check the results in the first page only. Only if your event is at the first page, then only can you be sure that the conference will attract the interested people. Getting noticed is half the job done. As a conference organizer the biggest challenge is to rake in the crowds. SEO makes your job easier.

Long term:

Unlike some other online hacks, SEO event marketing is a long term investment. The search engines keep altering their algorithms to provide the users with best results. In case, some past rookie online move you made kept you at the top today, it can equally get you out of the list tomorrow. SEO ensures that you reach the top and stay there. So if you want your event marketing to be impeccable, you can’t afford not to invest in SEO.

Tested:

It has been proven that conference planners who invested in SEO have reaped benefits. The number of registrations had been phenomenal. Conference SEO and event SEO is becoming a common thing for event managers these days. And if you are one, you definitely can’t ignore this boon that will transform your conference.

Lastly, you shouldn’t be too impatient if registrations aren’t coming from day one, SEO might take a little time, but it is a definite strategy and will eventually ensure that you get the maximum registrations for your event.

The post The Ultimate Guide To SEO For Conference Organizers appeared first on Yapsody.

In order to keep up with the rapidly changing promotional preferences of your target audience, you need to alter your promotional plans according to their preferences and this blog post will tell you how to effectively incorporate one basic multimedia element – videos – into your marketing strategy.

SLOW AND STEADY PUTS A FROWN ON THE VIEWER’S FACE

When you’re uploading your video online, don’t ignore sizing issues. If it’s a small video, uploading it in HD won’t necessarily make it slower; but a longer video will consume more data in HD and for people viewing it on their mobile devices and using mobile internet may get annoyed if it’s too lengthy and data consuming. Make sure your video provider has an option to turn off HD in such cases.

SERVE IT WITH SALADS AND SOUP

Your video has to be accessible, and you can ensure this by providing an audio description and subtitles. Though this may call for more money, time, and efforts, it’ll be definitely worth it. At least work on a transcript or text description since this will also help with Search Engine Optimization.

ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER

There are high chances that due to lack of time or data, an interested user may drop your event because of no direct access to required information. So, provide URLs to your Facebook page, website, blog, registration page etc. in the video’s description so that people who aren’t able to watch the video still have someplace else to go for the needed information.

AVOID AUTO-PLAY

When you have a video, you are going to put it up EVERYWHERE (including your website). Embedding it in your website is cool, as long as it doesn’t start playing automatically because firstly, it annoys users when they have to look for that one tab where the stupid music is coming from and secondly, mobile users who are probably not looking forward to using up their data for watching videos would be so mad at your website for auto-loading that video.

A LOT OF STUFF PLUS A VIDEO

Your video is a small marketing aid, and your entire promotional strategy can’t be based on one video. If your video includes all the vital information related to your event, make sure that the same is also available in alternative formats because even though a video is a great way to boost promotional activities, it’s not the only way, and should never become one.

Got better ways to use a video for promoting an event and selling event tickets online? Comment your ideas below and help your fellow event presenters!

The post Set Your Event Promotion in Motion appeared first on Yapsody.

SEO Maximization

Driving attendees to your event is not a step; it’s a process, the first step of which is driving them to your website. Majorly, websites are brought into the picture in the form of search results, so if you want your event to be a result ranked high up, you’ll have to optimize your website to sell tickets online and make it keyword-centric. SEO is an affordable and effective marketing strategy that can drive qualified traffic to your website, which can further translate into increased ticket sales.

Website Testing

Your website is the first impression you create on your potential attendees, so you have to make sure it’s a good one. Having a functional website is not the same as having a beautifully designed, optimized, and of course, fully functional website. While it’s the virtue of e-commerce websites to have an appealing UI, it will be highly advantageous for your event if your website has the right colors and fonts for the striking features.

Social Media Integration

Because if it’s not on Facebook, it’s not good enough. After ‘what came first, the chicken or the egg?’, the next big question of the universe is, ‘does social media run in the world, or does the world run on social media?’. Whatever may be the answer, an event presenter has to come to terms with the fact that social media marketing is the key to brand awareness. Your event management software should make sure it incorporates social media. For example, Yapsody has social media widgets to facilitate social media integration easily.

Utilize Your Speakers

Maybe that’s not an appropriate way to put it, but your speakers can be extremely useful when it comes to promoting your event because they already have a huge fan-base. They are busy folks, so you might have to work their talks and promotional images, but seeing you take efforts for them, they’ll be delighted to be a part of your event. Give them special promo codes or offers that they can offer their own followers for attending the event and make brilliant posters for them and use these to connect to their followers directly.

Multi-channel Marketing

Using platforms that are already bases for interaction between your potential attendees will favor you, because they’ll see you as approachable and one of them. Make sure you have an account for your event on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and even Pinterest, if needed. If you’re hosting a professional event, LinkedIn can serve as a big platform to meet people in your industry. Create open groups and include the link to buy event tickets in there, you’ll be surprised at the response you receive.

Real Time Analysis

Obtaining real time information about your ticket sales and statistics can help you track your ROI efficiently. While Google Analytics stands as the best way to accomplish the analysis, you can also use an event management software that ensures these features. Yapsody’s YapStats is one such application that helps you track your ticket sales and similar data in real time.

Attendees or Ambassadors?

Figure out the incentives that your potential audience would love to be offered, and come up with competitions and referral plans to drive your ticket sales. These may include special discounts, VIP seats, freebies, or whatever appeals to your target audience.

Custom Facebook Ads

Apart from being a social media platform, Facebook is a gigantic database of all kinds of people and can tell you exactly what is it that is liked and ‘unliked’ by your potential attendees. You can use Facebook’s custom audience feature to ensure that your advertisement is only viewed by your past attendees, present contacts, and their friends. Also, uploading a CSV of your database or your LinkedIn contacts will ensure that Facebook only shows your ads to the ones whose email matches with those in your CSV.

Remarketing

If you have a decent marketing budget, you might want to invest in paid advertising campaigns that follow your website visitors even after they’ve left your site. Your ads will now pop up in front of users who have already been introduced to your event, and your campaign will make much more sense that way.

Blog

This takes us back to the first point regarding SEO which tells you that keyword rich content can work wonders for your website’s ranking in search results. To achieve this, a very simple measure is to start a blog and put up posts that are keyword-centric without having to modify your existent website content. Your blog can be used as a platform to engage with your audience, publicize your event and also glorify your speakers and sponsors.

The term ‘hack’ is self-explanatory here, because as you actually inculcate these factors in your strategies, you’ll realize that there is nothing that could possibly go haywire with these techniques. They are the little tricks that a magician should always have up his sleeve in case the ‘big act’ doesn’t work out.

The post How To Hack Your Way Into Maximum Ticket Sales appeared first on Yapsody.

THAT GOOD OL’ MAIL

Some things never go out of style, and mails are one of those things. Even though people ignore junk folders in their email inbox, they open EVERY mail that they get in their mail box (except bills, maybe. Nobody likes opening bills). You could check out USPS’ Every Door Direct Mail service that lets you enter your address, ZIP code, or city and state for your target areas, and narrow down your audience using a simple tool. Also, a lumpy mail is an amazing idea because even when people know it is maybe junk mail, they’ll still open it excitedly. Put in balloons, Christmas bows, pens, or invite cards to make the envelope lumpy.

WORD OF MOUTH

Again, an old technique that’s an amazingly effective marketing technique. Many people attend events because their friends or relatives are attending it, too. You could take word of mouth a step ahead and ask your trusted attendees to spread the word using small palm-sized printed invites, or Christmas packages containing an invite and cookies, maybe.

MICRO-SITE

Put up a micro-site dedicated only to your Christmas event, and have good SEO for the site to make it revolve around keywords that your target audience is likely to search in this season. Have a warm welcome video that embraces the Christmas festivities on your site, ways they can share the event with others, social media integration, DDTVs, and a link to your main website.

FACEBOOK

Purchase advertising benefits to promote your event in front of your target audience on Facebook. Get your graphic designers to work on a cover photo and profile picture for your event. Design digital content that your attendees can easily share, and encourage them to share it on their groups and pages. Event pages can be highly beneficial for your event if you put them to optimum use.

COMMUNITY EVENTS

Attend other events in your community or where your target audience is likely to be and hand out invites to your event or simply let the word of your event slip in your conversations. You can even formally partner up with these event presenters to publicize your event during theirs. Always remember, you won’t get something till you ask for it.

EMAIL MARKETING

Like mail, email will always stay in style. As a matter of fact, emails have better conversion rates than social media. Build highly targeted email lists and send out crisp newsletters informing the receivers about your event. Encourage them to share your event with their folks so that they have company, and you have a successful event or concert.

A Very Merry Christmas, y’all!

The post Effective Promotional Strategies For Your Christmas Event appeared first on Yapsody.