Once you have an online booking engine/ticketing system in place to accept bookings, including payments, and issue tickets if required, the next challenge is to get interested visitors to your website so that they can make a booking/buy their tickets. How can you reach the people who would be interested in attending your event/activity if they knew about it? Some ways require a lot of money to be spent, others very little, and other ways are free – but cost a lot of time. Obviously you’ll want to create a bit of a buzz about your event/activity so that people will start talking about it with their friends and spreading awareness about it by word of mouth.
General Principles
Before looking at the different methods of advertising, there are some general principles to be kept in mind:
- You need to have a high quality offering. Your event or tourism activity needs to be great! Don’t use advertising to make up for poor quality – it won’t work. Try to exceed the expectations of what visitors/attendees/customers you already have, then work to get even more of them to come.
- Once you build up a good momentum with your advertising across the relevant media types (and very often you will want to use more than one type) the friends-telling-friends-effect will start to happen. At this point it would be a mistake to stop all advertising. It is still required to keep your message hot and to act as a regular reminder for people to make a booking/buy tickets and to talk about your event/activity with their friends.
- Know your target market and focus your advertising on them. This makes economic sense as it will save you money. Do some analysis of your target market. Can you identify their age group, gender, their interests, the TV programs they watch, the websites they visit regularly, the sports they play, the newspapers, magazines and blogs they read?
- Design your advertisements with your target market in mind. If the typical person in your target market switches off when they see certain images – then don’t use those images. Think about what will grap their attention and then hold it while you get your message across.
- Always ensure that your advertisements contain a suitable Call to Action. Don’t just give them information about your event. You must also tell them to Book Now and provide them with information on how to do that, for example, with a link/website address or telephone number.
- Give them a short deadline. If they think they can put it off for a while – they will. That’s just human nature. And then they can forget! If you tell them that the available places/tickets are likely to be sold out by the end of the week, they are more likely to book with a greater sense of urgency. “Don’t be disappointed, book now”, “Tickets selling fast”, “Limited availability”.
- A trick linked to the short deadline is to have an early-bird-discount. This offers a limited number of places/tickets up at a significant discount but only for a limited time. After that time the discount is no longer available. This can help build advance bookings as people spread the word to their friends so that they too can avail of the discounts. After all, everyone likes a discount.
- Monitor return on investment (ROI): How effective is your advertising? A simple metric is the amount of revenue which you can attribute to your advertising campaign divided by the cost of that campaign. If that value is one or less, then it is not effective. If that value is 6, for example, then you know that for each Dollar/Euro/Pound spent on the advertising campaign, you are realising 6 Dollars/Euro/Pounds in revenue.
- Test and test again. Run some small test advertisements before you launch your main campaign. Use it to test alternative wording, images, layouts etc. to see what works best. Devise A/B testing whereby you test two alternatives to see which is the most effective.
Let’s take a look at some of the advertising possibilities:
Television Advertising
TV Advertising has a huge audience reach and so can be very effective for certain events, however it is probably the most expensive method. It requires engaging a video and advertising production company to design, produce, and record the advertisement, hire actors to play their parts, even for voice-overs. Then there is the cost of airing the advertisement. You will have to price and compare options in terms of what TV channels to buy air-time from, and which timeslots to choose. The more popular channels will be more expensive. Peak times will be more expensive than off peak. That may work in your favour if your target market is not “everybody” but a certain segment who watch a certain special interest TV program, late at night (off peak) on a certain night of the week. You can then just target your ads at them.
Radio Advertising
The advantage of radio advertising is that most people listen to the radio every day. According to figures covering all of 2014 from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland 84% of the adult population listen to the radio every day. The average time spent listening to the radio per day was 4 hours. Many people listen to the radio while working or travelling. Advertising on radio is simpler and cheaper than television advertising, plus there are many more radio stations than television stations, so more advertising slots are available. A small number of stations broadcast nationwide whereas there are many local stations catering for audiences over a smaller geographic area (e.g. at the county level or listeners in a certain major town or city and its surrounding areas). Based on your target market analysis, determine which radio programs your typical target person listens to and advertise during that show. Some stations may also offer the possibility of sponsored shows, which will ensure that your name gets mentioned when the show is introduced and possibly during it, and your advertisements are aired before others during the ad breaks.
When comparing advertising slot prices from a number of radio stations, in addition to looking at the total price, you should also take into account a marketing metric known as Cost Per Point (CPP). This is the cost to reach 1% of your target audience. It is calculated by dividing the total cost of advertising with that radio station divided by the sum of the percentage of your target audience who are tuned in each time the advert is aired. People generally need to hear an advertisement several times before they act on it, so repetition over several days will probably need to be part of your plan. The CPP metric can be useful when comparing prices from several radio stations where each has a different level of reach.
Remember that radio content is, for the most part, entertainment, and many successful radio advertisements have used a technique where the format, theme or style used is in tune with that. Techniques which make the advertisement memorable can lead to greater brand recognition and recall. Included in such techniques are: some form of humour, and for adverts which are aired regularly: a jingle which people will remember and associate with your advertisement, and using the same people for voice-overs of a series of adverts.
Because radio is audio-only, the call to action must be simple, unambiguious and easy to recall. This can be a telephone number or a website address. Be careful with website addresses which someone could miss-spell or easily forget – in such cases it might be a good idea to acquire an alternative website address for the purposes of the campaign.
Print Media Advertising
This channel includes newspapers, magazines, journals, trade publications, brochures, and flyers. Because of the amount and variety of print publications which exist, it can be a good method to target a particular group of people. If you want to advertise a music event, for example, then a local music magazine catering for a similar genre of music would be a good place to advertise. The advertising departments of the publications will provide you with a rate card which will indicate the cost of taking out various sizes of ads in various parts of the publication. Ask them about particular features and articles which are planned for future issues, and then plan to include your advertisement close to/on the same page as articles on a similar topic to your event. Brochures and flyers and can be distributed by specialist distribution companies who deliver leaflets to target residential or business districts. Postal companies may also offer distribution to specific postal districts where your target market reside. You must bear in mind that some people indicate that they do not wish to receive unsolicited (junk) mail and so they will not receive such leaflets. Of course you can send the leaflets yourself as part of addressed letters to targeted individuals if you know their postal addresses.
People receiving such flyers decide in under one second whether to read it or discard it. It is critical therefore that the flyers uses appropriate imagery and words to grab the attention of the reader and keep it until they read the key message which you wish to convey. This is where understanding your target market comes into play.
Internet/Digital/Online Advertising
It should not be a surprise that as the proportion of the content which people consume online increases, the spend on online/Internet advertising also increases. The trend over the last few years is that the total amount spent by advertisers on online advertising is quickly closing in on that spent on television advertising, and is expected to overtake it by 2016. Advertising on the Internet can take several forms:
- Search advertising: where advertisements are shown alongside search engine results. The search engines try to match relevant adverts to the word or phrase which the user is searching for. The leading search engines offer advertisers a way to place auction-style bids on certain keywords which determine the position and frequency of the advertisement, and the cost of a click on such ads. If you choose to use search advertising, be aware that it can be expensive. Put a daily spend limit in place to control costs. Because you are paying for clicks, be prepared to get a significant number of clicks which don’t result in sales, but still have to be paid for.
- Banner advertisements: shown by website owners next to their website content
- Mobile advertisements: shown by mobile applications on tablets and smartphones
- Email advertisements: these can be sent as part of an information e-mail or sent as complete e-mails to particular target groups. Many websites ask their visitors to provide the website with their e-mail address so that they can be notified of new topics and newsletters and these may include advertisements. If you have your own website and are regularly updating and adding new content related to your events, then you could also build up an e-mail list which you could use to let the subscribers know about your upcoming events. Another way to collect e-mail addresses of people interested in your events is to ensure that you capture the e-mail addresses of people who book your event/buy tickets using your booking engine. During the booking process, simply offer them a checkbox to opt-in to receive occasional e-mails about you future events. You should not send out e-mails to this list too frequently as it will simply annoy your subscribers. You should also include in such e-mails an unsubscribe link which enables the recipient to remove their e-mail address from your list when then don’t want to hear from you anymore.
- Social Media Advertising: Over the last few years the social media networks have been trying to use advertising as a way to generate revenue. They use what information they can glean from your profile (your interests, age, location, education, profession etc.), the type of content you post, the posts which you like and share, and the people you follow to filter the advertisements to show to you. Some may also share some of your details with advertisers. Data protection and privacy is becoming an increasing concern for users of social media networks, which started out free of advertisements. If you wish to advertise with such networks, they can, because of the detailed information they have about their users, enable you to target your advertisement to a very fine degree, based on specific locations, age, education, profession, interests etc. Typically, you are paying per click, and as with search advertising, you will have to monitor carefully the proportion of clicks which result in sales.
- Affiliate Marketing: This is an arrangement whereby you partner with people who have popular websites and who will show advertisements for or promote your event on their websites and/or mention it in their own newsletters such that when their visitors click on such ads the visitor is directed to your website. If the visitor then makes an online booking/buys tickets, the software will pay a commission to the referral partner. This advertising channel typically involves signing up with an affiliate network which handles all of the visitor tracking and affiliate payments for you, while making it easy for you to see the number of visitors being referred each day/week/month and the the number and value of sales resulting. The nice thing about this way of advertising is that, being commission based, it is very cash-flow friendly, and, depending on the network used, needs no or little up-front advertising budget to be spent.
- Get your website/events/activities listed on specialist websites for your particular event type. For example, if you are running tourism activities, guided tours or have a tourist attraction, then try to get your website listed on the websites of travel agents, travel bloggers and tourism sites which attract people planning a holiday/vacation. Some examples would include:
“Free” Advertising
If you don’t have any advertising budget, then apart from the affiliate marketing method method mentioned above, your other choice is to explore ways of getting news of your event/activity for “free”. Free in financial terms, but not free in terms of your time. If you can give time to it, here are some ideas for you:
Local Radio Interviews
Local radio stations may have certain programmes where they feature interviews with local small business owners. This is a type of public service whereby it informs their listeners about businesses in their area and the people who run them and to encourage entrepreneurship. Why not contact your local radio stations and put your name forward as someone who would be interested in being interviewed.
Local Media Events List
Local radio stations and local newspapers typically have a section where they cover upcoming events & activities and are usually happy to hear from event organisers. Why not contact them?
Write an Article
Local newspapers and event magazines are hungry for local content. They have journalists who need to write articles about local happenings on a daily/weekly basis. If you were to write an article about your upcoming events or activities, written in a style which would appeal to the readership of the publication, describing what it is like to organize and run such events/activities, the joys, the pains etc. and then send it in to the editor or a particular journalist offering it to them as a starting point for them, you could get column space which would be very expensive to buy as a regular advertisement. The focus of the article should be public interest and not sales focused.
Social Media Engagement
Use social media channels. Follow people who you think would make good customers or who are influencers in your space. With any luck they will follow you back. They may then forward your posts about your events/activities to their followers. If you want this to yield results you need to do the following daily (about 15 or 20 minutes): looking for a few new people to follow, posting one or two messages, responding to messages and engaging with people, sharing/forwarding/liking interesting posts to your followers. If you can record some videos, even with your mobile phone, of people enjoying your events/activities and post them to your social media channels (you should get permission from your guests to do this) it will encourage more engagement.
Get Testimonials/Recommendations From Existing Customers
Get written or better still, video, testimonials from people who have attended your events/training courses/tourism activities in the past. Let them talk about their experiences, and show these testimonials on your website.
Write a Blog
Set up a blog and write an article every couple of weeks. You can then post a link to your blog articles to your social media channels to entice people to visit your website to read the complete article.
Competitions
Think about running a competition on your social media channels. A prize could be a few places/tickets for your event/activity. Check your social media network’s rules on competitions to ensure that you comply, otherwise your account could be suspended. Typical competitions involve asking some questions about your events/activities, which people could find the answers to easily enough from your website. Make it fun, and people may tell their social media followers about it and spread the word.
Press Releases
Write a press release announcing new events, activities and newsworthy happenings and publish it on appropriate press release websites and to local media. Finish the press release with a short paragraph stating the name and contact details for your business and include a link to your website.
I hope that you have found the ideas here useful in growing the bookings/ticket sales for your event/tourism activity.