Event Promotion For Creators: Go Beyond the Basics

Stage 1: Connect with your audience on a deeper level 

Event Branding

Experiential Marketing

Audience Reporting

Audience Segmentation

Event Email Marketing

Event Ads

To truly influence an audience, move beyond targeting surface-level interests and instead focus on tapping into their emotional responses. 

Harness the power of feeling and memory     

When purchasing event tickets, attendees are often driven by emotions without even realizing it. 

So if your event branding is inconsistent or only focused on event features rather than creating an emotional connection, it could be the reason you’re struggling to increase ticket sales or generate buzz. 

We relate to brands the same way we relate to people — and your event is no different. To motivate an attendee to take action, you need to trigger a memory filled with emotion.  

To do this, you want to market to the primal brain instead of using logical reasoning. 

The most common example is the “FOMO” (fear of missing out) effect. Emphasizing what people will lose if they miss your event can help you increase ticket sales. 

For example, Nonsense Atlanta consistently uses event photos that capture youthful energy to evoke nostalgia. This visual element subconsciously triggers a memory of feeling wild, carefree, and adventurous — the kind of experience attendees don’t want to miss.  

When designing your event brand, it’s important to go beyond what looks visually appealing — that will only get you so far. Instead, consider what emotions and memories you can trigger to influence your audience.

Pro tip: Create a free event website through Eventbrite to build a custom page with consistent branding. 

Use neuromarketing strategies 

Simple things like image layout may not seem to impact how your audience views your event, but the truth is they do — and you can use this to your advantage. 

By understanding neuromarketing techniques, you can tap into the subconscious desires of your target audience. For example, Netflix uses aesthetic visual analysis to create custom thumbnails for each user based on their individual preferences and behavior.  

Here are some core neuromarketing techniques that you can use to take your event promotion to the next level.

• Use color psychology: Colors can significantly impact how people perceive and remember your event. Therefore, choosing a key color that evokes emotion in your target audience is important. For example, black can symbolize power and mystery. 
• Create sensory experiences: Engage multiple senses at once to appeal to the subconscious desires of your target audience. For example, Coca-Cola focuses its brand identity on the refreshing taste, feel, and sound of a cold Coke. Take this idea and use it in your event promotion. For instance, if you’re promoting a nightclub, a slow-motion shot showing attendees’ faces as they dance to loud music can help trigger excitement from memories of being in the action. 
• Understand eye gaze and anchoring: The first piece of information a person receives is crucial as visual searching helps people subconsciously decide if they’re interested in your event. Therefore, it’s important to place compelling information in the center of your ad to boost the audience’s engagement. 
  
  With Eventbrite’s marketing tools, you can gain valuable insights into how your community responds to specific aspects of your event promotion:
• Audience reports allow you to see if your audience is new or returning visitors and how long they’re on your site. This can help determine what aspects of your promotion are making an impact. For example, if potential attendees only spend 5 seconds on your site and don’t scroll past the first section, you may not be anchoring the right information about your event. 
• A/B testing allows you to experiment with different elements of your event ads, such as color, image, and text, to determine what best resonates with your audience. For example, you could run two separate Facebook and Instagram ads with different-colored text to see which  generates more engagement.
• Behavior reports provide detailed information on how visitors interact with your Eventbrite site and social media accounts. These reports can help identify factors of your promotion that impact potential attendees’ emotional experience, such as the loading speed of your landing page.  

Use precise audience targeting 

Of course, consistent branding and images that elicit emotion won’t get you very far if your target audience doesn’t see your event promotions! When it comes to event promotion, targeting the right people is the key to increasing your chances of selling tickets. Think of it like a word-of-mouth recommendation versus a cold call — the more targeted your approach, the more likely you are to succeed. 

• Take advantage of event discovery sites: Our research shows that more than half of urban event-goers search neighborhood guides for things to do. Reach them by making your event more discoverable on Eventbrite. Our promotional channels highlight unique events worldwide to put them in front of interested audiences. 
• Use and integrate your customer relationship management (CRM) software: It’s much easier to manage your event community when the data from your event registrants go directly to your CRM. Eventbrite allows you to segment and market to your attendees and have an organized list of people you can promote to now and later. 
• Enhance your event email marketing strategy: You might be missing the mark if you blast your whole mailing list every time you announce an event or book a performer. 
  
  Instead, optimize your event email marketing strategy by segmenting your email lists into categories: people who have bought tickets to your events versus people who haven’t, or specific demographics within your target audience. Then create campaigns that speak to those smaller groups with a targeted message using email marketing platforms like MailChimp or Emma.
• Consider ad retargeting: Incorporating ad retargeting into your event promotion strategy can help optimize website traffic and maximize the return on investment (ROI) of your paid advertising campaigns. The technique works by placing a tracking pixel on your website that captures visitor information and displays targeted ads on other websites they visit. Eventbrite organizers have seen an average of 6x return on investment using ad retargeting.

To maximize the effectiveness of your event promotion, focus on audiences who are already engaged in your community and likely to be interested in your event. With Eventbrite’s audience targeting tool, you can easily identify who’s responding to your ad and tailor your marketing efforts accordingly.

Pro tip: Use Eventbrite to keep track of your email list across multiple events. With our Mailchimp integration, you can send over 10,000 emails a day to nurture leads in between events. This can help grow your audience and increase ticket sales over time.