To make the most of your marketing and event budget, you need to understand what makes today’s digital economy tick. Most of us are already aware of the many changes driven by the digital economy but in this article, we’re going to focus on one in particular: customer-centricity. One of the key factors that differentiates the major e-commerce players from their competitors is their relentless focus on the customer.

Netflix changed the landscape of how we consume entertainment. Remember how you used to go to the video rental store on a Friday night? You’d choose a DVD, head back home and then rush back the next day to avoid those late fees. Now, those video stores have become extinct due to the convenience of Netflix’s on-demand service. Netflix became a giant in the home entertainment market by focusing on improving customer experience.
 
In the same way, Amazon changed the landscape of the retail industry. Bookstores fell like dominoes following Amazon’s launch of the Kindle – along with the fact that Amazon’s scale enabled them to sell books at massively discounted rates. Bookstores weren’t the only victims of Amazon’s innovations – electronic stores, fashion stores and discount stores have all been affected. Again, Amazon’s focus on improving customer experience by introducing a ‘one click’ buyers button and easy to use platform sent them to the top of the retail industry.
 
How does all this help an organiser create, market and sell their event?
 
The content of any event will always be key, but it’s important to note that the customer experience is also vital to sell out. It might sound pedantic, but every detail about your attendee experience matters. This experience begins with the initial discovery of the event, through to the online ticket purchase, all the way to arrival at the event and of course the experience of the event itself.
 
For the purpose of selling more tickets, let’s focus on the process of event discovery through to ticket purchase. What should you as an organiser do to optimise this purchase experience?
 
Conversion is the key metric to understanding how to optimise your purchase flow, and by extension improve your return on investment and boost ticket sales. A strong conversion rate drives incremental ticket sales without a corresponding increase in your marketing budget. For example:
 
You’re selling tickets to your next show. You know the following pieces of information from your last show:
  • It costs – on average – £200 of marketing budget to drive 100 people to your website (expenditure).
  • Your conversion rate is 3%
  • Your tickets cost £75
 Example 1 – 3% conversion rate
 
  • Gross ticket sales from a 3% conversion rate on 100 people (3% x 100 = 3 ticket sales) = £225
  • Your profit = Gross ticket sales – Expenditure OR £225 – £200 = £25

At this stage, many organisers choose to increase their marketing budget. But the other option is to improve your conversion rate. In the same example, let’s look at how increasing conversion by 2 percentage points can improve your ROI.

Example 2 – 5% conversion rate

  • Gross Ticket sales from a 5% conversion rate on 100 people (5% x 100 = 5 ticket sales) = £375
  • Your profit: £375 – £200 = £175
 In this example, a 2% lift in conversion increases profit from £25 to £175. That’s a 600% increase in profit! Now apply that line of logic on an already high volume of ticket sales. So how does this work? How can an event organiser improve their conversion?
 
As I highlighted at the start of this article, all the major e-commerce organisations have put their customers first by providing a simple to use, customer-centric platform. The rules of improving conversion in the ticketing industry are the same. It’s all about putting the customer first when designing the online purchase flow and attendee experience.
 
The first area of focus is how your attendees find your tickets. As an organiser, you’ll want to get your tickets in front of as many potential attendees as possible. This means you’ll want good distribution partners.  Where is your audience at the moment? Most event organisers will more than likely answer that with Facebook – so get your tickets onto Facebook. You’ll also want your event to appear as high as possible in Google search results. Ensure you work with a ticketing provider that can help make this possible. Once you’re happy with how your tickets can be found, you now have to move onto how the tickets are purchased. Here are a few factors to look out for:
 
What decreases conversion?
  • A longer page load time. How often have you given up on a website when the load time is longer than what you’re used to?
  • Extra steps in the purchase flow. For every additional step past step 3, there is typically a 10% decrease in the rate of conversion
  • Forced logins. Most companies use forced logins to ensure they’re collecting data, but that’s not exactly a customer-centric approach.
  • A clunky or awkward purchase flow. Ensure your purchase flow is smooth, looks good and reflects your brand.
  • Unnecessary questions and information requests. Don’t overload your registration form with unnecessary details. Remember that after your attendee has purchased a ticket, you can send a follow-up email with secondary information.
 What improves conversion?
  • Pre-populated data without a forced login. Companies like Eventbrite have introduced a soft account creation where we pre-populate fields with data from previous purchases.
  • A short, simple, concise purchase flow.
Instead of pumping more and more into your marketing budget, take a minute to consider how well your purchase flow is performing. Realise that today’s digital economy is all about putting the customer first. That is the key to selling out your event today.
 
To see this theory in practice, check out how Eventbrite helped the Sony Awards improve their ticket sales by lifting their conversion rates.