Selling as many tickets as possible is both a goal and a top stressor for event organizers. If you’ve already deployed all the promotional tactics in your playbook, consider some new ways of expanding your reach.

Learn how to promote an event with these 29 creative event promotion ideas to help skyrocket your ticket sales.

Table of contents

Connect with people who can help promote your event

Promote your event and sell tickets online

Network within your community

Design a thoughtful marketing strategy

Feature exclusive offers at your event

Rely on data for event promotion

Use social media to your advantage

Promote your event with the help of Eventbrite

Connect with people who can help promote your event

Connecting with the right people can help you expand your event’s reach and improve its visibility within your community. Here are a few potential partnership opportunities for your event.

1. Pair up with a sponsor

If you secure a sponsor or two for your event, consider ways to partner with them on promotions and marketing. They have, after all, committed to your event and are interested in its success, so they may be open to cross-promotional opportunities. When discussing a possible event sponsorship, offer ways your event can open promotional opportunities for both of you. The partnership should be mutually beneficial to make the strongest partnership.

2. Hire a brand ambassador or influencer

The highest echelon of “influencer marketing” is the paid brand ambassador. Seek out people with vast online influence — celebrities, subject-matter experts, popular bloggers, and/or YouTube or TikTok stars. Enlist them (typically with financial compensation) to create strategic and timely posts about your event.

Use technology tools like SocialLadder to find, manage, and capitalize on social influencers in your sphere.

3. Invest in professional photography

Eventbrite data shows that the top two online spots people bounce to from an event page are YouTube and Google Images. Are they going to like what they see?

Photographs set a vibe and answer eventgoers’ questions about your event’s atmosphere. Take well-lit photos that appropriately capture the ambiance and illustrate what people can expect at your event. Photography is also crucial for making the other techniques on this list — from advertising to email — more effective.

4. Empower speakers and partners for your promotions

Your speakers, sponsors, and partners have their own audience, waiting to be introduced to your event brand. Make sure you give them blurbs to share on social and imagery they can use to promote your event to their followers. You’re likely to get at least a few new registrants. Give them a tracked registration link so you can tell where your new guests came from.

5. Turn attendees into event ambassadors

You can spend money on hiring a brand ambassador, or you can leverage your event guests to be natural ambassadors. Show them a good time, and you can bet they’ll be sharing their experiences with their friends and colleagues. Take it a step further and provide them with swag, or plenty of Instagram-able and TikTok-able moments; these will become conversation starters and get them singing your praises long after the party has ended. If they have a significantly large network, give them an incentive by offering a personal link to share where they earn a percentage of each ticket sold.

Promote your event and sell tickets online

Use the online space to promote your event in creative and engaging ways. Follow these tips to connect with new audiences.

6. Take advantage of event discovery sites

Eventbrite research shows that over half of urban event-goers look to 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. Then, you can share your Eventbrite event on other promotion websites to reach new audiences. Check out our Ultimate Marketing Guide to see how you can get discovered.

7. Enable native checkout

Once your event is on event discovery sites, make it easy for people to buy tickets without leaving the page using event distribution. The ability to buy tickets wherever event-goers are streamlines the customer experience. This eliminates the risk of ticket buyers getting distracted during checkout or bouncing because of a slow site load.

Events that utilize Facebook’s end-to-end checkout drive 2x more sales and free registrations on average than events redirecting to a ticketing page.

8. Enhance your event email marketing strategy

You might be missing the mark if you’re blasting to your entire 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 in the past versus those who haven’t, or different demographics within your target audience. Then create email campaigns that speak to those smaller groups with specific messages. This is called email targeting, and it’s made easier with email marketing platforms like MailChimp or Emma.

9. Utilize Eventbrite Boost

Improve your online advertising: The best way to promote your events is with Eventbrite Boost — an all-in-one marketing platform designed for event creators. Whether you’re connecting people in person or virtually, for poetry readings or mariachi lessons, cook-alongs or concerts, you’ve got a lot on your plate. Eventbrite Boost makes it easy to reach new people, engage your fans and followers, and grow your attendance — directly from your Eventbrite account.

10. Consider ad retargeting

You might not know the term, but you’re familiar with the technology. You look something up online; days later, you see ads for it on a completely different site.

People who weren’t ready to make a ticket purchase the first time are often grateful for the reminder to sign up before it sells out. Eventbrite organizers have seen an average of 6x return on investment using ad retargeting.

Network within your community

Reach out to other local businesses to build your network and tap into their audience to promote your event.

11. Network at similar events

You’re organizing a brand new technology tradeshow and hoping to entice some of the crowd that’s usually at Salesforce. Why not purchase a booth at Salesforce? Or sponsor a happy hour?

Find events with the same demographics — but that aren’t necessarily direct competitors — and team up with them to promote your upcoming event.

12. Partner with another event

When you partner with other event organizers, you extend your platform and visibility. By joining forces with another event brand that knows how to maneuver the event scene and has an established network, you set yourself up to increase ticket sales by association. Ensure your brand images overlap so your alignment is recognizable to fans of both event brands. A strong relationship can more than double your ticket sales.

13. Donate tickets

Of course, ticket sales are essential, but ticket donations can help develop relationships with other organizations. You’ll also expose your event brand to a different demographic of people who may promote your event and share it with others. What you may have lost in direct sales, you can gain in loyalty and promotion, so set a few tickets aside to offer strategically as gifts!

Design a thoughtful marketing strategy

Think creatively when it comes to marketing your event. Sending a powerful message and using different marketing tools builds interest in your next event.

14. Gear your content marketing efforts toward thought leaders

Create thoughtful content that positions your event brand as a thought leader, a place people turn to for insightful information. You can achieve this by showcasing collaborations with recognized experts in your industry, sharing testimonials from reputable and recognizable names, and building your credibility by producing data-driven content. The more people trust your brand, the more likely they are to share and buy.

15. Explore podcasting

Make podcasting part of your event marketing plan. You only need a good-quality microphone and some recording equipment to reach a wide audience without breaking the bank.

Launch your podcast with a theme that’s relevant to your event or a series. Or, for less effort, become a sponsor or guest speaker for an existing podcast that draws a similar target audience.

Love, Inspire, Teach, Evolve, LLC hosts a happy hour podcast as a promotional tool for the personal and professional development blog and consulting company. The podcast touches on topics relevant to the company and offers an opportunity to engage with listeners.

16. Shift the focus from promotional to conversational

Move away from strict marketing messages with your social media posts. Instead, engage potential ticket-buyers in thoughtful conversations. A good balance is the 4:1:1 Rule — for every promotional post you make, retweet or share a relevant post, and then post four pieces of content written by other people or brands.

Think of it as giving your followers useful content. “Hey guys, did you hear about this?” Build their trust, and they’ll respect your event brand.

Feature exclusive offers at your event

Give your event an exclusive feel with creative offers and VIP experiences that can build interest. Check out these ideas.

17. Limited-time offers

There’s nothing like a limited offer (that will soon be unavailable) to get people to finally input their credit card information to confirm their ticket and space. Make sure you make it sound enticing and clear that the offer will be off the table after a specific time and date. You’ll garner a sense of urgency and a fear of missing out (FOMO) that will help drive sales.

18. Invitation-only sessions

An effective way to attract people who might not otherwise attend your events is to offer an elite VIP package. You can piggyback this with free event entry to encourage mixing and mingling. A VIP presence at your events increases your audience and amplifies your online promotion.

19. Recap the experience

While you promote your limited-time offers and induce FOMO ahead of your event, make sure you don’t miss out on the follow-up posts. Give your attendees — and those who didn’t make it — a view into what the experience was like, and make sure they don’t miss another one!

Rely on data for event promotion

Trust the data when it comes to promoting your event. Keeping track of demographic and ticket sales data can help you focus your marketing to maximize its effectiveness.

20. Integrate your CRM

It’s a lot easier to manage your event community as a whole when the data from your event registrants go directly to your CRM. This will make it easy to segment and market to your attendees and have an organized list of people you can promote to now and later. If your event registration doesn’t have an integration for CRM, it’s time to start thinking about making the switch. Eventbrite happens to offer this feature at no additional cost to you, plus a ton of other free tools that will help you sell more tickets.

21. Connect a web analytics tool to learn from activity

The more you know about how guests found you, the more informed you are in making decisions to promote in the right spaces online. Your registration platform should offer an analytics report and allow you to connect an analytics tool. This gives you valuable data, like how people are getting to your site and what motivates them to stay or purchase.

Research which platforms offer this feature. (Hint: Eventbrite also offers analytics features at no additional cost to you.) Plus, you can try these four strategies to measure your event promotions.

Use social media to your advantage

Social media is an incredible promotional tool — and many opportunities are free. Enlist these social media strategies as event promotion ideas.

22. Tell stories with social media

The Stories features on Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook, along with the live video features available on TikTok, Facebook Live, and YouTube, are potential event marketing strategies.

As you prep for your event, and throughout it, engage your social audiences with in-the-moment insider stories. This is an intimate way to make people feel connected and more inspired to attend.

23. Create an infographic

One of the most effective ways to get your content shared across the web is to develop visually engaging infographics that combine information with entertainment.

The more your content is shared, the more event-goers discover your event; 10-20% of ticket sales typically come through social media.

24. Encourage widespread sharing at your event

Make it easy and enticing for attendees to share photos and videos from your event with their friends at home — potential attendees at your next event.

25. Launch a YouTube channel

YouTube’s popularity and ubiquity make it a perfect place to establish an online presence. You can take advantage of the current demand for live video by streaming your event via YouTube Livein real-time to your audience.

Tap into many creative event marketing ideas for video: sneak peeks, introductions to speakers and sponsors, insight into what participants will gain, or practical tips for how to make the most of the event. If you need some help, attend a webinar where you can learn how to launch a YouTube channel to grow your business. The NYC Department of Small Business Services uses Eventbrite to host these types of webinars.

Snapchat geofilters are a playful way to layer a branded illustration over photos. Social media booths can automatically post pics to Instagram for your attendees. A social media wall displayed on a mega-screen encourages participants to tweet using your custom event hashtag. Or set up a ministudio to inspire some TikTok videos.

26. Utilize social media badges

Your attendees are your biggest fans, so empower your grassroots marketers with badges. When someone buys a ticket or registers for your event, send them a badge or icon they can display on their site or post to social media. Build HTML into these graphics to link viewers back to your event page.

27. Search for lookalike audiences

You have a solid list of people who’ve purchased tickets to your events in the past. You want to find more people just like that.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest all have the technology to help you find target audiences — people who match your buyer profile in terms of demographics, geography, stated interests, and online behavior. Using their algorithms and automated tools, create ads targeted to those exact people.

28. Create an event community

Using social to showcase your past events and promote upcoming ones will get people talking. Take advantage of the chatter by monitoring social, engaging with those discussing it, and using your hashtag to encourage a larger event community. Create a space where people gather, network, and develop relationships that can extend past the individual events you organize.

29. Orchestrate a social media ticket giveaway

This might be as simple as your basic enter-to-win sweepstakes or something more unique and playful: a judged Snapchat drawing contest or a tag-a-friend contest (“Who would you bring?”). People love to share chances to win with their friends. Make sure you study the rules and regulations each social media platform upholds around contests.

Promote your event with the help of Eventbrite

You likely don’t have the marketing bandwidth or budget to institute all of these event promotion ideas at once. But you can identify several ways to promote an event and track your conversions to optimize your marketing. Using measured results, you’ll be able to prioritize those that drive the most sales