Marketing your music events or festivals successfully means that you understand the values and expectations of your target audiences.
To successfully boost ticket sales of your music festival or event, maximizing marketing efforts is just as crucial as organizing the event itself. In this article, we take you through a particular form of marketing-referral programs-and highlight how referral marketing may be exactly what your upcoming event needs.
There are several benefits of referral programs for event promotion. Today, word of mouth marketing is still as relevant as it has been, having stood the test that was brought forth by the mass digitalization of marketing, the world over.
People—influencers—are the best part of your marketing plan. A strong referral program will look to engage with as many influencers as possible to maximize marketing efforts. By partnering with notable, relevant influencers across the available largely-used social platforms such as Instagram, Twitter/X, etc. your event is broadcasted to existing customers that actively engage with influencer pages.
Partnering with the right influencers can boost your event to a target audience you have not yet identified, one that is already interested in attending the type of event you are organizing or promoting.
However, referral marketing is not limited to partnering with influencers exclusively. Setting up your event to feature an in-built referral program opens your marketing efforts to everyone purchasing a ticket. From friends and family to the individual’s social media channels, a strong referral program can incentivize attendees to broadcast your event organically to avail referral incentives, such as discounted tickets or exclusive access and merchandise.
In this article, we take a detailed look at the types of referral programs, ways to set up a successful referral program and talk about why your event could benefit from a referral marketing strategy.
1. Ticket Fairy’s Referral Program
Picture this: Your customers purchase a ticket to your event, and upon successful payment, they are led to a page that confirms their tickets, and offers them a unique code. If they share this code with a pre-set number of friends, who then also successfully buy tickets, they are eligible for up to a full refund on their ticket!
And now, imagine every customer that purchases a ticket shares their unique code with friends and family, urging them to buy tickets as well. Your event stands to benefit greatly here, without even considering the marketing costs you bypassed.
Take it on step further, and offer tiered rewards, allowing buyers to avail a percentage refund of their ticket price if two, or four, or eight tickets are purchased using their unique referral link.
That’s just one of the numerous unique advantages of ticketing with Ticket Fairy. After a ticket buyer purchases a ticket on Ticket Fairy, they are led to a page that allows users to copy their unique promotion link and share the event on their social media, or directly with their friends and family.
You can see what the page and link look like here:
If ticket buyers invite friends to get tickets using their unique link or social media share option here, their ticket becomes cheaper or even free depending on how many people buy a ticket. You can set up these slabs while setting up an event, while Ticket Fairy also provides you with intelligent recommendations.
When ticket buyers see this, they are incentivized to share the event link on their pages without being directly asked to, and they end up automatically promoting the event to an audience that is likely to attend the event – friends and followers with similar interests.
Also Read: Ticket Fairy: An Event Promoter’s Platform
How does this affect the event’s revenue?
According to statistics, we averagely see an increase in ticketing revenue by 20-30%. However, the amount of money refunded never crosses 1% of the event’s total revenue.
So even at a minimized spend, you’ve effectively increased your revenue and reached the most legitimate audience.
2. Influencer Partnerships To Help Boost Event Sales
As we mentioned before, partnering with influencers helps boost ticket sales dramatically. People look to influencers to find out what is new and fresh.
People want to experience something unique and trendy and a personal recommendation from a favorite influencer could bridge the gap seamlessly. Having an influencer endorse your event can bring already loyal customers to purchase tickets.
Include a high-quality ticketing platform that offers a customer referral program and watch your marketing efforts flourish.
Endorsements such as positive feedback for a previous event, positive testimonials of engaging with your brand or announcements for a premium package are some types of content you can create with the influencer.
Base a successful referral on actions such as following both you and the influencer, commenting on a particular post or sharing a story with your event’s hashtag, and offer prizes as incentives for select winners.
From here, you can work to further build personal relationships with your event’s audience to leverage your newly-acquired follower base for coming events.
3. Think About Your Target Audience
When you partner with a specific social media influencer, they bring a particular audience demographic to your music event or festival. For example, if you partner with a social media influencer that is popular amongst the older Gen-Z audience on social media, you are able to pull in a definite audience demographic.
You can then create a marketing plan and referral campaign that caters to the values, interests, and aesthetics that is popular with that specific audience. With your marketing tailored to a specific audience, you can ensure a certain amount of excitement and attention for your music event or festival. It also helps you better plan for specific activities at the event, set-up, and other creative aspects of your event.
Also Read: How To Leverage Event Themes Into A Cohesive Marketing Strategy
Refer a friend campaigns are also a unique opportunity to engage with your audience. Encourage customers to refer a friend when they purchase tickets across the content included in your campaign. Spread the word using paid advertising on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. You could even consider traditional advertising whilst broadcasting your event’s referral program.
The best customer referral program ideas come from a clear understanding of your target audience. Set your event apart with high-quality advertising content that draws focus on your referral program and watch the power of word of mouth marketing boost your sales to success.
4. Consider Offering Additional Referral Rewards
If you’re using a platform like Ticket Fairy for your event ticketing, tracking ticket sales becomes extremely easy. You also gain insight into some of your event’s top ‘influencers,’ awarded to the highest referring ticket buyers for your event.
Use this data to reward top referrers with special prizes such as early access to ticket sales for your next event, or add-ons to their tickets for your current event. A strong rewards system is key to satisfied customers, and a seamless referral process can benefit your event greatly.
Specifically for influencer partnerships, offering referral rewards can bring in even the most undecided customers. Think about setting tiers to the level of engagement you expect from your audience and decide on rewards across each tier to entice your growing audience to particpate.
With Instagram’s Stories feature to allow users to share links, broadcasting a unique referral link becomes an easy way for customers to avail discounts on their tickets. Urge your audience to share across all their social media pages, and make sure to inform them of the different ways to do so. Highlight the group discounts your event offers to further drive sales.
Tips for a successful referral program:
Here are a couple of things that you can plan for to maximize the reach of your event promotion referral marketing strategy.
Select a High-Quality Ticketing Platform To Handle Your Online Referral Program
Using a platform like Ticket Fairy to build your referral program will enable you to focus on the creative and/or actionable parts of your campaign while the platform handles the process and crunches the data for you. Track every successful referral in real-time, gain insights into existing customers and think about your event’s referral incentives in a tiered format.
Consider Announcements For Successful Referrals on Your Social Media Pages
Potential customers would be even more keen to share your event further if they can actively watch the system gain traction. Spread the word when a particular tier of tickets sells out and think about including a list of top referrers.
You could even make an announcement to your audience for how many referrals have already taken place, or share a post walking potential buyers through the steps to successfully generate and share their referral codes.
Include Influencer Partnerships To Generate More Referrals
Influencers that already have their own loyal customers can compete with traditional advertising methods for a fraction of the cost. Partner with influencers that are on-brand for your event, or even consider appointing brand ambassadors that can engage with attendees during the event.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a referral program for a live music event?
A referral program for a live music event is a marketing strategy that encourages buyers to refer a friend to the event, offering incentives to the original buyer for successful referrals they generate.
What is a referral marketing strategy?
Effective referral marketing combines the various types of advertising and partnerships available to craft a campaign that is tailored to a particular event. This could mean everything from a strong platform to host the event’s referral tracking, to tiered rewards and curated social media posts.
Why does my event need a referral program?
Every live event can benefit greatly from a referral program. Referral programs use your buyers to circulate word of your event, encouraging them to share their unique referral link to close friends and family in order to avail discounts on their tickets, and more rewards.
Using Ticket Fairy’s proven referral program, your event can see sales boosted by 20-30%, with the total spend on referral refunds amounting to mere 1% of your event’s total revenue.
How should I set up a referral program for my event?
First, identify the scope and size of your event attendance and decide on a tier-based scale for referrals. For example, if your event will have approximately one-hundred attendees, you may find that rewarding between 2-8 referrals fits your strategy best. Or, for a large scale event, you could opt to maximize the number of referrals for buyers to be eligible for a full refund of their ticket.
Once you have set a tiered refund scale for your referral program, the next step is selecting a powerful system, like Ticket Fairy, to manage the technical side of your referral process. Utilizing an intelligent and user-friendly referral tracking system will bridge the gap between browsers and buyers.
What are the benefits of a referral program for live music events?
Referral programs rely on the age-old word of mouth marketing method to boost engagement, and in turn, sales. By using a well-equipped referral software, you minimize the hand-on online management of your referral program, leaving the technical aspects to the software you have chosen. A seamless process directly translates to turnovers in sales.
You May Also Like:
Boost Event Sales: Master Pixel Tracking for Ticket Conversions
The Best Event Ticketing Software of 2023 – Price and Feature Comparison
How Planning A Multifaceted Digital Strategy Enhances The Marketing Of Your Music Event
