PROMOGOGO is built for the person whose job it is to sell tickets. There are two aspects to that process: (1) know what your ticket sales to spot potential trouble and then (2) execute an appropriate sales strategy. Often the issue is not enough marketing, so people don't know about the event or the right people are not being reached. To meet this need, building a marketing campaign is what needs to happen.
A Modern Marketing Campaign
It's clear that it's not enough to just post campaigns on social media and expect your message to spread organically. The name of the game has become paid advertising on social media, which brings your event to a wider audience than just the hardcore fans. However there is one thing we have found, and that is just promoting directly the ticket website link is missing something absolutely crucial.
It's missing context for those who don't already have a clear idea of the act. Most artists, unless they're selling to their hardcore fans, need to give even if it's just a little bit of context about what is happening. And the truth is, there are a lot of people prepared to go to live shows even if they're not hardcore fans of the specific artist. It doesn't take a lot, just a little bit of atmosphere and basic info ("catch a Zeppelin-like rock'n'roll show this weekend"), of course with the listings and an option to get tickets right away.
Social media is really only optimised for one link per post, at most – so it's hard to include a video, a blurb, a photo and the ticket links. Having full control of the audience experience with a landing page means you can convey all the relevant information and add media content for atmosphere and vibe which is much more compelling than a simple "Buy Tickets" in someone's Facebook feed.
Build-Your-Own page, inside Promogogo
So we built a landing-page-builder, where any person can put together a landing page of this nature.
To us, nothing was more important than making sure that putting together the landing page would be as easy as creating content for social media. There is no coding that takes place anywhere, everything is modular (see more about that here) so you just pick the element you need and then add your own content whether that's photos, videos or text.
Because we are focused on the world of live events, including the listings is absolutely critical. We've secured safe data connections with major ticket services like Ticketmaster and Eventbrite which means whatever listings you already have, may add later or have to delete, will automatically update on any landing page created using Promogogo. Further, all listings will be automatically displayed based on the location of the person who is on the page to create the best buying experience for your visitors.
And then finally, any clicks to the landing page itself, and the clicks on the ticket links, and the ticket sales themselves (needs to be set up first) are tracked so you know exactly how effective your efforts are.
These are basically a modern version of band-posters from back in the day, but with trackable clicks. See what these can look like with these two examples: pt I has description of all the elements used and pt II is an example of what the final product can look like.
Dead simple, yet very effective.
What's more, is if you have set up your account so that it connects to your Eventbrite/Ticketmaster listings, these simple posters can be auto-generated. From the ticket services, Promogogo can access not just the event listings but also photo assets and more, so you can simply press the 'build a poster' button to have your page ready to share right away.
...so like a CMS you mean?
It turns out in order to make event posters that are effective, you already have all the elements to make an exceptional website. To a technical person, what's being described here is a user-friendly content management system. While we have built features for what a promoter would need to sell more tickets, Promogogo is a platform meaning you can host whatever content you like.
The modular nature of the page-builder, where it's super easy to add text, photo, video – and any embeds, like a playlist or social media posts and buttons and whatever you want makes it super fun to piece content together. It becomes a little bit addicting to pick whatever elements you want to add whatever content your heart desires.
Keep it simple and basic like a personal blog or podcast, or even entire media entities on there. Here are three examples of websites that are hosted on Promogogo that don't have all that much to do with music.
In terms of look and style: create a template to have a consistent look and feel throughout, or custom make each page, that is up to you. You can create footers, navigation bars, templates and other editorial elements so if you're focused on something bigger than just simple landing pages to promote a show.
Because of how every element is modular, it all works perfectly for any reader no matter what device they are using.
Why bother when social media exists?
Having been in the ticketing industry since before there were iPhones, here's the single most important thing we have observed about ticket sales. A brand is what sells tickets. That's it.
The best way to sell tickets it by already having such a giant brand (Guns N' Roses, Ariana Grande, Glastonbury etc) that people are tripping over themselves to get tickets. If you're not there already, you need to be a bit more clever. How can you make your event compelling, even if people don't necessarily know all that much about you?
Well, step one is to have the story you're telling, your story exists –somewhere, literally anywhere– where the SEO-machines can find them. We think it matters more than ever to have a solid home somewhere on the internet that is outside the algorithmically driven platforms, like social media has become. Scandals around Facebook and YouTube in recent years show the importance for creators to have a home somewhere online for their audience to find them outside any single given platform.
We know this is true, because we have tested this on entities big and small. Journalists like using it when we hosted INTO (before Grindr was bought by the Chinese) and laying out practical information clearly turns out to reach people way beyond following numbers on any social platform, like our project with Talent Unlimited demonstrated.
We wanted to test the campaign building we preach on a small scale to see if it works so Habbi put together a campaign using only pages made in the page-builder laying out the programming for a classical music festival in London that was brand new and so had no name recognition. We believe that being clear about what you're doing, and then making sure people can find the information is not just powerful and effective (the festival sold out) but also something many people overlook. For a charity with an audience size of 611 people on Facebook when we started the 26 posters we made were engaged with over 18 thousand times and their Facebook following grew to 888 likes over the period, a growth of 45% in three months. And there was actually no ad spend behind that, it turns out people who care about classical music festivals are also curious about what's being played by whom and at what time and how to get there.
It's easy to assume that everyone knows what you know, but that is just not the case. We have become so siloed in our echo chambers, so if you're able to break outside of the silo you're used to interacting with, it's literally never been more important to then give this 'new person' the context they need to know what you're about. This is why we are such strong believers in the page-builder.
It's fun to use, sure; but it is also very effective this internet. It's not hard to learn how it works, and when you have, you can do whatever you want with it.