Ho-Ho-Holden's Holiday Event Guide
It’s Holiday Season and Holden’s here to give you some tips on having your event and your stress level stay merry and bright. The winter holiday season is a highly saturated market when it comes to events. Holden’s here to give you some tactics on your audience, social media, and event execution strategies.
Defining Your Audience
When defining your audience for the holiday season, you should start by defining your event. Whether it’s a full Die Hard Christmas 5k or an event that fits into more of the traditional scheme, defining your audience is the first step to your marketing plan.
Do you have last year’s admission data for your event? Check and see if you already have their emails or zip codes and you can re-target your past attendees. With HoldMyTicket’s Spark CRM, you can pull up past patron data in a matter of minutes.
How far is your audience traveling from? Will they need lodging accommodations? You can think about partnering up with a local hotel to offer package deals and set up a partnered email marketing or billboard campaign.
Is your audience local? We’re living in the age of digital, but traditional media buys like radio and tv still go a long way. See if you can partner up with your local news stations - they usually have advertising packages you can work with and will generally send a crew out and create the commercial for you.
Holiday Event Social Media Tips
Upload your event to social media at least 1-2 months before the event. By doing this, you will increase your organic reach and have the ability to designate your marketing dollars to other avenues. Tip: HoldMyTicket’s platform will automatically upload your event to your Facebook page, website, and other RSS calenders with all your event details, ticket link, and event images.
Post on your Facebook event page and Instagram at least once a week up to a month before your event. In the two-weeks prior, post in the event two to three times a week. If you have over 10,000 followers on Instagram, use your story swipe up feature to link tickets. Our best practices are to post two times a week to your story a month leading up the event and three to four times two-weeks prior.
Work with promoters and local influencers to get their followings to purchase tickets. You can try to find local micro-influencers to see if they can post about your event. Sometimes you can get them to come for free tickets and swag, but sometimes you’ll have to negotiate a contract.
Track people who are going to your site with Facebook Pixel or Google Tag Manager. When you place your Facebook Pixel on your site and set up event triggers (ex: event trigger for an abandoned cart), you can create “look-a-like audiences” and place ads to target those specifically who have visited your site or abandoned their cart. Tip: When uploading your event when using HoldMyTicket, you can add in your GTM and FB Pixel UI codes and we’ll connect your tags to our event ticket page.
Event Execution
1. Hire a Professional Decorator
If you’re throwing a Shop and Stroll, Holiday party, or anything that you envision garland for, hire a decorator! When you hire a decorator, you will never have to worry about being the one who’s going and purchasing hundreds of dollars in decorations at Hobby Lobby, hoping for the best when you climb the ladder in 20º, and then throwing a fit because you didn’t like the way it turned out. Your decorator should make your Holiday event look like a Christmas Carol. Bonus if they can do lighting too.
2. Heaters
If you’re having an outdoor event, make sure you have portable heaters around the area. You don’t want people leaving your event because they are too cold. If your event is indoors, double-check that the heat is working, but make sure it’s not getting too hot. Nothing is more uncomfortable than being stuck inside a room wearing your winter sweaters with 200 other people.
3. Weather Check
The weather can be spontaneous, so make sure you have a backup plan in case of bad weather. Make sure to include a weather disclaimer in your cancelation or return policy.
4. Think Outside the Box
The Holiday season is saturated with Holiday events. How can you make yours stand out? You can beat this by creating a niche event or something that you see your community getting involved with.
4. Delegate
Don’t take the whole event on your shoulders. Make sure you and your team have a list of tasks that each person needs to get done. Last-minute fires are bound to happen, but it’s best to stay proactive.
