Let’s face it, everyone loves free stuff! For an event organizer, ticket giveaways and contests can be a great way to increase event revenue and event awareness.
We’ve outlined a few benefits to consider when deciding if ticket or merchandise giveaways are for you.
Create extra buzz around your event.
Ticket giveaways can create continued engagement with your fans even if the event is already sold out. Fans who did not get tickets will appreciate having another chance. For events that are not sold out, plan to run your ticket giveaway after sales have slowed down. It will reinvigorate the conversation around your event, resulting in a bump in ticket sales from the audience that wasn’t lucky enough to win your giveaway!
Strengthen your social media presence.
Employ a giveaway or contest series that stretches over a period of time, such as holding a ticket giveaway once a week for a month. Be sure to promote it across all social platforms. A series of giveaways encourages fans to check your social profiles and website often – they could be the lucky winner! After the contest is over, fans can continue to follow your updates, interact with your content, and buy tickets to future events.  Â
Expand your email list for future promotions.
Contests and giveaways provide you with another tool to collect data about your customers to use in the future. Set-up forms with email address fields and question fields so you can collect relevant information. You’ll be able to market to these fans in the future and use the collected information for advertising.
Increase awareness for your event.
Choosing to offer merchandise can be mutually beneficial to your event’s image and your customer. You give away one t-shirt and you’ve gained a happy customer wearing your logo – who makes a better brand ambassador than that? Keep in mind — giveaways are much more exciting if the items you offer are limited or one-of-a-kind to the contest. Offer a specially designed event hat, or a never-before-released t-shirt design for the contest. After the contest is over, sell the rest of the limited supply online for another stream of revenue!