How to sell-out your concert venue?

Organ­is­ing con­certs usu­al­ly boils down to THE main ques­tion: How will I fill my venue? This very rel­e­vant mat­ter deserves our atten­tion con­sid­er­ing it is a nec­es­sary con­di­tion to the longevi­ty of your con­cert venue. Many venues use Weezevent to sell their tick­ets. Here, we list our best tips to attract atten­dees and retain your audi­ence.

Con­tents

1. Play the local card
2. Take con­trol of your tick­et­ing
3. Offer attrac­tive prices
4. Com­mu­ni­cate on the right chan­nels

1. Play the local card

Con­cert venues rarely attract an audi­ence liv­ing more than a cou­ple of hours away. With­out being too chau­vin­is­tic, sched­ule local artists and add local ref­er­ences to your cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tion mate­r­i­al.

In addi­tion to geo­graph­ic prox­im­i­ty you can play on human prox­im­i­ty too. Your audi­ence is not just cus­tomers. They are above all pas­sion­ate, inquis­i­tive peo­ple — just like you! Speak to them as equals, using the appro­pri­ate tone and words. Hav­ing a friend­ly impres­sion of your venue will make them want to come back. The con­cert expe­ri­ence is more holis­tic than peo­ple think. The friend­li­ness of the staff, the com­fort lev­el of the venue, and the appre­ci­a­tion of a loy­al audi­ence mat­ter.

2. Take control of your ticketing

In sell­ing your con­certs tick­ets your­self via a tick­et­ing plat­form, you have access to mul­ti­ple fea­tures while main­tain­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty on who your audi­ence is: num­ber of peo­ple, time of pur­chase, etc. Using a self-dis­tri­b­u­tion solu­tion such as Weezevent allows you to add your tick­et­ing to your web­site in a few clicks, which means your cus­tomers don’t need to leave your web­site.

If you don’t have a web­site, we give you the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate a min­isite quick­ly and turn it into a valu­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool. Your tick­et­ing gives a first impres­sion of your con­cert, it should there­fore grab your audience’s atten­tion. There, you can include all your use­ful infor­ma­tion and set the tone for your con­cert. You can immerse your audi­ence in the atmos­phere of your con­cert using words, colours, pic­tures and videos. In addi­tion, the link to your min­isite can be shared eas­i­ly on all your com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels. It would be a shame not to use it!

3. Offer attractive prices

Pre-sales sys­tems and ear­ly bird prices are well known of con­cert-goers. Put your tick­ets on sale at dis­count­ed prices dur­ing a lim­it­ed time to encour­age your audi­ence to buy theirs quick­ly. Then, grad­u­al­ly increase the price to reach the full price, with more or less tiers depend­ing on the length of your sales peri­od and your sales pol­i­cy. This will help you sell over a longer time and will decrease your uncer­tain­ty in terms of fill rate.

4. Communicate on the right channels

The pletho­ra of avail­able com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels can be dizzy­ing. Rather than try­ing to use all of them to attract a max­i­mum num­ber of peo­ple, we rec­om­mend that you choose the most rel­e­vant based on your tar­get audi­ence, its habits and inter­ests. You will prob­a­bly not have enough time to cov­er every­thing and your audi­ence is not present on all com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels any­way.

An inspiring blog

On your web­site, post about your sched­uled artists, news about your venue, the stage design, the sound sys­tem, etc. You can also inter­view the artists and get them to share your con­tent on their social media.

Unique social media

Social media are too pop­u­lar today for you not to be there. Start with cre­at­ing a Face­book event for each con­cert, spec­i­fy­ing all the infor­ma­tion that your audi­ence will need to know: date, price, loca­tion, use­ful info, etc. Add a direct link to your tick­et­ing on the event page, and on your Face­book page.

About your Face­book page, make sure that you reg­u­lar­ly cre­ate con­tent to grow and retain your audi­ence. Fol­low the trends that work on these media to pique the inter­est of peo­ple who don’t know you. Be care­ful not to be too sim­i­lar to oth­ers and copy-paste things that work. Adapt your con­tent to your venue’s brand­ing, its his­to­ry and its authen­tic­i­ty. Stand out!

Cre­at­ing video con­tent is a very good way to stand out on social media and fill your con­cert venue. You can even add it to your ad cam­paigns on Face­book and Insta­gram as well as all oth­er chan­nels list­ed below.

Final­ly, cre­at­ing com­pe­ti­tions encour­ag­ing many peo­ple to like your posts will boost your expo­sure for a while.

Targeted emails

Thanks to a tick­et­ing solu­tion like Weezevent, you have all your audi­ence mem­bers’ email address­es. You can there­fore send them reminder emails when­ev­er you sched­ule a con­cert they might be inter­est­ed in. Tar­get them based on the con­certs they have pre­vi­ous­ly attend­ed and increase your chances to con­vince them.

Regular press relations

As a local/regional con­cert venue, you rep­re­sent your geo­graph­ic area. Local media — online or off — can there­fore be con­sid­ered as poten­tial part­ners. You can bring pos­i­tive things to one anoth­er. They are an impor­tant relay of infor­ma­tion for your con­certs, and you can give them a fair num­ber of news that would inter­est their read­ers. Get in touch with them on a reg­u­lar basis, either using press releas­es or in a more infor­mal way.

Local poster campaigns

This com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool can hard­ly fight the advance­ment of tech­nol­o­gy and social media. How­ev­er, depend­ing on your bud­get and abil­i­ty to pro­duce attrac­tive visu­als, you should con­sid­er dis­play­ing posters around your con­cert venue. Tar­get neigh­bour­ing streets, as a reminder to the locals.

All of these tech­niques seem tedious? Join the great­est con­cert venues in France and use Weezevent to organ­ise your shows — just click on the but­ton below:

Find out more