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Sometime in July 2023, I attended an event tagged Lagos Creators’ Week (LCW). It was a full week of activities, but I only attended one event named ‘The Creator Con’. Before this event, I had only attended 2 other events (unrelated) since the beginning of the year. Coming from someone who does not just buy any event ticket, I’m here to explain why I was persuaded to buy this one.
This article is for you if you’re trying to get your event tickets to sell out fast, but you don’t know what method to use and decisions to make. There is a process to follow for this, and your No. 1 goal should be to build anticipation.
To anticipate is to have high expectations for something.
Most times, we try to sell based on the benefit of our product. This is value based selling, and it works, mostly in the long-term.
But if you want to sell fast, within a short time frame, you need to sell the fear of missing out plus the positive feeling associated with your product
So, how do you build anticipation that leads to sales?
Here are a few learnings from my LCW experience:
- Make noise, but in the right places.
Anticipation starts with awareness. Your audience needs to know what your event is about and why they should attend. If it’s a product, first articulate what it does and the benefits to the user. When you have that, it’s time to publicize it.
Know where your audience is. If it’s social media, would Instagram be better? or LinkedIn, or Whatsapp groups, or Facebook? Don’t choose randomly. You can also take it offline by distributing physical fliers, using billboards or other traditional advertising tools. But make sure it will reach your target audience. Do some research so you don’t waste cash publicizing on the wrong channels.
2. Create structure (from noise to waitlists to creator stories to experience calendar to emails of price up)
Your noise should have structure. Create a flow or funnel that your audience will pass from being an onlooker to a ticket buyer. This funnel should consist of different levels of communication in the pre-event stage.
For LCW, I first came in contact with their content through an Instagram ad. Being a creative who was curious, the thought of an event solely for creators caught my eye. I saw the ad at least three times before eventually I followed their page. It was somehow documentary-like, and promised to tell the story of African creatives like never before. I couldn't resist.
The Waitlist
About a week or two later, LCW posted content requesting their followers to join the official waitlist for the event. I had no idea what the activities would be yet. But they promised special offers and gifts for people who joined the waitlist before the list of events for the week was released. Get your audience to commit with the promise of an incentive.
The form to join the waitlist had an additional but compulsory question which was easy to answer (I’ll explain more on this in the next point). I received email confirmation after I was added to the waitlist.
UGC - Creator Stories
After a week or two, LCW used User Generated Content (UGC) to populate Instagram page. The questions they asked while I filled out the waitlist form were posted on their page (with my consent) and then I got to see other people who, like me, were anticipating the event too.
These were called ‘Creator Stories’ and features a 2-image carousel. The first had the tagline ‘why we create’, the person's picture, and the second image showed their answer to the question ‘why do you create?’. They also tagged each person per post, so it would appear on their feed as well.
Of course this tripled my excitement. But tickets weren't even on sale yet.
The Experience Calendar
The next thing was the ‘Experience Calendar’ which showed the details about all the LCW events for the week, activities, locations, times, and which ones were free or paid.
Now here’s the catch - the event that looked the most promising for me - the Creator Con – required paid tickets. And some part of me just knew that I had come some way with this and I wanted to see it through. But then, I rarely attend paid events.
I didn’t pay immediately. I still had some indecision in me. Plus, they still hadn’t opened the portal for ticket sales (the nerve!). There was a gap of a few days for people to go through the calender and decide what they wanted to attend and then get ready for payment. Payments opened 12 noon the Saturday of that same week, and emails kept reminding me to pay early enough before tickets ran out.
They got me there, I must confess. I paid the N10,000 ticket price the same day the portal opened.
Creating more Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO)
The organizers did two things to make me feel like this was an opportunity not worth missing.
The first was a price slash. Let me mention here that those on the waitlist got an exclusive email with a discount code of 50% (for the Creator Con). So, the main price was N20,000, but I paid half using the discount code. Of course this made me feel like if I was attending a similar event elsewhere, I would have paid more.
This ramped up my perceived value for the Creator Con.
The second tactic was that after a few days of opening up ticket sales, they jacked up the price by 50%, now making tickets cost N30,000. They notified us 24 hours or so before this, and I’m sure those who hadn’t bought yet had to decide faster if they would attend or not.
You need to make your audience resolve to attend your event, sooner than usual. Don’t allow them to decide slowly, on their own.
- Tell a story, but through the eyes of your audience
Let’s go back a bit to the waitlist experience. The additional question on the waitlist form I filled asked me ‘Why do you Create?’. Remember, people don’t like forms with too many questions. So I could have easily skipped this question or put a dummy answer just to submit.
But I took my time to think and answer it. Why?
The question sounded like the organizers were interested in me, and what I do. I would have never assumed they wanted to put the answer on socials. I thought they just wanted to tailor the experience to better suit me, so I gave a genuine answer.
When curating an event, make your audience feel like they are part of it, that you really want to understand who they are, so you can solve their problems better.
It didn’t stop there.
Weeks later, I received an Instagram message from the organizers saying they wanted to share my response, and they needed a picture for it. I couldn’t focus on anything else until I sent that picture (which took me almost hours to decide on by the way). They shared a lot of creator stories on their Instagram and tagged the individual creator for each post.
It felt so good to be on their IG page and part of their pre-event journey.
- Maintain multiple communication channels
Selecting the right channel(s) is super important for an event, not just for creating awareness but also for communicating all through the different stages of the funnel. The most important channel is a website. I don’t mean having a page on Eventbrite or any event publicizing site. Create a website (or webpage of an existing website) just for the event.
It should have every possible info the customer will need when you want them to have it. What I mean here is don’t put out info until it’s time to do so, according to your plan (for example, how the Experience Calendar and payment link were released late to build anticipation).
When that is done, you can leverage other event sites like Event Brite If you like. Obviously, you should avoid this if you want automomy over your ticket sales.
The next channel is social media. For LCW organizers, it was mainly Instagram (for what I know). This was where we got news updates first, got to meet our ‘Creator in Chief’, where our creator stories were posted, etc.
And don’t forget emails. I got consistent updates from the time I joined the waitlist up until the day of the event, and even afterwards. There was no information regarding the event that didn’t come to my mail and my Instagram feed. I was kept in the loop.
Choose a channel where your audience can easily see and respond to information. You can post event changes on your website, but you need to cascade to other channels that your audience interacts with daily.
Also, make sure there’s someone on standby to respond to questions, complaints, and comments at least within 24 hours.
In essence, treat your event like a business. You wouldn’t leave your customers hanging for too long, would you?
Leveraging your audience post-event
As a side note, when you follow the right steps to build anticipation for your event, you can leverage your platforms for a future event. Your audience will still be subscribed to your email, and you still have access to them on social media. Meaning you can communicate another event without spending as much to gain attention.
However, this won’t work if you did not meet their expectations in the first event. For my experience at LCW, I’ll reserve my comments on whether the Creator Con met my expectations or not. But still, it built anticipation and converted the average frugal Nigerian to an attendee, and that is worth writing a case study on.