Boost Attendance to Live Events with Coupons
Give your patrons the excitement of finding a bargain while boosting your attendance and revenue with coupons.
Prime Day and Black Friday generate frenzied shopping for one reason: we all love a good deal.
Coupons encourage attendance for live events.
With so many entertainment options, some people need an extra push to get them to commit to attending live events. Coupons can be that extra push. Even internationally followed artists offer coupons and discount codes when events aren’t selling as well as they would like. For instance, a dual concert bill of Garbage and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds recently offered a BOGO coupon for General Admission tickets in Denver. Everyone benefitted. The artists had a much larger and enthusiastic crowd; the venue made more money from the increased attendance, and attendees had a great time at a fun show that they might not have attended without the discount.
Patrons get excited by coupons as they provide the following:
- Affordability: Attending live performances can often feel exclusionary because of the daunting prices. Coupons lower that economic barrier encouraging a broader audience for your performances.
- Incentives: Exclusive discounts and coupons encourage people to attend an event they may have otherwise overlooked.
- Excitement: Limited-time offers and exclusive discounts create a sense of urgency and buzz around an event.
Organizations reap the benefits of coupons because they insure the following:
- Increased attendance: Discounts boost attendance and sales.
- Social Media Amplification: In addition to patrons posting to their social media feeds about their excitement of saving some money on a performance, coupons can be shared digitally, which automatically broadens the reach of your performance and increases excitement and attendance.
Coupons hone your marketing strategies.
Coupons, whether in the form of digital codes or hard copies, provide a gateway to new audience members and help fill your empty seats. They also let you know which of your advertising strategies work best. For instance, you can use different coupon codes for each of your different advertising platforms to see which is most effective. The hard copy coupons you distribute at local businesses could show the code 123ABC while your Instagram account could use 987DFG and Facebook would use a different code like 123DFG. When patrons purchase tickets using their code, the data is automatically accessible for you and your marketing strategists to track which techniques and platforms resulted in the most ticket purchases.
Implement a successful coupon strategy and boost attendance.
Before you provide coupon options to your patrons, do the following:
- Decide the amount and duration of your discount. Will it be a dollar amount or a percentage? Will it be for the whole run of a show or for a few performances?
- Think about the purpose of your discount: Is it broadly to fill empty seats or to reward past purchases and encourage patron loyalty?
- Analyze which demographics you are missing from your nightly performances: What strategies and discounts does research say will attract them?
Start small and give some of these ideas a try.
- Boost attendance by offering coupons for limited performances or during periods of low attendance, such as opening night or Sunday evenings.
- Create excitement by offering fun BOGO offers such as Two for Tuesdays.
- Customize coupons that target different demographics, such as students or seniors, to yield better results.
- Work with local businesses to create mutually beneficial discounts and excitement. For instance, encourage people to make a night of it by providing discounts on a show and a two-for-one drink or meal offer at a local restaurant, such as Wine Down Wednesdays.
Contact us to guide you through a successful coupon strategy. While starting a new strategy can be daunting, we have tried and true methods to make the most of using digital coupons to create excitement, increase attendance, and boost revenue.
