Christopher BarrettMustard Media senior strategist Rory Palmer-Rowe provides guidelines on how to market live events to young audiences.
The famous Scottish poet Andrew Lang once said, ‘Most people use statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost; more for support than illumination’.
As someone who has witnessed kicking out time at Glasgow’s infamous Sub Club, I might have been inclined to agree with Mr. Lang.
However, as event marketers we need to stay agile to reach and connect with our audiences and the following four statistics should not be ignored:
40% of Gen Z is using TikTok over Google (Source: Google).
What does this mean for your event? In a nutshell, you need to be on TikTok.
We get a lot of push back from event clients: “We’re a premium brand, we don’t do silly dances” or “we’re a small team, we don’t have time to create content for yet another platform”.
Try this:
- Search for your event within the search function on the platform, it’s likely that there are people posting about you. Repurpose this UGC as content by using in-app features or audio trends.
- Curate the best online video content of your acts and repost it. Just make sure to credit the source.
84% of consumers ‘like it when content from brands is not perfect (Meta).
A hangover from the heights of Instagram filters and Photoshop, perfection fatigue is driving a culture that celebrates the unpolished and real. People are bored of airbrushed images and highly edited aftermovies.
Try this:
- Capture content on your mobile in 9:16 (that’s portrait for us non-techy folk)
- Ditch the costly postproduction and motion graphics. Instead, use the in-app captions and stickers.
- Repurpose UGC, for example the Top 5 Moments At..
People spend on average 1.7 seconds with a piece of content on mobile compared to 2.5 seconds on desktop (Meta).
Your content needs to stop your viewers’ thumbs in their tracks. This is not the time for long intros or slow atmospheric drone shots.
Try this:
- Use visual cues without the need for audio (subtitles, captions).
- Start with a written hook, for example 5 Reasons To… or Did You Know…?
- Open with customer, artist or press testimonials.
- Save the calls to action for the end, and instead open with a benefit.
- Ask a question.
When consumers are exposed to a product page with 1 or more reviews, conversion lifts by 52.2% (Power reviews).
Reviews, social proof and UGC, are all powerful marketing tactics which help drive conversions. They tap into a psychological phenomenon called mimetic theory. Put simply, past the innate human needs of food, shelter, safety, security, love and belonging, we don’t know what we want. Instead, we look to what other people/society deems desirable and mimic this behaviour.
Industries such as ecommerce, theatre and film take advantage of this well. Press quotes, star ratings, and customer testimonials are all common features in their marketing but it’s something we need to get better at when it comes to selling tickets for events. Your ultimate goal is to make your event seem like the hottest ticket in town.
This article was published in the Summer edition of Access All Areas, which is available to read for free HERE.