Beyond followers: Using Instagram for real ticket sales

Instagram is the social network to build your event’s brand. Algorithm changes are making event promotion on social media increasingly difficult, but Instagram provides a direct way to connect with event-goers. 80% of Instagram users follow at least one business on Instagram, and 200 million users check out a brand’s profile every day.

If you’re not on Instagram, your event brand will be left behind. But attracting thousands of Instagram followers is not your ultimate objective. Your goal is to sell tickets — and that won’t happen unless you’re strategic about how you use the platform.

So how can your team use your Instagram account to drive tangible ticket sales?

of Instagram users follow at least one

business on Instagram1

users check out a brand’s profile

every day2

80% 200M

Eventbrite.com.au The 2018 Guide to Instagram for Event Marketing Page 2

Here’s how smart event brands can convert Instagram from a simple engagement tool into a powerful sales conversion platform.

This guide is for...

Event founders, owners, and marketing directors who want to convert Instagram from a brand-enhancing social tool to a ticket-selling platform with measurable ROI.

What you’ll learn...

• Advanced Instagram strategies to drive ticket sales

• The overlooked elements of Instagram’s interface that your teamshould use

• How your team can create advertising and influencer campaigns

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01 Profile: Build the foundation of your Instagram strategy

02 Posts: Bring your brand to life

04 Advertising: Double down on ticket sales

05 Influencers: Enlist brand ambassadors and local tastemakers

06 Giveaways: Motivate peer-to-peer engagement

07 Sales: Make it as easy as possible for Instagram users to buy

03 Stories: Drive instant engagement — and sales

Contents

06

08

13

15

17

18

10

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Instagram by the numbers

The basics

The potential for brands

And, perhaps most importantly

800M

2M

30%

100M 18-35

14%

800 million monthly users and is growing quickly.3

100 million new users added in just a month.3

2 million advertisers take advantage of Instagram’s

Facebook-powered ad options.5

14% of millennials say they would buy a product from

someone they follow on Instagram.6

30% of Instagram users have made a purchase that they first saw on Instagram.7

Its user base skews toward millennials but is growing in popularity among every age group.4

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Build the foundation of your Instagram strategy01 Profile

Your event’s profile is the anchor for your Instagram marketing. It’s a

snapshot of your brand, a glimpse at your “post portfolio” and a high-

level visual and textual description of who you are. Users navigate to

your profile when they want to learn what your event is — or commit

to attending.

Yet this valuable space in your event’s profile has room for just one

URL and a measly 150-character bio. And there’s another wrinkle: To

maximise your reach, your profile needs to be discoverable by people

searching on Instagram.

Want to verify that your account is managed by your event brand?

The blue checkmark verification icon next to your Instagram username

is elusive. Instagram doesn’t publicly reveal how verification is assigned

— you can’t request it or pay for it. The most direct route to becoming

a verified Instagram account is to simply grow your followers — bigger

accounts tend to become verified.

PRO TIPS

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For brands with multiple events and lots to say, it’s vital your team distills

the information here down to its essentials:

• Concise, engaging copy

• A clear image

• Correct URL

• Searchable keywords

• Relevant hashtags

People are moving fast on Instagram, and if you make it too hard, you’ll lose them.

— Christy Huggins, Senior Social Media Manager at Eventbrite

Use your one URL wisely

The link in your profile is your best chance at driving sales through

Instagram. Some brands create a specific landing page for Instagram

traffic to orient visitors whose interest was piqued by different Instagram

posts. If you’re promoting multiple events, you can tease them all here,

with deeper links to send people where they want to go.

Or, if you use a ticketing platform like Eventbrite, you can send users

straight to your Eventbrite organiser profile page, where they’ll see all

your events and other links in your bio. Just be sure that wherever your

team points them, the site is built to be viewed on phones, where most

Instagram users are.

PRO TIPS

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Bring your brand to life02 Posts

Publishing consistent, quality social media content throughout the year

can be challenging for event brands. You know you can announce lineups

or on-sale dates, but on a daily basis, your team needs to tell a much

bigger story.

Your account should be of value to your users, not just a platform to push ticket sales. You have to earn the right to make that sale.

— Christy Huggins, Senior Social Media Manager at Eventbrite

Posts that include geolocation tags get 79% more engagement9

79%

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Posts are a place to build ongoing engagement that leads to ticket sales.

Your team should take advantage of all the ways Instagram lets you

express your brand with organic content, including:

• Posting photo albums on a theme (up to 10 photos at once)

• Sharing videos (video views are up over 80% since last year on

Instagram)8

• Using custom hashtags and geolocation tags to expand your

reach

• Tagging influencers associated with your event, such as artists,

speakers, sponsors, or vendors

If your team engages users for the months leading up to your on-

sale date, followers will be primed to buy. To inspire your team, show

them the following two examples of event brands that have mastered

Instagram posts.

hashtags on Instagram were made by a brand10

7/10

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Drive instant engagement — and sales03 Stories

If posts showcase the best of your brand, stories record what’s

happening right now. String together snapshots and short (10-second)

videos, and you create an ephemeral story that lasts for only 24 hours.

With more than 300 million daily active users, Instagram Stories are

the future of the platform.13 As an event brand, this ephemeral posting

method has strategic applications:

• Testing content: Stories are ideal for testing new tactics and types

of content in a temporary environment

• Teasing announcements: Before artist or speaker announcements,

tease the reveal with hints, such as the speaker’s initials or a blurred

picture that your followers have to decipher

• Inspiring FOMO: Because the posts disappear, showcasing insider

info, behind the scenes content, or flash sale promotions here will

incite FOMO (fear of missing out)

people watch and create stories on Instagram every day11

300M

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Best of all, as an event brand, you can convert viewers into attendees by:

• Adding links to your ticketing page: Once you have 10,000

followers, your team can add clickable links to your stories

(something you can’t do with traditional Instagram posts). Your

team shouldn’t miss this opportunity to link to your ticketing page

— once a week at minimum.

• Converting your most successful stories into sponsored ads:If your Instagram account is a business account (more on this on

the next page), you can use stories ads to connect directly to your

ticketing page.

The stories feature is a darling of Instagram, and the platform is putting

more and more emphasis on it, including the addition of an inline story

promotion in users’ feeds and the ability for "brands to feature story

highlights on profile pages. As an event brand, if your team doesn’t start

taking advantage of this feature soon, you’ll miss out.

stories get a direct message from viewers12

1/5

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Why it pays to be a business on Instagram

Instagram began to offer brands the ability to update to business profile

status for free in 2016. Now, there are 25M active business profiles

on Instagram, 15 and a third of the most viewed stories come from

businesses.16

More importantly, two-thirds of visitors to business profiles come from

users who don’t yet follow that profile. That’s a lot of potential event-

goers, and business profiles have other advantages, too:

• Metrics: Business profiles have access to metrics that general

users don’t, including insight on both posts and stories, so you can

see the numbers on your reach, impressions, replies, and exits.

• Contact: Business profiles get a "Contact" button on the bio,

making it easier for followers to get in touch.

• Easy ad creation: Businesses can convert posts and stories into

ads or create ads from scratch with built-in tools that used to only

be available via Facebook.

• Tagability: Business can tag their products in a post once they

create a product through Facebook. For events, this means you can

tag your merch, vendors, or other event swag in Instagram posts for

a direct line to revenue.

PRO TIPS

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Double down on ticket sales04 Advertising

Instagram’s advertising M.O. is to keep the experience inline and

authentic. From sponsored posts in users’ feeds to immersive, full-

screen ads within stories, the user’s viewing experience is consistent

and fluid.

With the power of Facebook’s advanced targeting algorithms behind

Instagram advertising, your team can hone in on specific micro-

audiences and prospect for followers who’ve displayed specific

behaviors — like following other event brands.

Aside from your profile, an ad is the only place you can embed a link straight to your ticketing page.

This makes it a crucial tool for converting fans into ticket buyers. To

optimise your strategy, have your team read this post on the anatomy

of an ideal event ad.

Any event that has great visual content and narratives to share should be advertising on Instagram, especially if their core audience is present on Facebook and Instagram — i.e., millennials and younger crowds.

— Linda Chen, Performance Marketing Manager at Eventbrite

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Create Instagram ads that work

To get serious about Instagram advertising, consider a tool like ToneDen

that helps you get the most from your Instagram (and Facebook) ad

dollars with automation and optimisation guidance.

ToneDen places the ads for you, pinpoints a target audience, and

automates AB testing to hone and refine your ads for best results. If

you’re an Eventbrite customer, you can manage this entire process right

from your Eventbrite dashboard for quicker onboarding and a more

integrated experience.

PRO TIPS

If you want to get your content in front of the right people, it’s a pay-to-play environment.

— Ali Shakeri, CMO and Co-Founder of ToneDen

Eventbrite.com.au The 2018 Guide to Instagram for Event Marketing Page 14

Enlist brand ambassadors and local tastemakers05 Influencers

Instagram is a marketing ecosystem, and influencers are at the top

of the food chain. They range from paid brand ambassadors with

enormous social clout to micro-influencers — your everyday fans who

just happen to have a dedicated base of followers. And that base could

soon be following your event as well.

But establishing a relationship with an influencer is not just another

way to broaden your reach. All Instagram roads should ultimately lead

to ticket sales. Your team should work with influencers whose followers

match your target market in terms of subject matter, demographics, and

geographical location.

Here are some ideas for influencer campaigns:

• Launch influencer campaigns around your ticket on-sale dates

• Offer influencers free tickets to your event to share their

experience online

• Let an influencer do an “Instagram takeover” of your account

on Instagram Stories, during which they’ll encourage their fans to

follow your account to follow along

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Tools for building an influencer campaign

Managing an entire influencer marketing campaign can be

overwhelming for even the most savvy events team. To make their

efforts more efficient, have a member of your team investigate one of

these tech tools to find and manage your influencer program:

• SocialRank identifies potential influential Instagram accounts

within your existing audience, based on things like location, follower

numbers, and engagement

• Scrunch helps your team find influencers based on topics and

keywords, then connects you to these people

• SocialLadder builds a team of brand ambassadors from within your

event’s fan base and arms them with vanity promo codes

• Verve motivates fans to sell tickets for you with an automated reward

system and coaching

PRO TIPS

• Arm influencers with promo codes they can share with their fanbase

(this is an especially effective tool to use with local tastemakers or

micro-influencers, who’ll love to reward fans with the perk)

Just be sure your team has made the terms of your relationship clear

before the promotion begins — they can learn more in this post.

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Motivate peer-to-peer engagement06 Giveaways

There’s a direct relationship between brand affinity and barrier to entry. If giveaway entry is simply about liking your post, that’s a relatively low barrier to entry. User-generated content, on the other hand, attracts your highest engagers, your brand loyalists.

— Linda Chen, Performance Marketing Manager at Eventbrite

Instagram algorithms dictate where and when posts show up in feeds.

Those that get the most engagement — likes, comments, video views,

direct message (DM) shares, saved story views, and live video views —

rise higher. You’ll often see event brands use language like this: “Tag a

friend for a chance to win tickets to our event.”

Social media giveaways work because they’re engaging. With every new

user tagged, you get an extra set of eyeballs on your post.

But it’s worth repeating: Your ultimate goal with Instagram can and

should be ticket sales. The law of attraction works well with Instagram

giveaways: Enchant your followers with a chance to win tickets, VIP

upgrades, sponsor products, or other types of unique, event-related

experiences. They, in turn, invite others to participate. Entice them with

your giveaways; convert them with your content.

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Make it as easy as possible for Instagram users to buy

07 Sales

You’re doing the work to drive your Instagram followers to your website

— now you need to convert them into ticket buyers. The vast majority of

Instagram users are on their mobile app, which means that most users

you attract on Instagram are clicking through to your site and ticketing

page on their phones.

Don’t frustrate your Instagram audience with a website that’s hard to

view and use on a small screen. Make sure:

• Your website displays well and can be navigated without a keyboard,

mouse, or trackpad

• Attendees don’t have to pinch and zoom to buy a ticket on your site,

or scroll sideways to see all the fields in a form

• You use a ticketing partner with a responsive site built to make it as

easy as possible for Instagram users to buy

Making your ticketing site look good on phones

isn’t just about design. Studies have shown a

160% increase in purchase completion with

mobile-optimised payments.17

160%

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Eventbrite.com.au The 2018 Guide to Instagram for Event Marketing

Take the next step

For your team to go beyond building buzz with Instagram and actually use the tech to drive ticket sales and attendee loyalty, you need technology that extends Instagram’s sleek user experience to your website.

To learn how your team can upgrade your event’s checkout to better convert social media users contact us or get in touch at 1800 820 172 in Australia or 0800 448 422 in New Zealand. 1 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-stats

2 https://business.instagram.com/a/toolkit

3 https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/instagram-now-has-800-million-monthly-and-500-million-daily-active-users/

4 https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/25/instagram-now-has-800-million-monthly-and-500-million-daily-active-users/

5 https://business.instagram.com/blog/welcoming-two-million-advertisers/

6 https://www.eventbrite.com/blog/how-to-use-instagram-to-promote-your-food-and-drink-event-ds00/

7 https://www.yotpo.com/blog/instagram-data/

8 https://business.instagram.com/blog/welcoming-two-million-advertisers/

9 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-stats/

10 https://sproutsocial.com/insights/instagram-stats/

11 https://business.instagram.com/a/toolkit

12 https://business.instagram.com/blog/bringing-insights-and-ads-to-stories/

13 https://business.instagram.com/a/toolkit

14 https://marketingland.com/instagram-now-lets-brands-feature-stories-highlights-profile-pages-229679

15 https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/30/instagram-25-million-business-profiles/?ncid=rss

16 https://business.instagram.com/blog/bringing-insights-and-ads-to-stories/

17 https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2014/10/01/mobile-shoppers-convert-160-more-often-optimized-sites/

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