Create Your Own Tickets: Effective Tips and Strategies to Sell Out Completely

As an event organizer, you’re always looking for ways to create your own tickets and maximize sales. Selling tickets is a crucial aspect of the event planning process. But before that, you must learn how to create your tickets efficiently. 

There are several ways to enhance the ticket creation process, distribution, and sales to attract more attendees. From early bird offers to social media advertising, the possibilities are endless.

We’ve prepared a comprehensive list of ideas, tips, and strategies to help you establish a seamless ticketing experience. 

A. Understand the pillars of event tickets

Generating the buzz around your event and selling more tickets needs a lot of meticulous and clever planning. 

Here are three key elements of event tickets that you should know about before creating tickets:

1. Ticket pricing

A tiered pricing structure is the most effective way to target all demographics and encourage the maximum number of people to buy tickets. For example, you could include early bird tickets at a reduced price, offer premium tickets with bonuses such as meet and greet with special guests, and more. 

Classify your tickets into different tiers and price them accordingly to make them affordable for everyone. If you want to target a wider audience, keep some tickets on the cheaper side. If your event occurs for more than one day, create tickets for each day separately.

2. Ticket design

Ticket design is another powerful branding tool for your event and company. Designing a memorable ticket will leave an impression on your audiences’ minds and make it more likely for them to attend your future events. 

Make sure to design a ticket that works well regarding functionality and aesthetics. Put clear and precise information that people can read without confusion. 

3. Registration

A smooth and seamless registration process will ensure registrants don’t quit the process midway. The process should be easy, but simultaneously, the security and integrity of customers' confidential data should be protected at all costs.

B. Employ effective pricing strategies

Have a look at some tried and true event ticket-pricing strategies to help you accelerate ticket sales:

1. Early bird discount

Early bird tickets are popular examples of time-based discounts in event ticket pricing. It’s popular for two reasons:

• Easy and cost-effective to implement
• Encourages potential attendees to purchase your tickets as soon as possible.

The basic strategy of this idea is to offer different ticket prices based on how far the ticket purchase is from the event day. 

The purchase gets more expensive as the date of the event gets closer. So, you’re offering discounts to those who purchase tickets early, hence, ‘early bird discounts.’

2. VIP tickets

If you’re confident about a group of attendees spending more, you can take advantage of this opportunity by offering premium-priced or VIP tickets. 

The key is to craft a reason to encourage attendees to spend more. For example better seating, lounge access, unlimited food, etc. If hosting a virtual event, you can offer private sessions with your guests and speakers.

3. More affordable tickets

To offer more affordable pricing tiers for potential attendees who can’t or don’t want to spend more, there are multiple ways to do this. For example, if it is a multi-day event, you can offer a 1-day ticket at a lower price. Cheaper tickets may convince people not yet sure to attend your event.

4. Exclusive tickets

You can offer exclusive tickets to a segment of your audience. For example, special discounts for people who have attended your previous events. Another way would be offering discounts for sponsors’ social media followers as a part of your sponsorship package. This may also help you in securing more sponsors.

C. Best practices for ticket design, sales, and registration 

Implementing these strategies will help you plan an unforgettable event that resonates with participants long after it ends. Have a look:

1. Ticket Design

Design is one of the most significant elements in your ticket. If done correctly, it will help you connect with your audience on a deeper level. Let’s learn how:

i. Reflect on your brand essence

This is one of the most important things to follow.

To make sure that your ticket is memorable, follow these tips:

• Create a recognizable logo and place it prominently to feature your brand strongly on the ticket design
• Make sure you place your logo strategically on social media handles
• Choose color schemes, images, and texts that complement your brand logo and essence

If you already have established past event brands, feature them on the ticket as well

ii. Make the texts easily readable

Make sure the texts are easily readable while considering size, color, and font type, including the color of the background and other elements of your ticket. 

All the ticket elements should represent the overall theme/feel of the event. Here are some tips to enhance the readability of your tickets:

• Use black/white spaces and contrasting colors to emphasize important information on the ticket
• Choose a legible font that is easy to read. Avoid cursive, thin, or too-fancy fonts, as they might be hard to understand.
• Balance your alignment and make sure it looks symmetrical, neat, and professional
• Preview your ticket before making it final and available for the public. This will make sure it looks good and has no errors

iii. Keep it informative and attractive

Tickets have limited space, so you must learn how to use them judiciously. You have to include all essential information without making the tickets appear cluttered. 

Positioning also plays a very important role here. All important information should be placed in easily spottable areas such as the top and center

iv. Decide what information to include

Plan what information you want to include as early as possible. For an in-person event, these are the pieces of information you can include:

• The complete and accurate address of the venue
• A map or QR code to Google map and other useful information such as public transportation
• Provide a schedule of the important events
• For big venues, use a venue map
• Put all your contact information including email and phone numbers
• If you have sponsors, ask what kind of information to include on the ticket such as logos, images, etc.

v. Keep it the right size

There is no one right answer to this, but the general rule is to ensure the ticket size is compact enough so it’s easy to carry. 

The size should not be too large that cannot fit in a purse nor too small that the people might lose the ticket.

The average size tickets are:

• With stubs: 1.97’’ x 5.63’’. stub size: 1.875’’
• Without stubs: 2.125’’ x 5.5’’

2. Ticket sales

The primary aim of any event organizer is to sell as many tickets as possible. Here are a few ways to do it:

i. Utilize mobile ticketing

Optimizing tickets for mobile devices has numerous advantages, including enhanced accessibility, convenience, and an effortless user experience. 

Here are some more advantages:

• Event organizers can optimize websites for mobile devices by implementing responsive design. This ensures the site adapts and functions well across different screen sizes and simplifies the ticket purchase.
• Streamlines the checkout experience and provides mobile-friendly payment options to encourage easy and frictionless ticket buying on mobile devices
• Mobile-offered e-tickets are easily accessible and easy to store, eliminating the need for physical tickets. You can send the tickets via mail, message, or WhatsApp
• Digital tickets with unique QR codes can be scanned at the entrance, improving convenience and eliminating paper waste
• A dedicated mobile app allows organizers to provide a comprehensive platform where attendees can access event information, receive updates, view schedules, and even purchase tickets directly

ii. Promote your event aggressively

One of the most effective ways to get more people to buy tickets is to promote your events through social media posts. 

Here are some great ways to do it-

• Include direct links to the ticketing website on social media posts and stories to make it convenient 
• Run targeted ads based on interests, job descriptions, and industries to effectively reach potential attendees who are not following your social media accounts
• Develop custom and bespoke content to drive ticket sales, reach a wider audience, and generate excitement around your event

iii. Integrate the ticket engine into your website

Your event website is a one-stop tool for event-related information and ticket purchases. You should prominently display your landing page, making it convenient for visitors to access and register for your event easily. Encourage speakers and partners to embed the ticket page onto their website to increase visibility.

iv. Implement easy check-in options

Implementing QR code check-in options will help streamline the entry process and contribute to increased attendee engagement. 

Event management platforms like Ticket Generator offer a unique QR code for every ticket.  This will prohibit gate-crashers from gaining entry while each ticket gets validated. It will also speed up the entry process without having the attendees wait in queues for long.

v. Utilize event analytics for continuous improvement

After the event, it’s important to analyze the data on ticket sales and event attendance to measure performance. You can use the data to optimize marketing strategies and ticket sales for future events. You will get insights into attendee behavior and preferences with metrics such as

• Names, emails, and phone numbers
• Purchase times
• Ticket volumes
• Participant attendance
• Number of check-ins

3. Ticket registration

The process of ticket registration is extremely crucial because it’s one of the initial contacts a potential customer has with your brand. Here is how you can make it worthwhile:

i. Optimize your registration page

To get more people to browse your event registration page, make sure the page is mobile-friendly and loads fast. To maximize user experience, ensure the page provides easy navigation and a safe payment process.

ii. Streamline the registration form

The smartest thing to do is to ask only the essential questions in your registration form. Event registration platforms like Ticket Generator offer a set of form templates you can choose from. 

You can even customize these templates to subtract or add more fields. Asking too many questions can prolong the registration time, making the attendees lose interest and hurting the user experience. This can also lead them to cancel the ticket purchase process.

iii. Maintain branding consistency

Registration and ticketing process is an essential part of your event marketing strategy. Maintaining brand consistency throughout the whole registration process will ensure the audience connects with and remembers you for a long time. You can do this by ensuring correct brand elements, including logo, fonts, and color usage.

iv. Provide payment security and versatility 

It’s important to provide secure payment options for potential attendees. People might have different payment preferences and financial situations, so try to offer popular payment options like Stripe, credit cards, etc. To protect registrants’ data security and integrity, make sure your platform is  Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliant.

D. Create your own ticket efficiently with Ticket Generator

Our clear and straightforward tips will help you create your own tickets efficiently. It will set the stage for an extraordinary event experience. 

Ticket Generator is an event management app that helps event planners and organizers produce single-use event tickets and validate them using a smartphone app. 

You can design, generate and distribute event tickets in minutes, eliminating the need for expensive design tools. You can also:

• Create fully mobile-optimized landing pages. 
• Create unique tickets that can be easily customized according to your event or company branding. 
• Get deep insights into attendee analytics to improve your events and plan better. 
• Generate multiple tickets with unique information (guest names, hall numbers, seat numbers) in one go and more!