- Hello you beautiful people!
In this video, we are gonna show you
exactly how we sold our Atomicon 2019 tickets
and pretty much sold out within the first five days.
- It was absolutely mental.
We only expected to sell about 40 tickets in the first week,
maybe 100 in total for the whole event
in the whole nine month period of promoting the damn thing
but you know what?
Over 280 people bought a ticket in the first five days!
What!
That is mental.
You guys are amazing, thank you so much.
- So we wanted to show you exactly what we did
so if you're thinking about putting on some kind of event
then do keep on watching but actually
there's lots and lots of sales tips in this video too
that you can apply to anything you try to sell.
Hey, we're Andrew and Pete and welcome back to our channel
where we make marketing unboringed.
Recently, we announced that we were putting on
our very first live event, our conference, Atomicon,
and we had the craziest week of our lives.
- Here's the thing, we were so nervous
that nobody would want to come
that we completely maxed out the promotion
and, boy, did it work.
By the time this video comes out,
we don't think we're gonna have any tickets left.
So if you do wanna come, then make sure
that you get on the waiting list for next year
and if you are coming, then let us know in the comments
how excited you are. - Let us know!
We're excited to see you!
- Prize for the most excited person.
- What's the prize gonna be?
- I don't know, I'll have to think about that.
- Good improv.
- Don't tell them that.
- But what does maxing out our promotion actually mean?
Well we've broken it down into nine things
that we did that we think really helped
to get those ticket sales moving.
Let's do this!
(explosions)
Boom!
- One is that we launched it based on demand.
This event wasn't a full stab in the dark,
we actually surveyed our Atomic members recently
and in the question that went something like,
"Is there anything else that Atomic can do for you?"
a whooping 25% of people said, "we want an event".
- 25% of people, unprompted, asked for an event.
Wow.
- Now you might not have a membership site to do this with
but the key is, before you launch anything,
make sure there is that demand.
Make sure people actually do want it
and find out who those people are
because those initial, small subset of people
gave us that initial traction to run with it.
- Two, brand it, baby!
Oh yeah!
Branding is so important when it comes to selling anything,
including an event.
Depending on how competitive the event space is
in your industry, the brand can be the main differentiator.
- [Andrew] We wanted to make sure that Atomicon stood out
with the design of it so people got a sense
of what the event was going to be like
because if you're in year one,
you've got literally nothing else to go on,
you've got no photos, you've got no videos,
people are looking at the design of your sales page
and making that judgement about what this event is all about.
- So we put a lot of time into not only the colours,
the themes, the logos, the design, the pictures,
but also the experience of buying after the sale.
More on that later.
- Three is to sell your speakers,
or if you don't have speakers,
sell whatever people are coming to the event for.
- We have some well known people speaking in our industry
but don't ever assume that people know who your speakers are
and don't expect them to just move tickets
just because you have a name.
- So tell people why your speakers are blooming awesome
and more importantly, why you've picked them for your event.
- The fourth thing we did was to pre-launch.
We told people about the event
way before they could even buy a ticket for it!
We were teasing them, and all they had to do
was pre-register for our pre-launch e-mail list.
And we're gonna do the exact same thing for next year, too.
It's not just the year one tactic.
- Because this is your buzz period,
this is when you get people excited,
you want as much excitement built in that initial
pre-launch period that, when you launch, it's crazy!
You want to come out of the gates with a bang!
Not a whimper.
- The fifth thing we did to make that crazy buzz explode
was to have an amazing flash sale
with a discounted ticket price.
Next year, when we do this crazy week-long flash sale,
we're actually gonna take the full week completely off
because you're not gonna get anything else
done in that time, it's a bit mental.
- In this flash sale, it should be all hands on deck.
We want you to utilise every single marketing channel
you have: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram,
resurrect Google Plus, Blab, Meerkat, Bebo, MySpace,
that's still going.
- Just do everything you possibly can.
- Set the price so that people are getting a good deal
and set a short - no more than a week - window
that they can get that price in.
- The sixth thing is to capitalise on that buzz.
Your ticket holders are the main people that are gonna share
this far and wide, all for you.
Make it super, super easy for them to share.
We simply created the 'excited for Atomicon' branded gif
that they could just click to tweet and share on social.
That's so, so easy for them, and next year,
we're gonna make it even easier for them!
- And even better.
- Oh yeah.
- And this took the hype and excitement
to a whole other level when people started to share it,
so if you shared it, thank you so, so much.
It was absolutely heartwarming to see everyone
talking about it and raving about it.
It was just, it was emotional.
- It was awesome.
- It was amazing, thank you.
- Also, don't forget about your lovely speakers
and number seven is to actually make it as easy as possible
for your speakers to share.
Here's the question that you need to ask them:
We'd love it if you could help us promote the event
in this time period - your flash sale - so what can we do,
or what can we create, to make that
as easy as possible for you?
- So, yes, create the standard speaker graphics for them
but, basically, if they have an audience
and they want to promote it, you've gotta do
anything and everything that you can, that they need,
whether it's a bespoke e-mail campaign wrote for them,
whether it's Instagram designs made for them
or whether it's being on their Facebook Live as a guest.
Whatever they want, whatever they need, be there for them.
- And bonus tip here: if you've nailed all the other
previous points in this video, then the speakers
are going to be way more likely to share the event
because it makes them look good if the event looks good.
- And, ultimately, number eight is e-mail promotion.
E-mail marketing shifts tickets!
It's as simple as that!
And our sales spiked on the days when we sent out an e-mail
to promote Atomicon.
But here's the secret sauce:
because you're doing a flash sale,
that almost gives you permission to do more e-mails,
more e-mail promotion than you normally would
without people getting too annoyed,
because they know it's only for that set week.
- In the flash sale week, Monday to Friday,
we did three e-mails: one on Monday, one on Wednesday,
one on Friday, we could've potentially even done more.
Now, after the second e-mail on the Wednesday,
we got one or two complaints from people that said
we were e-mailing too much about it,
which almost put us off sending that e-mail
on the Friday.
But we didn't, we thought about it,
and we segmented the complaints out
and we sent the e-mail again on the Friday
and, actually, on that Friday we sold more tickets
than we had on any other day.
So sell with your e-mail list maybe a little bit more
than you feel comfortable with, is the lesson there.
- Up ninth is actually something to do
prior to selling those tickets,
and that's to build up your audience and reputation.
Believe us, it is way easier to sell stuff
when you have built up a loyal audience and a following
with valuable and useful content.
And if you wanna know about how we approach that,
how we build an audience, and especially
if that bit about pushing yourself on the sales
freaks you out a little bit, if you wanna know how to sell,
and not in a douchey way, then you might wanna check out
our free online workshop: Content Marketing Decoded.
It is a free webinar just for you.
You can check it out in the description
and it'll teach you all those things.
- Thank you so much to everyone who has supported us
and helped us put on this event.
It's our mission to make it the best digital marketing
conference that those attendees have ever been to.
- We're gonna learn so so much from all the speakers
but we're also gonna have a lot of fun
so we are super super stoked to see you there in March 2019.
- If there are any tickets left, or if you are watching this
some time in the future, we might be gearing up
for Atomicon 2029, who knows,
go and check out atomicon.co.uk to see what is happening.
- I hope we still have that domain in 2029.
- I really do or we're gonna look really foolish.
- (tutting) What were we thinking back in 2018?
(laughing)
- I've been Andrew.
- He's been Andrew.
- What was our sign off from last week?
- I've been Andrew!
- I've been Pete!
- See you same time next time!
- Same time next time!
- I don't think that's gonna catch on.
- I don't think so.