Selling tickets online is a four step process.

Step 1

Tell people there's a thing they can buy tickets to go see

Step 2

Providing a link so people can find out more

Step 3

Giving them enough details so they want to go see the thing, and then tell them where to buy a ticket

Step 4

Selling the ticket

Your live heatmap will track the process of getting people through these four steps. From putting out a promotion, to watching those tickets get sold. 

Taking the audience from Step 1, learning about the thing – through Step 4, them having a ticket in their email inbox. 

If you've done a good job with your marketing, your live map should light up like a Christmas tree when you launch your campaign. 

There'll be a ping on the map for every clickthrough, pageview, CTA button pressed, and ticket sold. 

Quick reminder of the terminology.

Clickthrough

From Step 1 to Step 2

Clickthrough is when a person sees a link that looks interesting to them from whatever source, often email or Facebook, and clicks on it to find out more. This is taking person from step 1, finding out about a thing, to step 2 where the person has clicked on the link.

This is tracked using gogoLinks, short-urls that automatically get generated for your social promotions. Using short-urls means that the source of the traffic is tracked, so you can tell what's really the most effective means of getting people to click on the link (it's probably going to be email).

Pageview

From Step 2 to Step 3

So your link obviously had to take the person somewhere. The industry standard is headed towards having a landing page per promotion, so there's 'a continuum of the mood of the email or social media post'.

It sounds a bit hippie, but it's good so people remember why this page is now in front of them. On phones, where this is likely to take place, the context from whatever place they were on before is lost, so the page basically has to say the same thing as the original promotion did – so people don't forget what they're doing there.

So the pageviews are for knowing how many people have viewed your gogoPoster, that is in fact your landing page.

CTA

From Step 3 to Step 4

CTAs or Call to Actions are the raison d'être. This is what you're working for. Getting people to click that Call to Action button. 

That's how people buy tickets. All your hard work is all aimed at this one thing. Getting them to click the Call to Action button. The Call to Action button is the one that says 'Buy Tickets'. It's the one that everything leads up to, so the button should be big, it should be clear and concise. 

The science says it should also be green, so that's how we made it. Only people with intent to buy click the CTA. 

Sale

Completing Step 4

Once the person has clicked the CTA, it's out of your hands. They are on the ticket vendor page – one you might or might not have control over. It's now up to the person to buy the ticket, and there's nothing really for you to do anymore. It's out of your hands. 

We in the biz call selling tickets in the way described with the steps, a Sales Funnel. 

Sales funnels are useful, because they show very clearly that for every ticket sold, there are many many more people that don't buy tickets. For every extra step your audience has to take, there's a significant drop-off. That's why it's good to not have any extra steps. 

So for every 10k people reached on Facebook, maybe 1k will click on the link. Of that one thousand, maybe a hundred will click on the call to action. Of that hundred, maybe 10 will buy tickets. That's a conversion rate of 1% which is pretty average. 

So that's why we've put a sales funnel next to the live map. So not only can you monitor how traffic and sales are behaving in real time, but more importantly, break your sales process into its individual components. 

Having this information available as and when it happens, always, makes the marketing suddenly much more fun. 

Seeing the difference between two different Facebook posts, not just in likes and engagement, but in actual tickets sold – is the difference that makes the difference.

Because here's a little trick, not necessarily the most liked posts are the most effective for driving ticket sales. 

Save a Ton of Time 

Find out that Twitter is useless at selling tickets? Just don't bother with that then. Find out photos from fans actually sell more tickets than those fancy photoshopped ones? Great, keep using the fan stuff. 

It only takes a little bit of insight to have the outcome of your efforts multiply. 

Banner by David Schap