Smart Ways to Use Tickets in Your Marketing

If you’re looking for a fun and unique way to get attention and increase the results of your marketing, using a great-looking ticket, may be just the ticket to higher response (I couldn’t resist)!

Event marketers have used tickets for centuries to give their events a special feel of exclusivity and as a way to know who to let in. Tickets are cost-effective attention-grabbers that (done right) can really add spice to your marketing. You can use tickets to fill events, seminars, webinars, teleseminars, even for pre-tradeshow marketing. However, as I’m going to show you in a moment, you don’t necessarily have to be hosting an event to be able to use this attention-grabbing marketing tactic. This means EVERYBODY reading this marketing how-to article, can use this tactic in their marketing.

One such company that used tickets in their marketing was a client of mine who was hosting a local seminar. We came up with the idea of including printed tickets to be sent in a direct mail package to a cold prospect (meaning we bought a list and they were not current clients of my client). We thought we did everything right, but the initial response was only around 1.1%, which we thought was low given the importance of the seminar topic and the fact it was free.

envelope

Then I had the idea of sending the package out again, but this time letting them know the tickets were in the envelope by adding a CopyDoodleÂź on the outside of the envelope. The result was a phenomenal bump in response (to 8.7%) and one of my first CopyDoodles success stories.

envelope2

Recently, a number of other excellent examples of “ticket marketing” have come across my desk and I thought I would share them here. Probably one of the best examples of using tickets to fill an event (and fill it it did) comes from Mike Crow of Dallas, Texas. At the recent GKIC Info Summit(SM), Mike handed out these great0looking tickets inviting attendees to a special breakfast. They were printed on a high-quality metallic gold paper and they got attention. Notice the effective use of copy cosmetics and good “reason why” copywriting. Nice job Mike and his marketing guy, John!

golden ticket

golden ticket2

Speaking of the GKIC Info Summit, GKIC sent out a great looking ticket to help fill that event.

gkic ticket

gkic ticket2

James Malinchak, who spoke at the Info Summit created another great-looking, high-response ticket for his recent bootcamp that had over 600 people in the room.

james malinchak ticket

james malinchak ticket2

And finally, to show one more example of using tickets to fill up events, here are the tickets Charlie McDermott and I are using to get business owners to attend our Business and Entrepreneurs Networking meetings (www.benphilly.com). We print these up and hand them out to members to allow them to invite their friends to our next meeting.

ben ticket

ben ticket2

But what if you’re not hosting events, can you still use tickets in your marketing? Absolutely and one way to do this, would be to create a graphic that looks like a ticket and use it in your ezines, newsletters, sales letters, HTML emails, web site, etc. The idea is to use the ticket to get attention and get your recipients engaging with your marketing.

This month, I released a Ticket CopyTemplate for my CopyDoodles Access Club Platinum members and it contained a number of ticket templates and special ticket marketing CopyDoodles for our members. One such template was a ticket design just about any business owner could use (as you can see) as an attention-grabber.

2012 ticket

So I hope I’ve triggered an idea or two on for you to consider how you can use tickets in your marketing. If you have any other ideas or ways you’ve used tickets in your marketing, leave me a comment below!