How to Promote an Event (When the Presale Sat at Zero)

A presale can sit at zero for so long you start taking it personally. So if you're googling how to promote an event at 11pm because the ticket counter hasn't moved, welcome, you're among friends. The short answer is this: work backwards from a real number, point every channel at one easy-to-buy page, lean hardest on the audience you already own, and start about four to six weeks out. The clever bit isn't finding a new trick. It's doing the boring ones properly, and not letting all that lovely traffic die at a checkout that scares people off. Let's walk through it, one beer in.

Start with a number, not a poster

Before you design anything, answer one question: how many tickets do you need to sell, by when. "Promote the event" is not a goal. "Sell 200 tickets in six weeks, 60 of them in the first fortnight" is a goal, and it tells you whether things are on track or quietly on fire.

Work backwards from the number and it sorts your whole plan. If you need 200 and your email list is 800 people, a 5 percent conversion gets you 40, so you already know email alone won't do it and you'll need social and word of mouth to carry the rest. Without a target you can't tell a slow start (normal, presales always crawl before they run) from a real problem (nobody's actually seeing it). Set the number first. Everything else is in service of it.

Point everything at one page people can actually buy from

Every channel you use has exactly one job: get someone to the page where they buy. So that page has to be good. One clear event page with the date, the place, the price shown up front, and a buy button that works on a phone. Not a Facebook post that makes people ask "so where do I get tickets", not a Linktree with four dead ends. One page, one button.

This is also the page your promotion is judged against. You can run the best campaign in Western Sydney and still sell nothing if the checkout is confusing, slow, or forces people to make an account to buy one ticket. Make it boringly easy. The fewer taps between "I'm keen" and "I'm going", the more of your hard-won traffic actually converts.

Your email list is the channel you actually own

Here's the one most people underuse because it isn't shiny: email. Social platforms rent you an audience and change the rules whenever they like. Your email list is yours. It converts better than anything else because these are people who already raised their hand once, and it costs you nothing to send.

A simple rhythm works: an announcement when you go on sale, a reminder mid-campaign (with a reason, an early-bird ending or a lineup drop), and a final "last chance, doors this weekend" in the closing days. That same day-before nudge also quietly cuts your no-shows, so it does two jobs at once. Three or four emails across six weeks, not one lonely blast the night before.

One very Australian catch the US guides sail straight past: you need consent to email people. The Spam Act sets real rules about consent, a working unsubscribe link, and identifying who you are. Emailing a list you bought or scraped isn't a growth hack, it's a fine with a countdown. Build the list honestly (a signup at your last event, a checkbox at checkout, a newsletter form) and it becomes the thing that sells out your next event before you've even booked the room. Which is the quiet argument for owning your attendee data rather than leaving it locked inside a platform you'll have to rent it back from later.

Social media: free reach, but only if you do the work

Social is where discovery happens, and it's free, which is the good news and the trap. Free doesn't mean easy. A single "tickets on sale now" post is a message in a bottle. What actually works is a run of content that gives people a reason to care: the lineup, behind-the-scenes, last year's highlights, a countdown, the venue, the food trucks, a face talking to camera about why they made this.

A few things that punch above their weight:

• One event hashtag, used everywhere, so the chatter is findable and your attendees add to it.
• Stories and reels over static posts, because that's where the reach is right now (this will change, it always does, so follow the reach, not the advice from two years ago).
• A contest or giveaway (a free double pass for tagging two mates) to turn your audience into your promoters.
• The team's personal accounts, not just the event page. People share from people.
• A Facebook event and the local community groups, which still quietly sell more tickets to community events than anything with a media budget.

You don't need every platform. Pick the two your crowd actually uses and do those properly, rather than spreading yourself thin across six and posting to none of them well.

When to actually do all this: the timeline

Promotion isn't a launch day, it's a slow build with a sprint at the end. A rough shape that works for most events:

Give a bigger or first-time event more runway (six weeks or more), because the first of anything takes longer than you think. But don't start six months out either. Announce too early and the urgency evaporates, people file it under "later" and later never comes. Most of your sales land in the first week and the last week, with a long quiet middle that will test your nerve. That middle is normal. Hold the line.

The best promotion in the world dies at a bad checkout

Here's the part the marketing guides skip because they're not the ones answering the phone at 9pm. I once had an organiser convinced their ticketing was broken. "No one's buying, something's wrong with the page." I asked one question: had they bought a ticket themselves. They hadn't. The event was still in draft. Ninety seconds to publish it, and sales started that afternoon. All that promotion had been pointing at a locked door.

So the rule that came out of it: buy a real ticket on your own phone and refund yourself before you announce. Thirty seconds, and it catches about half the "why isn't this working" panics before they happen.

And once the door's open, watch what happens at it. This is my one strong opinion for this post, and it's a numbers one: your promotion is only as good as the checkout it lands on. Plenty of organisers move off a platform that's "free" to them but charges buyers 6.95% + $1.79 a ticket, most of it sprung at the final screen. When the buyer covers Ticketted's all-in 3.95% + 95c fee instead, they still pay less on every ticket, and, crucially, the price stops jumping at the card form, so fewer people bail at the last tap. Spending money to drive traffic to a checkout that ambushes people with fees is like advertising a shop and locking the till. That last-screen fee jump is also exactly the drip pricing the ACCC is cracking down on, so it's not just bad for conversion, it's increasingly not allowed.

Early-bird, urgency, and the waitlist nobody tries

Urgency sells, and every guide tells you to discount your way into it with an early-bird. Early-birds work, and a clear "price goes up Friday" is honest and effective. Use it, and if you're not sure where to set the tiers, the ticket pricing guide walks through the maths. Just know that slashing the price again in week three quietly trains people to wait for the next cut, and now you've taught your own audience not to buy at full price.

The move almost nobody tries is a waitlist. If a release sells fast, open a waitlist for the next batch instead of immediately discounting. It manufactures real scarcity (the honest kind), tells you exactly how much genuine demand is out there, and hands you a warm list of people to email the second more tickets drop. A quick word of warning while we're here: keep the urgency true. A fake "sold out" or a countdown that resets forever can fall foul of Australian Consumer Law on misleading claims, and your crowd remembers being played. Scarcity works because it's believed. Spend that trust once and it's gone.

When you don't need any of this

Time for the bit where I talk myself out of a signup, because it's the most honest thing on this page. If you're running a small free community event, forty people at a local hall, you do not need a promotion strategy, paid ads, or a funnel. You need a Facebook event, a post in the two local groups, one good email, and a couple of reminders. That's it. That's the whole plan, and it'll fill the room.

The machinery in this post earns its place when the stakes rise: when tickets cost real money, when you need to hit a number to break even, or when you're building something you want to run again next year and a mailing list is worth having. Below that line, promoting harder just means annoying your friends. Put the energy into the event being good. A great night promotes next year's for you, for free, better than anything you could buy. If you want the fuller picture on getting a first event off the ground, the event planning checklist covers the rest of it.

How to promote an event: FAQ

How do you attract people to an event? Give them a clear reason and an easy way to act on it. Lead with what's actually good about it (the lineup, the cause, the experience), point every post and email at one simple event page, and make buying take as few taps as possible. Then use the audience you already have, past attendees and your email list, before you spend a cent chasing new ones.

How do you promote an event on social media? Post a run of content, not a single announcement: teasers, behind-the-scenes, a lineup reveal, a countdown, and last year's highlights. Use one event hashtag everywhere, favour stories and reels for reach, run a tag-a-mate giveaway, and post from personal accounts as well as the event page. Pick the two platforms your crowd actually uses rather than spreading across six.

How far in advance should you promote an event? For most events, start about four to six weeks out, with the hardest push in the final two weeks and a real urgency nudge in the last few days. Give a large or first-time event six weeks or more of runway. Starting much earlier than that usually backfires, because the urgency fades and people file it under "later".

How do you promote an event with no budget? Lean entirely on owned and free channels: your email list, a Facebook event, posts in relevant community groups, your team's personal social accounts, and a genuine ask to past attendees to share it. A small giveaway (a free pass for tagging friends) costs you nothing and turns your audience into promoters. For a free community event, this is not a compromise, it's the whole strategy.

How many emails should you send to promote an event? Around three or four across the campaign: an on-sale announcement, a mid-campaign reminder tied to a reason (early-bird ending, a new act), and a "last chance" in the closing days, plus an optional day-before nudge. Segment where you can so past attendees get a warmer message. Just make sure everyone on the list actually opted in.

Do I need permission to email people about my event in Australia? Yes. Under the Spam Act you need consent to send marketing emails, every email needs a working unsubscribe option, and you must identify who you are. Consent can be express (they ticked a box) or, in limited cases, inferred from an existing relationship. Emailing a purchased or scraped list isn't allowed, so build your list from your own signups and checkouts.

What's the difference between an early-bird discount and a waitlist? An early-bird lowers the price to reward buying now, which creates urgency but can train people to wait for the next discount. A waitlist keeps the price steady and creates urgency through genuine scarcity: when a batch sells out, people join a list you can email the moment more tickets drop. Use early-birds to open strong, and a waitlist instead of repeatedly discounting.

Why is my event not selling despite promotion? The usual culprits, in order: the checkout is broken or the event is still in draft (buy a ticket yourself to check), the price jumps with fees at the final screen and people bail, the event page is confusing or won't work on a phone, or the promotion isn't actually reaching your target audience. Fix the checkout first. The best promotion can't rescue a page people can't buy from.

Still stuck? Give us a call

If your ticket counter is stuck and you can't work out whether it's the promotion or the page, that's a good thing to get a second pair of eyes on before you spend more on ads. Email support@ticketted.com or call 0452 590 455 and you'll get a real person, usually inside the hour, any day. We'll help you test the checkout, tidy the event page, and set up an email list you actually own. We can't make your headliner more famous. We can make sure that when people finally click buy, the till is open.