Setting the right event ticket price doesn’t come with a recipe. At the same time, your ticket price is one of the most dominant factors in ticket sales.
If you’re reading this article, you’re trying to at least break even with your ticket sales. But, what if I told you that you could sell out with these tips too?
Ticket pricing is an art requiring you to consider a lot of factors. We deduced those factors into easy actionable steps for you to practice.
When you reach the end of this article, you will know what your event ticket price is. But, that’s not it.
You’ll also learn how to get people to buy your perfectly priced ticket. After all, ticket prices will be perceived differently by people with different backgrounds.
We’ll teach you how to make it appealing to everyone!
Let’s first understand the steps to calculating the event ticket price.
And, if you continue reading till the end, we will teach you a shortcut too!
A. How you can calculate the event ticket price
1. Read your budget
Knowing your budget inside out will help you understand the various costs involved for you.
This will help you make informed decisions about the event ticket price. No need to throw random numbers.
Once you know the expense you’ll bear, you’ll know how much money is needed to break even.
However, your ticket price shouldn’t just be to break even based on your expenditure. You must also include a margin to earn profit.
Worst case scenario, even if your estimate of ticket sales tanks, you’ll still be able to cover the costs. You won’t have this luxury if you simply set the ticket price based on the expenditure.
In events, budgets almost always exceed. So setting the ticket price a little higher will help you take care of that.
However, at the same time, try to get the best deals to reduce your overall expenditure.
2. What did others do?
Say you’re organizing a prom or a food festival. You’ll have to research similar events in the recent past.
Ensure you first look at the event’s success and then check the event ticket price.
Try to understand what is the price that people find worth paying for your type of event.
This will help you get a ballpark figure and set an event ticket price within that range.
3. Is your event in demand?
Becoming a trendsetter can often be a hit-or-miss move.
While we encourage you to take risks, it’s still advisable to do market research to see if your event is in demand.
If the answer is yes, it’ll help you set a reasonable event ticket price.
You can do this by researching similar events and how many people attended them. Try to measure their success with your metrics.
What you’re doing here is trying to understand if people think an event like yours is worth attending.
Don’t be a victim of your passion and only take into account what you think is a great event.
4. Know your value
When we talk about the ‘value’ of the event, we’re dealing with something very subjective.
However, you can still assess the various values associated with the event.
a. Actual money value
Based on the budget, calculate the amount to be spent on the event to create a good customer experience.
This will be the minimum possible event ticket price.
b. Customer’s perceived value
Ask around in your team and peer groups as to what they’d like to pay to attend an event like yours.
Be sure to share a detailed itinerary of what they’ll experience in the event. Include the artists, food details, venue, and other attractions.
This will be the highest possible event ticket price.
Now, what do you do with these two values?
You find a middle ground.
Set an event ticket price that is over the actual value, so you can get a profit. However, you must still keep it under the customer’s perceived value. It will make them feel like they’re getting more than what they paid for.
This way, you’ll be churning profit and higher customer satisfaction at the same time.
5. Estimate event ticket sales
It is not very wise for you to assume that your event is going to sell out.
However, it needs to be a statistical possibility that you can arrive at after some research.
So, here’s what you need to know to estimate how many tickets you will be able to sell:
- Enquire organizers of similar events as to how many tickets they were able to sell
- Take into account how many tickets you sold in your previous events
- Location of your event (is it a hub for events or a completely new one?)
- Weather forecast on the day of your event
- Brand awareness for your event
- Other events that’ll clash with your event
Then, come up with the minimum number of tickets that’ll sell and multiply it with the ticket price you’ve thought of.
If you’re able to break even with that amount, you’re headed in the right direction!
6. Give your customers multiple options
You must follow a multi-tier pricing strategy. As in, your event should give customers options to choose from multiple types of tickets with different prices.
For example, you could have different ticket types like Regular, VIP, Stag, Group, etc.
This means that you don’t just have to calculate one event ticket price, but multiple.
But, why would you willingly increase your workload?
Giving customers options ensures that you cater to more than just one class of people.
In fact, having higher bands of tickets like a ‘VIP ticket’ will also contribute a lot to your profit.
The ‘additional work’ is just creating a base ticket price or the ‘regular’ ticket. Then, just come up with higher-priced tickets with more benefits at the event.
7. A cost you may fail to include
When you set the event ticket price, you might forget to include the cost of selling.
You will need to know the cost of the following:
- Social media marketing for your event
- Email marketing
- Advertisements for your event
- Tracking ticket sales and retargeting leads
- Public relations management
- Search engine optimization
People usually try to do most of it by listing their events on popular event-hunting websites.
Here are some good sites for listing your event but most of them keep a huge cut for themselves. If you don’t want to share your profit, try Ticket Generator tool.
8. Track ticket sales
Your job doesn’t end with setting the perfect event ticket price.
The thing is, an event ticket price is very time-sensitive. In fact, at times, it might not even be as perfect as you think.
You must track your event ticket sales to modify your ticket price if need be.
For example, a price drop strategy works if your event tickets are not selling at all.
Do you have different bands of ticket prices, let’s say Regular and VIP tickets? Then check which band is selling the most. Next, allocate more tickets to that particular band and get the most event attendance.
Another reason why you must ticket sales is to retarget. You need to see which customers ‘almost’ bought your tickets or are yet to pay. Conversions are most likely in this scenario if you continuously pitch your event to them after they’ve browsed through.
B. Shortcut to calculating the event ticket price
Once you’ve arrived at an event ticket price, you may still have questions.
To validate your figure, an event ticket price calculator already exists in the market.
However, in order to use it, you will need to know the following details for your event:
1. Target profit
This doesn’t really have to be a stagnant figure. The amount of profit you’d like to make can be played around with this calculator.
It’ll also help you understand the maximum profit you can make without having an unreasonable ticket price.
2. Cost of procuring tickets
This cost is mostly calculated by seeing how the event listing websites are charging per ticket.
For printed tickets too, you’ll need to see how much the ticket or the event entry band costs you per piece. Don’t forget to include the shipping costs and contingency tickets.
You can also reduce this cost by getting a sponsor on board in exchange for their branding on the ticket.
3. Number of events
This calculator needs to know if it’s a one-off event spanning over multiple days.
For example, if it’s a festival, it may take place over the weekend and be a two-day event.
4. Cost per event
It’ll include the amount quoted in your event budget or the total expense of hosting the event.
If it is a multiple-day event, you need to multiply the costs for each of the days.
5. Number of seats
Note that this segment of the calculator won’t ask you how many tickets are going to sell.
Rather, they need to know the maximum number of tickets that you can sell. You can arrive at this number by simply writing the capacity of your event venue.
To avoid confusion, keep this number per event and not for the overall multi-day event.
6. Percentage of tickets to be sold
Here too, you may experiment and asses your profits and losses if you don’t completely sell out.
See if you’re able to breakeven even if 60% of the tickets sell. Then slowly increase the percentage to see how better scenarios will impact your revenue.
Enjoy using the calculator but remember that it’s only a way to validate the event ticket price you’ve thought of.
Once you’re done, you’d want to come back to EventTube to learn the best event pricing practices.
But, just in case you forget, you can simply sign up for our newsletter below and we will tell you what they are.
