One of the great mysteries in event management is that successful formula for promotion. What kid of promotion exactly works? Mailers? Broadcast advertisements? Print? Social media? Well, if the answer to it were easy, everyone would be doing successful events. There’s a reason billions of dollars go into the marketing and advertising industry every year — nobody has figured out just how to do it yet.

And that’s why getting to know your attendees is so important.

Find out who they are
Your ticket buyer demographic is some of the most valuable information
you can take away from you event. These are the people who are actually attending your event, so they are the best ones to ask about themselves. Getting to know who your attendees are is the first step in finding ways to more efficiently promote your event. Information like age, gender, income, geography, and even occupation is a good jumping off point, so that you can segment your attendees into specific groups.

Once you discover a pattern or common denominator amongst your current attendees, you can use that information to go after potential ticket buyers. It is very likely that other people like them would be interested in your event.

Find out where they’re from
One of the glorious benefits of selling your event’s tickets online is that tracking where ticket buyers come from is no longer a guessing game. Instead, you have cold, hard facts to pull real, usable data from. Using online tools like Google Analytics help you track where your ticket buyers are coming from, what sites they’re using, and how they interact with your event’s online presence. Follow their patterns and in essence, become your ticket buyer. Learn what they like, what they don’t like and what they need. The better you know your attendees, the more knowledge you can apply to future promotional campaigns and the more conversions you’ll garner.

Don’t sell yourself short
A quality of a good promoter is a deep understanding of their market. They know their market and their region like the back of their hand. However, sometimes, we think we may know our market so well that we don’t think outside of it. In today’s social landscape, trends are changing faster than Lady Gaga’s nail polish. Ideas are moving faster than a speeding bullet, which will only eventually influence your market. Stay true to yourself and what you know about your market, but keep your finger on the pulse of the ever-changing culture within your market, too. You never know what you may find if you take a different way home.

Ask them outright
One of the easiest ways to know who your ticket buyers are and where they’re coming from is just to ask them. Using survey tools like SurveyMonkey or AttendStar’s attendee fields option, let you ask your ticket buyer how they heard of your event and who they are. In addition, you can also collect your ticket buyer’s contact information, so that you may contact them before, during or after your event. Ask them for feedback, or let them know of some other cool things you have going on. In business, it’s always easier to keep a current customer than to get a new one!