Selling event tickets with paid social: a campaign calendar

The shape of a ticket campaign

Anyone who has sold tickets for a concert, festival, conference or club night will recognise the pattern. There is a burst of sales when the event is announced, mostly from fans, past attendees and people on your mailing list. Then sales slow to a trickle for weeks. Finally, in the last fortnight, and especially the last few days, a large share of remaining tickets go, often to people who were interested all along but did not commit.

Paid social should follow that shape rather than fight it. Spending evenly every day means paying for attention during the weeks when people are least likely to act, and having too little left for the period when they finally do. A calendar lets you put money where the decisions happen.

The timings below assume a typical event with a ten to twelve week run. Shorten each phase for smaller events, and extend the build-up for festivals and large conferences that sell months ahead.

The calendar at a glance

Here is a rough guide to how phases, goals and budget can be spread. The budget shares are illustrative starting points, not a formula; adjust them to your own sales history.

Before launch: set up what you will need later

The two weeks before announcement are about preparation, not spending. Get these in place:

• Tracking on the ticket checkout. Most ticketing platforms used in Denmark and internationally let you add a Meta pixel or Google tag, and some support server-side events. Check exactly which events they pass (view, add to basket, purchase) and test a purchase yourself.
• Audiences. Build custom audiences from past attendees and your mailing list (where you have permission), people who engaged with your social profiles and visitors to your website.
• A creative bank. Footage and photos from previous editions, short artist or speaker clips, venue shots, and a simple, clear key visual with the date and place.
• A landing page or event page that loads fast on a phone and goes straight to ticket selection.

If there are no past editions, budget a small amount for building an engaged audience with video views in this period, so you have someone to retarget at launch.

Weeks 12 to 6: announce, then give people reasons

The announcement phase targets people who already care. Run conversion campaigns to past attendees, mailing list audiences and social engagers, with early bird pricing as the hook. A deadline (“early bird ends Friday”) gives a reason to act now rather than later. Keep the creative direct: what, where, when, how much.

After early bird, interest drops. The way to restart it is news. Every line-up announcement, speaker confirmation, programme detail or new feature (a food partner, an after-party, a workshop) is a reason to put fresh creative in front of people. Plan these reveals in advance and space them out, so you have something new every week or two.

This is also when you widen the audience. Use interest targeting, lookalikes of past buyers and broad targeting with strong video, and optimise for purchases if your tracking has enough volume, or for adding to basket if it does not yet. We plan these windows in our seasonal, launch and event-driven campaigns work.

Weeks 5 to 3: ride out the lull

The middle of the campaign is where many promoters panic and overspend. Sales are slow because people are not ready to decide, not necessarily because the ads are failing. The aim here is to stay visible cheaply and grow the pool of people you will retarget later.

• Run reach or video view campaigns with behind-the-scenes clips, artist or speaker content and short “what to expect” videos.
• Keep a modest always-on retargeting campaign to people who visited the ticket page but did not buy.
• Test new creative now, while the stakes are low, so you know what to put the big budget behind in the final weeks.

In Denmark, many people are paid on the last banking day of the month. If your lull covers a payday, a short, sharper push around it can be worth testing.

The last two weeks: where most of the budget goes

This is the period when the undecided make up their minds. Increase spend and shift almost everything to conversion campaigns. The most valuable audience is people who already showed interest: ticket page visitors, video viewers and engagers. Retarget them with urgency that is true, such as “final release”, “two weeks to go” or “last tickets for Saturday”. Do not claim an event is nearly sold out if it is not; it damages trust and can breach marketing law.

Refresh creative more often in this phase. Frequency rises quickly when budgets go up against warm audiences, and people tune out ads they have seen several times. Practical details move people now: doors open time, transport, the weather plan, what is included in the ticket.

In the final days, switch the message to door sales or “tonight” if the event allows it, and stop spending on audiences that are clearly not converting.

Which platforms for which events

Meta (Facebook and Instagram) is the core for most ticketed events in Denmark: Facebook events still matter for many audiences, and Instagram carries the visual side. Beyond that, the right mix depends on who you are selling to:

• Snapchat is widely used by younger Danes and can suit club nights, student events and festivals with a young crowd.
• TikTok works for music and culture events where short artist clips and crowd footage carry the message.
• Pinterest is useful for events people plan ahead, such as wedding fairs, design and food events.
• X can help for conferences and talks with an audience that follows speakers there, though its reach in Denmark is limited.
• LinkedIn is often the right choice for B2B conferences, despite higher costs.

We advise on the smaller channels in our page on Snapchat, Pinterest and X. As a rule, start with one or two platforms done well rather than five done thinly.

After the event: start selling the next one

The campaign does not really end when the doors close. The days after an event are when attendees are most enthusiastic and most likely to share, and that goodwill is the cheapest marketing you will get for the next edition.

• Publish photos and a short recap video within a few days, while people still remember the night. A well-made event recap film also becomes the strongest creative for next year’s announcement.
• Save audiences of buyers and engagers. Meta lets website audiences look back up to 180 days, so build lists of purchasers you can keep refreshing, and add buyers to your mailing list where they have agreed to it.
• Write down what sold when: the dates of each sales spike, which creative drove it and what each ticket cost in advertising. That record turns next year’s calendar from a guess into a plan.

If the next date is already known, consider a small “save the date” or presale offer to this year’s attendees while the memory is fresh.