6 Tried & True Tips For Selling Your Portrait Certificates
Have you set big and exciting revenue goals for your portrait fundraiser? Can you envision yourself earning those large bonuses?
Well, we certainly can and we want to ensure your dream becomes a reality. Below we’ve put together our most helpful tips for selling your certificates with ease!
1. Take Advantage of Local Advertising
When it comes to ticket sales, the focus should be on spreading the word about your fundraiser as far and wide, and as soon, as possible! Chances are you aren’t on a first-name basis with everyone in your town, and even if you are (shout out to small towns!), it can be awfully time-consuming to reach out to everyone individually.
Use local advertising platforms to get the word out. A huge benefit? Local advertising will connect you to people from neighboring areas.
You may think, “sounds great, but how?” Think local. Every town has a radio and news station, grocery stores, schools, community groups, and churches. As a portrait fundraiser host you’re in a great position, because you can sell to everyone!
Here are some practical ideas for reaching people:
Call your local radio and/or news station. Ask them to announce when and where your fundraiser is being hosted and who to contact. If you have enough resources and help, ask the local news to do a special spot on your fundraising cause.
Ask your local grocers if you could hang up flyers or put up a stand out front for one or two days. You could even convert a grocer into a volunteer, promising them a special package or bonus if they sell 10 tickets.
If you’re hosting an event for a school, take advantage of the community boards already in place. You could get the student council involved and have the kids promote it to the rest of the school, or have student groups give out free cupcakes while passing out flyers for your fundraiser.
Regardless of the type of cause you’re fundraising for, these are all great options for creating awareness around your event.
2. Make An Online Event Page
We have the answer to streamlining your entire fundraising process! Ready? Promote online.
For best results, we recommend taking advantage of both Facebook and an event platform like Event Smart. It’s an easy-to-use platform where you can quickly and affordably create an online event page with all of your fundraiser’s essential information and people can sign up to attend. An added bonus, online event platforms save and store all of your customers’ contact information for you. You’ll even have the option to link to a Facebook event page. People who see the event on Facebook can immediately link to the Event Smart page to sign up and buy their ticket.
The cherry on top of all of this? Knickerbockers will help you set the page up! If you’re more of an independent “DIY” type, check out our tips on event page essentials here.
3. Sell Certificates Online
It’s no wonder that online shopping is so popular. If you can accomplish something from the comfort of your own home, why wouldn’t you? These days most tasks are accomplished through a digital format—the way people buy their tickets from you should be no different.
Another reason people are more likely to buy when an online option is available is because it decreases decision time. The more time people have to mull over a purchase in their minds, the more time they’ll have to come up with doubts, or to even forget about your event. If the link to buy is right in front of them, they’re more likely to click and buy on the spot.
Selling online is also better for the seller, because it keeps all customer data in one place. This will make it easy to keep track of sales and numbers as your event draws nearer. The platform you use is not particularly important, but we recommend you try out Event Smart or PayPal, as both are trusted and secure.
4. Leverage your Loyal Customer Base
One of the most effective things you can do to sell tickets is to take advantage of those who have supported you and your cause in the past. The reason for this is related to what’s called word-of-mouth marketing, one of the most effective means of attracting customers. It’s a powerful tool, because as naturally social beings, we’re more willing to trust our best friend’s positive recommendation of a product or service than we are a self-promoting advertisement. It accounts for the success of platforms like Yelp, where everyday people just like us can give honest reviews of businesses.
So, how can you implement this technique to drive certificate sells? Reach out to your trusted supporters. If you’ve already hosted a Knickerbockers fundraiser in the past, you are in the perfect position to do this. Ask these folks if they wouldn’t mind helping you sell tickets. Give them a small amount, for example, 5-10 tickets to start, and encourage them to sell to their friends and family. Breaking it up this way will increase the reach of your sales and help you to reach your goals faster.
5. Create Printed Materials
This might sound a bit “old school”, but we recommend you create a flyer or some form of printed material to market your event.
Giving interested people a visual and tangible take-away like a flyer will help keep you in their minds. It’s also helpful when they learn about your event while running errands or speaking with a friend. You can pass materials out, hang them in local businesses and ask local business owners to pass them out, place an ad in the newspaper, pin to community bulletin boards and go door-to-door with them.
No worries if you’re not a photoshop whiz, or you’re positive you didn’t inherit the creative gene! There are helpful and free online resources, such as Canva, that let you choose from a variety of template styles to create all kinds of digital and printed materials like a flyer.
6. Sell to Groups
A simple and efficient way to sell multiple certificates at once is to sell to large groups. Reach out to sports teams like your child’s baseball team or your husband’s recreational soccer league. Are you part of a book club? Are your children involved in a local Girl or Boy Scout troop?
Remember the word-of-mouth concept mentioned above; consider all of the people within your personal network and the types of groups they’re involved with. Simply ask if they might get the word out to their group.
We hope these easy tips for selling your portrait certificates will have your fundraiser at full capacity in no time! If you come up against any roadblocks and feel like you need extra support to sell more tickets, always feel free to reach out to us for help. Email us at info@knickerbockers.bizor call us toll-free at 1-800-332-1066.
