A Case Study: How We Got 350 Paid Attendees with Just $500 in Ad Spend!

Cover Image 2

Ever had to promote a live event on short notice and a shoestring budget?

Chances are, it’s gonna suck.

Good news is that it’s possible to turn things around with laser-focused marketing.

With just a few key strategies, we sold out an ENTIRE venue with paid participants  – and spent just $500 for ads. This podcast episode explains how we pulled it off.

You’ll discover:

  • The one ‘attraction’ that  can make participants beg you to take their money
  • How we used local buzz to turn our client’s event into a must-attend
  • What types of partnerships we tapped into that got us free advertising
  • The strategy to sell tickets 10x faster to this event

Download Terence’s book, Lead Surge for free here: www.leadsurgebook.com

Watch Now:
OR Listen Here:

Key Points

  • 00:00 Introduction to Event Marketing Success

  • 00:33 Leveraging Star Power for Event Success

  • 03:18 The Power of Local Marketing

  • 04:40 Collaborating with Local Organizations

  • 06:18 Maximizing Ticket Sales with Bulk Purchases

  • 07:13 Recap and Key Takeaways

  • 07:43 Closing Remarks and Subscription Reminder

Transcript

Terence (0:00 – 5:35)
In this episode, I want to share how we got 350 paid participants into an event with only $500 in ad spend. Hi, my name is Terence Tam. I’m the founder of Radical Marketing, and we’ve generated 1.5 million leads for coaches and course creators in the past 10 years.

And in today’s episode, I got something really special to share with you, and that’s a case study of how we generated 350 paid participants with only $500. And the first thing that I want to bring up that made this event an absolute smashing success is that we got someone with star power, a big name that everybody knows about. In this case, we got a former billionaire.

His name is Vincent Tan, and he is one of the richest guys in Malaysia, like in top 30 kind of thing. And he’s the guy that’s credited with bringing brands like McDonald’s, like Starbucks, like Krispy Kremes into Malaysia, and he owns this brand in Malaysia. And that’s why he’s rich.

Maybe if you’re in England, you might know him because he is the owner of a football club called Cardiff City. So with a high profile person like that, we managed to use him as the draw card for this event, which made the marketing so much easier because once you have someone with a star power like that, it is so easy to get people to come for the event and to whip out their wallets and take out their credit cards because they want to see this person because wow, it’s like a superstar. It’s like they want to see Taylor Swift kind of thing, right? And this strategy has been employed by most of the successful event organisers all around the world.

That’s why they have people like Tony Robbins, like Donald Trump, like Richard Branson being a keynote speaker at an event, right? Because they know that these people will draw other people to come for the event. These kind of speakers, this calibre of speakers, and even if they pay them a huge amount of money, like a million dollars to actually show up to do their one hour or two hour presentation, they know that in the back end, they’re going to make the sales because these people are the people that attract big crowds. So how do you apply it for your event? Now, here’s a few ways, first of all, you could get a guest appearance by an influencer, someone, a big name, you don’t need to have the high level super names that I just mentioned, but maybe someone who’s famous in your industry, or maybe someone who is famous in your local area that you could get to come as the keynote speaker.

And that is the drawcard for you to attract more people to the event. And if you can’t get them to actually come and speak at the event, you could at least get an endorsement from them, perhaps just like a two minute, one minute endorsement on video so that that can also serve to get the attention of people who want to potentially show up for your events. So that’s number one, having that star power.

The number two factor for success was that we use local marketing, we use a strong local marketing angle, because this is a city that’s not very big. And the fact that we had a superstar coming to our city, and we also have this location, which is like, well known to everyone is like, everybody knows, okay, I just need to take a 10 minute or 20 minute drive. And I’m at the event to see this person.

This is like a once in a lifetime opportunity, right? So using that local marketing angle, and using ads that only targeted the local area, and we got like lots of people registering and paying for the event, just because it was a local event. So that worked powerfully for us. This also had the side benefit of giving us publicity in the local media, because we had such a big name coming, we got free publicity from the local newspapers.

So that’s another reason why this whole local factor worked so well for us. Now, the third thing that we did was that, as I mentioned, we only spent $300 on ads, which is pretty ridiculous, considering like each ticket to the event was like 100 bucks, right, we could have spent more. And you know, we should have spent some more in hindsight, but we actually filled up the room before we could even spend more money.

So that was the situation, right. So here’s what happened is that the third strategy we use is we worked with other people that had lists. So we reached out to other business organisations in the local area, once again, tying back to the local thing, and telling them we had this big name coming to speak at the event, and their members should not miss out because they’re all business people.

So we convinced them to actually promote our event to their list to support it, right. And in return, we, I’m not sure whether we did this, but we could have just placed the logo as a supporter of the event, right, without actually profit sharing with them. In this case, we did not do any profit share.

But in your case, you might consider profit sharing. And that’s totally cool, because you’re getting people signing up for your event without paying for any marketing. So that is another way to do it.

Terence (5:35 – 7:58)
So even in this case, the local, not just the other business associations got into the act to support this event. But the local newspapers, as I said, also blasted this to their own internal email list as well. So we got plenty of support and plenty of organisations promoting this one event.

And even though we had a very, very short lead time, we managed to fill those 350 spots. So think about it, who in your market has lists that you can do cross promotions for? Maybe it’s a case where they promote you, they get a profit share, like I mentioned. The other way to do it is that where they promote you to their list, and you promote them to your list.

So it’s kind of a fair arrangement, right? So that is the third thing. And the fourth thing that made this event so successful was that we employed a strategy, which is multiple ticket sales. So in this case, there were multiple companies that bought tickets in bulk, like 10 tickets, 15 tickets for the event.

And to be honest, we did not actually employ the strategy, but they actually approached us to say, hey, can we buy 10 tickets? Can we buy 20 tickets and get a discount, right? So of course you can, right? I think there’s a lesson to be learned where why not, if you’re selling tickets, why not bulk it up and sell it to like big companies, you could have a family package, you could have like a package for teams and organisations. So all those things you could do to get, you know, so instead of selling one ticket at a time, you could sell multiple tickets at a time, which will then fill your events a whole lot faster. So there you have it, guys.

Those were the four lessons we learned from this particular scenario. And just a quick recap. Number one, make sure you get star power.

Number two, utilise the local marketing angle, if you can. Otherwise, you could go by niche as well. And third thing is partner with people who have lists of your target audience.

And finally, employ the multiple ticket sales strategy so you can sell in bulk. So I hope you enjoyed this particular episode, and I hope you can employ it into your own business. So thank you so much for watching.

Remember to subscribe if you’re on YouTube. Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you in my next episode.

This podcast is hosted by Terence Tam, author of Lead Surge: 8 Radically Effective Marketing Funnels for Coaches and Experts. He is also the Founder of Radical Marketing, a digital marketing agency that partners with high-ticket coaches to scale their businesses with Webinars – by using a proprietary blend of story ads and battled-tested sales funnels to achieve better returns on ad dollars.

Share This:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest

Read More Articles:

How to Market Your Webinar in 2025

How to Market Your Webinar in 2025

Webinars. The golden goose of high-ticket sales. When done right, they bring in dream clients on autopilot. When done wrong, well… they feel like a ghost town where even the ...
READ MORE
5 Deadly Mistakes to Avoid When Choosing a Webinar Marketing Agency

5 Costly Mistakes to Avoid When Hiring a Webinar Marketing Agency

Webinars have become a game-changing tool for businesses looking to generate leads, establish authority, and drive revenue. However, finding the right webinar marketing agency can be a daunting task. Hiring ...
READ MORE

Can Your Coaching Business Survive A Ruthlessly Changing Market?

One thing coaches and experts need to know… …is that the coaching industry, like any market, is volatile. Case in point: COVID. When COVID hit,  seminars went from being everywhere ...
READ MORE

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top