4 Tips for How to Diversify Your Live Event Revenue

As an expert in 6-figure event strategies, our Eventistry by Alecia team knows a thing or two about diversifying your live event revenue. People think that 6-figure success is unattainable for them in their business, but most of the time, it’s simply mindset and a lack of knowledge holding them back from that significant milestone. 

When you’re looking at laying the foundation of your event strategy, start with your revenues and expenses. While this seems simple, so many people skip this step! You must understand what you’re paying before you even start thinking about how you can make money. The goal isn’t to break even; it’s to make a profit! 

So, once you understand your expenses, start hashing out ways you can well-exceed those with some of the following ideas!

Things You Can Offer to Break Profit Records

Ready to diversify your live event revenue? Here are just a handful of our favorite ways to start making events more profitable.

Offer VIP Tickets & Micro-Experiences

Sales success lies in the upsell a lot of the time. When it comes to your ticket sales, you need to have a variety of options for your attendees to elevate those ticket sales. 

A few ideas for ways to add an upsell to your ticket sales include:

• A Keynote VIP Ticket: Backstage access with a meet and greet with the keynote speaker.
• A Content VIP Ticket: Get recordings of every session for a year post-event (add another upsell for lifetime viewing access).
• An Invite to an Exclusive Micro-Event: An after-hours event with VIP guests and attendees, only ten spots are available to general admission attendees.
• An All-Access Ticket: You can do a tiered entry model with access to only specific sessions and offer an all-access ticket where you can go literally anywhere on-site, including VIP spaces and breakouts.
• A VIP Training Day: Offer a lucrative certification course or a training day with a huge influencer that you can only add on to a high-level ticket.

See how creative you can get? Don’t sell one level of ticket. Otherwise, you’re missing out on the big bucks.

Sell Merch, Services, & Products 

What do you have that you can sell before, during, and after the event to increase your live event revenue? 

Here are a few ideas:

• Discounts on courses
• Apparel
• Custom goods with event logos
• NFTs
• VIP consults on-site with subject matter experts
• Your company’s latest product release (pre-sales!)

Every business has something to sell. Whether it’s a physical product or a valuable service, there is no limit to what you can share.

Cultivate a Stronger Sponsorship Kit

Sponsorship is the bread and butter of every event. If you have sponsorship offers that aren’t intriguing, valuable, or different, you’re not going to be able to sign up these critical partners. And with that, you’re not optimizing your revenues. 

Here’s a recent blog we did about what sponsors want (and don’t want) that may provide some inspiration for how to mix it up and attract big-ticket sponsorships! 

Leverage Affiliate Marketing

Now, this is a strategy that many think is reserved for just bloggers and content creators, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth! 

You can add affiliate revenue to your events in a few ways, including but not limited to: 

• Partner Referral Fees: Giving partners that make sense with your brand booth space or session space. Then, set up a custom link for attendees to get a discount, and you receive a commission for all sales made with that link. Or provide a virtual swag bag with discounts on affiliate products! 
• Promote Affiliates in Event Marketing: In your email newsletters, allow sponsors to advertise in an aligned way, and you get a percentage of sales made.
• Include Affiliate Partners in Sessions: For the keynote especially, you can really leverage this. Show your team using a specific product or service, how it helped you, etc., and provide discounts for all attendees in the post-event follow-up comms. 

Let Us Help You Diversify Your Live Event Revenue

The only limit to your revenue is your own imagination, as we like to say. Let’s get on a complimentary 20-minute brainstorming sesh to talk about all the components of your upcoming events, your event goals, and how you can diversify your live event revenue. We think you’ll see a new world of opportunity in less than a half hour. We help teams increase their event revenues for 6-figure event success every single day. Let’s chat.

P.S. Want more tips? Check out the most recent episode of Alecia’s 6-Figure Event Podcast, where she gives the behind-the-scenes of an actual 6-figure event.