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  • Event Promotion Tips

How to… Host the best New Year’s event

  • By Ryan Moss

  • 29 Nov 2022
  • 9 min read

The New Year’s period is busy. There will be lots of people around the venue, and you’ll have to find solutions to problems that crop up in the evening. In addition, it will be crucial to promote your event. You’ll have to stand out among the many other promoters trying their hardest to deliver an unforgettable night to their customers. 

If you nail all of the above, there’s a high chance your event will be a success. It’s certainly a challenge, but the rewards will pay off when you’re successful. Here at Skiddle, we’ve compiled an article giving you some top tips on hosting the best New Year’s event. 


Nail the timing

Timing is crucial. Take advantage of initial interest by listing your event early. However, be mindful of when you do list. Too early, and customers will be thinking of other holidays; too late, and your event will get lost in the sheer volume of choices for something to do. 

According to historical data from Skiddle, customer interest in New Year’s events begins from September 1st to November 5th. 15% of all searches for New Year’s Eve events happening in this stage. 47% of searches occur from November 6th to December 25th, with consistent traffic and interest after Halloween and Bonfire Night. 

Credit: CatsComing / Pexels.com

Between the 26th and 30th of December, 27% of searches for New Year’s Eve events occur. Christmas is over, and people’s attention turns to the final day of the year. This continues until 31st December, often seeing customers searching rapidly to find an event. 11% of all searches happen on this day. 

Timing your event right has many benefits. For example, you may want to stagger sales with tiered tickets and targeted ads. Starting the event promotion cycle in advance means you can have all the tickets set up when the listing goes live, with each tier going on sale as soon as the one before it has sold out. 


Establish your target audience

Establishing your target audience will help you host the best New Year’s event. Think about why you’re hosting the event. Are you catering to a specific audience, or do you feel like your town lacks a great new year’s event? Perhaps you could be booking performers from a niche music scene or creating a space for up-and-coming comedy acts to get a shine. 

A clear target audience will make organising easier in the long run. For example, if you’re running Facebook ads, you can make them more relevant by selecting the interests and hobbies of the people you want to reach. In addition, you can pick age demographics, location and consumer behaviour. 

It will help with branding, too. You don’t want to send out social media posts to people who might not be using certain platforms or familiar with online trends. The branding of your event needs to resonate with your target audience, and knowing who your event is for will help you create content that speaks to potential attendees. 


Pick the right venue

The correct venue can add an extra dimension to your event. For example, it’s no good trying to host a techno event in a local pub. You won’t have the right sound system, and the venue won’t be able to host an event of this ilk. It could be too small or set out in a way that doesn’t cater to a room full of people dancing. 

Similarly, hosting a formal dinner and drinks event in a nightclub would feel out of place. While there would be space for tables, the venue probably wouldn’t have the kitchen facilities.

Credit: Vishnu R Nair / Pexels.com

Intangibles like ambience play a part, and while you create that as the promoter with the people you attract to your event, it’s much harder to transform a nightclub into a dinner event space. 

Ensure your event is accessible no matter the genre. You want to make sure everyone can attend the night, so look out for places that offer alternative entrances and be on hand to find solutions when making your event available for all. This extends to location, too. Your New Year’s event needs to be somewhere attendees can realistically travel to. 


Make the event special

New Year’s Eve can yield excellent sales. However, other promoters will be hard at work in your area. Creating an incentive to attend should be at the top of your list, helping you stand out from the crowd and drive interest to the event. 

Securing a prestigious act can help. If you run an event with performers, consider booking someone with an international following.

This can drive ticket sales, as a notable name generates excitement, particularly if the person or group haven’t performed in your location before or it’s been a while since they’ve made an appearance. 

You can use this in your marketing. Placing emphasis on the fact that the appearance is a debut or return can play on FOMO. It goes with the special occasion of New Year’s Eve, and people are likely to be interested in buying if you’re offering something that stands out among your competitors. 


Plan your staffing

The New Year’s period is busy. Queues at the door, people coming outside, and the concentration of people in one venue means everything needs to run smoothly. Limiting the wait times and making sure people get inside promptly will go a long way to making your event stand out. 

People remember how well an event is planned. If they arrive on time but are greeted with sub-par organisation, they might not come back next time. Worse, they could leave a public review or pass on that information to their friends. This damages the reputation of your event. 

Skiddle’s RapidScan app can take the headache away. A free barcode entry solution available on iOS and Android with many helpful features, the app can ensure smooth entry on the night. Each ticket can be scanned in around one second, so you can get people in as quickly as possible. 

It also helps with staffing. If you’re running multiple entry points, RapidScan provides updates on who is entering in real-time. So, if one entrance gets busy fast, you can solve that problem by moving staff around on the night to deal with any issues. 


Use Skiddle’s tools to help promote your event

Alongside listing your event, managing tickets and viewing data, Skiddle can help you promote your event. E-Flyers — our specialised mailshots — can assist in your marketing campaign, getting eyes on your event based on a selection of metrics. 

Potential attendees are targeted through their proximity to the venue, postcode, if they’ve been to an event before and Skiddle users’ favourite genres and artists. 

For a club night, we’d target a radius from ten to twenty-five miles. An event with a large capacity would fall on the larger number, while a club night with a niche following would fall toward the smaller number. The map will also calculate how far the radius is reaching. If you’re hosting an event in a major city, the target audience will increase sizeably. 

You can refine the targeting to reach the event’s age range. This ties into what we discussed earlier. If your night caters towards a crowd who enjoys classic garage or house night, for example, then you can select what you feel is the appropriate range. 

Then, you can input music genres. If customers have been to events with the genre you’ve tagged, they’ll receive a notification of the E-Flyer in their email. 


Got a question you need an answer to? Give us a call on 03333010301 or ask us a question over on the Skiddle Promoter Twitter account by clicking or tapping on the button below. Alternatively, you can also find a list of our most frequently asked questions over at https://help.promotioncentre.co.uk/

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