Becoming Oversubscribed: How to Sell Out Your Event or Product

Are you looking to create a sell-out event or product? The key lies in becoming ‘oversubscribed’—a book and strategy by Daniel Priestly focused on creating more demand than supply.

The idea is that you need to create demand that exceeds supply and a fear of missing out! For example, communicating there is limited spaces available for your event whilst building a personal connection with the audience.

Priestly advises creating a pre-launch registration process, where you can deliver targeted email marketing communications, before allowing people to purchase a ticket, or buy the product.

Creating a waiting list for people to express their interest and signal they are interested in the event or product is a key part of the process. This is your ‘engaged audience.’ The goal is to then target that audience with a minimum of seven interactions and eleven touchpoints, across four platforms. These platforms will be a combination of where your target audience is.

Stage One: Build awareness and anticipation

Create a compelling story of why your product or event is unique, who it is for and how it solves the customer’s problem. If you are uncertain on the value, tools such as the Value Proposition Canvas can help to extract how your product solves the customer’s problem. Draw upon testimonials, case studies and reviews to support and strengthen your message. Sharing teasers on social media, and behind-the-scenes spoilers about speakers will further drive engagement and excitement. The goal is for the prospective audience to pre-register, capturing data and email addresses.

Stage Two: Engagement

Nurture early adopters. This could include offering a bonus such as priority access for joining the waiting list, and a series of email drip campaigns to reiterate the value of the product or event. Follow-up with a further email sharing testimonials and success stories, followed by an incentive for those who are ready to commit early. Alongside email marketing, you are working on your seven interactions, and eleven touchpoints so continuing with social media to keep the audience engaged, from polls to starting discussions and continuing to share value.

Stage Three: Conversion

Your aim is to turn your engaged audience into buyers before opening the sale to the public. You can achieve this through early-bird offers. Create a sense of urgency by reminding the audience of the deadline, using countdown timers and reminders of previous successes and testimonials – continuing to remind them of the value.

Stage Four: Reaching Capacity

You have achieved a good level of conversion from your audience and potentially have several remaining products or tickets left. It’s time to launch to the public and reach capacity. A further email distributed with a sense of urgency, for example stating a limited number of products or tickets remain could be sent to those who are yet to convert. Encourage the audience to share the event and harness the power of social media ads to retarget those who may have been engaged at the start of your campaign but have not so far committed.

Once you have reached capacity, and become oversubscribed, it is time to follow-up and thank your customers and give them the opportunity to provide feedback. This will continue to support engagement for your next product launch or event.

For further information on Daniel Priestly check out Oversubscribed, Key Person of Influence and 24 Assets.