Deciding how much to charge for virtual event tickets can be complicated. You know the value of your event and the virtual content that will be made available to attendees. However, in the case of hybrid events, these tickets shouldn’t cost as much as tickets to the live event. But, if you undercharge, you risk making your event look less valuable to potential attendees. Pricing your virtual event is tricky, but you can come up with a price that values what you’re offering and is within attendees’ expectations for a virtual event.
4 Ticket Pricing Strategies for Virtual Events
1. Free (But Don’t Call It That!) Pricing Model
For small single-session events such as a webinar or panel discussion, there’s always the option of not charging for tickets at all. That doesn’t mean you should say that attendance is free of charge.
When you give virtual event tickets away for free, you risk diminishing the value of the event in the eyes of your potential audience. After all, they might think, if you’re giving it away, how good can it really be?
The trick here is that even if you don’t charge money, you can still put a value on tickets. For instance, you can say that tickets to your event have a “$50 value” even if you don’t actually charge $50 for tickets. Perhaps the cost of the event has been covered by a sponsor. Or perhaps you might give those “$50 value” tickets away to valued customers or to people who commit to a sales meeting.
Free tickets might be a particularly good strategy for product launches or introductory content, where you hope attendance leads to a longer-term relationship to the attendee. This strategy is not likely to be successful for hybrid events where you’re charging a premium for the in-person event.
2. Pay-What-You-Can Pricing Model
One thing that’s unusual about virtual events is that this arm of the events industry has grown and expanded so quickly, that there aren’t really any “best practices” set in stone, especially in terms of pricing.
Particularly in 2020, when many events were hastily canceled or postponed, there was little expectation that people would attend online events if they had to pay a premium price for tickets.
As a result, many events chose to go with a “Pay What You Can” structure, which meant exactly that: attendees paid what they felt was a fair and affordable price. For some smaller independent events, especially in industries that are still recovering, that may still be an appropriate ticket pricing strategy.
Pay-What-You-Can may also be an effective strategy if you’re holding your first-ever virtual event and aren’t sure what your audience is willing to pay. However, this strategy can be challenging for event organizers, when you’re never certain how much your company will get back for all the effort you’ve put into an event. Once you prove your ability to host valuable virtual events, you might switch to charging a flat rate for tickets for subsequent events.
3. Multi-Tiered Pricing Model
One way to make sure your event is affordable for a broad range of people—while still including options for adding value and upselling—is to offer multiple tiers of ticket categories.
For instance, one option might be to sell individual tickets at a flat rate, small-group tickets at a discounted rate, and bulk tickets at a deeper discount.
With this strategy, your pricing structure might look something like this (numbers are an approximation only):
- Tier 1: Individual tickets, $100
- Tier 2: Group ticket, $500, provides access for 6
- Tier 3: Corporate ticket, $2000, provides access for up to 30 employees of a single company
Each tier might also include an option for VIP tickets that provide access to exclusive event content.
4. The Per-Session Pricing Option
If you really want to maximize your attendee figures, one option is to offer event content on a per-session basis. This would mean that instead of buying a full-price ticket and getting access to all the event content, some people would pay a reduced rate for access to individual sessions.
This can be an effective way to reach attendees who are only interested in specific sessions and don’t want to buy a full ticket. But it’s important to balance the per-session price and the full-price ticket carefully, and perhaps to limit the number of single sessions a single person can buy access to. Otherwise, you risk having people flock to buy single-session tickets and losing too many full-price attendees.
Factors to Consider When Pricing Your Virtual Events
How Much Does the Event Cost to Produce?
Event budgets vary a lot and are a critical piece of event planning. Before you can set a ticket price, you need to know how much the virtual portion of the event will cost to produce. This will let you determine your break-even point. Once you know that figure, you can accurately determine a reasonable ticket price.
When the considering the cost of hosting an online event, you might consider:
- The event management platform
- Keynote and breakout session speaker fees
- High speed internet at the live event, if you’re live-streaming
- Internet hosting that can handle your audience all logging in at the same time
- Event technology: cameras, microphones, and computers
- Graphic design and video editing contractors, if you don’t have them on your team
What Is the Perceived Value of the Event?
The perceived value of your event is no less important than its actual value. In fact, perceived value is more important, because it’s what determines how eager your audience is to buy tickets. Your content might be genuinely valuable, but if your audience doesn’t see it that way, your event is toast.
That doesn’t mean you can’t charge premium ticket prices. But if you do, you’d better have some high-value content and experience to justify the high prices.
Remember, what people expect to pay has a lot to do with what they think they will be getting from you. No matter how valuable your content is, your audience’s excitement over watching a PowerPoint slideshow on Zoom will be less than attending a virtual retreat on a tropical island. Remember, the ambiance and experience of your virtual events platform will play a significant role in how your audience perceives your event.
What Is the Industry Standard?
Checking out what other industry virtual events are charging for tickets can help you figure out what your own ticket pricing strategy should look like. Research these events and look at what they’re offering and how much they’re charging.
- What kinds of content are on the agenda?
- How many sessions are they running?
- What guest speakers do they have? Are there any industry names or celebrities?
- Are any CE credits being offered?
- Is entertainment included?
- What “experience” is being offered? Are there networking and socializing opportunities? Do attendees engage in a way similar to live attendees at a conference?
How Does Your Virtual Content Value Compare to a Live Event Value?
If you’re having trouble hitting on the right ticket price, it can help to consider what a comparable live event might cost to attend. For hybrid events, this is simple: compare to the actual price of a ticket to the live portion of the event. By using the cost of a live ticket as a baseline, you might then determine a virtual ticket price as a percentage of that baseline. The better your virtual event experience approximates that of a comparable live event, the higher your percentage might be.
This isn’t a foolproof method for virtual ticket pricing, of course, but it can help you figure out if you’re in the right ballpark.
Price Virtual Tickets According to Value, and You Can’t Go Wrong
Given that the virtual events industry is still relatively new, it can be difficult to figure out the perfect pricing model. To oversimplify a bit: Price virtual events according to their value to your audience. If you’re not sure the value of your event, it’s time to ask your target audience a few questions. Find the right balance between price and value, and you’re all but guaranteed to sell every single ticket.
