Selling out isn't luck — it's a funnel. The events that fill up reliably treat marketing as a system that starts weeks before doors open, not a burst of posts the day of on-sale.
Start with the on-sale, work backwards
Pick your event date, then your on-sale date, then plan the awareness and retargeting windows before it. A typical timeline runs three to six weeks: tease, launch, sustain, and a final-call push.
Every phase has a job. Tease builds an audience you can retarget. Launch converts the warmest buyers. Sustain keeps momentum with fresh creative. Final-call uses scarcity honestly — real remaining inventory, not fake countdowns.
Spend where intent is
Meta is where you create demand — short video that stops the scroll and gets shared. Google captures the demand you've created, plus people already searching for things to do.
The mistake is treating them as either/or. Run Meta to build the audience and Google to catch them at the moment of intent.
Measure tickets, not clicks
Install conversion tracking per event — pixel and server-side — so you know your true cost per ticket, not just your cost per click. That single number tells you where to move budget, every day.