Picture this: your festival just went live, and ticket sales are rolling in. Your inbox is full of excited attendee confirmations, your VIP passes are almost gone and local buzz is building online.

Festivals don’t sell out by accident. Behind every packed venue, buzzing vendor area and “sold-out” sign, there’s a strategic marketing plan driving results. Unfortunately, too many festivals rely on old-school marketing methods like flyers and word-of-mouth that no longer work.

Your festival has it all: live music, food trucks, incredible entertainment and an experience people will talk about for years. But if your website isn’t doing its job, you’ll struggle to fill seats and maximize profits.

How do you make sure your festival stands out in a world dominated by scrolls, swipes, and double-taps? The answer isn’t always more flyers or social media ads (though they can help.) Instead, it’s leveraging the hottest trend in marketing today: influencer and user-generated content (UGC) marketing.

You have a great idea for a festival. You’ve worked hard to figure out logistics, planning and ticketing. Now it’s time to sell as many tickets as possible using strategic marketing. Unfortunately, many festival creators rely on old-school techniques like flyers or word-of-mouth that don’t move the needle like they once did.