During the process of creating the Strictly Dancers website (a listings site for events involving Strictly Come Dancing’s professional dancers), we learned a huge amount about what goes into organising and running a Strictly dance event. We also realised that our home county of Kent was a bit short of chances for Strictly fans to meet the dancers!

So we decided to organise our own, using our extensive network of online and offline contacts, systems and expertise.

Our first event – An evening with Ian Waite and Camilla Dallerup - is set to happen on 5 June 2009 at Ditton Community Centre, near Maidstone. And we sold out over 300 tickets in three weeks!

The online side of things was key to our highly successful ticket sales. We created the Strictly Kent microsite as the destination for both online and offline marketing, designing the site in line with the look and feel of our print posters and flyers.

We integrated PayPal as our primary payment channel, to great success, enabling customers to buy tickets securely online either with their own PayPal accounts or with a debit or credit card.

To help our guests – some travelling from as far away as Loughborough, Exeter and High Wycombe – find the venue, we included an interactive Google map on the site.

We used targeted Google AdWords and Facebook advertising campaigns to drive highly targeted visitors to the site at a tiny cost, as well as using our Facebook and Twitter contacts from the Strictly Dancers website to spread the word.

Offline, we produced A5 flyers and A3 posters tied closely in with the site design, as well as secure, uniquely-numbered two-part tickets for our guests.

With tickets having sold out so quickly, we’re now working on our next Strictly event – watch this space!