Boost Event Attendance with Facebook Ads

A How-To Guide

Facebook is a wide open door for managers looking to promote their next event.

There are more than 1.65 billion monthly active Facebook users. More than half of these users access Facebook on mobile.

The average person is spending 28 percent of his or her day on social media, or just under 2 hours per day. In the U.S., people spend 40 minutes daily on Facebook alone, and every minute, Facebook users engage with more than 4.1 million posts by liking, commenting or posting updates and media content.

Businesses dominate this arena as well. Already, 40 million businesses have a Facebook fan page. Yet Facebook advertisers are relatively fewer. Only 2 million businesses advertise on Facebook, which leaves greater opportunity for you.

(Image via Business Insider)

Why Should I Advertise on Facebook?

1. Facebook is the largest social site

Worldwide, Facebook remains the king of social media. It has more active users than WhatsApp, Twitter and Instagram combined.

With the reach and popularity of Facebook, as described at the beginning of this article, it’s obvious why a business needs to promote itself on this network. But why isn’t it enough to simply have a dedicated event page or to regularly update posts? Because Facebook’s changing algorithms are reducing organic reach.

2. Organic reach is quickly diminishing

Facebook has been changing their formulas to downplay business page posts. For brand pages, organic reach is dropping significantly. Right now, only about 0.5 percent of your fans are likely to see your posts.

With this low reach, it’s imperative to invest in paid advertising in order to create marketing impact for your event.

(Image via Social@Ogilvy)

3. Facebook advertising is very affordable

With budget requirements as low as $1.00 a day, virtually anyone can afford to advertise on Facebook. But of course, even this low price is worth it only if it can bring you substantial return. That’s where Facebook ads marketing tactics come in, and we’ll discuss these in length below.

How to Maximize the Impact of Facebook Ads for an Event

1. Have an established fan page with a solid following

To get started with Facebook ads for events, first, you need a business fan page. You also want to drive up the number of likes for your business through quality content and regular posts. Accumulating likes is important, because those who’ve liked your page can become your select advertising audience. They’re practically the best target group to hit, because they’ve already shown interest in your brand and what you have to offer.

Next, set up a Facebook event through your page. This provides a URL that’s needed when setting up the corresponding Facebook ad. If you can prep your event page with people who’ve clicked to attend, that’s even better. It’s much more attractive for customers to sign up for an event when there are already a handful of people going.

2. Refine your marketing objective in the Adverts Manager

Go into Adverts Manager to set up your campaign objectives, for example “Raise attendance at your event.” Other potential objectives include “Send people to your website” and “Increase conversions on your website.”

After determining your goals, you’ll be led to create an Advert account and to define your audience.

3. Carefully define your target audience

(Image via Facebook)

When you narrowly define your audience, you ensure that your marketing dollars are better spent. Audience segmentation is the process of creating an ideal audience, so that only people who fit your perfect demographic get to see your ad.

Facebook offers a multitude of audience parameters, letting you design very specialized campaigns. Alternatively, you can input information about your existing customers and let Facebook develop a “lookalike” audience for you.

For events in particular, it’s important to specify your audience’s geographic location. People are less likely to travel more than two hours to attend an event, so defining your location parameters helps you save ad costs. Also select the age group and the language of your ideal customers.

Take time to go into the Detailed Targeting options in Facebook. If your conference is for newly married couples, you can choose that exact demographic under the Life Events category. You can choose such finely defined groups, for example, parents with toddlers, users of Samsung Galaxy 7, or people who returned from a trip one week ago. The specificity of audience targeting categories available through Facebook is amazing, so spend time finding the exact individuals most likely to attend your event.

Under Connections, you can choose to target people who’ve liked your page, or friends of people who’ve liked your page. You can also reach out to people who’ve responded to your event in the past, or friends of people who’ve responded to your event. These parameters put you in control of audience selection, so take full advantage of them.

4. Control your ads budget

Facebook makes this part easy. You can choose how much you want to spend per day and limit your spending to a monthly amount. Facebook helps you maximize this budget by using your funds towards your target audience only, and only during times when your audience is most likely to be active. Alternatively, instead of a daily budget, you can set a lifetime budget, which is the total amount of funds to be spent during the duration of the ad run.

When it comes to showing your ad, Facebook implements a bidding system, which aims to balance advertisers’ interests with viewers’ benefit. You can let Facebook bid automatically for you, or you can bid manually by choosing the amount that 1,000 impressions are worth to you.

In terms of winning a bid, your ad’s quality and relevance plays a big part. This means that a high-quality ad that’s very relevant can beat out a low-quality, less relevant ad with a higher bid. Facebook advises, “…to get the most out of advertising on Facebook, you should strive to maximize all factors — bid the maximum you’re willing to pay, create compelling ads and target them to the right audience.”

5. Design your ad to captivate the web audience

(Image via Facebook)

Facebook offers three options for your ad format: a single image, a single video, or a slideshow. All three can be very effective. One of the best ways to find out which gets more results is for you to test all three in turn.

Whichever format you choose, your ad needs to appeal to online readers. Social media ads are different from print ads or web banners. A high-performing Facebook ad generally has one central, high-quality, modern, eye-capturing image, and minimal to no text. In fact, Facebook prefers ads with less text, and more words in the ad can decrease your audience reach. Save your sentences for the text box that accompanies the ad, and keep the image sparse for a cleaner, more attractive look.

Another tip is keeping your headline short. The best-performing Facebook ads have headlines that are not longer than five words. Teasing, click-bait type headlines tend to work very well in the social sphere, so experiment with some tantalizing headers.

Utilize the most powerful marketing words: you, free, because, instantly, new. These words jump out at online readers. Include a call-to-action, so readers know what to do next. The most popular call-to-action buttons are “Learn More,” “Shop Now,” and “Sign Up.”

6. Set up a professional ticketing page

Many people who RSVP on a Facebook event page won’t show up at the actual event. Moreover, invitees have the option to click “Maybe” or “Interested,” which reflects even lower levels of commitment.

To capture interested audiences right away, drive them to your dedicated ticketing page, where they can reserve a seat for your event right away and perhaps enjoy a time-sensitive discount provided through your ad text.

A dedicated ticketing page also demonstrates the professionalism of your organization and the event you’re hosting. Not only does this site help you collect sales, it provides a very convenient, easy-to-use platform for your customers to secure a place at your event.

A professional ticketing site also takes care of secure purchasing transactions, automatic receipts and thank you emails, and it provides room to expand on the details of your event. Facebook’s layout can be quite restrictive, and only the most recent or pinned posts show up at the top. On your own site, you can organize information clearly, and especially, complicated information such as event schedules and speaker bios can be neatly laid out so attendees know what to expect.

8. Test your ads to improve effectiveness

Even experienced, professional marketers may not achieve the best results the first time around. Your audience’s taste, preferences, moods and behavior is always changing, so your ads need to be quick to adapt in order to continue bringing in worthwhile results.

Methodically test ads based on key elements such as image, text and header. For example, run two ads for a similar audience, keeping everything the same but changing the header. The engagement metrics will indicate which title is more effective.

Remember to keep your ads fresh by replacing the images, adapting your design to seasonal events and piggybacking on trending themes such as the elections campaign or Cyber Monday.

Regular monitoring of ad performance will help you tweak your campaigns for greater performance.

At Eventgrid, we’re passionate about making your events a success. Whether you’re running a concert or a conference, we supply the tools to make your event fly. From online registration to mobile-friendly event pages, we’ve got you covered. Talk to us today for a free Eventgrid demo.