If you are in charge of event marketing for a conference, seminar, or even a private party, you know that there are many factors involved in creating a successful event. You may begin by looking around for event venues and setting up an itinerary and speaker schedule, but you will eventually need to consider how you will market the event.
So where do you start? There are many types of event marketing you can do to create awareness, but social media is one that you certainly can’t ignore or underuse. For the purposes of this post, we are going to take a second and talk about event marketing using Facebook Event Ads to take your social media marketing efforts to the next level.
What Happens When You Have Exhausted the Free Options on Facebook?
Facebook is great for event planners with a limited budget because there are so many things you can do for free:
- You can create an event on a company or personal Facebook page that you can then share with those who follow or like the page.
- You can adjust the page to make sure that the Events tab is one of the first tabs on the page’s wall.
- You can share the link of the page’s event calendar to others.
- You can create a Facebook event page for the specific event.
While all of these options are great, many event organizers find that they need to go a little further with their promotional efforts to reach their marketing goals. This is where Facebook Event Ads can make a major difference. If you’re new to Facebook ads, we highly encourage you to review the Facebook Advertising Support Center, which will provide you with basic information on how to create an ad. For example, you will need to know the differences between Ads Manager and Power Editor to determine which one will better fit your experience and the extent of the marketing campaign.
Things to Keep in Mind When Creating a Facebook Event Ad
- There are two types of Facebook Event Ads. The first is an Event Response Ad, which provides relevant information about the event and will ask those who see the ad to respond by clicking on the Interested button or Going button. The second is a Ticket Sales Ad, which provides viewers with event details, but will also include a link to buy tickets. Obviously, if your event does not require buying tickets, this will be unnecessary, but it is an easy way to increase ticket sales for those that do.
- Consider how you target people who see your ad. You will likely have some sort of a budget so finding people who may actually be interested in going to the event is crucial. The Ads Create Tool enables administrators to target people based on whether or not they have shown interest in the event, target past attendees if it’s a repeat event, target friends of people who have responded to the event, or even target people who have shown past interest in events the business may have held. The goal is to reach as many people as possible without going over budget or reaching people who have already accepted an invite or bought a ticket. Check out these tips from Facebook as well for additional information regarding targeting.
There’s no question that Facebook Events Ads can be a very important marketing tool. We encourage you to play around and see how Facebook advertising tools can help you generate awareness and excitement about your business’s upcoming event.