Facebook, the 1.7 billion person social network. Naturally, this is an obvious choice for promoting your next event or pop-up shop. Facebook can be an excellent way to promote your event but it won’t just do all the work for you. Marketers and brands need to learn how to promote events on facebook, before all the traffic starts flowing.
Refine the Event Page
First, make sure that you optimize your events page. Choose a cover photo that’s 1920 x 1080 pixels, it should be exciting or eye catching. It’s the first thing that your target demographic is going to see about your event, so make it count.
Use a memorable, short an unique event name.
According to the facebook events team, events which feature longer names perform worse on the platform. The majority of users use facebook exclusively on their mobile devices, longer titles typically don’t look good on smaller devices.
Use facebook data to help share your event
What’s great about facebook, is that they have such a large network of people and set of tools which allow marketers to precisely target individuals for particular variables which may be relevant to them. There are algorithms that will recommend events to certain users based on a number of particular factors. This makes it very important that event producers add the correct address and location info for your event so that the right people get the invitation.
Leverage some facebook advertising
Ads represent the main source of revenue for facebook, resulting in the greatest advertising platform that enables organizers and event marketers to reach a wider audience. Most facebook users only log into the platform using their mobile devices. This means that if event marketers are looking to maximize the efficiency of their ads that their campaigns should look great on mobile devices. Stimulating images, clear, powerful messages with engaging copy.
Here are some primary advertising functions you can use with facebook to help support your event initiatives:
1.) Ads to collect responses
If you want to generate some buzz, use the “Interested” or “Going” button. You don’t need to rely on your audience to actually register to generate some buzz!
2.) Ads for Driving Event Registrations
Facebook ads can also be used to drive potential event attendees to an event. The page can be hosted natively on facebook or go to a third party website. These type of ads look exactly like the ads designed to generate responses, but the button reads “Buy Tickets” instead of “Interested” or “Going”.
3.) Facebook ad manager
Facebook offers some neat tools to keep you ahead of the curve. These tools give advertisers the ability to target certain people, such as those who visited a particular website, or match the demographics that your event requires.
4.) Retargeting
This is a cool feature. You can target visitors who have already visited an event website, promoters will need to insert a piece of html provided by facebook that will track the visitor until he or she opens facebook. Once the visitor is on facebook, they will see the ad reminding them to register for the event.
5.) Look alike targeting
Event Marketers can upload a list of emails and facebook will find users who share similar demographic data to the list of contacts that were uploaded. Using the lookalike audience feature is a pretty awesome way to reach attendees with similar profiles to people who have already registered for a particular event.
6.) Connection-based targeting
Facebook allows for event marketers to target friends whose friends already registered interest in an event. This can be a very useful tool as well for people who may jump on the bandwagon a bit later.
With a vast network of engaged users, facebook can be a fantastic resource for event marketing. Facebook indicated that they want people to engage with the platform before, during and after live events, meaning that they will continue to invest in providing event organizers with the tools they need to create successful events.
In order to reach the proper audience, event marketers must create an optimized page, and incorporate their event page into their brand page. Using specific content, advertising and embracing omni-channel technology is a great event promotion strategy for anyone to get more people interested in showing up at your event. If you build it they will come!
Have questions about promoting your next event? Contact BeCore today! We’d love to partner with you on your next experiential or event marketing project.