2 February 2024 | Meta advertising
Are you dreaming of selling out your event, strengthening your brand, and creating engagement among your target audience? Then you should consider advertising on Facebook and Instagram. With Meta's powerful advertising tools, you can reach a wide audience and create campaigns that deliver real results.
But how does Meta advertising really work? What do you need to know? In this blog post, you'll learn everything you need to know to create event ads on Facebook and Instagram.
Advertising on Meta (which includes Facebook and Instagram) can be particularly beneficial for you as an event organizer. When you are selling tickets to experiences such as concerts, theater performances, and other events, and need to showcase your offerings through videos and pictures, Meta is an ideal advertising platform.
It might seem obvious that an advertisement allows you to showcase what you are actually selling and offering. However, we still want to emphasize the great opportunities that Meta advertising can offer, especially to those in the event industry.
Since an event is not a physical product, but rather an anticipation and vision of something, you need to use multiple channels to reach potential buyers. You need to engage the customer through email, SMS, social media, and more traditional forms. Moreover, you need to convince the potential guest in a completely different way than if you were selling a physical product.
An event cannot be touched or felt in the physical sense. Therefore, you need to use multiple channels, formats, and content – including advertising on platforms like Facebook and Instagram – to get the audience to notice and buy from you. Here, you have the opportunity to use images and videos to show what a concert, a comedy show, or a race looks like with you.
According to We are social you can reach nearly 2.2 billion users on Facebook, as an advertiser. On Instagram, you can reach 1.65 billion users with your Meta ads. Therefore, the potential for extensive reach is enormous.
By advertising on Meta's platforms, you can reach existing, previous, and potential audiences. Moreover, if you target your specific audiences, you can achieve very nice results. More on this below!
Within Meta's ad management, you will find several advanced tools that are easy to use. For example, you can choose to use any of the following features when setting up your ads:
• Advantage+ audiences: Meta's Advantage+ feature allows you to expand your audience through detailed targeting. With the help of AI, Meta's ad technology can automatically find a broader audience that matches the one or those you've chosen. It's like finding twins, where AI does the work! According to Meta, Advantage+ audiences often show better results compared to the original audience options. This is because Meta's AI has more flexibility to find new audiences. In short, this tool makes it possible to maximize your advertising budget by targeting people who are most likely to be interested in your events.
• Budget optimizations: Are you going to spend a small or a large sum on your advertising? Do you want to pay more on certain days or times? With Meta's budget planning, you can choose to increase your budget at specific times and/or days, based on when you anticipate greater demand.
• Ad optimizations with Advantage+: Once the audience and budget are set, you upload your ad content. Whether your ad is a still image, a video, or a carousel, you can choose to let Meta automatically optimize the content. This includes everything from music and text enhancements to 3D animations and expand image functions. Meta claims that the ad is 100% optimized when all Advantage+ features are activated, but here you should consider what is relevant and most important to you.
Meta's platforms offer a variety of advertising formats. Examples of formats include:
• Photos and images
• Videos
• Carousels
• Stories ads
• Event ads (perfect for you who's an event organizer!)
These formats, combined with creative tools, enable you to create visually appealing and compelling ads that capture attention and inspire. Video ads can be particularly effective for showcasing the atmosphere and highlights of your event, which can increase curiosity and create anticipation for your event.
What is the purpose of your Meta advertising? Are you looking to sell tickets to an event or increase awareness for yourself as an organizer? You need to be clear about what you hope to achieve with your ad.
The goal here is to increase awareness of your brand, a product, or a service. In this phase, you want to reach as many relevant people as possible and make them aware of you as an event organizer. An example of an awareness objective could be to increase the number of views on a video ad.
In this phase, potential buyers are aware that your brand exists – and they start to consider whether they should engage further. Your goal in the consideration phase could be to increase traffic to your website, get more people to download your app, or gain more newsletter subscribers. It's about building interest and engagement.
The ultimate goal is usually to convert curious individuals into paying customers. Here, you want to drive sales, generate leads, and get your followers to purchase event tickets, merchandise, and/or season passes.
Typically, you advertise on Facebook and Instagram to reach potential customers, where the objective often aligns with one of the three aforementioned goals. However, there is also a fourth type of objective: customer loyalty.
By focusing on loyalty, you can target your advertising towards those who, for example, make frequent purchases but do not yet have a season pass. You can also create ads that offer loyal customers early access to special events. A third idea is to use advertising to maintain brand awareness and keep your event business constantly top of mind for the customer.
A big part of marketing, in general, is knowing who you are talking to. Who is your persona? What buyers do you have – opera enthusiasts, musical lovers, or hip-hop fans? Do they come often or rarely? Do they buy tickets close to the event or well in advance? What are their purchasing behaviors like? Where do they live, and how old are they?
You need to be aware of your target group and your buyers – even when you are advertising on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. In Meta's audience management, you can create and use different types of audiences:
• Custom audiences: Create ads for audiences that have previously shown interest in your brand or one of your events. You create your custom audience using, for example, your customer contacts, your website traffic, or your followers' engagement on Meta.
• Lookalike audiences: With lookalike audiences, you can target your advertising to users who resemble audiences you are already interested in. You can choose to base the audience on things like conversion pixels and people who like your page. You can also create a lookalike audience that resembles your custom audience.
• Advantage+ audiences: Meta's Advantage+ feature gives you the opportunity to expand your audiences through what is known as detailed targeting. Read more about Advantage+ higher up in the blog post.
• Export your contact lists from MarketHype: If you use MarketHype, you can easily export your contact lists to Meta for advertising on Facebook and Instagram. MarketHype's Meta connection is incredibly smooth. With the integration, you can target your advertising in a completely new way, since you start from your unique contact lists and can filter out exactly the audience you want to reach. For example, you can filter out those who have attended rock concerts, those who have not yet purchased an add-on product, or those who hold a season pass. Then, you export your filtering from MarketHype to Meta with a single click – without having to leave the MarketHype platform.
Do you want to maximize the effectiveness of your ads on Facebook and Instagram? Of course you do! To achieve the best possible effect, you need to consider how the ad should be designed based on objectives and target audience. What format should the ad or ads have? How should they be designed? What size should they be and – if you choose video – how long should the content be?
The format of a Facebook and Instagram ad depends on the type of ad. If you are selling experiences in the form of events, using video as a format can be advantageous. This gives you the opportunity to showcase much of your offering in a short amount of time.
• The recommended image size for image and video ads in the Facebook feed is 1200 x 628 pixels. However, Instagram prefers square images/videos of 1080 x 1080 pixels for its feed. Video ads in the news feed should ideally be under 15-30 seconds long (but can be longer) because shorter videos are more engaging and more effective at retaining the viewer's attention.
• Carousel ads should ideally be square, preferably 1080 x 1080 pixels. This type of ad allows you to showcase up to 10 images or videos in a single ad, each image/video with its own link.
• Stories ads, such as Instagram Stories, should be 1080 x 1920 pixels and cover both Facebook and Instagram Stories. Images are displayed for up to 5 seconds, and videos can be up to 15 seconds per clip.
• Video ads can be used in both Facebook's and Instagram's feeds, Stories, in-stream, and more. Videos should be optimized for viewing without sound (through subtitles and/or visually engaging details without sound).
(Please note that sizes vary and are updated regularly.)
• Optimize for mobile: Most users will see your ad on a mobile device. Ensure your ads are mobile-friendly, with readable text and visually engaging content.
• Use strong visual elements: Choose images and videos that spark curiosity and represent your event well. Use colors and elements that make you stand out from the multitude of messages. Ads should also adhere to your brand's visual identity.
• Keep it short and concise: According to Facebook, an ad should consist of 80 percent image and 20 percent text. Additionally, a video should ideally be no longer than 15 seconds. Therefore, you need to be brief and concise in both text and image, utilizing the space you have in the most optimal way.
• Clear Call-to-Action (CTA): Use a clear CTA in your ads, whether you want the person to buy tickets, learn more about a topic, or sign up for your newsletters. Your CTA can link to your website.
• Use storytelling: Create an emotional connection by using storytelling in your ads – both in still images and videos. Tell a story about your event that engages and makes the viewer want to participate.
• Never stop testing! Use A/B testing to compare different versions of your ads to see which perform best. You can also test different images, video lengths, texts, and CTAs.
• Measure and optimize: Use Facebook and Instagram's analytics tools to see how your ads perform. Depending on the results, adjust your strategies based on data.
In this blog post, you have learned the following:
• You get the opportunity to showcase your events and brand to a wide audience. Meta has many users!
• Meta offers smart AI tools that help you optimize the results of your ads.
• You can combine creativity with various formats on Meta. Consider using video to showcase your event business.
What objective(s) do you have for your Meta advertising? Are your ads intended to increase brand awareness, engage users with your brand, sell tickets, and/or enhance customer loyalty? The following are common objectives to aim for:
• Awareness
• Consideration
• Conversion
• Loyalty
In Meta's advertising tools, you can choose to create custom audiences and lookalike audiences. You can also activate the Advantage+ feature.
As a MarketHype user, you have the ability to develop filtered audiences for precise advertising on Facebook and Instagram. This is facilitated by our smooth Meta integration.
The format, size, and length of your ads depend on the type of ad. To achieve the best possible effect, you should design the ad based on your objectives and target audience. Are feed ads, carousel ads, or event ads best suited for your purpose? Image or video? Which format is most suitable for the target audience you want to reach?
In general, video is great for cutting through the noise and being seen in the never ending scrolling. Especially for those who market various types of events. Keep in mind that your video ads should be 15 seconds or shorter.
"The Facebook integration is used a lot! We filter out target groups when advertising something on Facebook and Instagram, and we can export the target groups directly from MarketHype to Meta. Then we also create look-a-likes. The function is incredibly flexible, it's like a new service!"
Grant Murdoch Purdy
Kulturbolaget
MarketHype is your system for marketing events and experiences. Our all-in-one tool includes customer data, sales views, segmentation, and communication channels. For Meta advertising, there is the seamless Meta integration to utilize.
Curious to hear more? Get in touch with us, and we will help you getting started.
