At this point, pretty much everyone is aware of the importance of utilizing social media channels for outreach, and with upwards of two billion users, Facebook claims dominance among social platforms. As an event organizer or host, you want to do all you can to get your message to the right people.
This means promoting in smart ways that connect you to prospective event attendees that are most likely to already have an interest in your industry, subject matter, and so on. Facebook can help, especially when used correctly. For event holders, convention planners, and organizers of every stripe, this means using Facebook Events.
According to Facebook, 700 million people use the Events tool each month to market events and 35 million people view a public event on Facebook each day. You definitely want to make sure you can cut through the noise and get your event in from of the right people. Facebook is constantly improving, and every convention planner and event host can benefit from understanding updates. Here are a few you’ll want to take advantage of in 2019.
Include a Ticket Sales Link
Spreading the word about your event to an interested audience is a great place to start, but from there you want to make sure follow-through on a purchase is as easy as possible. The good news is that you can include a link to your ticket sales page as part of your event page, helping to drive purchases and attendance.
Best of all, you can use the data from click-through to improve your promotional efforts for future events. As a convention planner or event host, you not only want to facilitate purchases but also gain the ability to market future events. Linking to a ticket sales page is a great way to accomplish both goals.
Custom Event Audience for the Savvy Convention Planner
Creating custom audiences for Facebook ads is nothing new, but as an event organizer or host, you can probably guess the benefits of creating a custom audience based on events. Now you can target anyone who has interacted with your event, whether they’ve expressed interest in your current events, attended past events, or even said “maybe” to a previous event.
Says Annie Fernandez, Director of Marketing at AMI, “You simply create custom ads for an event audience based on specific characteristics and timelines, such as people who expressed interested in last year’s event, but failed to attend.”
Have Your Event Organizer Integrate Facebook Live
Integrating other Facebook features into your event campaign can help you to improve outcomes. In addition to creating correlations between Facebook Events and advertising, you and your convention planner can also use Facebook Live to stream video to your Event page. Whether you show pre-recorded video from past events or your live stream setup, you can create a sense of FOMO using little more than your Facebook Mobile app.
Encourage Attendees to Post Stories
The event organizer and host need not do all the heavy lifting when it comes to promoting events through Facebook. You can tap attendees by encouraging them to participate in collaborative stories that show up on your Event page. This can help to boost engagement and attendance at your event.
