In the hierarchy of performance marketing, social media advertising ranks near the top. Social networks—particularly Meta and TikTok—tend to have a high volume of inventory, providing advertisers with lower CPMs and, often, better performance metrics than other digital advertising channels. For event marketers, the combination of audience and geographic targeting & organic features such as Facebook Events can be one of the most effective tactics at driving ticket sales and attendance.
The same tactics successful at promoting events with paid social also can apply to those looking to fill bookings, such as restaurants, yoga studios, and wine tastings. The idea is much in the same: encouraging folks to part with some of their time & money in exchange for a service.
Whether your business has an event coming up, or you run a business where reservations are the revenue, our experience with using paid social ads to promote events is that both goals can be accomplished in similar ways. Here is our advice on creating a high-performing paid social campaign for events and bookings.
Events: Set up your facebook event before advertising
Creating a Facebook Event listing does two things paid ads can’t: it sends automatic reminders to people who click “Interested” or “Going,” and it creates a community space where attendees can interact before the event. This is also typically a great opportunity to engage with customer support, upselling, and encouraging user generated content. Run paid ads that drive people to your Event listing, not just your website—the conversion path is shorter and the platform’s native RSVP functionality does the follow-up for you.
bookings: utilize your facebook business page
Facebook’s Call-to-Action buttons (Book Now, Get Tickets, Reserve) map directly to flows with third-party providers, making paid social for bookings generation convenient. That provides businesses such as restaurants and art studios the ability to connect with customers instantly, without leaving the Meta environment (which, as we’ve seen with lead ads, can significantly increase conversion rates). Similar options are available on platforms such as TikTok as well.
Facebook offers advertisers call-only ads, which allows for optimizing to phone calls.
Events: Start your ads earlier (yes, earlier than that)
Most businesses and nonprofits begin promoting events far too late—as late as a few days prior. With local events, we recommend running advertising for at least four weeks leading up to the event. During particularly busy seasons like summer, we often recommend 8-12 week paid social campaigns.
We often think of advertising in phases, from awareness to consideration to conversion (aka the marketing funnel). However, keep in mind that your audience will go through these phases at different times from each other, and not all of them will necessarily need awareness. Create ad groups that target new audiences separately from returning, and be sure that you are creating content that aligns with where those various audiences may be in the marketing funnel.
bookings: Consider an always-on approach
If your business is bookings, paid social advertising can be a year-round strategy. The return on ad spend (ROAS) for restaurants on Meta advertising averages 6.9x, while those with OpenTable integrated into their page see a 14x ROAS. By comparison, the travel & hospitality industry averages a 4x ROAS—still far greater than most other digital advertising channels (aside from Google).
By heavying-up during slower seasons but maintaining “always-on” advertising, bookings-based advertisers can generate monthly revenue from paid social ads.
Events & Bookings: choose your goal wisely
Most social media avertising platforms offer several campaign objectives, and picking the wrong one is a common and costly mistake. For event promotion and bookings, take note of the following campaign objectives:
Event Response: gets people to click “Interested” or “Going” on your Facebook Event. Great for awareness and organic reminder benefits, but doesn’t guarantee attendance or ticket purchases.
Traffic: sends people to your ticketing page or website. Good for driving off-platform purchases or reservations.
Conversions: requires a pixel-tracked action (ticket purchase, form submission, booking confirmation). The most powerful objective if your tracking is set up correctly, because the algorithm optimizes delivery toward people most likely to complete the action.
Lead Generation: useful for free events, waitlists, or booking inquiries where you want to collect contact info without requiring a purchase.
Events & Bookings: Curate your audiences
Two audiences worth building for any event or bookings campaign are warm or cold, or prospecting and retargeting. Retargeting (often referred to as remarketing) is one of the most effective digital advertising tactics across all mediums; but, it requires first-party data, acquired from your email database, website cookies, and current social media following.
This first-party data is also quite useful in creating lookalike audiences, which match to similar demographics and interests of your current customers.
Events & Bookings: Creative that converts
Video is currently winning the battle of top-performing creatives on social, with UGC content preferred to that over polished clips. Video ads of 6-30 seconds are preferred. Social proof also works incredibly well for events and bookings alike: photos and quotes from past events (“Over 500 people joined us last year”), attendee testimonials, and “as seen in” credibility markers all reduce the hesitation that comes with trying something new.
Other Events & bookings paid social tips
Don’t forget you are running a campaign: the “set it and forget it” approach can cause you to spend a lot of money without seeing any results. It’s also important not to rely solely on boosted posts—while these can generate some results, boosting a post only gives you access to limited targeting options.
Also, don’t ignore remarketing. Most people do not make purchase decisions the first time they visit a website, regardless of the commitment. If you are only doing prospecting, you may only be driving traffic through one level of the marketing funnel.
Screechy Cat Media has nearly two-decades of experience running paid social advertising for events and reservations. Send us an email today and we can get you started on the right path in running a successful event marketing ad campaign!
