Hundreds of people have marked “interested” or “going” to your event on Facebook. Nice job getting the word out! Now it’s time to turn that interest into actual ticket sales.
We caught up with Allison Hoffman, an events marketer at Facebook, on how to optimise your Facebook promotion for ticket sales — at little to no extra cost. Here’s what she recommends:
#1: Increase your sales by selling tickets directly on Facebook
It’s important to offer buyers the most seamless purchase experience possible because most won’t make it past the first step of checkout. They may abandon their order if the process is too tedious — or if they’re redirected to your ticketing page and get distracted. This is especially true for people buying from mobile devices.
That’s why Eventbrite and Facebook partnered to launch Facebook’s new checkout, which allows buyers to purchase tickets to your event — without ever leaving your Facebook Event page.
This new checkout reduces buyer drop-off and can drive more impulse purchases. In fact, Eventbrite organisers who make tickets available directly on Facebook drive 2x more sales and free registrations on average than those who redirect to their ticketing page.
After purchasing tickets, attendees are automatically prompted to RSVP to your Facebook Event and share it with their friends. Which means the more people buy tickets to your event on Facebook, the more they share your event and widen your reach.
#2: Use data to find the people most likely to attend your event
Don’t waste time promoting your event to people who just aren’t interested. Instead, dig into your Facebook and Eventbrite data to identify the people who are most likely to attend your event based on past attendee traits and behaviours.
You can learn about the people who view, reach, and respond to your events on Facebook through the event metrics reporting available on Page Insights.
With this data, create a profile for your target attendee and develop a marketing message tailored to this attendee’s interests and preferences. If the majority of your attendees are from Birmingham, for example, you might consider spotlighting Brummies in a video testimonial to share on Facebook.
Many communities already exist on the world’s largest social network. In fact, 1B people use Facebook Groups every month. Tap into these Groups — and engage their followers — by posting your event to relevant Group pages, which you can find on Facebook’s Groups dashboard.
Targeted marketing like this will help you attract the people most likely to attend your event — and requires no extra marketing spend.
#3: Seal the deal by retargeting the people who show interest
Even if interested people leave your ticketing page without buying, that doesn’t mean you’ve lost your chance to land a sale. Through retargeting, you can identify the people who left without completing a purchase and target them with Facebook ads to get them over the finish line.
Add a tracking pixel on your event listing and your website so Facebook knows when someone views your event. Then Facebook can serve them an ad for your event the next time they visit their News Feed, helping you stay top of mind for people who show interest. Plus, you can choose to pay only if the person clicks on your Facebook ad, so you don’t waste any money on meaningless impressions.
While retargeting isn’t the cheapest tactic, it’s one of the most efficient with ROI.
Just keep in mind that not all events see the same type of returns: events with tickets priced at £40 or more generally see the highest ROI.
Ready to take your Facebook promotion to the next level? Publish your event to Facebook using Eventbrite’s “Add to Facebook” tool and take advantage of Facebook’s new checkout, which lets people complete their purchase without ever leaving your Facebook Event.
