Feb 27, 2019
The data speaks for itself - highly-targeted Facebook and Google Ads have higher engagement and conversion rates in event-specific campaigns.
It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of using the extensive marketing platforms both Facebook and Google offer, with the ability to reach hundreds of thousands of users in your area with similar interests. But just because they live within a few miles of your event location, doesn't mean they'll be interested in your event.
When putting together new campaigns, it's important to reach both new customers who have similar interests in the event you are promoting, as well as fans who have previously purchased from you.
Here's a few ways we use existing online ticket purchaser data to target audiences in event-specific campaigns. Chances are if a user has previously attended one of your event and had a good experience, they'll repurchase a ticket to a similar event you're hosting.
Niche Audiences
Start by reaching fans who are highly likely to engage with your ad by exporting customer data from events with similar themes. If you're selling tickets for a rock concert, for example, you'll want to export the customer email addresses from events featuring a similar genre of music.
Once your data is exported, you can upload this list directly to both your Facebook and Google Ad accounts. Once uploaded, you can filter this list by location to reach a specific geographic area, or optimize your campaign settings to A/B test specific zip codes, cities, or entire states to see what areas are generating the most engagement.
Behavioral Targeting
It's important to note that using existing niche audiences is a powerful secondary attribute to your marketing campaigns, but is not intended for stand-alone use. It's important to also create a separate ad group with behavior-based targeting to reach new customers who are likely to purchase from you.
Behavior-based targeting includes displaying your ads to users such as Facebook event creators, small business owners, expats, specific mobile device users, and much much more making it an incredibly powerful tool in targeting a highly-engaged audience.
Lookalike Audiences
Sometimes targeting existing customers with very specific interests leaves us with an extremely narrow audience reach. That's where lookalike audiences come in!
Creating a lookalike audience based off past purchaser data is an effective expansion strategy to get your ads in front of new potential customers who have similar common attributes of people who have already purchased from you.
Optimizing for similarity and creating a lookalike audience in the Facebook platform is extremely simple. Lookalike audiences take your current customer attributes, and finds new users who fit similar criteria. Using these audiences is a great targeting option to help broaden your reach and you can still customize your ad groups based on location, age, gender, interests, desired audience size and more.
The best campaign strategies are diversified!
When leveraging your existing customer data for event-specific campaigns, remember you don't have to pick just one of these powerful targeting options. Spend some time A/B testing your different ad groups.
Try creating separate ad groups for your niche lists, lookalike lists, and behavior-based targeting. Testing audiences allows you to gather data-driven insights to further optimize your campaigns.
