At the 13th edition of Backstage Pass in Singapore, a community event by Peatix for organisers, we drove deep into the topic of Facebook event marketing. With an increasingly limited organic reach on Facebook, how can you manage your Facebook page to reach and engage the audience you want at your event?
Amra Naidoo, Head of Partnerships at the Singapore Committee for UN Women, has five pieces of advice on marketing your event on Facebook on a low budget.
1. Know your audience
Outline the demographic and interests of your current audience (i.e. followers on Facebook) and compare this with that of your target audience (i.e. people you wish to see at your events). Know the difference and figure out how to bridge the gap to build a Facebook following that’s closer to your target audience. This would help inform on a range of decisions.
In the case of the Singapore Committee for UN Women, they surveyed people within their target audience to understand their top interests or what’s important to them and discovered they wanted more localised content. In particular, children, animals, and ending violence against women were their top causes. This resulted in a campaign to profile 50 inspiring women in Singapore which saw engagement and reach shoot through the roof for their Facebook page.
Understanding their audience helped them be more proactive in planning content ahead of time that’s aligned with both audience interest and current affairs, rather than being reactive. This also provided a good sense of which posts would do well in generating engagement on Facebook amongst their target audience, and hence identifying ahead of time posts they should boost using Facebook Ads to generate even greater reach and engagement beyond their current following.
2. Have strong content
Invite expert speakers on topics that would help your target audience solve a current problem or fulfil a need. Include giveaways or discounts at your event. Have amazing partners that will add value to both your event and attendees. All this strong content at your event is something to be proud and loud about on Facebook – publicise it to generate engagement and hence interest in your event.
3. Use Facebook Ads
Pay to reach a targeted audience defined by you. You’re able to set the audience demographic, interests, and even user behaviour, for your ads so you know exactly who’s seeing the ad for your event. Relying on organic reach alone would limit the visibility of your event to the detriment of your ticket sales.
4. Boost posts on your Facebook page
Boosting posts means paying to have greater visibility for posts on your page. Do not go boosting everything. Narrow it down to posts that would help you achieve the objective of your current Facebook campaign, or ones that already have high engagement amongst your target audience which would indicate it’s content they’re interested in. Like ads, you can define your target audience and reach a relevant crowd of a couple thousand on as low a budget as $5.
5. Use ticketing sites
Use Facebook event pages to first get the word out by getting your team to invite everyone they think will be interested in the event. From experience though, the bulk of people who RSVP “I’m Going” on a Facebook event page do not turn up. Disappointing, but true. Use a ticketing platform like Peatix to collect RSVPs or sell tickets to your event, because only truly interested people will take the time to officiate their attendance through the purchase of a ticket. Place your ticketing link on the Facebook event page under their “Find Tickets” section so people immediately know to RSVP or buy tickets from your ticketing site.
There you have it, Amra’s tips on marketing your event on Facebook, even on a low budget. Have other tips to add? Let us know in the comments below!
