The Covid pandemic may have put a damper on live events, but it has made more room for persons to go to virtual events.
But to label an event a success, you first need persons to show up, right? There's good news. An effective Facebook ad strategy will help you promote your event well.
I’ve used Facebook ads extensively and I know it can get quite complicated for the uninformed. That’s why I’m sharing this 10-step reliable ad strategy for promoting your next virtual event through Facebook
But before we get into these steps, it’s important that you have a business page already set up. Without it, you won’t be able to use this Facebook ad strategy I’m about to share.
Step 1: Create your landing page
Before you start running Facebook ads, you want to make sure that you have your landing page set. Your landing page is a web page where persons can sign up for your event.
Not everyone who visits a landing page will be ready and convinced to sign up. So your landing page should have more than just plain information about the event.
It needs to be persuasive. It needs to use content that speaks to your audience’s hopes and dreams and their barriers.
It should also explain how your event will address their pain-points and fears. There should be a short background story on the event organizers.
Next, you need to communicate the cost of your event in ways that are appealing to your audience. And of course, your landing should also have a prominent call to action. This call-to-action spells out the action you want persons to take.
I explain how to organize the contents of your landing page in another article. Be sure to check it out.
Step 2: Set up your Business Manager account
Facebook created Business Manager to help business owners better manage their pages and ad accounts. With a Business Manager account, you can give other persons access to your page and ad accounts. This is useful if you want their help running ad campaigns.
Follow these steps to set up a Facebook business account:
- Head over to business.facebook.com
- Click the create account button
- Enter the name of your business, select your Facebook business page and enter your name and email address
- From there, follow the on-boarding process that Facebook will take you through
Step 3. Create a custom audience using your email list
This step is an essential ingredient to this Facebook ad strategy. Facebook gives you several options to target an audience with your Facebook ads. One often-overlooked audience is persons on Facebook who resemble your email list.
(Note: This option is only available to businesses who have run Facebook ads before and have not run afoul of Facebook’s ad policies.)
I'm assuming that you’ve already built an email list and did so ethically (i.e. not purchasing or stealing a list). You’ll have a great jumpstart on attracting new persons on Facebook who are more likely to respond to your ads.
To get started on this, you first need to create a custom audience using your email list. To do this, follow these steps:
- Make sure you’re logged into Facebook
- Head on over to Audiences in your ads manager. (When you set up a Business page, you automatically receive an ad account). Use this quick link to get to Audiences
- Click the “Create Audience” button and select “Custom Audience”
- Under “Use Sources”, select customer list.
- Prepare a CSV or TXT file of your email list. (If your list is in excel format, save it as a CSV or TXT (*.txt).) Usually, your email list includes identifiers such as First Name, Last Name, Email, and phone. The more identifiers you have in your list, the better your Lookalike audience will be.
- Select the option that shows if your list includes a Column for Customer Value or not. (Customer value is a money value assigned to persons who have bought from you before).
- Review and agree to Facebook’s requirements if the prompt comes up.
- Upload your CSV or TXT file or copy and paste data directly into Facebook.
- Name your audience and follow Facebook’s instructions.
Step 4. Create a Lookalike audience using your email list
Remember the aim is to be able to attract persons on Facebook who are similar to the persons on your email list. That why’s this next step involves creating your Facebook Lookalike audience.
To create your Lookalike audience, follow these steps:
- In Ads Manager, click the Create Audience button and select “Lookalike Audience”
- Select your email audience as your source
- Select a region or country in which you’d like Facebook to match your email audience
- Select your audience size by sliding the button on the ranges line. The smaller the size, the more similar your Lookalike audience will be to your email list. If the region or country you selected is relatively small (below 750,000), go for a bigger audience size. This will give Facebook a better chance of finding persons who suit your audience.
Step 5: Create an audience with interest targeting
This next step in the ad strategy involves interest targeting. Facebook allows you to target audiences by their interests and demographics as well.
You should be able to come up with a few demographic and interest markers that your audience has in common.
For example, I had a client who was promoting an event for entrepreneurs. I identified job titles like Founder, Graphic Artist, and Social Media Manager. I also used entrepreneurship as a key interest.
After you’ve done this, follow the next steps to create and save your audience:
- Go to your Facebook page and click Ad Center
- In the Ad Center, select Audiences
- Within Audiences, select Create Audiences at the top. Fill in the following information:
- Audience name
- Gender
- Age range
- Location
- Under detailed targeting, enter key interests one by one to see if you’ll get a match on Facebook. Try not to go above 3 interests and aim for an audience size between 500,000 and 1,000,000 persons.
Step 6: Prepare a video
Your media are the actual photos or videos that you will use to create your Facebook ads to promote your event.
In this Facebook ad strategy, you will be running two separate but related ad promotions. This means you’ll need to prepare two sets of media for each ad promo.
The first media piece should be a 3-7min video clip that gives people a taste of what they can expect from your event. If it’s an event you’ve done before, use the opportunity to use a clip from this past event.
Whatever clip you decide on, be sure to use one that provides loads of value. Value comes in different forms. It can be informational, educational, or entertaining in nature.
With my client, I used a video clip of a previous event speaker who delivered an inspiring personal story. It provided lots of emotional entertainment value.
Ensure that your video file size does not exceed 4GB. Here are some other video specifications you need to adhere to:
- Minimum dimensions: 600 x 315 (1.9:1 landscape) or 600 x 600 (square).
- Recommended aspect ratio: between 9:16 to 16:9 (Horizontal: 16:9, Square: 1:1, Vertical: 4:5 or 2:3 and Full Portrait: 9:16).
- Recommended video formats: .MP4 and .MOV
Step 7: Prepare your images
For your second piece of media, go for a combination of 2-10 images. You will use these images to build what’s called a carousel ad.
A carousel ad allows you to showcase up to 10 images or videos in a single ad that users can interact with. It’s a great way to tell a story about your event or zero in on the unique value that your event will provide.
I suggest you choose images that each correlates with a major selling point of your event. When choosing or creating your images, keep the following image specifications in mind:
- Image/Thumbnail size: 1,080 x 1,080 pixels
- Image file size: 30MB max
- Max image size: 30MB
- Recommended image formats: JPG and PNG.
- Text on image: Strive for no more than 20% of the image to decrease the chances of Facebook rejecting your ad
For more on how to improve the effectiveness of your images, read my article on how to build better Facebook ads that get website visits
Step 8: Get familiar with Facebook Ads Manager
Facebook has made it easy to run ads directly from your Facebook page now. However, because one of your ads will be a carousel ad, I suggest you use the Ad manager tool to set up your ads.
There are extra features you can benefit from. So it’s worth building familiarity with the tool.
When you use Ads Manager for ad creation, you are building your promotion in three stages or levels:
- Campaign
- Ad Set
- Ad
The Campaign level defines the overall objective of your ad
The Ad set level allows you to define parameters for your promotion. There, you define your target audience, budget, ad placement, ad schedule, etc.
The Ad level allows you to set the business page you will use to run your ads. There, you will also set the creative elements of your ad. This includes your images, video, primary texts, headlines, links and link descriptions etc.)
In this ad strategy, you will be running two promotions.
Step 9: Run your first ad promotion
Follow the steps below to set up ads and begin promoting your event
- Go to business.facebook.com and select your business manager account
- Select Ads manager from the left menu
- Click the create button. This will take you to the Campaign level of your promotion.
- For the campaign objective, select traffic
- Create a name for your overall Campaign, Ad Set, and Ad and click to continue
In the new window, you’ll notice the three levels of your promotion in the left menu: Campaign, New Set, New Ad. Click on Ad set to continue setting up your first promotion.
Ad-set Level
- In the Audience section, select your email Lookalike audience
- In the Placement section, select automatic placements
- Enter your budget (This can be a daily budget or lifetime budget). When I did this for my client, they had a very small budget so I spent just USD 50 on a lifetime budget spread over 10 days.
- Enter the start and end date for your Campaign
- Leave the default setting for Optimization and Delivery
- Click next, to move on to ad set up
Ad level
- Under Identity, select your Facebook and Instagram page
- Under Ad Set-up, Select Single Image or Video
- Under Ad creative, upload the video clip you would have prepared earlier
- Enter your primary ad text (125 characters or less) telling people why they should come to your event. Add an attention-grabbing headline (30 characters or less). Also, enter the description for your landing (25 characters or less).
- Select website as your destination and insert the website link
- Select an appropriate call-to-action
- Hit publish
Step 10: Run your second ad promotion
Follow all the steps above under the Campaign and the Ad-set Levels save for the Audience settings. This time, you’ll choose the second Audience you created with interest targeting.
Continue with the following under the Ad level:
- Under Identity, select your Facebook and Instagram page
- Under Ad Set-up, Select Carousel
- Under Ad creative, upload your carousel images
- Enter a Headline (25 characters or less) and a short description (30 characters or less). Also, enter the landing page link for each image
- If you want the Carousel images to show up in a particular order, do not select the option to show the best performing card first.
- Select the option to have your profile attached to the end of the Carousel to promote your brand.
- Insert your primary text (125 characters or less). Be sure to give persons great reasons to attend your event.
- Add the landing page link to the see more url
- Select an appropriate call-to-action
- Hit the publish button
Conclusion
I am convinced. This is a reliable Ad strategy for promoting your virtual event through Facebook.
Why? Because I’ve used it before to help a client fill seats for her workshop. Her workshop was in-person but there’s no reason why you can’t apply these steps to a virtual event.
She had a tiny promo budget of just $100. And of all the tactics she tried, this strategy provided the best results.
Thirty plus persons showed up to the workshop at around 300 per seat. I’d say that’s a pretty good return on investment.
Here’s a quick recap of the 10 steps:
- Create your landing page
- Set up your Business Manager account
- Create a custom audience using your email list
- Create a Lookalike audience using your email list
- Create an audience with interest targeting
- Prepare a video
- Prepare your images
- Get familiar with Facebook Ads Manager
- Run your first ad promotion
- Run your second ad promotion
I’m very interested to know what do you think about this ad strategy? Would you test it out? Let me know in the comments below.
I’m a content marketing specialist and owner of C.D BLACKMAN SOCIAL REBELLION MARKETING, where I make it easy for professional service-based business owners to create content marketing strategies that attract leads and clients more predictably.