Facebook Ads Case Study: How We Got 50% Attendance For An In-Person Workshop

One of the biggest fears of many in-person event hosts is, what if the event attendance is low or if no one shows up. When hosting a live event, you have a lot things at stake, such as the money spent on the venue, advertising and other associated expenses.

In this case study, we are going to take a deep dive to explain how we increased attendance at a financial advisors’ live event and got leads as low as $26 each.

A Bit About the Client

Our client is a financial advisor who teaches people how to save taxes on their retirement income, and how to get the most out of their social security. This is a high ticket sale and every single prospect of his live event is worth $7500. He was hosting four to five events per month so our results were not a one time trick! The goal was to generate consistent results and fill every event as much as possible

Our Approach For Generating Leads 

We did many tests and trials to see which method would get the most results with the cheapest leads. Some of the things we tried included:

• Driving traffic from Facebook Ads to His Website
• Driving traffic to an Eventbrite event page
• Messenger Ad so people can book their spot

Out of these 3 ways we tested,driving traffic to an Eventbrite page was getting us the best response and lowest cost per lead.

Result of Trying Different Audiences

We had a budget of $1500 per event which we used to run ads for about 2 weeks. We tried 3 types of audiences to get the maximum registrations possible.

1. Warm Audience: These are the people who had visited his website previously, and they were in his email list. This audience already knew about his business.
2. Interest Based:These are people who are interested in retirement related websites, wealth management, money management, investment strategy etc.
3. Look Alike Audience:This method does not often work very well, but if your budget permits, it’s nice  to be able to test this audience. With a look alike audience Facebook tries to match up people who could potentially be interested in your business based on comparing your data on your known audience with other potential people.

This is what the results looked like:

The result is not surprising, warm leads were the cheapest while Look Alike audience was most expensive of the three.

Proper Targeting can make or break your campaign

The number one attribute of a successful ad campaign is targeting the right people with the right message.

Targeting is not simply figuring out where your target audience lives. (In this case, we were targeting people within a 20 kilometres radius of the venue.) Proper targeting will include getting all of these metrics right:

• Knowing where your audience lives.
• Knowing the age of your target audience
• Knowing their gender (this is important if your product or service is gender specific)
• Understanding what languages they speak.
• Understanding their interests
• Knowing where they hang out online

If you don’t get these things right, your ad won’t get the result you want.

Sending the right message to the right audience is the most important factor in determining the performance of your ad.

Messaging That Hooks The Audience

Since the event was for saving tax on retirement income and social security, we were targeting people who are 50 years or older. Our goal with the messaging is to help our target audience understand how they can save tens of thousands of dollars in taxes and get the most from their social security. Our ad copy focused on:

1. Increasing their lifetime social security value by tens of thousands of dollars.
2. Learn a secret to create a tax-free lifetime income.
3. Avoid common mistakes while filing for social security.
4. New retirement strategies they may not be aware of.
5. How to collect based on an ex-spouse’s benefit.

How Did We Get Leads to Attend The Seminar?

We ran Facebook ads that got people to sign up for the seminar but if we don’t get these people really excited about it the event would have a very poor attendance. This is one of the reasons why most in-person seminars have only a small percentage of people attending.

We did a text message campaign combined with voicemail messages to remind people about going and get them excited.  This resulted in much higher attendance.

1. Few minutes after they registered, we sent them an automated voicemail from the presenter – this helped make a personal connection.
2. 5 minutes after the voicemail, we sent them their event ticket in their email.
3. 72 hours/ 3 Days before the seminar, we sent them an automated SMS with a video from the presenter – we’re getting them prepared for the event.
4. 48 hrs/ 2 Days before the seminar, we sent them another automated SMS with a video, letting them know that the presenter has added more value to the seminar.
5. 24 hrs/ 1 Day before the seminar, we sent a voicemail message from the presenter and it said they couldn’t wait to meet them and help.
6. 5 mins after the voicemail, we sent them a SMS asking to confirm their availability. They could reply with a Y or N.
7. 4 hrs before the event, we sent them a final reminder message with the venue address.

This entire process is automated and it helped to keep the audience engaged. If we just have people sign up for the event and we don’t engage them, they are likely to forget and not turn up for the event.

To sum it up, our secret to success in getting 50% Attendance For An In-Person Workshop is:

• Putting the right message in front of the right audience
• Getting them signed up
• Being in touch with them regularly
• Make a personal connection and get them excited about the upcoming event

If you would like to see how we can create similar results for your business, please click below to schedule a free consultation.