Selling tickets to a conference can be very challenging because most of your sales to a conference comes by word of mouth. We want to prove you different! If you want to sell tickets to your conference, Facebook Ads work! We put this to the test and the results were astounding!
The conference we sold for was D2DCon 2019. D2DCon is the #1 door selling conference in the world! By attending this conference, individuals and business owners learned from the experts. They were taught by the top 1% of door to door salesmen in the world and CEOs of D2D.
For this conference, we ran Facebook Ads to sell tickets to our conference and ultimately, we crushed it! 39% of the transactions that occurred came from Facebook Ads. Check the proof below!
The image below shows the transaction of ticket sales for the conference with a grand total of 391 ticket sales!
The image below shows the majority of the conversions that came in via Facebook ads. Yes, I know 102+38 doesn’t equal 154 but, let me explain why we came to the conclusion of this number. We had a few small call campaigns that filled in the rest of the sales (14 more sales to be exact!).
Want to know how we did it? Here’s how!
Re-targeting on Facebook to Sell Tickets
Re-targeting is a form of online marketing that attracts a customer that had previously visited your website in the past. The re-targeting is linked to Facebook Pixel, an analytic tool that helps your product emerge on their Facebook ads as they are scrolling through their feed. There are 3 different sites that we have the Facebook Pixel on the header of their website. When some visits that website and leaves and goes on to Facebook we now can deliver an ad inside of the Facebook platform. The image below shows all of the different places you can deliver ads.
Let’s chat about Facebook Ad placements
Facebook- Currently, Facebook has the most amount of placements for ads than any other social media platform. Each placement has different requirements for running ads. Some requirements might be images only, others may be really short videos. From my experience, running ads in Facebook feeds have converted the best with the audience.
Instagram- Instagram has only two placements for ads: feeds and stories. I have done multiple tests with feeds and stories on Instagram overall, feeds have been winning. But I will say the stories aren’t too far behind. I recommend running 2 ad sets with specific placements.
As you can see, Instagram stories is $10.91 per purchase and the Feeds are $8.68. Both ads were converting the way we wanted them to so, we kept them running for our audience to see.
Audience Network– If you ask me, having an audience network is only for branding and getting your ads out there. Every time I’ve run audience network ads, I’ve never seen great results. Yes, it gains video views and impressions, but from my own experience, hasn’t produced the results I have wanted.
Messenger- The messenger app is a tool that you communicate on your mobile device with people and audience members on Facebook. I’m still testing this platform and seeing how it converts and as of right now, I don’t have much to say on it because the testing is still in the works.
Check out facebooks description of placements
Review based ads to sell tickets to your conference
I talk a lot about review based ads in many of my articles. If you haven’t read them yet, check out this case study. Review based ads have been the highest converting ads for my campaigns. A review based ad is a review of a customer reporting about your product. It can be an actual video or a review, typed in the body text.
This particular campaign we used a review inside of the actual video.
Give Yourself Time
Selling ticket to a conference can be nerve-racking because people procrastinate when it comes to purchasing tickets. There were times when our Facebook campaigns were converting at $60 dollars. As the conference got closer, our cost per conversion went down. The last week of the campaign, we converted at $7 a transaction.
One of the hardest things with running ads for a conference is the trust you have to put into your marketing strategy and the patience to see success. 27 of my 154 transactions occurred in the last 7 days of the conference. To give you a heads up, marketing actual events with actual dates and times are one of the hard things to market online. You might ask why? It is because everyone has commitment issues!
Conclusion
Selling tickets to a conference with Facebook ads works! One takeaway I saw with this conference was to put value into your conference. This particular conference was three days long. It had amazing speakers. So, don’t plan on filling a conference if you don’t plan on providing a ton of value.
Things that I had working in my favor:
- My client already had some raving fans- Why is this important? It is important that you have fans there at the conference because they are going to bring their friends. Naturally, some of the ticket sales were to repeat buyers from the previous conference.
- This was the second year the conference was put on- Last year was the first time the conference was launched. D2DCon received amazing reviews from individuals that were at the conference on social media and by word of mouth. Because they received so much praise, they decided to launch it for a second year in a row.
- My client is a successful businessman- My client truly works hard and stretches his ability to help others. He knows how to sell and wants others to learn of his success. He works hard to get people to his conference.
- Already has traffic- His sites are constantly being trafficked which allows me to re-market to these people.
Things that weren’t working in my favor:
- The client had the goal of 1,600 people at the conference- This is a big goal! Last year, we only had 800 people attend. Growing by 25% is amazing growth, but he had another goal in mind. Luckily we got 1,400 to attend that is about 57% growth!
- Limited time to market- For a big event like this, you want to start marketing for your next conference the day after it ends! We had a very limited time to market for this conference. We started marketing for this conference only three months before the event which was a big factor that was not working in my favor.
Overall, it worked out! Next year is going to be bigger and better!
How To Sell Tickets To A Conference With Facebook Ads?
- Re-target with Facebook ads
- Review based ads
- Market for an extended period of time
- Have a client that has a goal to make a successful conference!
If you have questions about selling a tickets to a conference, please contact me!
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