On the left hand side of your Facebook home page, you’ll see a link to “Events.” Click that link and you have the starting point for a campaign for any event, public or private.
In this post, we’ll talk about how Facebook events can work for a business. Holding events, from training seminars to cocktail hours to charity drives to open house sales, can be a great way to engage with customers and to meet new people who might need your goods and services. Facebook can help you get the word out.
Let’s get a couple of things out of the way. First, you can only set up an event if you have a personal Facebook page. Not all of our clients use Facebook, so we know this reminder is needed in order to avoid frustration. Don’t make a fake Facebook account for Ms. My Company, don’t Google for workarounds, just hand this task off to your web team.
If you have a Facebook page, however, and you want to set up the event yourself, you can easily do so. Once you click on “Events” you’ll find yourself on a page filled with upcoming events. Don’t get distracted and start accepting invitations to bridal showers and reading through all the exciting events you’ve been invited to. Just click “+Create” and get started.
You’ll get a simple form to fill out. Be sure to choose “Create Public Event” in the drop-down menu. You’ll end up with a page, just like a company page. You can change the photo, post on the page, and so on, just as you can for your company page.
Once you’ve established your Events Page, you can boost the event — in other words, create an ad for the event. Go to your Ad Manager, click on the button to create a new ad, and choose “Raise attendance at your event” as your objective.
Choose which event to boost, if you have more than one event set up. Note that there are Help choices in the top right hand corner.
Once you pick your event, there’s a wizard to set up an ad for the event. You can create a custom audience, or go ahead and define the audience by location, age, gender, languages spoken, interests, and more. Just fill out the form based on your strategic plan. (Don’t have a strategic plan? We can help.)
Once you’ve set your objective and your audience, you will be prompted to create your ad. You can choose multiple images, write text, and add links.
You’ll also be asked about your budget and prompted to establish your payment options.
Our ads are usually approved within a few minutes, and then we are able to go back to the Ad Manager and see the results in real time whenever we like.
Facebook events are easy to set up, can be very closely targeted, and are very cost-effective. How well do they drive attendance? To some extent, this depends on the type of events you’re offering. The more entertainment-oriented and the more social, the better.
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