Advertising events on Facebook is a cheap alternative for doing a viral marketing campaign among selected groups. There are several opportunities to promote an event on Facebook. Most of these opportunities are costless. The first step to advertise in Facebook is to have a Facebook account. Then it is necessary to create one event on the event menu. Following this is the most important; create awareness and involvement with the event. The last step is to create evangelism and make people invite their own friends to the event.
The Facebook Event Page
The Facebook Event Page is a customized profile that has all the specifications for an event. This page provides users the information, description, photos and videos of the event. The event owner can choose what will be seen by non attendees and what will not. Adding nice pictures and videos is a must for an effective Facebook campaign. The Wall is the most sensitive place in the event page since its content is not provided by the owner, but by the guests. The owner may delete messages but it is not recommended unless they have inappropriate language or intentions. This is because users may get suspicious about the event. Another important feature that is not controlled by the owner is the attending/ maybe attending/ not attending ratios. This shows how many people out of the invited are showing up and how many people are not interested in showing up. Deleting some of the non attending invitees might be a good technique to demonstrate the event is having a high acceptance ratio.The Facebook Paid Advertising Campaign
Facebook also provides their social ads solution. This is a targeted campaign solution that one can choose to advertise for a very specific crowd. This is very important in the event business. One
can choose the location, age range, gender, political view, relationship status and education of their targets. But the most important features are the abilities to choose keywords related to the users and also their school/college/university or working place. This enables for example one to target a Beatles cover concert only for people that have Beatles as a keyword in their profile. In Vancouver for example, the number of people that have “The Beatles” in their profile and are in the age between 18-25 is 3800. One may also choose if he will pay per view or per click according to the importance for that event, awareness or conversion. And finally how much will be spent per day of the campaign with a minimum of U$5 dollars.
Viral Marketing in Facebook
The Facebook event pages have the option of
inviting your friends to that event. The owner of the event page may also authorize others to invite people to that event. In the case that the event really makes people excited those people will invite their friends and create a campaign among the attendees to increase the number of attendees themselves. In this case the Facebook campaign will become a viral marketing campaign. This means for example that the owner might invite 80 people, among this 80, 10 will invite 40 more (400 total), among this 400 40 might invite 40 more, reaching about 2000 people with very low cost and in a very targeted manner.
References:
http://www.facebook.com/ads/
http://www.facebook.com/editevent.php
Facebook also provides their social ads solution. This is a targeted campaign solution that one can choose to advertise for a very specific crowd. This is very important in the event business. One
can choose the location, age range, gender, political view, relationship status and education of their targets. But the most important features are the abilities to choose keywords related to the users and also their school/college/university or working place. This enables for example one to target a Beatles cover concert only for people that have Beatles as a keyword in their profile. In Vancouver for example, the number of people that have “The Beatles” in their profile and are in the age between 18-25 is 3800. One may also choose if he will pay per view or per click according to the importance for that event, awareness or conversion. And finally how much will be spent per day of the campaign with a minimum of U$5 dollars.Viral Marketing in Facebook
The Facebook event pages have the option of
inviting your friends to that event. The owner of the event page may also authorize others to invite people to that event. In the case that the event really makes people excited those people will invite their friends and create a campaign among the attendees to increase the number of attendees themselves. In this case the Facebook campaign will become a viral marketing campaign. This means for example that the owner might invite 80 people, among this 80, 10 will invite 40 more (400 total), among this 400 40 might invite 40 more, reaching about 2000 people with very low cost and in a very targeted manner.References:
http://www.facebook.com/ads/
http://www.facebook.com/editevent.php
