Advertising the fact that you’re attending an event before it begins is a great way to increase your trade show ROI. The more excitement you create for attendees leading up to a show, the more you will have visit your exhibit when you get there. There are several ways you can generate this interest, but one of the most effective ways is leveraging your company’s Facebook presence.
It is a common mistake to just make a post saying, “We’ll be at this show! Come see us.” While the idea is right, the execution is poor. There are a lot of nuances to Facebook marketing that need to be considered before trying to promote an event.
Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads is Facebook’s built-in marketing system that’s available to all businesses that have created their own page. Recently, Facebook added a way to market to a custom audience that has interacted with current or previous events you have created. This addition makes creating an event like, “Visit us at this trade show!” an exceptional method of advertising.
Additionally, if you’re traveling globally for your company, you can target people in a specific area with lookalike audiences. You can upload a contact list of people who have interacted with your events and replicate the list with people of similar interests in a different location. This allows you to reach any untapped market you’re visiting.
Optimized Posts
Events are one of the best ways to advertise, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take advantage of organic posting as well. However, it is important to be sure you’re posting something that Facebook’s algorithm is going to like. Posting about a landing page on your site that correlates with an event is a popular and effective strategy, but Facebook’s timeline algorithm changes in August 2017 brought in a new calculation for website loading time.
It is important to make sure you don’t have a ton of videos and GIFs on the page you’re linking to, or Facebook will bury your post due to its slow load speed. One good thing that came with changes was Facebook’s switch from interest targeting to preferred audience. Instead of filtering people out that don’t have a certain interest, Facebook now uses a preferred audience of people that share a certain group of interests.
Stories
Stories are becoming a popular trend across all social media platforms, and Facebook is no exception. Once your show has begun, having an event story is a great way to grab people’s attention and create FOMO (fear of missing out) for future events. There are two ways to take advantage of stories on social media.
The first is your own live stream that people who follow your page can see what they’re missing out on. The second option, collaborative stories, has the potential to generate the most interest. With collaborative stories, people who went to the event you created can share their experience with those who were interested but didn’t attend. Again, this is a great way to generate FOMO for your future events.
Consider these nuances of Facebook before advertising your next trade show presence. A well-thought out pre-, at- and post-show Facebook strategy could greatly improve your ROI. Exhibitus is a custom booth design company that prioritizes your success. For more trade show tips or event display needs, contact us today.