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Need advice to boost Facebook Event attendance
GerryDavid
Registered Users Posts: 439 Major grins
I spent some time, boosted my facebook fan list with various groups, seniors, etc. I create events time to time and invite my "friends" to it. For some it can be as many as 1000 people, for senior events, it can be 300 or so.
I generally get a few that click attending, and get a bunch that click maybe attending. But I actually only get a few gigs from this.
Does anyone have any advice on getting better results and get more appointments?
I generally send each person a message that clicks attending or maybe, but only a few give me a simple response back.
I generally get a few that click attending, and get a bunch that click maybe attending. But I actually only get a few gigs from this.
Does anyone have any advice on getting better results and get more appointments?
I generally send each person a message that clicks attending or maybe, but only a few give me a simple response back.
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I want to turn the maybe attending and attending into scheduled portraits. Right now the appointment ratio is not as high as I would like. If I could get everyone that clicks maybe and attending into a scheduled portrait, that would be great!
I'm not a face space user so I'm trying to interpret the concept here.
Would it be reasonably correct to transpose what your saying into " I'm advertising a special and not everybody that see's it takes me up on it and I'm not happy more people aren't booking me?"
Basically I invite 1000 people, after a week when people have had a chance to check their facebook the stats could be something like this:
300 didnt respond *not everyone on facebook is active or responds to events*
500 clicked declined
150 clicked maybe attending
50 clicked attending
then I may have 10 actual bookings. I would like to turn that 50 into bookings and a good % of the 150.
Those numbers are just numbers I tossed out there.
So what are the numbers you are getting and what are the numbers you want? You have to have some sort of target to measure against.
Are you getting any bookings at all from this?
If you could pull a 1% booking rate out of a shotgun, no cost, no effort unresearched marketing ploy like that on a product with the pricepoint of a portrait sitting in an over saturated market like photography, Pack your bags mate, your coming to OZ on an all expenses paid, Rolls Royce level trip to show me how you do it.
Actually, scratch that.
I'll easily get a loan from investors to set up a new advertising agency based in New York with offices world wide with you as the head campaign manager and I'll make us both stinking rich in 12 months flat.
I'll charge you out at $10K per minute and you'll be working 18hrs a day, 6 days a week. :ivar
What are your actual numbers and what do you want to get?
Facebook isn't a currated customer list, or a managed list of a specific demographic, it's a bunch of folks hanging on the web. And worst of all, you really don't know if they are telling the truth about who they are or where they live.
As I believe Glort is trying to say, you first need to decide who your target market is, then ask if Facebook is the best tool to reach them, and then ask what success would look like. For example, traditionally, you would find a curated list of your target market. So you want brides. You can buy lists from bridal magazines from your area and send postcards, or partner with local jewelry stores to offer discounts or packages. Perhaps local venues will recommend you. In other words, find things or places where your target is more likely to be or be doing, vs everyone else. It's like trying to get customers by setting up a booth at the mall vs in the bridal store: in the mall, you might get hundreds of people stop to look, but only a tiny percentage will be brides. But, if you setup in the bridal store, most who stop will be brides: you will get more qualified customers in the bridal store.
This is one reason that Google Adwords have been successful, as you can target based on what you think your target customer is searching for, like "senior portraits".
I dont recall the actual numbers from my last event for Christmas, it got started a bit later than I had liked, got distracted by a gymnastics event. I sent the invite out to everyone on my list, abotu 900 people at the time. I think there was something like 300 that didnt respond one way or another, im thinking there was 100 maybe and 20 yes, and I got 4 appointments from it.
I just figure if people click attending, they must have thought about it enough to actually consider it.
In my newest event for valentines day I messaged each person that hit maybe/yes and offered them free doubles if they book before Sunday, giving them always a week to call. The doubles doesnt cost me much and as for work all I have to do is copy/paste the file before I upload. I dont usually sell more than one sheet of a print anywase so it just gives me a greater perceived value. One person already contacted me trying to get in on this deal and told me she sent the link to 6 of her friends, because I also mentioned a referral program in the event listing. Hopefully that one follows through.
So for an admittedly ill timed, no cost promotion, You still pulled better than .5%.
I'd say thats that's pretty damn good!
Werent you also arguing on another thread about doing a dancing school that people don't have any money before christmas etc but this is exactly when you did your promo? You can believe they do or they don't but is seems your wanting to have it both ways. You were trying to justify what you saw as the failure of one promo because people don't have money before christmas, now it seems your unhappy with another one because you didn't get what you wanted out of it even though you ran it around the same time?
Curious.
What exactly do you feel is a response rate you'll be happy with?
I believe i asked that before as it's fundamentaly to gauging the success and how realistic your expectations are.
No use complaining your not where you want to be when you didn't know where you were going in the first place.
You also have to keep accurate numbers on your promos or you won't have a clue if you are on track of if your achiveing your goal or not.
It's the net your promoting on, the modern equivilent of fairy land. A place where normal manners and thought processes and reality goes out the window. It's real easy for people to click a button before they have given it proper thought that they do later then reconsider or can no longer be bothered. Your also dealing with a demographic of people that are not exactly the most dependable or reliable and probably subject to a lot of whimsical purchases that may very quickly change their ability to purchase photographs.
Personally, I'd be happy if I got anyone to actually show and buy at all with a pronmo like this.
That's the only thing you really need to worry about.
How is this ill timed? Its true, I believe January is a slow time due to people focusing on paying off bills instead of buying new things. But when should I run a valentines day special? Before Christmas, probably not? A week before Vday, seems like I would miss alot of portraits? The first of January makes sense to me. They dont have to schedule it right away, hopefully they do, but if I get a ton of appointments for February out of this, then great. If I get some in January, even better.
My intent is to get better results, thats the whole point of this thread. I dont see how saying 1% is an incredible return, thats just a statement of a fact, not advice on how to increase the #'s. If I got 10% return, I would still want to learn how to get a 11% return.
So does anyone have any actually helpful advice on how to increase the numbers? Preferably those that actually use facebook for this.
"Clearly too much" in answer to the first part of your question and "A hell of a lot more than some" in answer to the second part.
You said: " I dont recall the actual numbers from my last event for Christmas, it got started a bit later than I had liked, got distracted by a gymnastics event."
That's what I was refering to as being ill timed, ( you said you started it later than you said you wanted to, so it obviously wasn't at the optimal time you planned. ) not whatever it is you are planning in the future.
I got the Christmas event going around the 15th of November, my intention was around the first of November, so only off by 2 weeks, but still later than I had wanted.
Probably you already factored in that many in your FB network see facebook as a social network. Few people like to be sold something while on social time - it is irritating. It can be done - perhaps you should read up on Tupperware who did this successfully for decades. Basically they made their sales pitch into a social event