Facebook Ad Birthday Party Marketing Campaign (Case Study)

Does your business offer birthday parties? Yes? Then you’re in the right place.

People assume that with advertising you have to spend a lot to get results.

But with Facebook ads you really can have your cake and eat it (excuse the pun).

Take a look at the results we achieved for a local Sports Simulator company:

$0.37 (c. £0.31) is relatively cheap compared with most other marketing methods. In fact, with many other marketing options, you can't even reliably track what the cost per click is.

This guide will reveal exactly how we achieved those results and the other underrated benefits of Facebook ads. You'll be able to copy exactly how we did it by following the same steps.

How we did it:

All there is to a successful advert is:

1. Good design (photo & text)

2. Correct targeting (showing it to the right people)

The photo/ video

Luckily we all know the best photos are always taken at birthday parties. So you've got no excuses on this front!

If there's some action going on in the photo that's a plus. And make sure the photo shows what makes you different or better than your competitors (a photo really does tell a 1000 words).

We initially used a photo of children enjoying themselves with our unique selling point in the background. For this business, it was the screen of their indoor sports simulator.

However, we wanted to attract parties for all age groups so we changed that to an action shot of someone that could have been aged 15-25. He wasn't so old that younger children would feel it wasn't for them (after all they look up to sports stars of that age wanting to do whatever they do). Most importantly it wouldn't put off Millenials and teenagers that may have been put off by the photo of young kids. You can see the photo we used below:

Note: If you show kids' faces in your advert be sure to get permission from their parents.

Videos may be worth trying. Facebook allows you to test a photo against a video so you could test the two to see which does better.

The text

This is the text we used:

Birthday coming up? 🎂 No longer do you have to choose between a golf party ⛳ or a football party. ⚽ Our Sports Simulator gives you 6 sports to compete at with your friends!

Find out more today: LINK

You'll have to re-word it a little depending on what you offer. But the general structure should remain the same. Here's the logic behind the structure:

1. Call out your target audience with a question. In this case "Birthday coming up?" This will catch the attention of the people you want (those with upcoming birthdays or with friends/ family with upcoming birthdays). It also instantly tells you what the ad is about.

2. Tell them what you offer and why you are different. Why should they not have their party elsewhere? The mention of the word 'friends' is good on Facebook because it is a platform where friends share things with each other. The use of that word may make people more likely to share the post with their friends which means free advertising for us.

3. CTA (call to action) & a link to your site. You want to clearly tell them what to do next. However, don't be too pushy as that doesn't work on Facebook. That's why 'find out more' are better than 'book today'. They likely still need some convincing to be willing to book.

Pro Tip: Include your location after your brand name. People get Facebook ads from companies far away from them and may not be bothered to look up where you are located. Putting your town or city name after your name actually helps you catch attention because if it's local to them they are instantly more interested - it's relevant to them.

Headline

The second most important piece of text on a Facebook ad is the headline which goes below the photo.

As this is in bold it might be the text that grabs someone's attention as they are scrolling through their Facebook news feeds. BUT you only have a few words to make an impact. I recommend finding some words that succinctly sum up what you do and that your service meets their needs.

This was ours:

The Ultimate Party Venue

Targeting

Facebook is often celebrated amongst advertisers for its wide array of demographic targeting options. For example, if you wanted you could target men aged 30-40, in London, who like football and dining out.

But this can seriously restrict the size of your audience if you are a local business. So although your ad may do well for a short time it will quickly run out of steam. Think of this as like a train with only a few carriages on it. Less carriages = less weight. This means it accelerates quicker but doesn't have as much momentum.

The better option is 'wide' targeting. This takes slightly longer to get going like a train with lots of carriages but once it gets going it has more momentum. If you want to run an ad for a long time you'll want to use this option.

This is how it works:

The only targeting you do is age, location and gender (if relevant). You don't bother with interest of demographic targeting.

This may look inferior to targeted traffic but Facebook won't just target everyone in the audience. Facebook will clock onto what type of people respond best to the ad and show it to more people like them. Remember Facebook's algorithm is usually smarter than you.

This is how our targeting looked:

Pro Tip: Even if you are only targeting kid's birthdays you don't just want to target kids. The parents are usually the ones that make these decisions so it's essential to target them.

Ad spend

We spent £6 a day once we'd found a winning ad to run.

Where to send the traffic

A lesson I learned early on with this client is that their website was not converting well. Even if I sent them loads of traffic only a few people got in touch. You may love your website but I'd guesstimate 90% of business websites aren't adequate in converting customers.

I recommend building a landing page - basically a stand alone website that is geared only towards the user taking one action. The more places they can click off to the less likely they are to take the action you want.

Now I know you're probably thinking "A second website! I don't have time for that!"

Truth is almost anyone can build a page that converts higher than their website in less than 5 hours. It's all about the software you use. Landing page builders such as Clickfunnels and Leadpages make it easy for non-coders to build high-converting landing pages. Often the simpler landing pages work the best.

Once you build the landing page you can link that to the original booking process on your website.

And if you don't want to build a landing page yourself you can use one I built as inspiration - just swap in and out your logo and change the text. You can get my funnel using the link below:

https://app.clickfunnels.com/funnels/9173552/share/lddps7tq3rpc6tv9

The hidden advantage of Facebook

Comments! People tag their friends in the comments below your ad. A suggestion from a friend makes you more receptive to a product. But also, it's free traffic for us.

Take a look at a few of the comments we received:

Conclusion

Hopefully, you now have everything you need to set up a successful birthday party Facebook ad.

If you get stuck or want to reach out to me send us an email (info@efixmarketing.com).