We often say time online should be time well spent. For The Women’s Fund of Central Ohio, a local non-profit for whom we occasionally offer pro bono services, that means a good chunk of time online should be spent on Facebook. For the past few years, Facebook has provided a platform for The Women’s Fund to interact and spark conversations with nearly 4,000 fans who support their mission of amplifying the voices of local women and girls. However, The Women’s Fund was also missing out on a largely untapped opportunity: Activating their Facebook fans to buy tickets to Keyholder, their annual fundraiser and signature event that brings a different celebrity to Columbus each year. This year’s guest? Actor and activist Ashley Judd.
Recognizing that Facebook could provide a relatively easy, low-cost way to connect with potential ticket buyers, The Women’s Fund asked Geben to help develop and help implement an advertising campaign that would enable them to simultaneously connect with new audiences while driving ticket sales.
Approach: Knowing that we had both limited budget and time, we wanted to maximize our investment by creating a highly targeted campaign:
- Each ad was set to reach people within 50 miles of Columbus, ensuring that everyone we targeted could realistically attend the event.
- We worked closely with The Women’s Fund to identify four key audiences that would likely buy tickets: Ashley Judd fans; local young professionals; women who already support the fund and the organizations/causes in which it invests; and women generally interested in supporting their community (also known as the “girls night out” crowd). We then created separate ads – each with different copy, images and calls to action – to reach each audience.
- Targeted ads were supplemented with a small “Likes” campaign, helping The Women’s Fund build its audience while driving ticket sales.
Results: In total, Facebook ads reached nearly 60,000 people and drove 1,600 clicks to the website to buy tickets. Additionally, The Women’s Fund added nearly 300 Facebook fans throughout the campaign.
More importantly, The Women’s Fund sold 442 tickets in three weeks leading up to Keyholder. Assuming even half of those tickets came from Facebook Advertising, that means spending less than $400 drove more than $11,000 in ticket sales – a 2,700% return on investment for The Women’s Fund.
Lastly, Keyholder was deemed a huge success by The Women’s Fund: Between sponsorships, ticket sales and donations, the Keyholder community raised more than $380,000 for women and girls in Central Ohio.