Pumpkin patches, corn mazes, and hayrides- agritourism is an opportunity to diversify and add new streams of revenue to your farm operation. As the number of fall agritourism opportunities rises, farmers face increased competition to attract customers to their farm event. Farmers can utilize social media marketing to communicate directly to a target audience and extend a personal invitation to attend their fall farm event.
Social media ads are an effective way to connect with customers. Seventy percent of U.S. consumers use social media daily according to Hootsuite. Thirty-five percent of women and 22% of men say social media is the most relevant advertising channel. Fifty percent of Gen Z and 42% of millennials say social media is the advertising channel that captures their attention. Facebook event listings, ads and boosted posts are three ways to attract attendees to your fall farm event.
Event listings
Facebook events are searchable, sharable posts that provide the public with information about an event. Posting a Facebook event is free. Farmers can promote the event on their page and invite followers to attend. Followers can like and share the event with their personal networks. Non-followers can discover the event when searching for fall activities.
Facebook interfaces with Eventbrite to allow online ticket sales. Nearly 48% social media users have made a purchase through the Facebook platform.
Ads
Facebook Ads Manager makes it easy for farmers to create targeted advertisements. Facebook offers three objective choices for an ad campaign: awareness, consideration and conversion. Awareness campaigns introduce a maximum number of people to an event. Consideration campaigns prompt interested people to learn more about an event. Conversion campaigns encourage customers to attend. All ad objectives will attract attendees to your event, but you may find one objective attracts more attention than others. An eight-week timeline allows farmers to run each objective for two weeks, monitor effectiveness, benchmark against other objectives, and determine which ad creates the most engagement. Re-run the best performing ad campaign for the final two weeks leading up to the event.
After choosing an objective, Ads Manager guides users to select an audience. Farmers can select an audience by demographics (age, gender, relationship), or psychographics (interests and behaviors) that represent people most likely to attend the event. Another option is to select an audience based on connections: people who like your page, people who like your page and their friends. Alternatively, choose a target audience by location, such as metro area or within a distance of the farm.
Next, set a daily or lifetime budget based on the time period you want the ad to run. Farmers can control the dollar amount and duration of social media ad campaigns to ensure ad expenses fit their marketing budget. Ads Manager forecasts how many people will see the ad based on your inputs.
The last step is to choose a format based on the type of content in the ad: photo, video, etc. Ads Manager allows farmers to run the ad on Facebook, Instagram or both. Facebook will notify you when the ad is live. Log into Ads Manager regularly to monitor performance. Adjust and optimize ads based on results.
Boosted posts
The average organic Facebook page post reaches only 8% of your page’s audience. Boosting a Facebook post increases the number of social media users that see it in their newsfeed. There are three steps to boost a social media post. Click the ‘Boost Post’, select an audience and set a budget and duration for the boost.
The process is similar on Instagram. Click the ‘Promote’ button, pick a goal, select an audience and set a budget and duration.
References
Cooper, Paige. (June 2015). “Social Media Advertising Stats that Matter to Marketers in 2018.” Hootsuite. Retrieved from https://blog.hootsuite.com/social-media-advertising-stats/
