Paid Social
The Great Caravan, Motorhome and Holiday Home Show- Low Awareness Into High Demand
THE RESULTS
+109% | Conversion rate |
+74% | Return on ad spend |
- 49% | Cost per acquisition |
Using Paid Social to create demand for an event no- one knew about
How do you drive ticket sales for an event that not many people know about in an industry where demand has been hit significantly by the cost of living crisis? That’s the challenge HERCMA, the leading body of caravan manufacturers in the UK, set us.
HERCMA launched the Great Caravan, Motorhome & Holiday Home Show in 2023 as a yearly event in Harrogate. It was to be a showcase for National Caravan Council approved manufacturers. With over 360 caravans, holiday homes and motorhomes exhibited, it would be the largest outdoor caravan, motorhome and holiday home show in the UK.
As with any new event, generating awareness and getting people through the door would be the main challenges. The first event sold 8,000 tickets sales, but HERCMA had much higher aspirations for 2023.
As the longstanding digital partner of Willerby, a founding HERCMA member, we were approached to use digital marketing to increase ticket sales to 15,000 for 2024. This was a big ask for an event still in its infancy, and a premium price category with subdued demand.
We identified three key areas to address:
- Utilise paid social to generate demand with relevant consumers who were unlikely to be aware of the event.
- Stop the scroll and grab users’ attention, with creative that made them want to find out more about the event.
- Use long- form landing pages to clearly explain the show wasn’t just another bland exhibition - it was an essential event.
Generating demand for an event no- one knows about
First, needed to set up a Meta Ads account, as HERCMA had not run ads on the platform before. Meta ads let you get your brand in front of a vast audience quickly but, when launching from scratch, it needs time to develop performance.
The event wasn’t until September, but we launched the campaign in April. This allowed the campaign to gather data and better identify who the ideal audience was for our ads well before the expected increase in buying intent closer to the event.
Build a warmer audience
The first challenge was that consumers were unaware of the event. So, we used Meta Ads’ robust targeting capabilities, combined with engaging creative assets to capture users’ attention and spark interest in the show. The goal wasn't immediate sales, but to build an audience who knew about the event. This would allow us to target them closer to the show with more sales-focused ads, when they were ready to buy tickets.
To help convert interest into sales, we used a strategic ticketing approach with tiered pricing. This included an incentivised early bird offer which provided significant discounts to encourage early ticket sales. By offering incentives, we aimed to drive immediate action and maximise revenue potential.
Use creative to grab consumer attention
Users aren’t looking for ads when they’re on social platforms. You’re in a constant battle for attention against paid ads, organic posts, and content from other people in their feed. To ensure that ads delivered the right message, to the right user, at the right time we created ads that resonated with our target audience, caught their attention and made them want to know more about the event.
So, we developed a creative strategy rooted in psychology and understanding consumers needs and desires. This allowed the ads to connect better with consumers and gave scope to explore new angles and ideas for testing.
Creative has a huge impact on ad performance, and if it isn't updated, ad fatigue sets in. When an audience sees the same message repeatedly, no matter how relevant it and engagement drops. Paid social has evolved.—It's now less about precise targeting and more about using engaging, relevant content to attract and convert audiences.
We continually launched new creatives into the campaign to drive incremental gains in performance. This included iterating the most successful ad creatives with small modifications to drive small performance improvements. We also introduced new ad concepts and angles based on different emotions and motivators, to help understand what worked best at driving users further down the purchase funnel. With creative now key to targeting, launching these new concepts and angles let us reach new audiences and build wider demand.
Use landing pages to educate about the event
The role of the creative isn’t to generate the sale. It’s to make with the consumer to want know more. Turning that interest into a purchase is the jobs of the landing page you send the user to.
Tickets for The Great Caravan, Motorhome & Holiday Home Show were sold exclusively on See Tickets. See Tickets is focused totally on the transaction of buying a ticket. This created a challenge, as consumers who may have only seen an image or short video ad were being asked to buy tickets for an event they didn’t yet know much about.
To combat this, we created long-form landing pages. These pages clearly explained who the show was for, why they should attend, and answered any potential objections to give them a compelling reason to purchase.
Normally, you wouldn’t want to add an extra stage into your purchase journey. But, adding this landing page helped send more high purchase intent traffic to the event page on See Tickets.
To confirm this was the right approach, we tested sending users to the landing page vs. straight to See Tickets. The results were impressive:
- Conversion rate - up 109%
- Return on ad spend - up 74%
- Cost per acquisition - down 49%
So, following the test, we directed all traffic to the landing page and focused on driving incremental conversion improvements. As more event details were announced, we tested landing page variations, with new information and differing angles, to help improve conversion rates.
We used the data we collected to direct users to the landing page they were most likely to convert on. Then, during the latter stages of the campaign, we increased the sense of urgency by introducing elements like countdown timers., This increased conversion rates by a further 21%.
The campaign was a huge success. We passed the original target of 15,000 ticket sales six weeks before the event, before demand started to ramp up. By the time sales closed, over 29,000 tickets had been sold - a massive 262% increase on the previous year.
We then had our creative team attend the event, to capture footage that can be used in the ads for next year's campaign. This gives us a head start on assets as we look to grow the event further with the team at HERCMA.
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Our Work
We’ve worked with a variety of companies to produce outstanding results. From internationally recognised brands to small family-owned businesses, we’ve gotten to know our clients inside out to produce perfect projects and create captivating campaigns that truly express their message and values.
