County Fair & Rodeo 2024: Integrated Digital Marketing
Overview
This client needed a comprehensive digital marketing strategy to increase event attendance and ticket sales. An integrated approach that combined organic social media growth with strategic paid advertising campaigns across multiple platforms helped to achieve those goals.
Objectives
The fair sought to use social media and digital ads to increase ticket sales among local audiences and spread awareness about the rodeo, concerts, and fairgrounds in neighboring counties to draw in new attendees.
Besides maximizing ticket sales, specific goals for the social media campaign included:
Increase followers by 15% during July
Increase clicks by 150%, year-over-year
Increase reach by 20%, year-over-year
Maintain engagement rate above 3% and increase by 100%, year-over-year
In addition, goals for digital ads included:
Click-through rates up to 5%
Cost-per-click as low as $0.40
Video ads achieved 0.8% CTR (industry average: 0.65%)
At the outset of the project, the planning process included a content calendar with promotional content based on 2023 photographs, as well as dates planned for posts to include newly produced video “reels” with 2024 footage.
Strategy
Execution of the campaign involved a multi-channel marketing approach with coordinated messaging across organic social media, paid social, programmatic display, and Google advertising channels. The campaign launched in May and intensified through August, culminating with the fair.
Specific focuses and tactics that produced results included:
Organic social growth: Building community through regular, engaging content
Paid social amplification: Advertisements targeting specific demographic segments
Google Ads: Search and display campaigns focused on high-intent audiences
Video Content: Special emphasis on 2024 event highlights and performer promotions
A pie chart assessment breaks down clicks between three age groups of a digital ad targeted toward ages 35-64.
Target Audiences
For the campaign of this fair that was already poised to attract an enthusiastic annual crowd, new attendees were the targets, rather than reliable locals. Posts addressed family-focused audiences, sports and event fans, and concert enthusiasts from a wider radius than the immediate county boundary.
Results: Social Media
Increased Facebook followers more than 15% (goal: 15%)
Increased clicks 330%, year-over-year (goal: 150%)
Averaged 7% engagement rate (goal: 3%)
Increased engagement rate by 54% year-over-year (goal: 100% increase)
While most of the stated objectives were met and exceeded, campaign analytics also offered learning opportunities. In this case, only one part of a two-tiered engagement rate goal was met.
For the fair’s pages, which had prioritized clicks for years, the outlook of simultaneously boosting clicks, reach, and engagement rate was particularly ambitious, as those objectives often conflict.
However, aggressive goals often yield stronger results than foreseeably attainable ones. To try to keep engagement high while showing posts to more people, the focus remained on quality visual content, daily schedules, and calls to visit the ticket website on every post.
All organic social media efforts ultimately achieved the ultimate goal to drive a stark increase of customers to the ticket website.
Results: Paid Advertising
Click-through rates up to 5.8% (goal: 5%)
Cost-per-click as low as $0.30 (goal: $0.40)
Video ads achieved 1.1% CTR (goal: 8%, industry average: 0.65%)
Like on social media, the digital campaign using programmatic display and Google advertising channels exceeded primary goals, drove more customers to the ticket website, and helped increase sales.
Takeaways
The campaign's success with clicks, new followers, and engagement rate hinged on consistent social media messaging working in concert with several other key factors.
Video content and carousel posts showing the experience of the fair proved exceptionally engaging as messaging across all channels reinforced the campaign's effectiveness. Continuous audience targeting refinement focused on event-seekers, concert enthusiasts, and family-focused audiences boosted performance metrics throughout the campaign.
The real strength emerged from the synergy between organic community building and targeted paid promotion. This element hinged on the confluence of organic content fostering authentic engagement while paid amplification extended reach to new audiences, driving up ticket purchases.
The integrated approach successfully built awareness, engagement, and ticket sales for the fair, significantly outperforming the prior year’s metrics and industry benchmarks across multiple channels. The campaign demonstrates the effectiveness of a coordinated digital strategy that balances community building with targeted promotion.
