Edmond Town Hall is a 1930's Georgian-style historic building in the heart of Newtown, Connecticut. As the name suggests, it once served as the town hall. Today, it's a community gathering place that shows movies and live performances in a 500-seat theatre. However, very few local residents realize that Edmond Town Hall also has rental space. Guests are welcome to rent the theatre for private screenings, a full gymnasium for sporting events, or one of several historic rooms for galas and weddings. Edmond Town Hall wants to generate awareness of their available space and, more importantly, get people to rent them for their next event.

Facebook is a great paid media platform to help Edmond Town Hall target their ideal audience segment and help create conversions. First, Newtown has an aging population, and Facebook tends to skew towards an older audience. Next, Facebook allows businesses to geo-target their audience and deliver ads to a specific region, which is preferred for a local establishment. Edmond Town Hall already has an advertising budget based on their 2025 goals for the available spaces. Setting up an ad campaign with clear objectives will enable us to target their audience effectively and maximize their Return on Investment (ROI). Finally, we can track the results to optimize future targeting and ad spend.

Setting the Objectives & Audience

Make no mistake, this campaign is about driving rental sales. Engagement and brand awareness will hopefully grow, but Edmond Town Hall will measure success based on financial outcomes such as net new sales. (Yahoo, 2011, pg. 211) Fortunately, Facebook allows us to set campaign goals immediately, and we can even designate the conversion location to drive sales on their website.

Targeting the most appropriate demographic will be crucial to increasing the campaign's efficiency. Edmond Town Hall is looking to serve local residents first, since it's partially funded by local municipality. We set the geographical targeting to Newtown, CT, with a radius of 15 miles. This will allow us to target our unique audience better, which will also help to optimize Conversion Rate (CVR). In this case, conversions take the form of users renting space online. In the future, we'll be able to retarget the audience that previously rented space, potentially increasing conversion rates even further.  

Most likely, customers will be renting space at Edmond Town Hall for celebrations — birthday parties, engagements, and weddings — or fundraisers and special galas. Therefore we set the minimum age to 25, and included audience interests such as parties, weddings, and kids activities, in addition to entertainment, dance, and theatre. Ads that show up in the feeds of the wrong audience will result in lower Click Through Rates (CTRs) and Conversion Rates (CVRs), and fewer sales. Interestingly, the average CTR and CVR for the Travel and Hospitality industry are only .9% and 2.82%, respectively. (Irvine, 2024) We will set those benchmarks with our client, and explain that the targeting or creative can be adjusted, if needed, to hopefully exceed those goals.

Placement, Budget, & Reach

Lucky for us, the budget and timeframe have been set. Our client has $300 to spend over the next month, which equates to $30 per day. With the geographic and demographic parameters defined, Facebook estimates that our campaign will reach an estimated 349,800–411,600 people on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and the Facebook Audience Network. This amounts to 398–1,100 views per day, representing a relatively specific audience, but less than 10 conversions per day. While that seems low, Edmond Town Hall only has 5 spaces to rent, and they aren't available every day. 300 actual conversions over 30 days would exceed their goals, by far, which is why Cost Per Click and Conversion Rate will be our most important KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators. (Thony, 2024, pg. 50) Considering the cost to rent each space ($450 – $2,000 per day), and the low advertising budget, one month will provide a great trial period to calculate their return on investment.

Creative & A/B Testing

Given the budget and timeframe, it wouldn't make sense to test too many variables at this point. But, we do want to take advantage of A/B testing in order to refine our target segments in future campaigns. One way we can do that is to test video ads versus static ads. Since Edmond Town Hall has multiple of rooms to rent, a carousel might work well to show the range of spaces available. This ad will be somewhat straightforward:

Headline
Host an Event at Edmond Town Hall

Copy
From birthday parties to business meetings, and cultural affairs to fundraising galas, Edmond Town Hall offers a variety of spaces for your next event. Our historic 500-seat theatre creates an extraordinary setting for a private screening. Need a gymnasium for your sporting event? We've got that, too. From small get-togethers to large weddings, check out all the spaces that Edmond Town Hall has to offer.

CTA Button
Book now

Images (Ideally hire a photographer)

On the other hand, video often shows a higher engagement rate. (Beveridge, 2025) This might be a more a successful creative approach. We'll create a short :30 spot to test, featuring all of the same rooms shot with drone videography. Voiceover with captioning will explain all of the available amenities. The video will run simultaneously within the same ad set as the carousel ad. By keeping the headline, ad copy, and call to action the same, we can easily see which creative media format works better. The use of video might also help determine if there is a younger audience — new parents, for example — that's interested in renting space.

There's a lot to consider when planning a paid media ad campaign, even on Facebook and Instagram. But, with clear goals and objectives, we can align on success metrics with our client to help figure out a proper return on investment. The targeting focus for Edmond Town Hall will be a highly-specific geographical and demographic segment. That way, we can reach the desired market, optimize conversions, possibly retarget engaged users in the future, and manage the budget efficiently. 

References

Beveridge, C. (2024, January). Paid Social Media Advertising: A beginner’s guide. Semrush Blog. https://www.semrush.com/blog/paid-social/ 

Blanchard, O. (2011). Social Media ROI. Pearson Education Inc. 

Hootsuite. (2023, March 20). Social Media Metrics You Should Know. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RAvd-ng8Ew 

Irvine, M. (2024, September). Facebook ad benchmarks for your industry [data]. Wordstream. https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/02/28/facebook-advertising-benchmarks 

NestScale. (2023, November 21). Facebook ad metrics that actually MATTER in 2024 (How to analyze FB ads the right way?). YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVz-8jAzn0g 

Thony, S. L. (2024). The Marketing Campaign Playbook. STK MKT Entertainment. 

Yakob, F. (2022). Paid attention: Innovative Advertising for a Digital World. Kogan Page Inc.