Solved: Lead Gen vs Conversion Ads for Festival Presale

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some of my thoughts on your presale campaign. It’s a common question, whether to go for the on-platform Lead Gen forms or send people to a landing page with a Conversion objective. The answer isn't as simple as one being better than the other, it's about what you're trying to achieve long-term.

You’re not just collecting emails, you're building a list of people genuinely excited to buy tickets the moment they drop. My advice will focus on how to build a high-quality list, not just a big one, because that's what will actually translate into ticket sales.

We'll need to look at the real question: Lead Quality vs. Lead Cost

Okay, so your question is about using the Lead Gen objective versus the Conversion objective. On the surface, it seems simple. Meta's Lead Gen objective lets people sign up using an instant form without ever leaving Facebook or Instagram. It’s low-friction, fast, and because of that, you will almost always get a lower Cost Per Lead (CPL).

The Conversion objective, on the other hand, means you send users off the platform to a landing page on your website where they then sign up. This adds a step, a bit of friction. The page has to load, they have to find the sign-up box, type their details in manually. Inevitably, you'll lose some people along the way, and your CPL will likely be higher. So, Lead Gen is the obvious winner, right? Cheaper leads, more of them. Job done.

Not quite. This is one of the biggest myths in paid advertising. The goal isn't to get the cheapest lead; the goal is to get a lead that turns into a customer. In your case, a presale sign-up that turns into a ticket sale. There's a massive difference.

Think about the user's journey. With a Lead Gen form, someone is scrolling through their feed, sees a cool festival picture, taps a button, their details are auto-filled, they tap submit, and they carry on scrolling. The whole interaction takes maybe three seconds. How invested are they? How much did they really absorb about your festival? A week later, when your presale email lands in their inbox, will they even remember signing up?

Now consider the Conversion journey. They see the ad, they're interested enough to click through. They wait for your landing page to load. They read your copy, look at your photos or watch your aftermovie. They get a feel for the vibe. They are sold on the experience. Then they make the concious decision to type in their email address and hit 'Sign Up'. This person is far more invested. They've been pre-qualified. They're not just a lead; they're a warm prospect who has shown genuine intent.

I've seen this play out time and time again. While Lead Gen forms often produce cheaper signups on paper, the users who come from a landing page (Conversion objective) are almost always more invested and therefore higher quality. The small bit of friction filters out the casual scrollers. For instance, we have significant experience in this area; one campaign we ran for an events app successfully generated over 45,000 signups by focusing on acquiring high-quality users who were more likely to engage long-term. For your festival, that dead weight from low-quality leads is a list of people who won't open your emails and won't buy your tickets, making your initial CPL saving a complete false economy.

I'd say you need to build a landing page that sells the dream

So, we're agreed that the Conversion objective is the way forward. This means your landing page becomes the most important part of this campaign. It has one job and one job only: to get a visitor so excited about your festival that they are desperate to give you their email address. It's not a page with your full line-up and FAQ; it's a dedicated sales page for the presale.

Here’s what it needs:

-> A Killer Headline: Something that grabs attention and communicates the core benefit. Not "Sign up for our Presale", but something like "Be First In Line for [Festival Name] 2024. Lock In The Lowest Price."

-> Emotive Visuals: This is your biggest asset. You need a hero section with a stunning photo or, even better, a short, high-energy aftermovie from a previous year. People buy feelings and experiences, not tickets. Show them the sun, the crowds, the smiling faces, the artists on stage. Sell the vibe.

-> Persuasive Copy: You need some professional copy here. Talk directly to your ideal attendee. Use the 'Before-After-Bridge' framework. Before: The boring weekend at home. After: The unforgettable weekend with their best mates at your festival. Bridge: The presale sign-up is the first step to get there.

-> Clear Call-to-Action (CTA): A big, obvious button that says something like "Get Presale Access" or "Unlock Early Bird Prices". And have it visible above the fold (before they have to scroll). Have it repeat further down the page too.

-> Social Proof: Got any good quotes from attendees or press mentions from last year? Use them. Show logos of any publications that have covered you. Display a few of the best photos from your Instagram. This builds trust and FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out).

-> Simplicity: Remove all distractions. No navigation menu to the rest of your site. No links to your merch store. The only clickable things on this page should be the sign-up button and maybe a link to your privacy policy. The goal is to funnel everyone to that one single action.

Your current website might not be set up for this, but tools like Unbounce or Leadpages make it easy to build these dedicated pages without needing a developer. It's an extra step, but it’s the differance between a campaign that flops and one that builds a huge, engaged waiting list.

You probably should calculate what a lead is actually worth to you

Before you even spend a single pound on ads, you need to know your numbers. Otherwise, you're flying blind. How do you know if a £4 CPL is good or bad? You can't. The real question isn’t "how cheap can I get a lead?" but "what's the absolute maximum I can afford to pay for a presale lead and still be very profitable?"

This is where most people get it wrong. They focus on the wrong metric. We need to calculate the Expected Value Per Presale Lead (EVPPL). This tells you what each email address on your list is worth in potential revenue.

The formula is simpler than it sounds:

EVPPL = (Average Revenue Per Attendee) x (Presale List to Ticket Buyer Conversion Rate)

Let's break that down:

-> Average Revenue Per Attendee: This isn't just the ticket price. You should also include an estimate of their average spend on-site (drinks, food, merch). For example, if your ticket is £150 and the average attendee spends £50, your Average Revenue Per Attendee is £200.

-> Presale List to Ticket Buyer Conversion Rate: This is the percentage of people who sign up for the presale list that you expect will actually buy a ticket. If you have data from last year, use that. If not, be conservative. A 10% conversion rate is a reasonable starting point for a well-qualified list. For a lower-quality list, it could be as low as 1-2%.

Let's do the maths with an example: £200 Revenue Per Attendee x 10% Conversion Rate = £20 EVPPL. This means every single person who signs up to your presale list is worth £20 in expected revenue. Now you have your North Star. You know you can afford to pay anything up to £20 per lead and still break even. A good target would be to acquire them for 1/3 of that (£6.67) or less to ensure a healthy profit margin.

Suddenly, a £4 CPL from a Conversion campaign doesn't look expensive compared to a £1.50 CPL from a Lead Gen campaign if the Lead Gen list only converts at 2% (EVPPL = £200 * 2% = £4). In that scenario, you're just breaking even with the cheap leads, while the "more expensive" leads are generating a 3x return. This is the maths that drives smart, scalable campaigns.

You'll need a smart targeting strategy

Now that we know who we want to reach (people with high intent) and where we're sending them (a killer landing page), we need to actually find them on Facebook and Instagram. A lot of people just throw a few broad interests in and hope for the best. That's a surefire way to waste money.

I always structure my campaigns based on the marketing funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu). This just means we're talking to cold audiences, warm audiences, and hot audiences with different messages.

Here’s how I would prioritise audiences for your festival presale:

1. BoFu - The "Must Haves" (Your Hottest Audience): These are the people who already know and love you. We need to make sure they see the presale ad first. This is your cheapest, highest-converting traffic.
-> Past Ticket Buyers: The absolute best audience. Upload a customer list of everyone who bought a ticket last year. They are primed to buy again.
-> Website Visitors (Last 180 Days): Anyone who has been on your site recently. They are actively interested.
-> Social Media Engagers: People who have liked, commented, shared, or watched your videos. They are your fans.

2. MoFu - The "Lookalikes" (Finding New Fans): This is where you scale. Meta's algorithm is incredibly powerful at finding new people who look and behave just like your best customers.
-> Lookalike of Past Ticket Buyers: This is your gold-standard prospecting audience. Create a 1% Lookalike audience in the UK based on your customer list. This will find people with very similar characteristics to those who have bought from you before.
-> Lookalike of Website Visitors: A slightly broader but still very powerful audience.
-> Lookalike of Video Viewers: Create a lookalike of people who watched 50% or more of your aftermovie. This finds people who are engaged with festival content.

3. ToFu - The "Interest Targeting" (Broad Prospecting): This is for reaching completely new people. Be specific here. Don't just target "Music Festivals". That's too broad. Think about your unique vibe.
-> Competitor Festivals: Target people who like the pages of other festivals that have a similar crowd to yours (e.g., if you're a folk festival, target fans of other folk festivals, not Reading & Leeds).
-> Artist Interests: Target fans of the specific artists playing at your festival, or artists from previous years that fit your genre.
-> Niche Interests: Think about the lifestyle around your festival. Is it family-friendly? Eco-conscious? A foodie festival? Target related interests like "sustainable living", "gourmet food", etc.

I'd structure this with seperate campaigns. One for Retargeting (BoFu) and one for Prospecting (MoFu/ToFu). In the Prospecting campaign, you'd have different ad sets for each of your best Lookalike audiences and your themed interest groups. Let them run for a few days, and Meta's algorithm will start to show you which audiences are delivering the best CPL. You then turn off the losers and scale up the winners. It's a process of constant testing and optimisation, not set-and-forget.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

As you can probably tell, running a successful presale campaign involves a lot more than just picking an objective in Ads Manager. It's about understanding the psychology of your audience, building a proper funnel, and knowing your numbers inside and out. It’s about making a series of smart, strategic decisions that stack on top of each other to produce a great result.

Getting this right can be the difference between a sell-out festival and one that struggles. If you'd like to go over your specific plans and have an expert eye look over your strategy, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can talk through your festival, your audience, and map out a concrete plan of action.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh