Solved: Looking for Meta Marketing freelancer?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Read your post and thought I'd give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance based on what you've described. It sounds like a familiar situation, and managing that many events across different markets on Meta is definitely a challenge, but a solvable one. I'm happy to give you my take on it.

It's a shame to hear the agency wasn't quite hitting the mark. It happens a lot, especially when a business has very specific needs and parameters. Sometimes an agency has a set "way of doing things" that they try to apply to everyone, and for a business like yours with lots of moving parts, that just doesn't cut it. You need a more bespoke, hands-on approach, which is probably why you're leaning towards a specialist freelancer.

Okay, let's get into it. Based on my experience, particularly with event-based clients, here's how I would approach your situation.

I'd say you need a rock-solid account structure first...

This is the absolute bedrock of everything else. With 30 events a month in different cities, your Ads Manager can become a complete and utter mess overnight if it's not set up logically. When it's a mess, you can't tell what's working, you waste budget, and you can't optimise properly. This might be part of the reason the agency struggled. They probably tried to lump things together to make it easier on their end, not better for your results.

Your goal right now is maintenance and optimisation, not scaling. That means we need clarity and control above all else. Here’s a structure that I've found works well for this kind of high-volume, multi-location model:

Campaign Level:

You should seperate your campaigns by funnel stage, not by event. This is a mistake so many people make. They'll create a new campaign for every single event in every city. This fragments your data, prevents the Meta algorithm from learning effectively, and makes it impossible to manage. Instead, think in terms of customer temperature.

You should have at least three core, long-running campaigns:

1. TOFU (Top of Funnel - Cold Audiences): This campaign's job is to find new potential customers in each event city who have never heard of you. The objective here will always be Conversions (likely Purchases or Ticket Sales). All your ads targeting people based on interests, behaviours, and lookalike audiences will live here.

2. MOFU/BOFU (Middle/Bottom of Funnel - Warm/Hot Audiences): This is your retargeting campaign. Its job is to bring back people who have shown interest but haven't bought a ticket yet. This is where you'll make a huge chunk of your sales. Again, the objective is Conversions. This campaign will target website visitors, people who have engaged with your social media, video viewers, and people who abandoned their cart.

3. Past Attendees (Retention): You could even have a third campaign dedicated to targeting past customers from your email lists. Selling a ticket to a previous happy customer is far easier and cheaper than finding a new one. You could use this to announce when you're returning to their city.

Ad Set Level:

This is where you bring in the location-specific element. Within your TOFU campaign, you would have an Ad Set for each city (or maybe group a few very small, nearby cities into one ad set if the audience is tiny). So you might have:

• -> TOFU Campaign
  • -> Ad Set: Austin, TX - Interests
  • -> Ad Set: Austin, TX - Lookalikes
  • -> Ad Set: Portland, ME - Interests
  • -> Ad Set: Portland, ME - Lookalikes
  • -> ...and so on for all 30 events.

Within your MOFU/BOFU retargeting campaign, you could have a couple of different approaches. You could have one ad set that retargets all website visitors from the last 30-60 days, and use dynamic ads to show them the specific event page they looked at. Or, for more control, create ad sets that retarget visitors of specific event pages.

This structure keeps everything organised. It lets you control the budget for each city at the Ad Set level, and it pools all your conversion data at the campaign level, which helps Meta's algorithm perform better. It's more work to set up initially, but it's infinitely easier to manage and optimise week to week.

We'll need to look at your targeting in a much more granular way...

This is your other "crucial" point, and rightly so. For event sales, especially in smaller markets, getting the audience right is everything. Throwing money at broad audiences is like flyering an entire city hoping a few right people see it – incredibly inefficient. We need to be more like a sniper. With your budget, every dollar has to work hard.

Using that campaign structure I mentioned, let's break down the audiences you should be testing in order of priority. This is a framework I use for pretty much every client, from eCommerce to software to events, and it works because it's logical.

1. Your BOFU (Bottom of Funnel) Goldmine - The Hottest Audiences

These are people who are this close to buying. You must be targeting them relentlessly (without being annoying, of course). These ad sets should get a dedicated slice of your budget and will almost always deliver your best Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).

• -> Website Visitors (Last 30-60 Days): Anyone who has visited your website. A basic but essential audience.
• -> Specific Event Page Viewers: People who viewed the ticket page for Austin, but didn't buy. They are highly interested. Show them an ad with a testimonial or a "tickets selling fast!" message to create urgency.
• -> Initiated Checkout (Last 14-30 Days): The absolute hottest audience. They put a ticket in the basket and went to the checkout page. Life got in the way. A simple reminder ad can often recover a huge number of these sales.
• -> Past Purchasers: Upload your customer email lists. You can create a custom audience of everyone who's ever bought a ticket. When you launch a new event in their city, they should be the first to know.

2. Your MOFU (Middle of Funnel) Warm-Up Act

These people are aware of you but maybe not ready to commit. The goal here is to keep your brand top of mind and pull them deeper into the funnel.

• -> Facebook & Instagram Engagers (Last 90 days): Anyone who liked a post, commented, shared, or saved. They've raised their hand to say they're interested.
• -> Video Viewers (ThruPlay or 50%+): If someone watches a good chunk of your event video, they are showing strong interest. This is a fantastic audience to retarget with a direct "Buy Tickets" call to action.

3. Your TOFU (Top of Funnel) Exploration - Finding New People

This is where you'll spend a good portion of your budget, and it requires the most testing and optimisation. For each event city, you need to find pockets of potential customers. This is where agencies often get lazy.

• -> Lookalike Audiences (LALs): This is your most powerful tool for finding new customers. BUT, you must create lookalikes from high-quality source audiences. A lookalike of "all website visitors" is okay. A lookalike of "past purchasers" is pure gold. It tells Meta to go find more people who look exactly like the people who have already given you money. I'd prioritise them like this:
  1. LAL of Past Purchasers
  2. LAL of Initiated Checkouts
  3. LAL of people who've viewed specific event pages
  4. LAL of 50% Video Viewers
  
  Start with a 1% lookalike in the specific country (USA), but constrain it by the city/radius at the ad set level. Then you can test expanding to 2%, 3-5% etc.


• -> Detailed Interest Targeting: This is your bread and butter for small markets. You need to get creative and specific. Let's say you run a "Craft Beer & BBQ Festival".
  • Bad targeting: "Beer", "Food". Far too broad. You'll hit everyone from college kids to people who just like a supermarket lager.
  • Good targeting: Think about what a real enthusiast in that city would be interested in. You can layer interests to narrow it down.
    • -> People who like pages of specific local craft breweries in that city.
    • -> People interested in "Craft beer" AND competitors like "Untappd".
    • -> People interested in specific BBQ restaurant chains or even local BBQ joints if their audience is big enough to target.
    • -> People who have shown interest in other local events like "farmers markets" or "food festivals".
  You need to build a seperate, tailored interest profile for each city. It's manual work, but it's the difference between a 2x ROAS and a 5x ROAS.

You probably should be more strategic with your ad creative...

Your ads are what people actually see. The best targeting in the world won't save a boring or confusing ad. For events, you're not just selling a ticket; you're selling an experience, a feeling, a memory. Your creative needs to reflect that.

Again, you need to be testing. Constantly. Here's what I'd be running:

-> Video, Video, Video: For events, video is non-negotiable. It's the best way to show the atmosphere.

• Highlight Reels: A fast-paced, 15-30 second reel showing clips from past events. Happy people, the main attractions, the energy. Set it to upbeat music. This is your hero creative for cold audiences.
• Testimonials/UGC: Get short video clips from past attendees talking about how much fun they had. User-Generated Content is incredibly powerful for building trust and overcoming scepticism. It feels more authentic than a polished corporate ad. We've seen this work wonders for SaaS clients, getting them really low-cost user signups, and for events it's even more powerful.

-> High-Impact Static Images:

• Carousel Ads: These are perfect for events. You can use each card to show a different aspect: Card 1 = The main headliner/attraction. Card 2 = The food/drink options. Card 3 = A map of the venue. Card 4 = A happy crowd photo with a quote. Card 5 = A clear call to action with the date and "Book Now".
• Single Images: Needs to be your best photo. A wide shot of a happy, full crowd works well. Overlay clear, concise text with the event name, date, and location. Don't clutter it.

-> Ad Copy:

• Keep it simple and direct. Start with the hook: what is the event and where is it? E.g., "Austin! The Ultimate Retro Gaming Expo is coming to town on October 25th!"
• Use bullet points to list the key features or benefits. Easy to read.
• Create Urgency/FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). This is huge for event sales. Use phrases like "Tickets are selling fast!", "Early bird pricing ends Friday!", "Don't miss out!". This is especially effective in your retargeting ads.
• Have a clear Call to Action (CTA). "Book Now", "Get Tickets", "Learn More". Make it obvious what you want them to do.

You should be running 2-3 different ad creatives (e.g. a video and two different images) and maybe 2 copy variations in each ad set at all times. This allows you to see what resonates with each audience in each city and put more budget behind the winners.

You'll need a clear process for optimisation...

This directly addresses your goal of "maintaining and optimizing" and the issue of an agency not following parameters. A good freelancer or consultant should have a clear, transparent process that you can understand.

With a $10k-$15k monthly budget spread across 30 events, you're looking at an average of $333-$500 per event. This isn't a huge amount, so there's no room for waste. My process would be something like this:

1. Daily Checks (5-10 mins): A quick scan of the account. Are all ads running? Is spending on track? Any major red flags like a sudden spike in Cost Per Click (CPC)?

2. Bi-Weekly Optimisation (Mon/Thurs for example): This is the proper work.

• -> Review performance at the Ad Set and Ad level over the last 3-7 days.
• -> The Kill Rule: Have any ad sets or ads spent money without getting any ticket sales (or at least Add to Carts)? A good rule of thumb is to kill anything that has spent 1.5-2x your target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) without a sale. If a ticket is $50 and your target CPA is $25, an ad that's spent $50 with no sales needs to be turned off. It's not working.
• -> The Scaling Rule: Identify the winning ad sets and ads. Which ones are bringing in sales at or below your target CPA? Give them a bit more budget. Increase the budget of winning ad sets by 15-20% at a time to avoid resetting the learning phase.
• -> Refresh Creative: Ads get stale. If you notice the performance of a winning ad starting to dip (frequency gets too high, CTR drops), it's time to swap in a new image or video.

3. Weekly Reporting: A simple, clear report for you. No fluff or vanity metrics. It should show:

• -> Total Amount Spent
• -> Total Revenue Generated (from the Meta pixel)
• -> Overall ROAS (Return On Ad Spend)
• -> Total Tickets Sold
• -> Cost Per Ticket Sold (CPA)
• -> A brief summary of what was tested, what worked, what didn't, and the plan for the next week.

This kind of disciplined process ensures the account is always being refined. It's not "set and forget". It's active management, which is what you're paying for and what you need with this many variables.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you in a table below to give you a clearer overview of the whole strategy.

As you can see, this is a much more involved process than just boosting a few posts or running one-size-fits-all campaigns. It requires strategic thinking, discipline, and a deep understanding of how the Meta platform works. I've seen this kind of structured approach deliver serious results. I remember one client selling courses, where targeting their past students for new offerings was a massive driver of their $115k revenue in just over a month. The principle is exactly the same. I also recall another client in student recruitment (which is basically selling tickets to an educational event) saw us reduce their cost per booking by 80% just by refining their targeting and structure on Meta.

Implementing a system like this is how you achieve your goal of stable, optimised performance. It gives you the framework to test methodically, find what works in each individual market, and allocate your $10-15k budget in the most effective way possible to maximise ticket sales.

This is obviously a lot to take in, and the real work is in the execution, the daily tweaks, and the creative development. It takes time, experience, and a dedicated focus that's hard to maintain when you're also running the rest of the business. This is where getting the right specialist help can make all the difference.

If this approach resonates with you and you'd like to chat further about how we could apply it specifically to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation call where we can go through your current ad account and discuss these strategies in more detail.

Hope this helps give you a clearer path forward!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh