Meta ads on Facebook and Instagram

Meta ads reach people who are not searching yet, which makes them best for visual work, dated events, local awareness and reminding past website visitors. Learn how to choose an objective, build audiences, brief creative that stops the scroll and judge lead quality, not just lead cost.

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Meta ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Nobody opens Instagram to hire a caterer.

They open it to see friends, watch a video or kill ten minutes on the subway.

What Meta ads are good for.

Meta's advertising system places ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and partner apps.

For event businesses, it earns its keep in five situations.

Choose the objective.

Meta asks you to pick an objective when you create a campaign, and it then shows your ads to the people its system predicts are most likely to take that action.

Choose the objective that matches the result you actually want, because Meta will optimize for exactly that.

Build the audience.

You can describe your audience in three ways.

Location and broad characteristics. A radius or a list of cities, an age range and, if you choose, interests.

Creative does most of the work.

On Meta, the ad itself decides more of your result than any targeting setting.

Brief every ad with this template.

Lead forms and lead quality.

Meta's instant forms let people inquire without leaving the app, with their name and email filled in automatically.

That makes them easy to complete and also easy to complete carelessly.

That is the lesson. The worksheet and the quiz are just below this video.

What you will be able to do

• Choose a Meta campaign objective and audience that match your goal and buyer
• Write a creative brief for image and short video ads with a clear hook and offer
• Measure qualified cost per lead and apply Canadian privacy and disclosure rules to Meta campaigns

Nobody opens Instagram to hire a caterer. They open it to see friends, watch a video or kill ten minutes on the subway. A Meta ad has to earn attention from someone who was not looking for you, in about the time it takes a thumb to move. That makes Meta very different from search. It is weaker at catching buyers who are ready today, and much stronger at showing your work to the people who will be ready next month.

What Meta ads are good for

Meta’s advertising system places ads across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and partner apps. For event businesses, it earns its keep in five situations.

• Visual work. Décor, florals, cakes, venues, photo booths and performers look good in a feed. A ten-second clip of a reveal or a room transformation does more than any description.
• Dated events. A ticketed dinner, an open house, a holiday party package with a booking deadline. A date creates urgency that a general service does not.
• Retargeting. Showing ads to people who visited your website or engaged with your profile. They already know you, so they respond better and cost less.
• Local awareness. Becoming familiar to people within a few kilometres of a venue or a food truck’s regular stops.
• Testing messages. Meta lets you learn quickly which photo, headline or offer people respond to, which you can then use on your website and in search ads.

Choose the objective

Meta asks you to pick an objective when you create a campaign, and it then shows your ads to the people its system predicts are most likely to take that action. Choose the objective that matches the result you actually want, because Meta will optimize for exactly that.

A common mistake is choosing Traffic because it produces the cheapest clicks. Meta will find people who click a lot and rarely do anything else.

Build the audience

You can describe your audience in three ways.

1. Location and broad characteristics. A radius or a list of cities, an age range and, if you choose, interests. Meta increasingly recommends letting its system expand beyond your choices, and with a good objective and creative, broad targeting often works as well as narrow guesses.
2. Custom audiences. People who visited your website (recorded by the Meta Pixel or the Conversions API), people who engaged with your Instagram or Facebook profile, or watched your videos. This is your warmest audience.
3. Lookalike audiences. People Meta judges similar to a source audience, such as your website visitors.

For a small budget, a simple two-part structure works well: one campaign to a broad local audience with your strongest creative, and one small retargeting campaign to recent website visitors and profile engagers with a reminder and an offer.

Creative does most of the work

On Meta, the ad itself decides more of your result than any targeting setting. Brief every ad with this template.

• Who it is for: “Office managers in Mississauga and Oakville planning a December party for 40 to 120 staff.”
• The hook: the first second or first line. A striking image, a question, a surprising number: “Your holiday party budget per person, before you book a venue.”
• The proof: a real photo or clip from your events, a short review line, a recognizable kind of client.
• The offer: one clear next step, such as “Get our three holiday menus and prices”.
• The format: a vertical video for Reels and Stories, a square image or a carousel for the feed. Make several versions and let the results decide.

Use real event footage, shot well on a phone, rather than stock images. People scroll past anything that looks like an advertisement for nobody in particular.

Lead forms and lead quality

Meta’s instant forms let people inquire without leaving the app, with their name and email filled in automatically. That makes them easy to complete and also easy to complete carelessly. Raise the quality by adding one or two qualifying questions, such as event date, guest count or budget range, and by choosing the form setting that asks people to review their details before submitting, if it is offered.

Speed matters even more than with search leads. Someone who tapped a form between videos may not remember doing it by tomorrow. Call or email within the hour, mention what they asked about, and offer one easy next step. Then measure what matters: not cost per lead, but cost per qualified lead.

Worked example: a caterer’s holiday campaign

A Mississauga caterer runs a Leads campaign for corporate holiday menus from mid-September to the end of October. These numbers are illustrative.

1. Spend: $20 a day for 45 days, $900.
2. Leads from the instant form: 36. Cost per lead: $900 divided by 36 equals $25.
3. Qualified leads, with a real date and at least 40 guests: 15. Cost per qualified lead: $900 divided by 15 equals $60.
4. Bookings: 4, at an average of $5,800. Cost per booking: $900 divided by 4 equals $225.
5. Revenue from the campaign: $23,200 from $900 in ad spend.

The cost per lead looked cheap, but the qualified figure was more than twice as high. That is the number the caterer compares with Google Ads and other channels.

The weekly check

• Cost per qualified lead and bookings, from your CRM, not only from Meta’s reports.
• Frequency, the average number of times each person has seen the ad. When it climbs and results fall, refresh the creative.
• Comments on your ads. Answer questions, hide spam, and treat complaints as you would a review.
• Which creative is winning. Pause the weakest, and make a new version of the strongest.

In Canada and the GTA

The local picture. Facebook remains widely used by families, community groups and many corporate buyers over 35 in the GTA, while Instagram is where most couples and younger clients look at vendors’ work. Community Facebook groups for neighbourhoods and cultural communities are influential, but they are not ad placements, and most ban promotion unless the group rules allow it. Run ads in the language your buyers prefer: an ad in Punjabi, Tamil, Cantonese, Mandarin, Tagalog or Portuguese, pointed at a page in the same language, can stand out in a feed full of English. Have a fluent speaker write it.

Seasonality. Meta advertising costs tend to rise in November and December, when large retailers compete for the same feeds. For holiday party packages, that is a reason to start in September and October, when corporate buyers are deciding and the feeds are cheaper. Wedding vendors often see the strongest response from January to March.

Rules that apply to Meta campaigns

Special ad categories. Meta requires advertisers reaching Canadian audiences with housing, employment or credit ads to declare a special ad category, in effect since December 3, 2020, and audience restrictions apply. For event businesses, this matters mainly when you advertise jobs, such as hiring servers, event staff or performers. Ads about social issues, elections or politics are a separate category that requires authorization. Meta’s special ad category documentation sets out the requirement.

Customer lists and the Pixel. Uploading your clients’ email addresses to build a custom audience discloses their personal information to a third party. Under PIPEDA, the OPC’s guidance says express consent is generally required when a use or disclosure is outside a person’s reasonable expectations, and gives sharing with third parties as an example. Before you upload a list, make sure your privacy policy explains it and your clients have agreed, or do not upload it. The Meta Pixel and Conversions API also collect information about your website visitors, so your privacy policy should explain that you use them, what they collect and why. Meta’s own documentation describes the Conversions API and how it relates to the Pixel.

Lead form follow-up. A person who submits an instant form has made an inquiry, which gives you implied consent under CASL to send commercial emails for 6 months. To keep them on your newsletter after that, ask for express consent with an optional, unticked checkbox on the form. Every follow-up email must identify your business, give a mailing address and a contact method, and include an unsubscribe link.

Boosted creator content. If you run ads using a creator’s or partner’s post, or pay a creator to promote you, Instagram’s branded content policies require the paid partnership label to tag the brand. Ad Standards’ influencer guidelines treat that label as sufficient only if it is prominent and visible on all devices, and say videos need a disclosure within the first 30 seconds in audio and on-screen text.

Prices and alcohol. The Competition Act’s drip pricing rule applies to social ads: an advertised price must include every mandatory fixed fee, with only taxes such as HST added. Liquor licensees and permit holders must follow the AGCO’s advertising guidelines. A private event held under a Special Occasion Permit may not be publicly advertised, such as on social media.

Music. Do not put commercially released songs in your ads unless you hold the right licences. Public performance licences held by a venue do not cover putting music in your own videos. Use music the platform provides for commercial use, or licensed production music.

This is general information, not legal advice. Check the source or a lawyer for your situation.

Worksheet

Download the worksheet and complete it for your own business, using Lantern & Lane as the model where it helps. Keep it with your marketing plan. It takes about 10 minutes.

Download the worksheet (PDF)