118 people interested in my Facebook event. Zero people showed.

A little background.
I'm a dance instructor. I was hoping to do a salsa bootcamp today. It was a total disaster. No one from my extremely successful Facebook ad campaign showed up.

Previously I did two VERY successful events, WITHOUT ANY Facebook advertising. For those events, I promoted on Facebook groups' walls. Groups like Houston Events and Things to do around Houston. I got about 50 interested people and a half dozen RSVPs. The first event (a beginning bootcamp) I had 35 people attend! The second (an intermediate bootcamp) I had 30.

With this event I wanted to push for more success. I was worried that I had exhausted my welcome on those groups so I decided to supplement my marketing strategy with a facebook ad. In addition to my previous marketing strategy I ran a 4 day add with $11 a day budget. It was in my judgment extremely successful.

All told 118 people said they were interested in the event, which as extremely exciting. But only 11 people said they were coming, which was worrying because of the low level of commitment and also because almost all of them were from my Facebook friends list. Furthermore I only sold 1 online evenbrite ticket, as opposed to the previous 7 or 5.

But I was still very optimistic because of the extremely high interest level. I figured if two people from that 118, that would pay for the Facebook ad. But I was expecting at least 20, considering the success from my past events.

To keep people interested I created posts as reminders to the event wall. What to wear. What to expect the next day. Things like that. Didn't help. Each post was only seen by 6 or 7 people.

I sent a reminder private message to the friends who said they were going.

I tried EVERYTHING to make sure this event was a success.

5 people showed up, NONE of them from the Facebook ad. Every single one of them were personal friends or they came from my Facebook friends list.

What did I do wrong?

These are the things that were different between the 3 events:
* This event was later in the day. 4pm instead of 2pm.
* I charged $5 more at the door and online.
* I supplemented my marketing strategy with Facebook advertising to target an interested audience.

I am at complete loss as to how this event failed.
Can someone please give me helpful advice and words of encouragement? I am completely depressed now.

 

I didn't even had to read the whole thing. Ad campaign was enough information.
First question. When you filled out your targeting, did you exclude all the "spam" engagement countries? It doesn't matter where you live and what your targeting is, if you don't exclude countries like India or Egypt, you will receive tons of "spam" engagement, also registrations. If this is the case, next time, try to make sure you exclude spammy regions.

 

Did you check that 118 people were from your region? What was their age? Maybe you need to do more precise targeting when start the campaign.

 

Obviously the first thing I did was make sure I only targeted people living within 30 miles of me. Facebook has a very easy map interface.

 

Than the main reason could be in this

Try promote the event in groups like you did before and you'll gain the success! Good luck.