This month we were a little bummed out from the rain, but that didn't stop the determined shoppers coming out in full force with umbrellas, ponchos, and rain jackets to shop the vintage market.
Selling out of vendor spaces, and bringing in a interest of over a thousand attendees on Facebook was no easy feat, and we're even more happy to say that we used this event to test out our organic marketing strategies- and they worked! No money was spend on social media ad campaigns for this event, all interest was obtained via organic strategy.
Utilizing 'unorthodox' promotional means on platforms like Facebook by taking advantage of local community event pages, activity groups, and local happenings pages. As an additional stipulation to the signups for our vendors for this event, it was a requirement for ant approved vendor to share the event & its details on their own social media twice before the event. This helped the distribution and sharing of content posted by the Fortuna Vintage Market page greatly!
Instead of paying for printing out 20-50 full size poster prints to tape up in doorways and windows around town, we invested in an experiment with 4x6 cards. And suprisingly, they were much more popular across the board with businesses to place on or around the checkout/register area. Being more compact they were able to display them easier, and keep multiples to hand out to people who were interested. QR code tracking on the cards showed a decent (although low in comparison to a direct social media ad) direct traffic from the QR codes to the website & social medias of the market.
Facbook evenets tab for Discussions regarding the event proved many challenges, but some amazing benifits. Due to people signing up or making 'interested' on the event, they'd then see whatever was posted on the discussion thread of the event. So, even though the page only had 200 followers (or at our start 0) the event gave access to an organic audience of over 1,000.
Spam, however, was rampant. 5-13 comments a day under multiple posts attempting to scam potential vendors out of a deposit, posing as the event coordinator, and simply proving to be a headache. Even with reporting individual accounts, 3 more would pop up. It is a rampant and quite honestly irritating issue to deal with on the platform.
What we learned:
Show off the event location, even if the event hasn't happened yet. It builds awareness of your venue, and shows vendors who are unfamiliar with the area where they'll be selling!
Physical advertisements like mini-posters (4x6in cards) are much more favorable to businesses compared to traditional sized "Can I stick this in your window?" sized posters.
You can't control the rain, even if you really want to.
Facebook events discussion section is an overpowered underrated asset.
Facebook events are plagued with spam bots.
Overall, you can't control the weather- and neither can we. But, we can't wait to see what 2025 brings for the FVM!
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