Melbourne International Flower & Garden Show

11.7 ROAS generated from event campaign

Grab your gardening gloves and dig into this case study about our annual success story with IMG’s Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show. 

Via bespoke digital strategies across Meta, Google and even TikTok this year, we planted the seeds for another sold-out event, by activating a community that helped ticket sales bloom.

Check out the fruits of our green-thumbed approach:

The Results:

• 39.14 ROAS generated via Google Ads 
• Meta ROAS increased from 6.38 to 8.32 YoY
• Both Google and Meta were equally powerful drivers of conversions, attributing close to 50% of total ticket sales each, and conversion value of around half a million dollars each
• Low cost per purchase of $10 on average, across all paid channels

The Solution:

We’ve been partners with IMG for a while – and that means having worked on a handful of their expansive events repertoire, including (but not limited to) the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show for five years now. 

Nothing beats the value of prior experiences, and our years spent in the event space meant a tried, tested and efficient approach was devised.

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The secret ingredient? Campaign phases – which serve to maintain performance all throughout an event cycle, and generate sales no matter how last minute or early in advance a prospect might be. Of course, each campaign phase had a mixture of ad creatives to boost YoY CTRs. 

You’ve probably heard this spiel a million times from us, but UGC is king.

On average, it increases ROAS by 68% and CTRs by 192% when compared against ‘traditional’ ad creatives of statics or branded GIFs, and for MIFGS, results were no different.

At the final stage of our campaign journey (aka. the “Urgency” or “Last Chance” station), static assets generated CTRs of 1.05% and Link CPCs of $1.29 – which already are metrics to be proud of, but still pale in comparison when UGC videos are thrown in the mix.

UGC ads saw CTRs of 1.9% despite our campaigns arriving at their golden years and could no longer be considered a shiny new thing, while Link CPCs impressively fell under $1.

To consistently fill up our MOFU audiences, where leads tend to be cheaper and easier to acquire, we ran an overarching TOFU brand campaign optimised for traffic to assist in supplementing the ‘warmer’ levels of our funnel with users now acquainted with MIFGS.

By allocating a fraction of our budget to interstate audiences, this same brand campaign even saw superb success out of Victoria – with high engagement levels across Launch, Early Bird and Show Feature campaigns. 

If you thought no one would be keen enough to cross state lines for a flower show, think again.

On Meta, our Early Bird campaign drove a 9.47 ROAS.

From an SEM perspective, our interstate generic campaign achieved a fantastic ROAS of 11.57 to prove that not even distance could dissuade. Users resonated with our ad copy regardless. 

But we never stop at what’s familiar or entirely comfortable.

Unlike the years prior, we jumped onto TikTok this time around to find the younger generation in the place you’d expect to find them.

MIFGS typically attracts an older demographic, but we figured: Why should that be the case? It’s almost unanimously agreed upon that flowers are stunning – and deserve adoration from all ages.

On TikTok, another win blossomed. That is, reaching a huge audience at a low cost, with CPMs at $5.65 and extra conversions as well.

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The DataSauce difference isn’t limited to all things eCommerce. We’ve got expertise in B2B, hospitality, real estate and evidently, events as well. 

A big part of this stems from our long-standing relationship with IMG, and we’re proud that our time together has sowed the seeds of yet another event for the history books – a show that perfectly reflects a celebration of the Melbourne lifestyle and our great outdoors.

Have something big in the works and want to make sure crowd sizes end up as monumental as you envision? Jump on a call with us and let’s talk about it.