Audience-Specific Messaging: One Event, Two Languages, Three Times the Engagement
When venues promote a community event, it's easy to assume that a single campaign can reach everyone.
But your audience isn't one-size-fits-all. For organizations trying to grow attendance, the opportunity often sits inside the campaign you're already running: making it feel more relevant to the people you're trying to reach.
The Opportunity
For the FIFA World Cup Final Watch Party, Akins Ford Arena at the Classic Center brought the community together for one of the world's biggest sporting events: a family-friendly watch party with food, activities, and the match on the arena's video board.
Soccer has one of the world's most diverse and multilingual fan bases. For many supporters, Spanish is the language they use to follow the sport, the teams, and the coverage.
Recognizing this, the marketing team created two versions of its Meta campaign:
An English-language ad
A Spanish-language ad with the same creative translated for Spanish-speaking audiences
The event was the same. The message was the same. The only meaningful difference was the language.
The Results
The Spanish-language campaign generated a 3.19% click-through rate, compared to 1.04% for the English campaign: more than three times the engagement.
Speaking the language fans preferred made the same invitation land with greater impact.
Why It Matters
Spanish-speaking fans just happened to be the audience in this test. Every venue serves multiple audiences:
Local communities
Families
Members and subscribers
Tourists
Students
Season ticket holders
Cultural communities
Each audience discovers events differently. Sometimes reaching them means leading with a different benefit; sometimes it's the imagery, and sometimes, like here, it's just the language.
Small changes can significantly boost engagement.
Try This at Your Venue
Pull your next event's marketing plan and pick one audience you haven't spoken to directly, a language, a neighborhood, a member group, whatever's closest to home. Build one version of your next ad just for them. You don't need a full localization strategy to start. One adjustment, aimed at one specific audience, is enough to see if it moves the needle.
Fresh Take
Localization means recognizing who you're inviting and ensuring they feel the invitation was made for them.
Are you speaking to every audience the same way? Which communities could use more personalized messaging, and where are you missing people entirely?
Let's Compare Notes
How's your venue tailoring marketing to different audiences, whether that's language, creative, offers, or channels? Our team is at IAVM's VenueConnect 2026. Come find one of us and let's compare notes.
