Casting a Wide Net
Google and Meta campaigns launched in October, ahead of the market’s late-November opening. Targeting covered the South West and South Wales, deliberately excluding Bath and Bristol to focus spend on new visitors.
Bath Christmas Market partnered with Floresco to grow its audience beyond the local area and attract visitors from across the UK. 45% of visitors said marketing influenced their decision to attend, up 11% year-on-year.
Advertising success for an unticketed event can’t be measured in clicks or ROAS. These numbers come from the market’s independent annual visitor survey.
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Visitors influenced by marketing
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First-timers prompted by marketing
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First-timers prompted by social media ads
“Floresco Media have been a fantastic partner… Their Google and Meta campaigns played a big part in driving footfall and awareness throughout our festive season…”
Bath Christmas Market – named Best UK Christmas Market 2024 by European Best Destinations – wanted to attract visitors from further afield: people who would stay longer, visit midweek, and spend more across the city’s hotels, restaurants, and shops.
But as a free, unticketed event, there’s no simple way to link an ad to an attendee. Success would be measured just once a year, through the market’s independent January visitor survey.
Our strategy had to be built on confidence in the fundamentals, not real-time conversion data – all on a limited budget.
Google and Meta campaigns launched in October, ahead of the market’s late-November opening. Targeting covered the South West and South Wales, deliberately excluding Bath and Bristol to focus spend on new visitors.
A separate campaign targeted affluent West London suburbs along the train line, with messaging built around day trips and longer stays. It became the standout performer, outpacing the broader UK campaign on Meta engagement.
We profiled the ideal visitor using interests like boutique hotels, spa days, and premium department stores, and skewed demographic targeting older, prioritising audiences most likely to spend at the stalls and across the city.
Applying the principles of performance creative, we ran the same video with distinctly different messaging, treating every result as an insight and optimisation opportunity. Each round of learnings was fed into the next, improving the creative as the campaign ran.
– Hannah Batey, Digital Marketing Manager, Bath Christmas Market
When the results of the January survey came in, they painted a clear picture. 45% of all visitors said marketing had influenced their decision to visit, up from 34% the year before, and 19% the year before that.
Among first-time visitors, 60% decided to attend after seeing marketing. And social media advertising proved as persuasive as a personal recommendation.
And London, targeted for the first time in 2024 and expanded in 2025, is now one of the market’s main visitor locations. Next year will build on that foundation, refining London targeting at the suburb level, broadening the audience to dual-income households, and continuing the creative testing that revealed what works.
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Visitors influenced by marketing
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First-timers prompted by marketing
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First-timers prompted by social media ads
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