Meta Ads vs mailing list for live show promotion
I'm in a mid-level touring band with a strong but niche following. We have been relying on social media promotion for many years to let fans know about our tour dates. The frustrating thing is that we will post tour dates on Instagram and Facebook, post individual concert posters, live images/video with info about upcoming shows in the captions, etc; and over and over again, people will post comments about "oh you just played in my town and I didn't know."
We think part of the problem here is that the algorithm isn't targeted/sophisticated enough to show people time-sensitive information in a timely manner. Like it's showing our content to our fans, but they may not see it the day we post it, they may see it any number of days later, or they might see a poster for a show far from them and not do the legwork to see if we're playing in their city too. Then the day after we played in their city and we post a picture of the show, that will come across their feed and then we get the comment "I can't believe I missed it."
We started a mailing list to try and address this but I don't think it's moving the needle very much on this problem. We would also like to try and get new fans to our shows, which a mailing list doesn't really help with.
A friend mentioned that someone she knows runs meta ads in the specific markets where she is going to be playing, and that she has gotten a lot more people at her shows since she started doing that. No one in our band has ever used meta ads before, and I'm hoping that some of you fine people have some expertise to share.
I'd love info on best practices for using meta ads for events in specific markets, and any thoughts on using mailing lists in conjunction with ads. Thanks!