28,000 people reached. 3,100 website clicks. £600 total spend. And the Railway’s best ever Easter. Here’s how targeted Meta advertising drove record ticket sales for a heritage railway attraction.
Following a successful Christmas Trains campaign with Oh So Social, Swanage Railway returned to us to promote its Easter event through paid social advertising on Facebook and Instagram.
The campaign had a modest budget, a tight three-week window (running across March and April 2026), and a clear commercial goal: drive awareness and ticket bookings from local families looking for Easter activities in Dorset and the surrounding areas.
The key objectives were to:
We built a targeted paid social advertising campaign on Meta (Facebook and Instagram), structured around the audiences most likely to convert: parents of young children, people with an interest in local days out and family activities, and users within a defined geographic radius of Swanage.
Creative centred on the Peter Rabbit theme, which is recognisable, appealing to young children, and well-suited to the visual formats of both platforms. Ad formats were selected and optimised to drive landing page visits rather than passive engagement.
Precise audience targeting kept costs low and relevance high, ensuring budget was not wasted on users unlikely to visit.
Despite a total ad spend of just £600, the campaign delivered strong performance across Facebook and Instagram.
The £0.20 average cost-per-click is well below typical benchmarks for family events and attractions, reflecting the effectiveness of precise local targeting combined with seasonally relevant creative.
Swanage Railway described the result simply: “Best ever Easter weekend.”
The campaign demonstrates what targeted paid social advertising can achieve for seasonal events and family attractions, even with a limited budget and a short campaign window. By combining strategic audience targeting with strong creative, Oh So Social delivered measurable awareness and traffic growth during one of the most competitive periods in the family days-out calendar.
Thinking about paid social for your next event or attraction? Get in touch to find out how we can help you.