HarborFest Chula Vista: 760K paid impressions on a $6.6K budget.
How Black X Marketing used Meta Ads, Google Search and organic Facebook to fill the funnel for a waterfront festival in Chula Vista, California, and send tens of thousands of people to the ticket page.
Website sessions
Paid ad impressions
Meta Ads clicks
Average Meta cost per click
The brief
| Client | HarborFest Chula Vista |
| Location | Chula Vista, CA · South San Diego County |
| Campaign window | Jul 1 – Aug 23, 2026 (54 days) |
| Budget | $6,582.68 ad spend (Meta $3,983.57 · Google $2,599.11) |
| Goals | Build awareness before event weekend · Drive ticket sales |
| Channels | Meta Ads · Google Ads · Facebook organic |
Fill a festival with a lean budget.
HarborFest is a summer festival on the Chula Vista waterfront. With under eight weeks of runway and a modest budget, the campaign had to keep the event top of mind across Southern California and turn that attention into ticket-page visits.
The festival also has two very different audiences: adults 21+ buying passes, and families planning a day out. Each needed its own message.
Cheap reach on Meta, high intent on Google.
Meta did the heavy lifting on awareness and clicks, with separate campaigns for the 21+ crowd, families, and people who had already shown interest. Google Search caught people actively looking for the event. A steady organic Facebook calendar amplified both.
$3,983.57 · 52,729 clicks
Retargeting for people who had already engaged with the event; a 21+ pass campaign across Southern California; a family-focused campaign; and an event-post engagement campaign with a maximum-awareness ad set.
$2,599.11 · 4,955 clicks
Search campaigns targeting ticket searches, including a campaign limited to a 20-mile radius around Chula Vista, sending searchers straight to the ticket page.
Clicks by campaign
52,729 Meta clicks at $0.08 each.
The campaigns delivered 760,300 paid impressions (607.7K on Meta, 152.6K on Google) and 31,590 users to the festival website. Those visitors stayed: the site had an 88% engagement rate, an 11.98% bounce rate and an average session of just over two minutes.
Views of the /tickets/ page, the most-viewed page on the site
Click-through rate on Meta retargeting, at $0.04 per click
Click-through rate on Google Search, at $0.52 per click
Key events tracked on the website
Organic Facebook media views from 42 posts
New Facebook page follows
Figures cover July 1 to August 23, 2026, and come from Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads, Google Analytics 4 and Facebook Page Insights. Ticket revenue is not included in this case study.
Lessons from the campaign
- Retarget the people who already raised their hand. The retargeting audience produced the most clicks of any campaign at the lowest cost, $0.04 per click.
- Split audiences by who is buying. Separate 21+ and family campaigns let each message match the buyer instead of averaging everyone together.
- Let organic carry the story. 42 organic posts reached 461K unique, non-paid viewers, stretching a small paid budget much further.
Let’s forecast your ticket sales.
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