Filling the Room: The Meta Ads Behind SMU’s Tokyo Thought Leadership Event

Singapore Management University wanted to fill the room for a Tokyo thought leadership lunch: Singapore Rising: Equity Market Reforms, Family Office Growth and Opportunities for Japanese Investors. But the goal wasn’t simply to attract registrations. It was to reach the right people: mid-career professionals in Japan with an interest in postgraduate education. 

That meant reaching mid-career professionals in Japan who’d actually consider SMU’s postgraduate programs. Working with them, Custom Media ran two Meta advertising approaches side by side to find out which registration journey worked better and was most effective.

The setup: one event, two languages, two ways to register

The campaign ran with English and localized Japanese materials on Meta, with two different registration flows tested against each other. One sent people to a landing page on SMU’s site to fill out a form. The other used Meta’s native Lead Form ads, letting people register without leaving Facebook or Instagram. The campaigns ran in parallel with comparable media investment, allowing us to assess the impact of the registration journey rather than simply comparing different audiences or budgets.

Event fully booked well in advance

Both campaigns launched in early July and were originally scheduled to run for several weeks. They didn’t need the full campaign period.

Registrations reached capacity ahead of schedule, allowing us to pause advertising after using approximately 50% of the planned media budget.

For a narrowly defined professional audience, the campaign demonstrated that there was strong demand for the event without needing to repeatedly expose the same audience to advertising.

More importantly, running the two approaches simultaneously gave us a clear view of what was driving registrations.

Lead Form ads won by wide margin

Meta Lead Forms generated more than five times as many registrations as the landing-page campaign on comparable spend.

The result highlighted the impact that even one additional step can have on conversion. By allowing people to register directly within Facebook or Instagram, the Lead Form campaign significantly reduced friction in the journey from interest to registration.

However, registration volume is only part of the picture. When comparing attendance outcomes, a different pattern emerged: approximately 32.61% of Meta Lead Form registrants ultimately attended the event, compared to 72.73% of those who registered via the landing page.

That doesn’t mean the landing page is worth dropping from future campaigns. People who clicked through were choosing to visit SMU’s site and read further into the program, which suggests a smaller but more engaged group.

Facebook outperformed Instagram for this audience

Another useful pattern emerged at the platform level.

Facebook generated the majority of registrations attributed directly to Meta, outperforming Instagram for this particular professional and education-focused audience.

This aligns with the profile of the campaign. The strongest response came from mid-career users — the audience SMU was aiming to reach for its postgraduate programs.

Rather than assuming that one Meta platform will perform best across every campaign, the results reinforced the importance of allowing audience behavior to guide channel decisions.

What changes for the next event?

Three adjustments are already locked in for our next Japan event. Lead Form ads go first, given the size of the performance gap. Japanese-language creative stays in the mix regardless of what language the event itself runs in. And since frequency stayed this low even at full capacity, we’re planning for a longer campaign window or a larger venue next time, so strong demand doesn’t cap out registrations early.

Running both approaches side by side is what made the difference visible — we didn’t have to guess which one worked. SMU’s team reached a strong pool of mid-career registrants, while the campaign gave us clear data on which acquisition path performed best.