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Creating Successful Facebook Ads for Hotels
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Paid ads. Sounds scary right? Perhaps you’ve even tried boosting a post in the past and got absolutely nothing out of it.
You’re not alone.
Facebook advertising is one of the most cost effective ways to promote your hotel. But there is one problem. 99% of people don’t really understand how to use them, resulting in wasted money and the conclusion that they don’t work.
So how do you create an ad that drives brand awareness or sales effectively?
Whilst there is no single rule to win with ads there are definitely some key steps you can take to measure success.
Firstly you need to consider what you want to achieve and work backwards.
Let’s say you want to get room bookings…
A common mistake made by hotels is to just put an ad up with a link to their booking page, promote it to people that like ‘holidays’ in a specific age demographic and then hit boost.
The result is often tumbleweed and a budget spent with little to show for it.
So why? Well firstly we are trying to promote to people who have probably not heard of the hotel or are at least in no mood to buy anything right now.
To ensure you excite people enough to be prepared to book you need to build them up carefully or create enough excitement for them to buy from you.
Think about it; if you are sitting there chatting to your friends about the weekend on Facebook and an ad suddenly pops up from a hotel you have not visited, telling you to ‘book a room now’, you probably won’t even click, let alone book ANYTHING!
So what do you do?
Installing a Facebook pixel
Before you start you must ensure that you have a ‘Facebook pixel’ installed on your website. For those that do not know what a pixel is, it is an invisible piece of code that can be added to your website that talks to facebook. The pixel does a lot of very clever things, but at a basic level it will allow us to target ads at people that have visited or performed specific tasks on your website.
Why is this important? Because this allows us to target people that we know will have a much higher level of interest in either your brand or specific services you offer.
To find out more about Facebook pixels read Facebooks help page: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/952192354843755
Creating your Facebook ads
Now we’ve got pixels out the way, let’s move on to the ads...
Depending on how many fans (likes) your page currently has, you might want to consider running a like campaign to build up likes from the demographics you know that like your hotel.
A like campaign not only helps us build on reach for the campaign we are running currently by increasing your fan base, it also gives us a wider reach on our future social media posts and activity, so when you make noise on Facebook, you reach more of the right people.
Once you have your fan base and likes covered, the next step we need to take is to create some buzz around your brand that gets people talking about you and sharing your post(s).
A good way to do this is to create a piece of viral content, a competition can be a great way to do this.
Check out this competition example from American Airlines.
As well as offering the audience a top notch prize, they have asked people to share, like and comment on the post.
By doing this they have managed to explode engagement on their page.
‘But why is this important, I want sales?’ I hear you ask..
Well, they have reached a bunch of new potential customers through this ad and created a lot of awareness which is the first step toward making sales online, getting people talking.
The key to a successful competition post is to ensure you pay to target the right people. Think carefully about the sort of people that you want to attract to your hotel. The age, their interests, leisure spend, family status etc. ensuring they are also people that like competitions or competition websites will also help increase the overall result.
Once the competition closes and the winner is announced we do not finish there.
Now is the time for us to do one of two things, continue to boost posts and grow engagement further or hit our engaged audience with a BIG offer. One that many simply can’t refuse.
Whether or not you have enough engaged fans to make sales with an offer is the key differentiator for success here.
The only way to truly know is to test offers and review results.
If there is not enough reach to create conversions through your current engaged audience, then you need to create more engagement by post boosting posts that encourage engagement such as by asking questions or encouraging shares.
Some good examples of posts that increase engagement can be found below.
A great example of a post that makes people take clear action to follow you and comment on their page.
Great opinion based piece asks users to 'like' for pumpkin or 'share' for apple depending on their favourite pie flavours.
When it comes to making an offer to your engaged fans, it is very much up to you and your own calculations, but something along the lines of a free nights stay when you book 2 nights, a free meal or 50% off bookings would be a good start. It has to be big enough to grab people's attention.
See a great example below of social media management platform Hootsuite, offering 60 days of totally free use.
A time bound awesome offer will create buzz that evokes a fear of missing out to encourage people to take action.
Let us help you take some real action!
Whilst this is one great way to make sales and grow your Facebook presence there are many other ways to do it as well.
Why not take a few seconds to take the first step of Facebook dominance by applying for a Free personal Facebook review.
Simply clcik the button below and book a free one on one 30 minute session with a social media marketing expert.
Click below, book your slot and launch your sales towards the stratosphere through Social Media!
