In a past article we gave you 25 Facebook post ideas to help increase your organic reach, but besides this we’d like to help you boost your reach through paid ads too. Facebook ads are used with great success of many companies around the world to sell products or services.
People in the hotel industry saw an increase in bookings after using them. Facebook advertising is an easy instrument, involves exponential awareness and visibility, and it costs very little. If you never tried this instrument in the next rows we will explain how to start.
The first step is establishing what you want to achieve through the campaign. Is it booking for a specific room on different seasons? Is it more bookings for all the hotel? Is it more awareness? Another thing in order to make bookings more appealing is the discount or the contest you are ready to offer. Good discounts for certain seasons or certain days may attract new guests. Also, contests are a very good tool to use in increasing awareness.
The second important aspect is defining your audience. With other words who are the people you want to target? Facebook Advertising app offers you the opportunity to manage your audience in a specific way. From the geographical segmentation to the interests of the people we want to target.
At the question how you want to target it is important to use a clear content and a good image to describe what you want to say in an attractive way. It is good to keep in mind though aspects that may improve your performance: The title makes almost everything. A catchy title will assure you a good campaign.
After you established what you want to communicate and who you want to target you can start to implement your campaign through the Power Editor. A campaign with Facebook Ads has to include the following 5 elements:
A. The purpose
B. The audience
C. The timing
D. The message
E. The budget
A. The purpose
What do you want to achieve through your Facebook campaign? More likes on your Facebook Page? More interaction? More visits on your website? Optimize your bookings? Establish what your main purpose is, then choose the proper audience, budget, timing, and message.
B. The audience
Facebook offers you the possibility to choose your audience based on demographic features, location, interests, marital status and other things. So you can target families for the school holidays, young couples for weekend travels or freelancers for out of season offers.
C. The timing
You can schedule your campaign based on what your purpose and audience are. For instance for people who work until 18:00 you may design a campaign between 19:00 and 21:00, in such a way the persons you target would receive the message when they are at home and they stay relaxed in front of the computer.
D. The add
The add content has three components: the image, the link to the landing page, and the text.
The image Regarding the image two aspects are essential: first, use the same image along the campaign. It will help users who saw the ad more times get to better understand the message and finally become interested. The second is to respect the size of 1200×628 pixels. Not respecting the size can lead to a low-quality ad, that is not attractive for anyone.
The link – you can choose any landing page you prefer. For increasing social media awareness and interaction you can pick the main page or a post from your Facebook page. If you want people to see your offers you may choose a page from your website as a landing page. If the sales are the direct purpose you can choose your booking page as a landing page.
The text has two components: the headline and the description.
The headline is the most important part because it determines if the user will read the rest or not. It has to be catchy! In order to obtain an attractive headline, it is important for you to know what is the main need you can respond to through your service: it may be relaxation, traveling or new experiences. For instance, a family with kids might search for a traveling experience, in which both the adults and the kids would have the opportunity to see interesting places and have fun together. So a headline as: ”Travel with your whole family!”- might be a good headline for promoting traveling in the area where your hotel is placed. On the other side, a group of young teenagers would seek for new experiences for instance rafting or skydiving. So a title as ”Searching for a new experience in mountains?”- might be another attractive headline.
The description may be longer and it can add more information to your headline, explaining exactly what you offer: See a marvelous castle in Romania with 50% discount for all of your family! Or ” Reserve in August a place in Apuseni mountains, with less than $300/week!”
E. The budget
Regarding the audience you want to target and the time you allocate to a campaign, you can start a Day campaign with 1$ (recommended) to a Week campaign or a Month one. It is recommended you start with a small budget campaign in order you to test the conversion rate (at 1000 views, how many clicks, or bookings) and then invest more and more according to your booking availability.
One last step is the final evaluation of the campaign. What was the conversion rate, what was the rate of investment? For future ads, invest the ones that showed a greater responsiveness and in promoting the landing pages with the greater results.
Hope this article was useful and please let us know in comments what experience did you have with Facebook ads.