get smarter: grow your hotel's direct bookings with facebook targeting
TRANSCRIPT
Get SmarterWith Targeting.Grow Your Hotel's Direct Bookings
With Facebook
Neimh McGlynn, Digital Marketing expert
Advertising on FacebookAdvertising on Facebook is now an absolutelyessential part of any hotel's book directstrategy.
Facebook constantly updates their algorithm to givetheir users the experience they want.
That's great news for users, but a challenge formarketers - the news feed is a more competitiveplace than ever!
Organic reach - the reach you can get for free - hasseen steep decline due to the sheer volume ofcontent being shared every day.
Here's the good news: Facebook has an incrediblyadvanced ad platform for showing very relevant ads,and one-fifth of leisure travelers worldwide turn tosocial media to inspire them in their travel plans.
That means you have the chance to engage travelbuffs and potential guests in your customerpersonas. What's the best way to do that onFacebook? Let's get started.
Key Takeaways:Identify & develop key target marketsUse Facebook advertising to target new &existing customersCreate custom audiences to reach guests whohave already engaged with your hotelReach customers at the right time in theirguest journeyRedefine targeting to increase relevance & ROI
What Can Facebook Ads Do?84% of marketers are using Facebook as theirtop medium for paid social advertising. Hereare the benefits they've discovered.
Brand Awareness: Facebook is an additional, and
powerful, touchpoint for increased brand visibility.
This is true for past, present and future guests.
Increasing Conversion: Communication on a personal
level through Facebook helps improve trust &
credibility
Website Traffic: A strong Facebook presence will
increase traffic
Improved SEO: The major search engines all indicate
that they now look at social media for signals to help
determine a page's ranking
Retargeting: Facebook allows you to retarget
potential guests based on their email addresses,
letting you create highly targeted campaigns
Grow Newsletter: Your retargeted adverts can
encourage your visitors to sign up for your newsletter
The number one benefit:
Building a relationship with your potential guests.
Social media channels give you a chance to create
familiarity and loyalty on a broad scale, one that's
difficult to achieve with just a website.
How Should You Target?Some targeting methods are better than over.Here's our guide to the absolute besttargeting options, to help you reach yourguests in a cost-effective way.
Facebook custom audiences allow you to reach
customers you have already established a
relationship with. These types of campaigns are very
effective, and avoid the wasted clicks from a more
generic audience.
Here's 3 ways to make a custom audience:
Custom Audiences:
1. Database Retargeting
Upload your e-zine or phone number database, and
Facebook will match these contacts with Facebook users.
You now have an extremely targeted list of customers that
you can deliver ads to. This is a powerful follow-up tool to
complement your e-zine campaigns.
Try to reinforce your message & the offers in your e-zine -
familiarity with your brand will encourage bookings.
2. Website Retargeting
Website retargeting lets you target people who have
visited your website or a specific page within your website.
For example, you can target someone who's checked for
availability on your website, but hasn't made a booking.
The biggest advantage of remarketing is that people have
already invested an interest in your hotel.
Tip: Try targeting these towards people who have seen a
page for a particular campaign, like the landing page for
your summer getaway package.
3. Lookalike Audiences
Lookalike audiences allow you to reach new people on
Facebook who share similar demographics and traits to
your other audiences.
For example, a powerful lookalike audience would be
people who are similar people to those who have already
made a booking on your website. Facebook will then
match up the top % of users to display your ads to.
There are a number advanced targeting options that
can be layered on top on one another, gradually
making your audience both smaller and more
relevant, driving down costs and raising ROI. You can
use single or combinations of interests, behaviour &
location.
Here's 3 ways to do it:
Advanced Targeting Options:
1. Demographics Targeting
Target people based on demographics like age,
gender, relationship status, education & parental
status.
2. Interest Targeting
Choose specific interests that are important to your
target audience. Facebook will look at people's
interests, activities, pages people have liked and
closely related topics. When choosing interests, be as
focused as possible. Know your target audience.
3. Behavioral Targeting
With behavioral targeting, you can reach people
based on purchase behaviors or intent. This type of
targeting takes users past behavior into account to
help you determine your audience.
As you can see, Facebook has a number of robust
tools that can help your hotel achieve direct booking
greatness.
Facebook's advertising platform combines the
opportunity for a personal connection with lots of
data, giving you a great opportunity to connect with
your potential guests.
We recommend you try out any or all of the abovestrategies - find out what targeting options workbest for your hotel.
Make sure to reference your customer personas when
you build your campaigns so they're as relevant and
powerful as possible!
Net Affinity is an award-winning technology companyfocused exclusively on the hotel sector.We have collatedthe brightest, experienced and passionate team of onlinemarketers, account managers, designers and developers
to ensure our clients' online success and continuedgrowth.