Travel agencies often seem to have second thoughts about marketing on Facebook. While many of them think that using social media platforms for marketing is just a wastage of time, some think of it as wastage of money and others think that no significant impact can be made on their business through Facebook or any other social media platform. Well, it is because they are far behind reality and aren’t aware of what facts and figures reflect these days.
If you also underestimate the importance of Facebook marketing for travel agencies, let’s delve into its importance before heading to tips and strategies. Once you know why you are doing Facebook marketing, you will be more eager to use it the right way for your business advantage.
What Makes Facebook Marketing Crucial for Travel Agencies?
To be honest, in this digital era, if your travel agency isn’t marketing online, it is invisible to so many people who use social media, do online shopping, and check deals online before booking anything right from accommodation and flight tickets to tour packages. A substantial share of Facebook users gets affected by lucrative offers directly or indirectly (through sharing and word-of-mouth). Many of them could be your potential clients and customers only if you can reach them and demonstrate how you, as a travel agency, can make their travel easier, memorable, cheaper, and hassle-free.
Even the prominent players of the travel and tourism industry like Airbnb, National Geographic Travel, Mint, and American Express are leveraging the attention that most people on this globe give to social media platforms, especially Facebook. Many travel pages such as Travel + Leisure have gone viral on Facebook and doing very well in grabbing the attention of masses through their attractive content, captivating photos, and videos.
Facebook ads platform presents umpteen opportunities for travel agencies that are waiting to be explored. Don’t believe us? Among all the available platforms, Facebook is the most popular social media platform among marketers and advertisers for the two very solid reasons.
- Facebook is the biggest social networking platform with around 2.7 million, as of Q2 2020.
- People spend an average of 58 minutes on their Facebook app, according to a 2018 report released by SimilarWeb.
So, it makes more than sense to advertise your deals, offers, products, services, blogs, or anything that offers value to Facebook users.
Not realizing the importance of Facebook marketing for your travel agency is hurting your business more than you can imagine. We aren’t saying that you will make millions of dollars in a month or year through Facebook ads. What we mean by your travel business being hurt is that you won’t benefit from the value, brand recognition, and revenue that you could earn from the people whose travel decisions are affected by social media platforms.
Now, let’s move on to how you can put Facebook Marketing to best use.
What to Do on Facebook to Market Your Travel Agency’s Brand?
Facebook has made it super easy for businesses to generate new followers and share content, photos, and videos. Just use your existing email list for now and run a page promotion ad at a very reasonable cost.
As a travel agency, you can use Facebook to inspire people to travel and explore wonderful destinations based on various themes, like cheap travel destinations, untouched and less explored places, most popular travel places, most beautiful cities, waterfalls, historic importance, appealing landscapes, adventure, and so on.
You can also target people based on their interests, habits, and hobbies, such as cooking, eating, dance and art, trekking, hiking, archaeological findings, the luxury of feeling free, calm, and relaxed, and whatnot. In short, pinch the right nerve of travelers and tourists and you might get stunning responses and feedback from your target audience.
Here are some tips that will help you build the brand of your travel agency through Facebook marketing:
- Promote your deals – The first thing you should do on Facebook to attract travelers is to promote your special deals, coupons, or anything that can ring bells in their minds.
- Promote upcoming events – If any major or interesting event, such as a trade show, travel expo, client appreciation party, festival, fair, conference, sports competition, or exhibition, is going to be held soon in the city, state, or country you are targeting, let people know about it. Share what is special about those events and why these events are worth spending time and money.
- Run Contests or Survey – Many travel agencies are already using Facebook to run contests, surveys, or polling to increase engagement of followers with their brand. When people engage with your brand more, they are more likely to trust you, and might even consider you while making travel decisions. Hence, these are great ways to drive conversions, gain new followers, and expand your reach to people who might become your future clients.
- Share User-Generated Content (UGC) – Whenever you are appreciated by your clients through testimonials, reviews, or video feedback, don’t keep it to yourself. Share it with your followers so that you become more credible in their eyes. Also, encourage your clients to allow you to share some of their travel photos, videos, or experiences on your page and share your gratitude-posts with their friend circle.
Besides, you can also ask them to tag your travel agency in some of their photos or videos while sharing their feedback. This strategy will greatly help you build trust among followers who haven’t used your services yet and also increase your potential audience.
- Help in budgeting and accommodation– When people travel, two of the main concerns they have are how much it would cost and where they will stay. Make it easier for them by sharing different types of accommodation, including hotels, resorts, guest houses, open houses, and vacation homes based on the quality of services, cost, food, outside view, and local surroundings. Share tips on how they can save money while traveling in places you are targeting or how they can make their travel easier and stress-free.
You can also share interesting facts and stories about places you don’t serve because it is not just about earning, it is also about gaining attention, trust, recognition, and demonstrating rich expertise among your followers.
- Share Current Hot Spots – Regularly post about vacation destinations with photos and descriptions that trigger your audience to click on your posts. It will help you attract those people who already have those locations on their bucket list and also those who are searching for destinations with unique experiences but undecided about where to travel.
- Make Facebook Group or Join Community – One of the cost-effective ways to present your brand in front of a high-potential audience is to create a Facebook Group and invite your existing clients and prospects or join Communities where travelers exchange information and engage in fun and useful discussions. It enhances your visibility and allows you to showcase your expertise.
How to Use Facebook Travel Ads Smartly
Facebook Travel Ads – The Ultimate Solution of Facebook Marketing for a Travel Agency to Connect with Travelers! These solutions are customized for travel advertisers so that they can easily set up and launch ads with real-time availability and pricing to people based on where and when they want to go. But you will reap real benefits when you will follow the best practices and strategies with Facebook Travel Ads.
Here, we have lined up some of the best practices and strategies to use Facebook Travel Ads in an optimized way:
- Locate and Target the Right Audience
The travel industry is too expensive and diverse. So is travel marketing! No single scheme, deal, or solution can appeal to all travelers. Travelers have their unique preferences and those preferences never stay the same. There are solo backpackers, hikers, office gangs, destination wedding groups, family tourists, college groups, adventure enthusiasts, business travelers, and so many other kinds of travelers.
As such, no particular ad campaign or scheme can attract all of them. Facebook Travel Ads allow you to target a specific group of travelers and filter out them using certain parameters to reach particular groups affordably. The addition of the Lookalike Audience feature is a plus to help you find out newer audiences who are interested in traveling and have similar characteristics as your existing audiences.
- Use Carousel Ads to Appeal Your Audience
Though there are a variety of ads, such as domain ads, offer ads, video ads, carousel ads, and lead ads and each comes with its own benefits, you need to choose and invest in them wisely. Remember that the more ads you use, the more cost you will incur.
We recommend using carousel ads more often as they allow you to be more expressive. They are more attractive and fun to use as they allow you to showcase two to ten images in a single advertisement. Besides, they are also ten times better at getting people to click through. The cherry on the top is that they come with 30% to 50% lower cost per conversion and 20% to 30% lower cost per click compared to a single image ad.
- Track Real-Time Movement and Searches with Dynamic Ads
Dynamic ads are a great addition to Facebook Marketing tools and techniques, especially for travel advertisers. Dynamic Facebook Travel Ads allow you to optimize your campaign and reach the relevant audience more effectively. Rather than creating an ad for each of your products, Dynamic ads allow you to create an ad template that automatically uses images and details from the data feed for products you would like to advertise.
Apart from saving your time and effort, these ads automatically promote most relevant products to people who have shown interest in your website, app, or elsewhere online. For instance, these ads can promote a searched hotel room or travel package with price and availability to the same prospect or customer after their search. All you need to do is to upload your product catalog, set up your campaign once, and it will keep promoting with updated details as long as you want.
Dynamic ads are wonderful tools also because they can help you complete the sale by retargeting your online customers or mobile app shoppers. These ads remind your prospect customers of products they showed interest in but didn’t buy. Dynamic ads can even trace destination searches so that the right ads are displayed to the specific audience. Moreover, these ads allow advertisers to save money by skipping users who have already completed a searched trip or confirmed their booking recently.
- Relevant Information and Clearly Visible Call to Action
When you are running ads for a specific audience, use specific call-to-action buttons. Though using the right CTA might not help you win accolades, no/incomplete information and hard-to-find CTAs can surely make a bad impression on your prospects or anyone who sees the ad.
So, ensure that you mention your website, blog (if any), social media handles, offers, and deals with bold characters, and add bright and visible CTAs so that users are convinced to click on the ads. Users tend to click on the ads that contain specifics, such as destination, dates, and experiences. Be sure to keep things simple; not crammed in a small space.
- Make You Facebook Travel Ads Eye-Catching
You know it very well that an advertiser gets only a fraction of a minute or a few seconds to grab the attention of people. So, make the most out of your Facebook Travel Ads with bright-colored fonts, easy to read and clear messages, charming description, and an attractive image in the background. Try to add a personalized touch in your ad campaigns to make the users stop scrolling and click on the ads. To make the ads more interactive, you can also add motion videos with striking captions or content.
Never use a low-quality image. Before uploading an image and content, put yourself in the shoes of a traveler and then think whether you would be interested to click on this ad after seeing this image or reading the description. You will get the answer.
- Pre-schedule and Cross-sell to Expand Your Reach
Facebook Travel Ads allow travel agencies to pre-schedule their ads at preferred date and time and cross-sell to people who have recently booked flights or hotels at relevant locations. This strategy helps in targeting specific people who have the same interests or search for similar things on Facebook as well as other platforms, including Instagram.
To Conclude
Facebook Travel Ads are a powerful addition to marketers’ arsenal in the travel industry. When used wisely and correctly, they can bring significant traffic and lead conversions. Maybe that’s why travel businesses, such as airlines, resorts, hotels, and travel agents are the major users of the Facebook ads and also invest more money than businesses of other domains.
Facebook already has made things simpler, cost-effective, and more efficient specifically for travel businesses. Since needs, requirements, and other parameters keep changing in the travel industry, Dynamic Ads and Carousel Ads (with engaging description, awesome images/motion pictures, and proper CTA) are two of the most profitable Facebook Travel Ads for travel agencies. Plus, both are easy to set up and customize.
All you need is to open Facebook help guide, follow instructions, and set ad campaigns. Facebook will take care of the rest, right from generating new followers to promoting the right products in front of the right audience.