Have you got a Facebook page and you’re not totally sure how it works? Or are you not seeing the results that you want to see? It may be because it’s not fully optimized to show off to the world all that you’ve got!
With over 1 billion people on the platform, your Facebook page has the potential to boost your leads and expand your marketing efforts to a variety of target markets! Utilizing your Facebook page is essential for anyone in any industry, especially the hotel industry, as it allows you to communicate with people across the world for free! Hello? This is opportunity calling and it’s ready for you!
So how do you harness the power of Facebook business pages? What can you do to bring in more “likes”, generate more leads and boost your sales? We’ll take you through it step by step.
1. Create a Business Page
If you already have a business page, you can skip this point and move straight on to point 2!
This one goes out to the ones who are sharing their business updates and product offerings on their personal Facebook page. You know who you are!
Now, as lovely as it is to be getting a “great!” or “Hi Carl, hope the kids are well. Love, Aunt Judy.” is for your emotional well being, is it bringing in customers? Are you expanding yourself to new target markets?
The answer is… probably not, no. Despite a couple of shares here and there, you might be experiencing from your Facebook friends, there’s, literally, a whole world out there that you could be engaging with beyond your circle of friends.
If that’s not reason enough to convert to a Facebook Business Page, here are a few more reasons:
Facebook Ads
Having a Facebook Business page allows you to pay for your content to be displayed across Facebook. These ads can be specifically targeted to reach your ideal customers and even target certain tourists based on their traveling preferences!
SEO & Increased Website Traffic
You are able to link your website to your Facebook page, which will not only boost traffic to your site but it will improve your SEO.
As SEO affects your Google ranking, it is important that there are more and more people spending time on your website. The more time spent on your website, the more Google will see it as legitimate. Have we lost you a bit here? Read more about the power of SEO here.
Increase the Number of Direct Bookings or Sales
One of the great tools you can harness on your Facebook Business page is adding a call to action button. This can be linked to your website and put potential leads in direct contact with you. We’ll get more into this later.
Now that we have you convinced, let’s get that Facebook Business Page started! It’s super simple and only takes a few steps:
- Open Up Pages
Under the explore tab, on the left side of your Facebook page you will see something that looks like this:
Upon opening the Pages tab, you will see the option to create a new page.
Select which type of page you would like.
And enter your details.
It’s that easy!
2.Carefully Select Your Profile and Cover Photos
Now that you have your business page setup, it’s time to get to the optimization.
Your profile and cover photos will be the first thing people see when clicking through to your page. Are they showing off your brand in the best light? Would you want to learn more about your services?
If your answer is no, then best to relook your current strategy. Both images should be attractive and intriguing – offering insight into your brand and product offering.
Dawning Digital page has included an image of our logo and an intriguing gif that is in line with our brand image and provides insight into what we do.
Sharpie uses their cover photo to showcase the possibilities their product offers.
You can even go the extra mile and make it super creative like DeMilked.
3. Customize Your URL
When playing around with your Facebook business page, you might have noticed the “@” under your page’s name.
The “@” determines your URL and it worth taking under consideration! This allows people to search for your page by your name and will avoid any confusion when searching for your page.
4. Take Care of Your About Page
Like any other about page, people will use this to learn more about your business. They will learn more about your services, your goals, your milestones and you might even convince them to convert to your business!
To add more to your about page, follow these steps:
- Select the About tab on the left side panel of your page
- Here you will find everything pertaining to your business’ about page
You can choose to edit the type of business for your page, your name, your contact details and most importantly, your about information.
Pro tip: be strategic with your keywords! This is a key Facebook marketing tactic and you should make sure to use them wherever you can!
5. Add a Call to Action Button
Your call to action button is a great way to bring attention to the purpose of your page! If you have an online store, you can link the site there or if you are looking for people to book a night at your hotel, you can link it here.
The call to action button is located under the cover picture:
And you can pick and choose as follows:
6. Create Attractive & Shareable Content
If you have read our article about Inbound Marketing, you will have read about how vital it is to create attractive and shareable content. Posting on Facebook should not just be sales based, it should provide value to your followers too.
The more you have content that people are interested in and want to share, the higher the growth of your organic reach! People will share content for the following reasons:
- my friends will find interesting
- inform my friends of the things I care about
- will make my friends feel something
- my friends will find useful
(Source: Revive Social)
Keep these in mind when posting your content. Would it be something that you think your followers would benefit from? How many sales posts are you posting a week? Which types of posts are gaining the most attention?
We suggest you limit sales posts to 20% or less of your total posts. The rest of your posts should provide value – they could be educational, funny or conversational, it all depends on your brand.
7. Look at the Frequency and Activity Times of Your Followers
Choosing the right time to post your ads can be the best secret weapon you can incorporate to your Facebook page.
Facebook offers a very handy tool call “Insights” where you actually track your follower engagement. Here you can view the number of page views you’ve had, your reach and the popular times that your followers engage with your content.
Look to post during these times as they are most active here and will more likely to see your content.
8. Make Use of Ads
The reason why a Facebook business page is a vital tool for any marketing strategy is due to its targeting abilities.
You are able to target specific audiences based on your ideal customer attributes. These can be attributes like gender, location, age, interests, job title, interests and more! For hotels, this could be a great tool for you to make use of in order to boost off-season bookings by targeting tourists who travel during that time.
To make an ad, open up the post you wish you to boost:
You will then be directed to a page where you can select your audience type and objective for the ad:
These are all tips that can enhance your Facebook page and help boost and extend your brand’s reach. The only thing you’re missing is a cohesive social media strategy that will go hand in hand with your optimized page!
How do you craft such a thing? Pop us an email or schedule a call to see how we can help you build an effective Facebook marketing strategy!
