Facebook Ads for Tour Operators
Travel content is SUPER shareable right now, which means tour agencies have an incredible advantage when it comes to Facebook advertising. They have the power to inspire travelers and to stimulate their inner wanderlust. They have content that people actually want to see and learn more about.
But how?
Through creating charming Facebook Ads, of course! Businesses can see incredible results in Facebook advertisement strategies. Tugo Travel detected a 3,000 lead generation with their ads. Furthermore, Wizz Air experienced a 284 x ROI in their Facebook advertisement.
Our guide will talk you through our top tips and tricks on how to use Facebook ads to your advantage. Advertising on Facebook has never been easier! You will learn how to target your content strategically and drive sales while doing it.
Sounds good? Let’s get started!
8 Steps to Creating an Effective Facebook Advertising Campaign
1. Adapt Your Webpage
Before we get into setting up a successful Facebook ad, take a moment to analyze your landing page. With the paid Facebook ads, you will start to see an increase in website traffic, engagement levels and click-throughs. It’s important that your website is fully functioning and that your sale funnels are top-notch.
Tracking the good, the bad, and the ugly of your website has never been easier! Programs like Google Analytics and Hotjar allow you to see where your page is underperforming. They analyze how people are interacting with your website and where they are getting interrupted. This way, you can go back to your website and tweak the weaker pages accordingly.
Setting up Google Analytics is super easy and has many benefits, you can learn about it here. Hotjar, on the other hand, offers a free 15-day trial for you to enjoy. With Hotjar, you can get instant visual feedback and watch actual footage of people interacting with your site. Nifty, right?
You can now avoid the problem of people buying into your Facebook ads but not your webpage. Help convert your new page visitors to customers with an attractive and easy to navigate website.
2. Set Your Facebook Ad Goals
Think of your ad campaign as you would approach the new year – you’ve got to set some goals!
Before launching your Facebook Ad, you need to look at your goals and do a little research. Ask yourself:
- What are you wanting to achieve with this ad?
Is it more sales and bookings? Brand exposure? Or to stay top of mind for the consumer?
- How are you going to measure its success?
Is it the amount of growth you’ve seen over a period of time? Or maybe it’s a percentage of sales?
Top tip: look at implementing SMART goals. The SMART goal tool guides you through setting defined and measurable goals.
Specific: Are your goals clear and well structured? Your goals should be clear and succinct. So much so that a different employee or a new person will be able to understand the goal.
Measurable: How will you measure your success within your goal? The effectiveness of the goal has to be measurable. This can be a percentage increase, the number of people you’d like to reach or an increase in the number of sales.
Actionable: Is the goal realistic and achievable? Don’t set yourself up to fail by setting unattainable goals.
Relatable: Does the goal relate to your services and product offering? It must be relatable within the number of resources you have available.
Time-measurable: How long will you set for you to achieve your goal? Give your goals a time limit where you will assess your success.
- Who are you targeting?
The more specific your targeting is, the higher your ROI will be. Having a good idea of what type of person you want this content to reach is key! Don’t worry, we’ll get into tactical targeting later.
3. Craft a Facebook Ad Strategy
Any type of social media practice requires a strategy. To maximize your results on social media platforms, you have to plan out your content. Map out what you’re going to post, when you’re going to post it and what purpose the post will serve. Look at using a content calendar to map out your content and see where you can provide value to your followers.
70% of Facebook users visit the platform daily. You’ve got to make sure that your strategy is bringing its A-game! Not all posts are the same, nor do they serve the same purpose. You’ve got to change it up in order to avoid seeming too sales-y. You can plan your Facebook Ad content to achieve different results:
- Call to Action (CTA): Encourage people to click through to your latest deals with a “Shop Now’ objective.
- Increase Website Traffic: Improve your SEO and promote your website with a “Learn More” objective. This will direct people to your website.
- Awareness: Get your name out to new audiences. You can choose to promote your Facebook page to audiences and increase your amount of page “likes”.
Thankfully, Facebook has your back on this one by providing an objective feature. Focus your campaign with the below objectives:
4. Enhance Your Facebook Business Page
Now that you have your basics done and dusted, let’s take a look at your Facebook business page. Even with the most attractive and enticing ad; if your Facebook business page isn’t up to scratch, you might be restricting its power.
Think of your Facebook ad as that attractive Tinder profile picture that got you hooked. Have you got one in mind? Now, think about when you finally took the plunge to meet this hunk in person. Not as pretty, huh? Doesn’t it take the magic out of the profile picture when in person, they aren’t what they seem?
Your Facebook page has to match the quality of your ad! If it doesn’t, your customer won’t call for a second date.
Did you know that 49% of users support their favorite brands on Facebook? Chances are, your future customer is already following you and waiting for a post that will convert them into a paying customer. You have to ensure that you are presenting your followers with the best experience. Always! It might just be the difference between someone who just follows your page and someone who purchases your services.
Never fear, as with most of our advice, we have a guide that goes along with. With our guide, you will be building a powerful Facebook business page and converting sales in no time.
Building a powerful Facebook page doesn’t take much – all it takes is a little attention. Here are some quick tips for enhancing your page:
- Does it have a clear call to action button?
- Is your website clearly listed?
- How attractive is the rest of your content and layout?
- Are you active on the messenger to promote customer engagement?
These 4 small adjustments will make your page more attractive. Making these quick and easy adjustments will enhance your page to match the level of your ads. When your page matches your ad, you will be more likely to convert your followers into customers.
5. Create Your Facebook Promotion Content
We could go on for days explaining the importance of compelling content. DAYS. We won’t, but we could. That’s how important it is!
Your followers are following you for a reason. They find your brand relatable and engaging. The last thing that you’d want to do is disappoint them with poor content!
Now, we’ve spoken about the power of engaging content. When it comes to your Facebook promotions, your choice of promotional content is no different. Yes, your promotion is there to carry out a purpose but it doesn’t mean that you have to stop serving your followers.
Engage and delight your audience with attractive content. Powerful imagery and enticing copy inspire audiences! This type of content leaves your audience thinking about your brand for days to come. If your Facebook ad is attractive enough to get someone to click through or to return to your page, you know you’re doing your job right.
Tour agencies are at an advantage when it comes to creating engaging content, as you have such an exciting product to sell. In fact, excitement is key to what you’re selling! Content should encapsulate this feeling. It should enthral audiences and ignite a passion for exploration!
Take the time to capture your audience’s attention. Draw them in with desire. Make them feel what it would be like to book a tour with your agency or travel the world.
There are many ways for you to do this. In our opinion, these have been most effective in grabbing the audience’s attention:
- Video Content
If you haven’t heard, video content is having its moment in the marketing world. By 2020, 80% of the content we consume will be video content. Video content is more shareable and more engaging. It captures a feeling that photos can’t! You can read more about why we love it here.
Tour agencies can benefit from using videos in their Facebook ads for many reasons. For starters, one minute of video is worth 1.8 million words. 1.8 million words in 1 minute! Do we dare go on?
Second, it’s a great way to capture the essence of your tours. You won’t need to think of enticing copy, they can see for themselves why your tour is the best! There’s something to be said about how videos can capture the essence of an experience. They have the power almost transport viewers into the moment.
Let’s have a look at Tourist 2 Townie’s Modena Tour as an example:
After watching that, don’t you feel as if you were in Bologna with them? You can practically smell the warm aromas of coffee wafting through the air! We’ll be right back, we’re just busy booking our flights to Italy.
Do you see how photos simply can’t capture that same feeling of longing?
Take your audience on a journey with your videos. Show them what they should look forward to see, to hear, to eat, to live!
Inspire your viewers with the good times and gorgeous scenery. If you are able to do this correctly, you have one sharable video with multiple bookings to follow.
- Cinemagraph images
Have you been asking yourself, “how do I make my images more engaging?”. Well, you could bring your stills to life with the use of animated imagery. Animated visuals will add movement to people’s feed and make them stop at your post.
For tour agencies, cinemagraphic posts are essential! They leave a great first impression with beautiful imagery and subtle movements. It will leave viewers wanting to look twice!
Ad Parlor recently tested the power of cinemagraph images. When they tested a static image campaign versus an animated image, they saw a 117% increase in click-through-rates.
Isn’t the above image more engaging? Doesn’t it look more appealing?
Picture this: you scroll through your feed and see an image of a stunning Thai beach. Then, the glistening movement of the sea catches your eye. It adds a new dimension to the image! It makes the viewer feel as if they were there. They are engaging with the material, they are paying attention.
Watch your bookings soar!
- Copy
So, we’ve got some attractive videos and imagery set up for your ad campaign. Don’t let your text ruin your hard work!
Your copy should amplify your services and tell the world why they should book one of your tours. Think of your copy as what it takes to seal the deal. It’s the one-liner your date uses that gets you hooked!
Your copy should take your imagery to the next level. It should capture your brand’s voice, tone, and identity. The more authentic your copy is, the more likely people are going to opt into what you are selling. As a tour agency, your copy needs to promote an adventurous and exciting encounter! Tell readers why they need a vacation. What is the benefit of booking with your agency?
Just remember that people scroll through their feed quickly! Keep your copy short and effective at maximizing its benefits. Facebook minimizes your text after a number of characters, so get the good stuff in first!
Making use of line breaks and emojis is a great way to catch people’s attention. Try incorporating catchy lines like “STOP THE SCROLL” and “WIN” to make your copy stand out. The capitalized phrase will stand out amongst the noise and help your post captivate audiences.
Did you know that emojis have their own language? These tiny emoticons can communicate with your audience in a fun and quirky way. With emojis, you are able to stay more with less!
Scoro recently tested the effectiveness of using emojis in their Facebook ads:
Do you see that little pole they’ve put before their subject line? That small emoji earned them a 241% increase in click-through rates. Emojis can add personality to your posts, it can make your posts more engaging and differentiate your ads from your competitors.
When in doubt, you can always consult programs like CoSchedule that will rank your captions on effectiveness. On the other hand, you could also schedule a call with us for a one-on-one, in-depth analysis. We’d love to help you!
6. Set Your Facebook Advertising Budget
Facebook ads work like this; the more you spend, the more results you will see. It’s important to plan out your budget before launching your campaign. This way expectations and limits can be set to help you achieve your goals.
Facebook gives you two budgeting options: a daily budget and a lifetime budget. If you are still in the experimental phase of Facebook ads, we’d recommend the daily budget setting.
This way you can set an average amount to spend per day. You might see that your ad is underperforming and may want to increase your daily spend for a larger reach. Whereas the lifetime budget allows you to set an amount covering the lifespan of the ad.
Try out each option to figure out what works best for you. It’s important to see what budget size is best for future campaigns.
7. Target Your Facebook Ad
Facebook’s effective targeting is like drinking a glass of wine to relax after a long day. It’s effective! Facebook’s targeting feature goes beyond genders, ages, and locations. It delves deep, deep down into user data to give you a focused target market.
Did you know that 83% of women use Facebook compared to 75% of men? This makes complete sense when analyzing the fact that women are more likely to shop online than men. Women are turning to the internet more and more to make their purchasing decisions. It’s information like this that you need to utilize in your targeting. Explore and consider the trends related to your agency’s location and offerings.
The more information you have, the more you will be able to craft your ideal customer. Think about who they are and what they want. Think about what type of content they engage with.
We suggest you deeply analyze the data and purchase decisions behind your sales. For example, your services may cater mostly to men, but women may be the ones who make the purchase decisions.
Gather these insights and profiles by sending out surveys to your customers to hear their feedback. Ask them how they found you, why they chose you, and what they loved about you.
You could also utilize social media to search hashtags relating to your audience’s interest to see what is getting positive engagement.
Try target market segmentation – segmenting your customers and speaking to them in their language allows you to further engage them. For example, you may have women in their 20’s purchasing your tours, as well as women in their 50’s – they each speak in different languages, and market segmentation allows you to discover this and act on it.
Understanding who your ideal customer is will help you target your ads. Why? Because you know who they are. You know what they want to see and how to speak to them.
Basic Facebook Advertising Targeting
So, how do you target your Facebook ad audience? To select an appropriate target market, you will see a table that looks like this:
Here you can create a custom audience that can be saved to use again for different campaigns.
- Step One: Select Your Basics
Here you will select your basic audience information. Choose the broader factors that best suit your audiences like the correct gender and suitable ages. Then comes the fun stuff!
- Step Two: Craft Your Ideal Target Audience
Remember when we were asking about your ideal customer? This is where it comes into practice!
Now there are a few ways for you to establish your ideal target audience. There’s the option to use Facebook’s travel intent feature, using your email subscribers and website visitors, and crafting an audience from scratch. For now, let’s look at creating a custom audience from scratch.
Facebook allows you to segment your target market into the following categories:
Location: This is perfect for those offseason slumps you may experience. You are able to target travelers who live in different countries and promote bookings during your offseason. No more worrying about how you will get through the quieter months!
Demographics: income, education, social status, life stage. For example, you could target college graduates who are looking to travel to a warm, sunny location. Or a South African
experiencing a warm Christmas but is looking for festive snowy, Swiss slopes.
Psychographics: It’s important to set up your buyer profiles based on their interests and lifestyle. Think about it, if you’re selling an adventure travel tour, you wouldn’t want to focus your ads on the suburban housewife with 3 kids, right? Chances are, that housewife would LOVE a holiday but their interests are more focused on their kids. Perhaps you’d rather want to attract the college graduate who loves exploring new things and has shown interest in adventure.
That’s the amazing thing about Facebook advertising. You can segment your profiles based off of interests and lifestyle components that relate to what you’re selling.
Behaviors: This is where you can focus your ads based on your audience’s engagement, life cycle, benefits, usage, and purchasing intent. For example, you can reach someone like; the college graduate who loves Thailand and is looking for adventure.
Behavior types are super important to how you are going to set up your buyer profiles. Fine-tuning your behavior types focuses your ad and enhances your chances of reaching the right people. For instance, as a tour agency, you’d want to focus on the groups that have either been travelling or looking to travel.
Lets take a look at how to target your audience based on their travel behaviors. When you’re refining your audience, you’ll see something like this:
Go ahead and click “edit”. As we’re looking at travel behaviors, just type in “behavior > travel”. Look at all the possibilities you can choose from!
Facebook actually allows you to focus your ad based on purchasing behaviors, travel patterns and even lifetime achievements. This is super nifty for agencies who are wanting to attract the honeymooners!
Let’s dive in a little deeper, shall we?
A tour agency that wants to sell wine tours in France is looking to set up their Facebook ads. What would be the best way to set up their ideal target audience?
Okay, let’s break it down into our sections of demographics, interests, and behaviors.
Demographics: For an agency who wants to focus on people who are in their winter season and are coming to Europe to enjoy the summer.
Well, we know that South Africans love to travel to Europe in their winter and we know that Cape Town is renowned for their wine. This makes for the perfect demographic choice to start off with.
Then, you’d want to take this a bit further. Analyze aspects like their income bracket, life event stages, education levels, and their relationship status. The chances of someone who is in a lower income bracket and that’s just had kids travelling to France for a wine tour is slim.
You’d rather want to set up your demographics for people who are in the mid to higher income brackets that have older kids or no kids at all. These are the people who have the freedom to travel and explore France.
Psychographics: So, we know who our target audience is but do we know what they like? Luckily, as a tour agency, you have quite specific interests to tap into. For the wine tour, you already know that your audience has to have an interest in wine to make the ad relatable.
However, wine doesn’t just have to be your focused interest. People who have interests in French cuisine, travel and leisure, and packaged tours are perfect for your buyer profile. Not only are reaching the wine lovers but you are now reaching a whole new market of people that might have an indirect interest in your tour.
Behaviors: One of the reasons why Facebook is such an important tool to use in marketing is because of their data. Facebook goes beyond tracking the pages that people “like” or how much time they spend online, but they track how their users interact online too. What does this mean for you? You have a direct insight into your audience’s behaviors.
For the French wine tour, you can select targeting frequent travelers and engaged shoppers. These are the people who are more likely to buy into your ad and make a purchase. Beyond the basics, you’d want to look at behaviors like the frequent international travelers and the people who have anniversaries coming up in the next 3 months.
Do you see what we’ve created a here? A specific customer profile that will find value in your ads. By crafting a specific customer profile, you are sifting through Facebook’s data and finding the people who are most likely going to convert to customers.
Onto Facebook’s Travel Intent Feature & Pixels
If you haven’t heard of Facebook’s new travel intent feature, don’t worry, we’ll talk you through it.
Breathing Social Media states that over 68% of millennials have previously found travel ideas on Facebook and over 60% have found ideas on Instagram. Look, those are some impressive numbers that your agency needs to utilize!
The main benefit of this feature is that you can now reach people with a clear intent to travel. Long gone are the days of interacting with the “oh, if only” customers! You are now directly interacting with active travelers who are looking for inspiration and planning advice.
So, how does it work?
First, you’ll need to install the Facebook Pixel. The Facebook Pixel is a small code that is embedded into your website to track the data from your Facebook ads. It can also help you create custom and lookalike audience to re-market your already engaged audience.
These are the people who have seen your brand before. With the pixel, you can create custom audiences for people who have interacted with your brand already. Perhaps they are looking for an extra bit of motivation to make the purchase or they need to be reminded of your travel deal.
Either way, you can target your website visitors or people who make up your email list. You already know they’re interested in your services, it’s time to seal the deal!
This tool is incredibly valuable to your Facebook ads. It provides deeper insights into what’s working on your ads and how people are interacting with your content.
To set up your Facebook Pixel, you’ve just got to follow these simple steps:
- Go to your Ads Manager and open up the Business Manager
- Select Pixels which will be under People and Assets
- Select Create a Facebook Pixel
- You will be asked to type in a name for your pixel, we suggest using your business name
- Agree to Facebook Pixel Terms
- Select Next
- Select Set Up Now to install the pixel onto your website
- Copy and paste the pixel code into your website
It’s that simple! If you do get stuck, give us a shout. We’d be happy to help!
Then, you can craft your audience based off of the tools you’ve just learnt. The trick is to make your ads less specific when using the travel intent feature. Facebook says that the feature works best for audiences more than 7 million.
Lastly, select your campaign objectives and activate the travel intent feature. Select “prioritize delivery to people who plan to travel”
It couldn’t be easier! You will be targeting people who are looking to travel in no time.
- Step Three: Monitor Results
If your ad isn’t performing, you can always go back and refine your target audience.
Do you see why Facebook Ads are so important for your marketing strategy now? You can directly interact with your ideal customer AND increase your reach across the world!
8. Stay Up-to-date With the Trends
As the saying goes, “the times are a’changing” and social media is no different.
Facebook’s algorithms are forever changing. Stay relevant and ensure successful ad campaigns by staying in the know. Keep up-to-date with changes and content strategies in order to stay ahead of the game. Read up about the latest ad features or types of content that are performing well with audiences. The more you know, the more your content will pop-up on your ideal customers’ feeds.
Algorithms aren’t the only thing that keeps on changing. The way in which people interact with content is forever evolving! Hubspot has cited that mobile video usage alone has seen an increase in the last two years. Video is now getting 10 million daily viewing minutes. That’s only the past two years! It was only 10 years ago that we were blissfully unaware of Instagram’s addictive powers. Look at us now!
So, there you have it – 8 steps for creating a successful Facebook campaign. How are you feeling? Inspired? Overwhelmed? You’ve got this! If you have any questions or would like to chat strategy, pop us an email or schedule a call. We’d love to help you.
