For majority of travel companies, online ads is an important way to find customers online. Is online ads a part of your marketing campaign? Moreover, are you wondering how to promote tour packages with Facebook Ads? If yes, this post provides you a simple yet effective guide on running successful Facebook Ads campaigns.
Finding the perfect formula to run effective Facebook Ads campaign is not easy, however, successful campaigns follow a pattern. Getting the following variables is vital to running successful Facebook Ads campaign – the Audience, the Offer and the Ad Creative. The best revenue generating Facebook Ads campaign target the right people with the right offer and the right creative.
- Why should you use Facebook Ads to promote tour packages?
- How to promote tour packages with Facebook Ads?
- Summary on how to promote tour packages with Facebook Ads
Our team at Pixelio utilized Facebook Ads to increase awareness and engagement for Nepal101.net, an awesome Trekking and Tour Company in Nepal. For the Nepal trekking industry, Google Search Ads were already competitive and expensive to run ads. After understanding the industry, the travelers and the business we were sold into the idea of running Facebook Ads.
Why should you use Facebook Ads to promote tour packages?
You might already know that your potential customers are spending significant time in Facebook (including instagram). For majority of the travelers – the photos and videos shared in the social media platforms is the inspiration to travel. The photos and videos create awareness of destinations and desire to experience it. Once their mind is set – they just need help from you to fulfill their desire for the experience. This is where your digital ads come in.
Furthermore, Facebook outlines how it is the best platform to involve your customers in all stages of the Customer Journey. Moreover, there are case studies on how businesses have been successful getting more customer with Facebook’s ads platform. Facebook Ads can be used to raise awareness, increase engagement and increase bookings for your business. Not only is Facebook Ads easy to implement, it is highly targetable and in our case highly profitable. We were able to get a high Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) on our advertising campaign.
Disclaimer: Before we go into details, please understand that successful campaigns takes time and knowledge of the platform. We had to research online, read various articles, watch video tutorials and conduct many tests. Once we could consistently run ads and get the desired results, we were fairly confident that we had something significant. We wanted to create this “How to promote tour packages with Facebook Ads” as a case study.
Following are the three key elements that helped scale Nepal101’s revenue by over 10 times in a span of two years –
- Audience: Find and target the right audience
- Offer: Create the right offer, differentiate the offer and provide more value
- Ad Creative: Create attractive Ad Copies, better than your best competitor
How to promote tour packages with Facebook Ads?
At this point, we are assuming that you might have already tried various advertising platforms. Moreover, we also assume that you are familiar with the most common advertising metrics. Finally, if digital marketing is something new to you, make sure you start with understanding Facebook Marketing Strategy.
1. Audience: Find and Target the right audience
For any successful marketing campaign, understanding anything and everything about your target audience, is crucial. Global Brands invest thousands of dollars before any big marketing campaigns to understand their consumers. This process is usually called Brand Health and Media habit check. The research findings basically give insights on the behavior of purchasers and the media they use. This due diligence ensures that the marketing budget is invested to communicate the right message to the right people.
The Facebook advertising platform has an amazing tool to help you understand your customers and their interest. It is called Facebook Audience Insights. The Facebook Audience Insights is a Free tool that helps advertisers find “Relevant Audience” for their businesses. This tool is amazing because it helps advertisers find out where their audience hang out. It helps find out which pages your target audience like and what interest you should be targeting.
We have made a separate detailed guide on using Facebook Audience Insights to find Audience that Converts.
Example: Audience Insights Tool to Find Travel Enthusiast in Australia
If I was an Australian Travel business owner and wanted to find my target audience would do the following.
- Go to Audience Insights
- Select Australia, choose the Age / Gender of my target audience from past trend
- Find the pages liked by the potential target audience that can be used to advertise
The objective is to find the audience who behave similarly to your potential customers. Facebook literally allows you to show your ads to people who already a “fan” of your competitor.
People who like pages such as TravelOnline.com, G Adventures, Skyscanner are people who are in your customer segment. By showing your ads to these group of people, you increase the likelihood of finding the right customers. Find the community, pages and interest similar to your current customers to begin in the right direction. Choose these interest in your Facebook Ads and increase the likelihood of converting them to customers.
2. Offer: Create the right offer, differentiate the offer and provide more value
The travel and tourism industry is a competitive industry. Moreover, the travel businesses regularly compete on prices rather than brand or experience. This leads to big brands having an edge over smaller players because they can compete in volume. Competing on price is great for consumers, but for the average travel business owners, it means dwindling margins. It is not fun to operate under such conditions and creates unwanted pressure.
Imagine this scenario – You get the Audience correct but your offer in the ads costs higher than average. What do you think will happen?
The chances of your offer performing well on the market goes down significantly. Why? Because customers are always comparing prices and if your price point is higher, they will not take up your offer. It is not all doom and gloom though, there is a smart solution to price wars.
Solution: Differentiate the offer and provide more value
If perceived value is more than the cost customers pay, then they are more likely to buy your offer.
The easiest solution to competing on price is to tweak and differentiate the offer. Create unique offers that is difficult to compare. Most importantly, add more value to your offers by creating savings on money, time or convenience.
For example, a customer is asking around for rates for Family trips in Thailand. The customer will have their budget already in mind. After approaching a few agents and checking prices online, they will have a fair idea on the costs. What do you think makes them finalize or choose an offer? The offer which provides the most value.
Provide value in terms of money: Bundle up your package with Free Food and Beverage Voucher. Utilize your relationship with the hotel partners to request vouchers. This is a win-win-win situation. The customers sees more value, the hotel gets more business and you will most like close the deal.
Provide value in terms of time and convenience: Activities like getting Visa or finding the right travel insurance causes inconvenience. Bundle your offer with Free Visa service and/or include travel insurance. This way even if your price is marked up, you provide more than enough value to your customers.
Note: The above examples are generic, we recommend making adjustments in your offer depending on your customer’s needs.
3. Ad Creative: Create attractive Ad Copies, better than your best competitor
There is a reason why big brands spend big budget on ad creatives. An ad creative’s most important objective is to turn heads and to capture attention. Moreover, big brands utilize it to create an anchor in the audience’s subconscious.
An ad creative’s most important objective is to turn heads and to capture attention.
Big brand’s invest in mass media and operate on a mass awareness. Luckily – you do not have to shell out massive amount of budget on ad creatives like the big brands. Why? Because you are marketing to a targeted group of people with the right offer and the right message. Think of it in terms of a more certified or warmer lead.
However, make sure your ad creative communicates the following:
- What is the offer on hand?
- How will the offer make your customer’s life better?
- How do they buy it?
Some businesses use videos as creatives, some businesses use photos – it depends on the story you want to sell. For travel businesses 15 seconds video or multiple photos perform better because it provides a visual experience.
Summary on how to promote tour packages with Facebook Ads
- Facebook is an effective advertising platform for travel businesses to acquire new customers
- Make sure you have your audience, offer and the ad creative correct
- Audience: Utilize Facebook’s Audience Insights tool to find the right audience
- Offer: Make your offer unique and differentiate by providing more perceived value
- Ad Creative: Make sure your ad creative communicates the offer, the perceived value and transaction method correctly
