Ep. 11: 8 Facebook marketing tips for hotels.
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One of my hotel clients recently told me she didn’t think Facebook was important anymore, that it seemed like a dead marketing channel. I gave her some thoughts on why Facebook is actually the opposite, and today I’m sharing 8 Facebook marketing tips for hotels. If you’re wondering what Facebook’s good for anymore, grab a notebook and let’s go!
1. Get more click-throughs to your website.
My first tip is really geared towards those who think of Facebook as an afterthought and focus most of their energy on Instagram. Here’s the deal: click-throughs should be a major goal when it comes to social media, because you don’t own your audience on social media. Yes, you have followers and engagement, but the platform owns these followers until you get them over to your website or convince them to subscribe to your email list. One of your goals should be to get your followers off the app, and onto your site.
Social media platforms can pull the plug on your account at any time. This happened to one of the hotels I work with last year—their account was taken down for six weeks because of what Instagram had deemed a copyright infringement. Even after proving we owned the image, it took three more weeks to get our account reinstated. Thankfully, we had an email database of over 50,000, and didn’t miss a beat with our holiday campaign. For those who focus on social media first, especially new hotels without an email list, this could’ve been a disaster.
I say ‘yes’ to showing up to where your potential guests are hanging out, ‘yes’ to engaging in real conversations, finding inspiration, partnerships, and like-minded brands, but this isn’t your end game. The end game is turning your fans into customers someday. Great. so we’ve established we want click-throughs to your website.
Here’s why you don’t want to abandon Facebook and focus all of your attention on Instagram: Facebook beats out Instagram when it comes to click-throughs simply because you can stick a link in your post. On Instagram, you have to ask your reader to go to the link in bio, whereas on Facebook, you can embed the link right there. Don’t underestimate the laziness of people! Although clicking the link in bio requires a few extra thumb taps, there’s more to it than that…Instagram is built to keep you scrolling.
For now, Facebook allows us to embed links right in our posts, which equals more click-throughs, even if you’re seeing less engagement in the form of likes and comments. If you’re strapped for time, and you’re auto-posting content from Instagram to Facebook, you’re missing out on an opportunity to drive click-throughs to your site. There’s a simple fix, which is to use the same content, but customize the last line (where you normally write ‘click the link in bio’) and add in the link to your website within your Facebook post.
2. Turn “likes” into Fans.
When a post does well, the common strategy is to spend a few more bucks to boost your post to a broader audience. Facebook and Instagram nudge us to do this—there’s a little note that reads “this post is doing better than a larger percent of your other posts. Boost it to reach a broader audience.” While it might be tempting to do so on Instagram, I recommend boosting your post on Facebook because there’s another action you’re going to take with the additional likes you receive from boosting the post to an audience of people who aren’t following you—you’re going to invite them to “Like” your page.
Here’s how: let’s say you’ve boosted your post for a week and around day 3, 5, and 7, go to your post and click on the likes tally. A window will pop up with all of the people who’ve liked your post. On the left side, you’ll see their thumbnail image and name, and on the right side, you’ll see a rectangular box that says “Invite to Like” or “Following.” Think of those people who have just engaged with your content as warm leads. Now is the perfect time to invite them to “Like” your page, since they’ve just shown interest. Facebook has made this so easy—just click that “Invite to Like” button next to their name, and they’ll receive a notification to follow you.
Why do you want more followers on Facebook? By building a bigger audience, you’ll reach more people organically without needing to spend money to boost posts, and you’ll be able to market to them more directly by including a link in your post that clicks through to your website. People are still hanging out on Facebook, and if you show up in their feeds with content that interests them, you may convert them into customers down the line.
3. Use Facebook Events for more than events.
This is a little trick I’ve learned in the wake of the pandemic: events don’t have to be in person. If you’ve never used Facebook Events for your business before, they’re a great, free way to get in front of a local audience. When you create a Facebook event, as the date nears, it will be suggested to people in your location who may be interested in the event, have friends who are attending the event, or are specifically looking for events in your area. Of course, at this point in time, gathering is limited, but consider using Facebook Events to promote online events, webinars, product launches, Facebook Lives, and when the time is right, actual physical events too, like restaurant re-openings and approved gatherings depending on where you’re located. Facebook Events are a great way to get in front of a local audience without paying to appear in traditional newspaper calendars or online listings.
4. Use Facebook Ads Manager.
If you’ve ever boosted a post on Instagram, you’ve probably done so in the Instagram app, with options like age, location, and interests. If you switch over to Facebook Ads Manager to promote your posts—yes, even your Instagram posts—you’ll find a wealth of behavioral and demographic targeting options to drill down on that targeting even more.
When you’re using the Instagram ads platform, it’s streamlined, it’s all contained in the palm of your hand, and it’s accessible to newbies. But if you know a lot about your audience—as hotels typically do—you’ll be better served by getting as specific as possible in your audience targeting. You can do this in Facebook Ads Manager.
In Ads Manager, you don’t have to stop at the basic stuff, you can drill down to include behavioral targeting, including what industries women work with, if they’re married or single, etc. The audience targeting for Facebook is more detailed than Instagram’s, and again, you can use the targeting in Facebook to create Instagram ads, too.
Some ways I’ve used Ads Manager targeting to get in front of a desired audience includes running ads based on relationship status, like people who are recently engaged that might be looking for a wedding venue, or people who like to travel whose birthdays or anniversaries are coming up. Amazingly, you can target all of this stuff. If you’re hiring, you can target based on job titles, we’ve done this successfully when searching for an executive chef and sous chef positions. You can also create retargeting ads, which means when using a Facebook pixel on your website, you can chase your website visitors around Facebook and Instagram until they enter your booking engine.
Retargeting is extremely effective because it’s focused on a very warm lead. This may be the last impression they need to decide to book with you. Effective targeting means you’ll spend less money to get more qualified leads in each step of the sales process—from dreaming about a vacation, to planning it, booking it, experiencing it, and getting back on social media to share their experience with others. Done right, it all comes full circle.
5. Creating Look-a-like Audiences in Facebook Ads Manager.
My 5th tip goes even deeper into ads with a specific targeting strategy that’s proven effective for hotel packages, time and again.
On Facebook Ads Manager, you can create Look-a-like Audiences to target people who are similar to a list you’ve loaded. So let’s say you ran the spa getaway campaign last year, you can go into your reservation system and pull out the data of all the people who stayed on the package last year, and make sure to pull their email address. Then you can hop into Facebook and import the list to create a Look-a-like Audience. Facebook will analyze your list while keeping it safe, and match profiles of other Facebook users that are similar to the people on your list. Then it will put your ad in front of those look-a-likes.
I’ve done some testing over the years, running the same campaign to a Look-a-like Audience and to an audience that just uses demographic and behavioral targeting. In my experience marketing a golf package at a Texas resort, the Look-a-like Audience performed four times better than the same ad that targeted golfers in our key feeder markets.
By the way, there are a few ways around building a Look-a-like Audience that don’t require you to import your customer list. One way is to create a Look-a-like Audience based on people who are fans of your Facebook page. Another way to create a Look-a-like Audience is to use a pixel placed on your website, which can build an audience based on site visitors. Pretty incredible stuff right here. Think about your next campaign and how you might use Look-a-like Audiences to improve your targeting and conversion.
6. Thinking outside the typical Facebook post format.
You’re probably already repurposing your Instagram content and landing page content to Facebook in the form of posts. I challenge you to use some of Facebooks’ other, newer options—like Facebook Lives—to share this same content in a different way. For instance, if you’re sharing a margarita recipe for summer, on Facebook, why not have your bartender mix the cocktail in a Facebook Live? This type of content, live video, gets more engagement than any other type of post on Facebook. You’ll have more eyes on your post, and potential shares of your video, too. For advanced marketers, you can even set up an ad based on who watched your live video, to drive them to your website or to reserve a table in your restaurant.
7. Redirect your WiFi page to…Facebook.
Next, when guests visit, chances are they have to complete a little form to use your internet via their mobile phone or laptop. With a little help from your service provider, you can redirect the WiFi login page to your Facebook profile. This can drive more likes, and more check-ins. Yes, believe it or not, check-ins are still a thing, and a great way for others to experience FOMO when they see a friend visiting your property.
8. Create compelling giveaways that convert.
Finally, giveaways. You may be running giveaways to gain more followers because you’ve seen others doing it. Maybe you think it’s a good way to increase engagement on your profile. Sure, it is, but there are a few things you can do to (1) rally up more participation without spending money on ads, and (2) turn more of your giveaway participants into future guests. Here’s how to tackle each one.
In order to rally up more participation without any ad spend, I recommend that you partner with a like-minded brand or influencer. Just make sure that they’re around the same size as you (warning: a massive account likely has followers that aren’t truly engaged and don’t match your ideal customer profile). A smaller account (like a local business in your town) or a smaller lifestyle brand that seems to share a similar audience, is the better bet to get not only more engagement on your giveaway, but also reach an audience that is likely to engage with your content and become a future guest.
Once you’ve found a great partner and you’ve both shared the giveaway, use your winner announcement to thank all those who entered. Maybe you’ll provide a discount code on a future stay. Since this giveaway audience is warmer in the sense that they’ve entered to win a stay and therefore have interest, there’s a good chance you’ll actually convert some of these participants into guests in the near term.
I have a lot more to say about social media giveaways, and I think I’ll dedicate another episode to that specific topic soon.
There you have it! 8 hotel marketing hacks for Facebook. Let me know your thoughts below by leaving a comment, or hop over to our very own How To Share Facebook group.
