How to make the most of paid social

Article by: The Union, Zoe Stephen, Digital Marketing Manager

Social media plays a significant role in inspiring and informing travellers’ holiday planning, and this is undoubtedly set to continue post COVID as customers research their future holiday plans, check out the latest reviews and of course upload photos of their holiday or day out for all their friends to see.

But can social media really affect your tourism business’ bottom line? The simple answer is a big yes; social media within the tourism industry impacts your customer acquisition, customer retention and overall brand reputation.

How to make the most of paid social

Social media advertising is a must if you’re looking to reach a new, targeted audience—fast, because like it or not, organic reach is harder and harder to achieve. 

A few benefits of paid social:

• Finding and prospecting new users
• Retargeting lapsed or existing users
• Test multiple ad formats on your target audience to find out what makes them engage most
• Create custom built audiences using look alikes of people who have engaged or visited the website, and also by using interests focused audiences
• Clearly see ROI through campaign data

More is not always better

In order to achieve success with your paid ads, you first need to consider what channels are best for your objectives and what channels are best to reach your target audience. For example, Linkedin is a great way to reach the B2B audience, while Snapchat and TikTok are overwhelmingly popular with younger users. 

Don’t think that you need to be on every available social channel. Think about which channels are best suited to your business and your target audience.

Not only is it important to pick the right channel but it is also important to pick the right objective to meet your business needs, and what primary action you want your target audience to take to achieve this objective. 

Understanding your business objectives is critical. It ensures you choose the right social network to advertise on. It helps you choose the right advertising solution within that platform. It even guides your creative strategy.

Are you using your website data?

If you are using Facebook as part of your marketing mix and don’t already have a Facebook pixel you are missing out on lots of highly valuable data about your customers. The pixel is very simple to install, and you can create events that trigger when someone takes an action (for example, buying something), on your website.

Once you have enough data you can then begin to segment using custom audiences. For example, if you have an audience group of people that have made a purchase on your website, you can use this to upsell products, and keep your current customers informed of any promotions you might be running. 

You can also create lookalike audiences, these are people that share similar attributes/interests to your current customers, and therefore are more likely to purchase from you. 

You can also use custom audiences to build a retargeting pool of people that have expressed an interest (viewed a product page, added to cart) but not completed the purchase. By setting up a product catalog on Facebook you can utilise dynamic ads, showing only the product, or similar products.

The path to purchase is rarely linear. You need to consider the customer journey and tailor your messaging for each stage.

Test and learn

Testing is crucial to the success of any paid campaign. It’s the number one rule of Paid Advertising. It’s the most important process for achieving success with Facebook ads.

The sad reality is that even your most successful Facebook ads will start to die out quickly once you’ve scaled them out with a decent budget. The best way to continue your success is to come up with a new ad creative or to promote your winning ads to a new audience. That’s why you always need to be testing new ad creatives.

• Only test one element at a time
• Test elements that have the biggest impact on results first
• For elements that aren’t being tested, use your top performing variables
• Determine metrics for evaluating tests at the beginning. And stick to them.
• Kill losers quickly. Increase budgets on winners quickly.

For more tips on getting the most out of your paid social campaigns or other digital marketing needs, please contact The Union.