Are you using Facebook Ads in your business? Most travel professionals I speak with WANT to use Facebook Ads, but they aren’t always sure they are getting a good return on investment from them.
Today I’ve got 5 tips for you to create Facebook Ads that get noticed… and get results.
Pick the right image.
Without a doubt, the most important piece of your Facebook ad is the image. Why? Because it is your scroll stopper. What do I mean by that?
A great image gets people to stop scrolling through their feed looking at cat videos, selfies, photos of food, or the back-to-school pictures their best friend from college posted of her kids. It gets them to stop and actually take a look at the text you have written and to take notice of your call to action. If they don’t stop scrolling, there is no chance they will take action on your ad, right?
So what makes a good photo? It can be different for every audience, but here are a few things I’ve found to be consistent:
- Bright colors or photos with lots of contrast. A stock photo of a blonde haired couple walking on a white sand beach wearing white shirts and khaki shorts doesn’t exactly grab your attention! Some bright colored tee shirts, maybe even some dark hair and some beautiful blue water and you’ve got more of a scroll stopper!
- Get up close and personal. Photos of little details are attention grabbing. Maybe it is a nice close up photo of some drinks on the swim up bar or a beautiful flaky croissant at a quaint little French bistro. It could even be a photo of some of the amenities in the room. Beautiful fixtures in the bathroom? High end toiletries? Fluffy slippers? Those all work!
- Happy women. Tons of research has shown that women looking at the camera, or at the text/button and smiling generates more click-throughs that most other types of photos.
- Text overlays. This can be a great way to add some bright colors to a photo and to make a picture stand out. Just be sure the text doesn’t cover more than 20% of your photo. Even though Facebook did away with the rule saying you had to keep text under 20%, if your image has too much text Facebook will limit it’s distribution (which means it will cost more for you to get it in front of your audience!).
Be smart about your targeting.
One of my favorite things about Facebook ads is how specific you can be with your targeting. You can really narrow your audience down to a very specific segment that will be highly relevant for your ad.
I spend a lot of time going over specific targeting when I teach any of my Facebook Ads workshops. We dive into how to do your targeting and how to double check your audience and be sure that you have the right people receiving your ads. You can target people based on age, gender, location, income level, home value, job title, marital status, industry, and of course their interests and other Facebook pages they may have liked.
As much as I love interest targeting, there are a few other types of targeting that can be really profitable with Facebook Ads. For instance, you can very easily narrow your ads to go to people who are subscribed to your email list or your current client list.
Most travel professionals who are sending out an email newsletter have around a 15-20% open rate. That means that 80-85% of the people on their list are not seeing their message! Facebook ads just give you another way to get that information in front of them. You will usually pick up a good segment of people who didn’t get, or didn’t pay attention to, your email.
Make good use of offers.
Have you tried using Facebook offers before? They are one of my favorite tools to use on Facebook!
You can use a Facebook offer to promote your freebie or “lead magnet” that you will use to collect names and email addresses for your marketing list. They are also my absolute FAVORITE tool for using Facebook ads to fill a group. I spent a good bit of time walking agents through exactly how to do that in my Facebook Ads for Travel Professionals work shop this summer and I’ve heard from 3 different agents who implemented that strategy to sell the extra spaces they needed to fill spec groups for cruises and even for a “Downton Abbey” themed trip through the UK.
Use a strong call to action.
So often I see travel professionals create an awesome ad that just sort of falls flat when it comes to telling people what they should do next. Having a very clear and strong call to action is critical! People don’t want to have to figure out what to do, they want you to spell it out for them very clearly. This is true not just of your ad but also of your landing page (we’ll get to that in a minute!).
Keep in mind that most of the time people seeing your ad are “playing” on Facebook when it shows up in front of them. They aren’t going to remember multiple steps to do anything and they are highly unlikely to stop what they are doing and place a phone call (so writing an ad that says call us at 1-800… isn’t a smart idea!).
Spell out clearly for them in the ad what it is you want them to do and (this is super important!) WHY they should do it. How will it benefit them? Will it entertain them, inspire them, save them money? Help them with something? There has to be a reason to get them to do whatever it is you want them to do!
It matters where you send them.
If you are spending money on an ad, you’d better put some thought into what people are going to see when they click on it! Sending them to your home page usually has too many distractions and it’s not very clear what they should do when they get there (see tip #4).
I see a lot of travel professionals sending people to a quote request page. Also not the best idea. A quote page is all about what you want from them (info about their trip) and has very little compelling text to tell them what YOU are going to do for THEM.
Your best option is to send people to a very specific, dedicated landing page that has a similar look and feel to the ad photo you used. The landing page should reinforce why they want to continue to take whatever action it is you want them to do. Remind them why they need what you are offering. Talk about the benefits they’ll experience.
If you are collecting information, I would recommend keeping it really simple and not asking for too much here. Remember they were playing. They don’t want to do anything that takes too much time or effort. Just get their contact info and then reach back out to them to get them to complete that quote form or schedule a call with you!
Lori Hardegree is a social visibility expert with TheVisibilitySolution.com and is the creator of the Visibility Marketing System, a proven step-by-step program to show you exactly how to stop being the best kept secret in the travel industry and start attracting new clients easily and consistently. Click here to download a free copy of her “99 Ways to Attract New Clients” checklist and receive weekly marketing and visibility strategies right to your inbox!
If you are looking to grow your business with Facebook Ads, check out my Facebook Ads for Travel Professionals workshop recordings. You’ll get instant access to recordings that walk you through every step of creating Facebook ads to grow your business. Some of the topics include specific targeting advice for luxury travel, family travel and romance travel, specific advice on filling a group with Facebook ads, how to scale your budget so you don’t break the bank (with bonus info on how to present a service fee so you get money up front quickly as you start working with clients), how to move people from prospects to paying clients, how to exclude tire kickers from your ads, how to exclude other travel agents from your ads (we love each other, but we don’t need to pay to advertise to each other…am I right?) as well as tons of best practices for creating ads and growing your marketing list. You can use coupon code TRO to save $70 off of the regular price and start using Facebook ads to get more clients and make more money today!
