When it comes to reaching more people online for your tour company marketing, Facebook can be a strong ally.
This social media platform boasts 1.66 billion daily active users. Its family of apps (which includes Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram) is used by over 60% of leisure travelers 18-34 years old to read travel reviews, share experiences with family and friends, coordinate with businesses, and get trip inspiration.
In terms of social video advertising clickthrough rates (CTR), Facebook (with CTRs at 1.05-3.42%) is even higher than popular video platforms like Instagram (0.39-1.8%), and YouTube (0.05-0.13%).
These advantages make it essential for tour companies to use Facebook ads to increase their bookings.
How to Use Facebook Ads to Promote Your Tour Packages
To get the most out of your tour company marketing, you need to get four things right on Facebook: your audience, offers, ads, and retargeting.
Zero In on the Right Audience
Identifying your ideal audience will help you get a good return on your Facebook ad spend.
For each of your tour packages, identify your current and ideal clients’, using demographics like their age, gender, marital status, and location. You can get these from your existing customer list or your Facebook Audience Insights.
Note that if you’re offering multiple packages or catering to different types of travelers—such as honeymooners as well as couples with kids and nature lovers—you’ll need different visuals, copies, and offers to appeal to each group.
Create Irresistible Offers
Some people think that pushing down prices is the only effective tour company marketing strategy. However, this can hurt your profit and make your business unsustainable.
Instead of providing tour packages with the lowest price tags, give your clients unique experiences or more value. You can do this by:
- adding a side trip your competitors don’t offer;
- providing travel insurance;
- offering to arrange their visa;
- partnering with local establishments to provide free meals or group rates on entrance fees.
These are just a few examples. As you brainstorm unique offers, make sure these appeal to your target audiences. For example, if you’re eyeing families traveling with kids, offer side trips to child-friendly sites.
When clients perceive your additional offers and conveniences as more valuable than the higher rates you charge, they are more likely to choose you over your competitors. You’re even more likely to attract travelers who don’t mind paying a bit more for better experiences and services.
Nail Your Facebook Ads
To run successful Facebook ad campaigns, you need to create compelling ad visuals and copy, a matching landing page, and a well-thought-out audience targeting strategy.
Eye-catching visuals
Visuals are crucial to successful display ads. Whichever ad formats you’re going to run—video, image, carousel, slideshow, instant experience, lead generation ads or offers—make sure you use high-quality photos and video footage. Use these to grab your target audience’s attention and give them a taste of the trip experience.
Don’t just promote your target destinations; sell emotions, and tell stories by showing travelers enjoying every aspect of the trip. You can do this through a short video clip or a series of stunning and emotionally laden images woven into a story.
Compelling copy 
Pair your carefully selected visuals with excellent copy that includes persuasive words and phrases like “discount,” “limited time only,” “luxury,” or “hurry.” Also, specify the benefits you offer. For instance, clearly show how much your customers will save by getting trip bundles instead of individual packages. Then, include a clear call to action (CTA), like “book now.” To make the CTA harder to miss, use an attention-grabbing button color.
Matching landing page
Design a landing page that matches your ad’s elements, from the copy down to the images, fonts, and colors. This is especially important if you’re running different ads per tour package or location. For example, if your ad shows a Paris vacation package, make sure people who click on it are led to a page with more details about that tour and the booking form.
But don’t lead them to your homepage. Your visitors can get distracted or overwhelmed by the information on your pages. In effect, they may browse your website but leave without converting.
Carefully targeted audience
To ensure that your ads are shown to the right people, you need to specify the audiences for your travel ads. They can be part of your core audiences, custom audiences, or lookalike audiences.
Core audiences refer to groups you target following specific criteria. For example, you can include individuals who are:
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- living in, recently in, or traveling to specific locations
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- satisfy specific demographic characteristics like income, life events, birthdays, relationship status, and work
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- interested in adventure or air travels, beaches, cruises, ecotourism
When you choose custom audiences, you will be showing your ads to individuals who have engaged with your tour company, whether offline (such as past clients) or online (which includes people who liked your Facebook page).
You can also use lookalike audiences to show your ads to people who share the same interests as your best current customers and, as such, may also become your ideal clients. Facebook will be using your custom audiences to identify lookalike audiences in your selected locations.
Why Facebook Retargeting Is Essential to Tour Company Marketing Plans
The average Facebook ad conversion rate for the travel and hospitality industry is 2.82%.
This means that among those who click on your ad, 97% won’t convert.
Consumers don’t immediately purchase things they see online. It may take multiple touch points—visiting your website, reading your posts, then seeing your ads—before they finally buy from you.
Thankfully, there’s a way for you to follow up and nurture potential clients who showed interest in your offers—Facebook retargeting.
With retargeting campaigns, you can significantly increase your CTRs, lower your cost per click, and maximize returns on ad spend by showing relevant ads to people who already engaged with your business. This includes individuals who browsed tour packages on your website, watched your video ads, abandoned their shopping cart, or reached your landing page but did not submit payment information.
Displaying your ads to interested audiences helps keep your business top of mind once they’re ready to go on vacation. You can even make the ads more enticing by offering discounts to those who have filled out your forms but did not enter their payment details.
Just as you can’t expect offline customers to purchase from you immediately, you also need online visitors to “warm up” to you. Attention-grabbing retargeting ads allow you to spark curiosity in them and increase brand awareness until they’re finally ready to click the buy button.
If you’re ready to get started with your tour package sales using Facebook ads, SEO, and other marketing strategies, book a free strategy session with us. As a results-oriented tourism marketing company, we help travel businesses boost their revenues through improved organic search rankings, well-targeted, paid advertising, and social media and reputation management. Find out more by visiting our website and browsing our latest tour company marketing articles.