Travel and tourism businesses have it difficult, they are often strapped for time and resources to really have effective marketing online.

While there are several different factors to consider when you are marketing online (SEO, E-mail, Social media Usability etc..) this article is focusing on using a relatively easy one; Advertise on Facebook.

Originally posted on Philipcaines.com

Background:

Facebook is now fighting for the #1 spot against Google, and people are spending much more time on Facebook than Google.com itself, so it makes it an intelligent spot to place your ads.

What makes Facebook so ideal is that it opens up a new realm of segmentation that not even Google can compete with. Never before have advertisers (read you) been able to speak to a very narrow and targeted market segment.

One marketer wrote:

Furthermore, their (Facebook's) segmentation abilities are amazing; not only can you target based on age, location, and gender, but you target consumers based on religion, and relationship status.

Even more amazing is their ability to create search parameters within users profile to advertise (e.g. "target anyone who lists Tool as their favorite band and Watership Down as their favorite book"). If you choose a larger campaign, you create a plethora of ultra-targeted ads in a sort of micro-segmentation.

As you can see you are able to zero in on your particular customer.

What does that mean?

Know yourself and your customer. Period.

For this example we will take a travel company / product that would benefit greatly from having a segmented product ad, and we will then go through the steps needed to make the campaign live.

Test Product:

Twilight Tours – This was inspired by Dazzled By Twilight

Here is what their product is: "Take a tour of actual Twilight locations in Forks and experience it for yourself!" They offer 3 different $39 daily tours.

So book fans are able to relive the locations as written in the Twilight series of books and as seen in the Twilight movies.

The demographics are a little interesting for Twilight fans, one would assume correctly that the main group of readers are young female teens, however there is an audience in the older age range as well.

Lisa Marks from the Guardian states "According to a survey of 5000 by movie ticket website Fandango, 95% of the respondents were female and 42% of them were 25 or older."

Being as this tour is in Forks, Washington you have to consider how far people would be willing to travel to take the tour in order to really understand the scope.

So lets look at how an ad for this tour would play out in Facebook:

Step 1:
Click on "Advertising" at the bottom of the page

Step 2:
Click on "Create an ad"

Step 3:
In the "Design your ad" block you need to put in your destination URL (the web page that people will land on when they click the ad) I would recommend that you put them on a page where they can find more information about the product and have the ability to book directly, or able to find out more information. If you are comfortable with Google analytics, I would recommend adding campaign tags to your ads to ensure that you are tracking all of the leads that are coming in from Facebook.

The "Title" box is limited to 25 characters, so be sure that you capture attention quickly. For this ad we could use something along the lines of "Twilight Tour – Live It"

The body text needs also to be short, but intrigue the viewer to click on the ad. I used some of their copy: "Take a tour of actual Twilight locations in Forks and experience it for yourself! Exclusive Guided Twilight Tours from $39 USD. "

The image upload box is important, if you can have an image that is 130px wide and 80px high to fill out the area completely. If not, it will scale the image for you.

Step 4:
Targeting. This is where it really gets interesting. For this ad, we will target our core demographic in the surrounding states as they will be the ones that are most likely to make the trip.

For country we will put the United states, and segment it by state/province.

Then enter Washinton, California, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada.

For age we put "13 – 40″

For sex we will put "woman"

We can leave the "interested in" and "relationship" options alone.

Language we put in "English (all)"

This gives us an estimated reach of 7.4 million people, but we can do better than that.

Step 5:
For likes and Interests we can add as many criteria as we like to filter our target audience. As they all should have a love for the twilight series, we will enter that as the main interest. We can also add similar interests such as "eclipse", "new Moon", "Breaking Dawn", "twilight series" and our good friend "Stephenie Meyer".

We can leave education and work out.

"Connections on Facebook" is for targeting people in the pages, groups, or events that "You" own. So if I had a Twilight Fan Club group, I would be sure to add them to the list.

This gives us a target market of nearly 650 thousand people. Which sounds pretty good.

Step 6:
Here is the tricky bit of the ad, the Campaigns and Pricing.

If you are new to Facebook Ads, then you will want to "Create a new campaign". Campaigns allow you to group multiple ads together for a variety of different segments. For this campaign, you will only have 1 ad. Name it something relevant, but don't worry, it won't be displayed to the public. I chose "Twilight Tour" as the campaign name.

The daily budget needs to be determined on your marketing budget. Keep in mind that this is a very captive audience and that these are the exact people that you want to reach out to, so spend enough to make an impact. I put $100 dollars as a general amount, but keep in mind that you need to work within your budget.

The schedule should be set up for a specific date range, this will prevent you from racking up a huge bill when your tours are not being offered. For this example I chose May 31st till August 31st.

It is almost always best to pay for clicks as opposed to impressions. A click ensures that the consumer read the ad and that they are interested in the product. Facebook recommends a "Max Bid" amount, which is dictated by the demographics that you have selected. If your bid is too low, your ad will not be shown to anyone. It makes sense to have the amount in the suggested bid range, which for this ad is $0.75. This should give me about 140 clicks per day.

Now is a good time to review your ad to ensure that it is appropriate, and then "Place Order".

Tracking

From here on in you will see an increase in traffic on your site that will be sure to be ideal clients. I didn't run this ad through as it would have charged my card, but I encourage you to experiment with Facebook ads, and see how you can make it work for your travel business.

This same segmentation can be applied to travel agency's products, night clubs, cruise companies, and any more. Let me know if you need help setting up a Facebook ad campaign, I am always available as a consultant.

Stephen A. Joyce has been working as a travel & tourism technology consultant since 1995. In 2005 Stephen and his company, Sentias Software Corp., began development on Rezgo.com, a next generation Web 2.0 tour and activity booking engine for SME travel suppliers and tour operators.

In June of 2007, Rezgo.com was officially released and now boasts a user base of 900+ companies. Stephen is also very active in fostering tourism technology and is co-chair of the Board of Directors of the OpenTravel Alliance, a non-profit organization whose mandate is to develop and foster messaging standards for travel e-distribution.

http://tourismtechnology.rezgo.com