Facebook ads are a great way to increase the reach of your hotel's marketing messages. Learn about the top Facebook Ad formats for generating awareness & sales for your hotel.
Updated for 2022
Hotel social media marketing is essential for any successful online marketing campaign. However, where Facebook fits into the overall marketing puzzle can be a challenge.
To master your Facebook advertising skills, you need to understand your primary goals and objectives and how Facebook ads can help you achieve these. Facebook offers a wide array of ad types and formats, making it easy to not only hone in on your target audience but also to reach them at the right time in the conversion funnel.
Let’s take a look at some of the more common Facebook ads for hotels and how they can help your hotel succeed online:
1. Facebook Page Like Ads
The primary goal of “page like” ads is just that – to acquire more page likes.
However, buying unqualified Facebook likes for the sake of having a larger audience can be a risky investment.
It’s no secret that organic reach has been on the decline for quite some time now. With more publishers and users joining the social network every single day and combined with Facebook’s attempts to provide a better user experience, reach and engagement metrics have eroded substantially.
One of the many factors that makes up Facebook’s newsfeed algorithm is engagement. If you publish a post and your fan base is actively engaging with and sharing your content, that content will organically reach a larger audience base. However, if you publish flat content that never gains any engagement momentum then Facebook will slowly stop showing your posts as often. Acquiring likes for the sake of having more page likes can kill your engagement rate and organic reach.
That’s why we typically recommend saving your budget and building a better organic experience to acquire new followers. This method is typically more cost-effective than spending hundreds on a likes campaign. The exception is for newer hotels that may not have a following. In that case, it may be beneficial to set aside a budget to build a following.
Creating focused audiences and serving them hyper-focused ads is a surefire way to ensure that the people you are reaching are interested in your brand and will actively engage with your content.
Facebook offers tons of targeting options that can be layered to reach very specific niches, making it easy to reach the exact demographic that will be genuinely interested in what you have to say. And, these advanced targeting methods also make it easy to match specific ad copy to your specific audiences.
This Facebook like ad for Grand Wailea Maui highlights their generous outdoor amenities, an important feature for this beachside resort.
Creating focused audiences and serving them hyper-focused ads is a surefire way to ensure that the people you are reaching are interested in your brand and will actively engage with your content. This general rule of thumb applies to any and all ad types.
Be sure to check out Facebook’s Guide to Organic Reach for any other questions you might have about how the algorithm works and how to use ads effectively.
Facebook Page Like Ads Tips for Hotels:
- Use high quality images that highlight unique property amenities, rooms, and features.
- Always make sure your pictures are centered and cropped appropriately if they exceed the recommended dimensions.
2. Facebook Page Promoted Posts
Page post engagement ads are a great way to increase the reach of your page’s content. Additionally, promoting a post allows you to reach an audience that has not already expressed an interest in your page through advanced targeting.
Targeting can be applied to the promoted post to reach a more focused audience and you can choose to reach only people who have liked your page already, a mix of current and potential page fans, or people who are not current page fans.
Any type of post can be promoted – status updates, photos, videos, and offers.
Promoted posts can be run with virtually any budget and for any length of time. Facebook also provides an audience size estimate and estimated daily results (reach and post engagement) based on your budget, targeting selections, and estimated run time.
Promoted Posts vs Boosted Posts
The “Boost post” option is also available at the bottom of every post that you publish on your Facebook business page. Boosted posts are particularly helpful from a hotel perspective to increase the reach of important property news, like the announcement of new renovations or new amenities, or to help spread the word about a new giveaway or promotion. Boosted posts are especially handy because you can build the ad directly from your Facebook page, without having to create a campaign in Facebook Ads Manager.
The Plaza Hotel uses a promoted post to highlight summer stays with a shortened link and uses social recognition via an influencer.
Note: Promoting a post is different than “boosting” a post.
However, boosted posts do lack several features that are available via promoted posts. This includes the option to exclude certain users from seeing your ad.
Facebook Promotion Post Tips for Hotels:
- Use promotions or giveaways to entice email signups and post engagement.
- Use marketing psychology tactics for hotels, like creating a sense of urgency, to help spark sales.
3. Facebook Reach & Awareness Ads
If you’re looking to reach as many people as possible within your budget, Facebook reach and awareness ads are perfect for your goals.
With a Facebook reach or awareness ad, Facebook will optimize your ad delivery for either:
- Reach → Your ad is delivered to as many users in your target audience as possible.
- Ad Recall Lift → Your ad is delivered to people Facebook estimates would remember seeing your ad if asked within two days.
Because the results for these ad types are considered “action-less” – meaning Facebook isn’t serving your ad for people to take a specific action – we recommend incorporating a few other metrics to measure whether a campaign like this is successful. For instance, demand generation metrics for hotels is the perfect match for measuring success for these awareness-focused campaigns.
The composition of a Facebook awareness or reach ad includes a media asset (image, video, or carousel), a headline, a description, primary text, an optional call to action, and an optional website link.
Great Wolf Lodge uses a quick, 6-second video and simple ad copy to attract Facebook users.
Facebook Reach & Awareness Ads Tips for Hotels:
- Make a good first impression with a video that introduces your hotel and tells a compelling story.
- Use a reach campaign to get people to take action. Yes, I mentioned that these ad types are “action-less”. However, the great thing about a Facebook reach campaign is that you have a greater chance of reaching more people in your target audience than other ad types, including with warmer audiences that may be more inclined to make a purchase now.
- Use demand generation metrics to measure the full scope of your reach and awareness campaigns.
- Set a frequency cap for your reach campaigns so your ads aren’t serving too often to the same people which can result in ad fatigue.
4. Facebook Lead Generation Ads
Lead generation ads are a great way for hotels to acquire high quality leads, either for an email database or for reservation requests. As a true “top of funnel” ad type, combining this format with strategic targeting is a great way to reach potential guests before they have selected a hotel.
When creating the ad, you will be able to also create a form in Facebook Ads Manager for visitors to submit. The form is easy to build and includes a plethora of options on different types of information to collect. The form includes a greeting section where you should clearly state the benefits of signing up, the list the guest is signing up for, a background image, and pre-filled questions like email, full name, and city. You can also create custom questions that may be more relevant to your offering.
A Facebook lead form includes a section for questions, form completion, and an intro like the example above.
MyrtleBeach.com uses an enticing promotional giveaway to build its email database.
Try to create a balance of collecting valuable information without overwhelming the guest with fields. Pre-filled question information on the form will auto-populate with the information listed on Facebook, though the visitor will be able to edit the information provided. All information collected will be stored on Facebook and will be available as a download for you to easily upload to your email or marketing platforms. For hotels, grab only the information that is relevant to your goal. This is typically first name, last name, and email.
More questions about Facebook Lead ads? Check out the Facebook help center for more information on this ad type.
Facebook Lead Generation Ads Tips for Hotels:
- Test different form fields to find the sweet spot of information and length. The more info you can collect, the better, but be wary of asking for too much too soon.
- Create an audience of people that opened the lead form but didn’t submit their information. Retarget this audience to entice those users to come back and complete the form.
5. Facebook Website Click Ads
If you want to drive more traffic directly to your hotel website, website click ads are the way to go. These ads are a great way to get new eyes on your hotel website or hotel booking engine.
The opportunity with website click ads is the ability to drive traffic directly to any page on your website, depending on how aggressive you want your campaign to be. Combine these campaigns with a Meta Pixel to monitor success and optimize the campaigns accordingly. Further, improve your success by testing different ad copy varieties with different call-to-action buttons to help you identify which combinations drive the most engagement and revenue.
Disney’s Aulani Resort & Spa uses simple messaging and a call to action to entice users to click through to their website.
The Bellagio Las Vegas chooses to highlight their on-site dining experiences with a carousel ad and See Menu call to actions.
Facebook Website Click Ads Tips for Hotels:
- Giveaways and contests are great ways to engage fans and collect email addresses for future communications.
- Always highlight any deals, promotions, or offers front and center on your website, social channels, and ad copy.
- These ads are perfect for driving different guests to different parts of your website. Use this to your advantage and test different images and pages to maximize ROI.
6. Facebook Conversion Ads
Deer Valley Resort entices users to Book Now with a special offer for summer that is clearly communicated in the ad copy.
Get as many conversions within your budget as possible with conversion ads.
With Meta Pixel implementation, you can track important events users are making on your website. Whether it’s a contact form submission, room search, or booking purchase, these are just a few of the actions you can track and use to optimize your ad delivery on Facebook.
Based on the conversion event you’ve selected to optimize for, Facebook will tailor ad delivery to those in your targeted audience that are more likely to convert on your website for that specific event. With website traffic and conversion campaigns, we always recommend additional link tracking for full scope measurement of your ads.
Note: Even if your events exist on a separate domain (think booking engine), you can still run conversion ads. However, there will be some limitations due to the iOS 14.5 update. Learn more about Facebook advertising best practices post-iOS 14.5.
Facebook Conversion Ads Tips for Hotels:
- At the very least, we recommend implementing the Search, InitiateCheckout, and Purchase events on your booking engine. Installing these events will allow you to utilize Facebook’s conversion ads to the fullest.
- Based on the audience you plan to target, use ad copy to your advantage. For instance, the ad copy for a campaign that targets users lower in the conversion funnel should be different from the ad copy in a campaign that targets a colder audience.
Facebook Ad Specifications
Depending on the ad type you select, you may be limited to what you can and can’t customize on your ad. For example, you cannot customize the headline or description for a Facebook like ad.
For website click and conversion ads, you can submit multiple headlines, descriptions, and primary text. This allows Facebook to deliver the ad copy variations that are most likely to deliver results.
You can find design and text recommendations, and technical requirements for ads by following Facebook’s ad guidelines.
About TravelBoom Marketing
TravelBoom specializes in developing and executing customized data-driven marketing solutions that drive direct bookings and growth for its clients. With over 25 years of experience in digital marketing for travel and hotels, TravelBoom leverages advanced data science and analytics to uncover insights and develop strategies that greatly enhance results for our clients and reduce reliance on third-party channels. TravelBoom is also host of the world’s #1 ranked Hotel Marketing Podcast and its quarterly Traveler Sentiment Study both of which can be found at www.travelboommarketing.com.