The age of organic social reach is all but over. Now businesses need to attract new clients with savvy strategies and paid social ads.
But the cost of paid ads can start adding up quickly if you only have a vague sense of who your audience is and how to engage them. Here are a couple strategies you can use to reach effectively reach your target audience and cut down on superfluous costs.
How to Customize your Ad Audiences
Is your email list performing as well for you now as it did last year?
If you’re like many tourism pros you may be finding that your e-list isn’t generating the bookings it used to. These days savvy marketers find that more marketing touch points are needed to generate a booking.
Using the long arm of marketing it’s now possible to target social ads to people on your email list. What a great way to maximize your touch points and reach the right people. Here’s where to start.
Figure 1 – Upload your client list and target ads to this list.
Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and by association Instagram, give you the option to upload your email list and then create an ad audience of your list members. On Facebook, choose the “Customer List” option shown in Figure 1 above.
Let’s think about the out-of-the-box options here. You could create an email list of people who’s email addresses have bounced, then upload that to your favorite social site. Since many people don’t change the email address associated with their social account when they switch jobs, you’ll now have an opportunity to reach them socially.
Similarly, you can create an email list of people who haven’t opened your emails recently. Uploading this list to your social media ad platforms gives you a way to reach these people in a channel that may work better for them.
Fine print: In order to upload your client list you’ll need to put your list into an Excel spreadsheet. Create 1 column of just email addresses, no other information. Then save your Excel spreadsheet as a .csv or .txt file. Facebook allows only uploads in these formats.
Combine Ad Audiences for Better Results
Wouldn’t it be amazing to reach back out to people who have watched your videos, visited your website and engaged with your posts? Here’s where to start.
- Choose “Video” to create an audience of people who have viewed your videos. Create a broad or narrow audience by selecting view time, specific videos as well as when they viewed your video.
- Choose “Website” to create an audience of people captured by your pixel. (no pixel yet? Here’s how to create yours in less than 2 minutes.) The people in this audience will have engaged with your post and clicked thru to your website. Here’s a quick tutorial video to show you how easy it is to create this type of ad audience. Bonus tip: Don’t forget to install the Pinterest pixel as well.
- Choose “Facebook Page” to create an audience of people who have interacted with your Facebook page. Create a broad or narrow audience by choosing the type of engagement.
Figure 2 – Create highly targeted ad audiences
The next step is to take this up a notch and combine this with your segmented email list so that you have a more specific, targeted audience.
This brings together all the audiences we talked about above and reaches the right people. Think of the possibilities for your business when you’re able to market to these superfans!
Saved Ad Audiences
You can do just that when you create a “Saved Audience”! Simply go to your Ads Manager account, select ‘Audiences’, chose ‘Create Audience’ then select ‘Saved Audience’. As you’re creating your new ‘Saved Audience’ you can add in previously created ‘Custom Audiences’. This strategy gives you the greatest amount of flexibility.
For example, you can easily create an audience of people who have watched your video about Spain for at least 3 seconds, liked a post on your page or clicked thru to your website to read more about Spain. How amazing is that when you’re marketing a destination or specific style of travel.
After all this, do you still think you don’t need social ads? You may be right if these 2 reasons apply to your business.
These days finding creative ways to reach your clients doesn’t have to take hours or break your budget! Turn on the power of technology to fine tune your marketing. You’ll be staying ahead of the game by consistently reaching the right people in the right way.
Related Articles
Groups & Pixels – 3 Tools for Targeting your Ideal Travel Audience
9 Advanced Tips to Target Ads Better
3 Behind the Scenes Ways to Understand Your Ad Audiences
Social Marketing Strategies for Travel and Tourism
About Catherine Heeg
Catherine Heeg is a recognized social media trail blazer passionate about social media and marketing in the tourism and hospitality industry. She takes the mystery out of marketing!
She creates and delivers meaningful, dynamic workshops that meet your unique needs in the Travel, Tourism & Hospitality Industry.
Catherine and her team help travel, tourism and hospitality pros design and implement social media marketing strategies and tactics that drive traffic to their social and web sites. Learn more…
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