It’s no secret that Facebook is the largest social media network in the world. How many – exactly? Well, as of Spring 2017, Facebook averaged 1.9 Billion monthly users. And, users are spending more than 30 minutes per day surfing the feeds – whether that means liking funny cat videos, scrolling past old high school friends’ babies, and yes – interacting with advertiser content.
Why do you need Facebook Advertising? Well, despite your best social media efforts, organic reach is at an all time low. As it has evolved over time, they have promised to keep users’ interests at heart and have kept newsfeeds relatively “clean” – meaning complex algorithms that make it difficult for businesses to reach their audience. Though you might consider your hotel page’s content interesting and meaningful, Facebook considers it intrusive and only shows it to the *most* qualified audience – meaning page fans they deem most likely to enjoy and interact with your content. And how many people is that, exactly? Not many. A recent report suggests the average Facebook page only reaches ~6.5% of their audience, with some figures reaching only 2% of the page audience. Yikes.
And don’t forget – Facebook is a business and businesses need to make money to survive. Being the biggest social media company in the world allows it to demand a premium for their valued eyeballs and complex targeting options. Though advertising is far from mandatory to use the platform, it is almost a necessity when it comes to reaching your audience. The good news, however, is that Facebook’s ad platform is incredibly user-friendly and relatively affordable.
After you have mastered the Facebook Advertising Basics, you’ll want to take steps to make your buck stretch even farther by reaching more targeted and qualified audiences. How can you do this?
Through a little thing called the “Facebook Pixel”.
Simply put, the Facebook pixel is a snippet of code that is placed on various places throughout a website to track either standard or custom “events” – aka actions that take place on your website. Implementing the pixel can help your hotel not only better reach potential and previous guests through smarter targeting but will also help you better measure the impact of your marketing efforts through conversion tracking.
