If your hotel’s strategy for marketing on Facebook is sharing photos or blog posts to your page, I have some bad news.
Not only has this been a low-performing strategy for the past four years or so, it’s about to be a non-performing strategy.
If you aren’t paying, you aren’t even trying.
Why Facebook?
If Facebook ads have never worked well for your hotel, you aren’t the only one.
At the same time though, you also know your hotel needs to put effort into its Facebook page, as 50% of consumers find your page more useful than your website. Even more striking, some 95% of Facebook users claim to use the network for travel-related activities before taking a vacation.
Google AdWords has long been the digital advertising method of choice for hotel marketing. This is because users’ searches show clear purchase intent. When someone searches for “new york city boutique hotel deals,” it’s fairly obvious what they are looking for.
Facebook has historically fallen behind in this department, but things are most certainly changing thanks to some new features on the platform.
The death of organic reach
“Organic what?”
Organic reach is the rate of “people you can reach (for free) on Facebook,” and it has been on a steady decline since 2014 due to their newsfeed algorithm changes.
In 2012, many Facebook pages saw around 16% reach. In early 2014, this dropped to two percent. In 2018, after Mark Zuckerberg’s post on the upcoming changes to improve the social network, even the most optimistic social media marketers expect one percent for organic reach.
“We started making changes in this direction last year, but it will take months for this new focus to make its way through all our products. The first changes you’ll see will be in News Feed, where you can expect to see more from your friends, family and groups. As we roll this out, you’ll see less public content like posts from businesses, brands, and media.” — Mark Zuckerberg
Is your team spending time and money sharing content on Facebook for only a handful of people to see it? You can do better.
