Most people don’t book a room on their first visit to a hotel website. It can take repeated visits for that to happen. Social media retargeting is about capitalizing on those encounters to drive conversions. It lets you connect with past visitors to your website by advertising to them on social channels such as Facebook and Instagram.
Social media is the perfect place to stay in touch with customers due to its usage—globally, people spend an average of 135 minutes on social media every day. As travelers increasingly use Facebook and Instagram early in the travel journey, social media retargeting also lets you influence decisions at the earliest stage.
The following article explains how this form of advertising works, with a series of invaluable recommendations and tips.
How does social media retargeting work?
Social media retargeting involves dropping a cookie onto the browser of anyone who visits your website. This cookie then tracks how they interact on your site and the wider web, and then retargets them with an ad on social media based on their online behavior.
This approach lets you create customized ads that are most likely to tempt users back to your website and convert. Let’s look at an example of how this works.
A typical traveler scenario
A customer visits your hotel website and looks at your Gallery, Amenities and Room page, then checks availability for a 3-night stay the following month.
An hour later, they visit Facebook and see a tailored ad with an offer based on the room and dates they were looking at. The following day, they visit YouTube and see the same ad, and the same ad appears when they check their Instagram feed. They click the ad, revisit your website and make their booking.
