Facebook Marketing for Tourism A 10 Point Tune-Up for Your Facebook Marketing Efforts

The 10 Point Tune-Up Checklist:

1. Are you marketing your tourism business on Facebook?

2. Is your Page set up properly?

3. Have you created a friendly URL?

4. Are you promoting the Page offline?

5. Have you looked at Insights?

6. Have you claimed your Places page?

7. Have you enabled Reviews, including TripAdvisor?

8. Have you upgraded to “new” Pages format?

9. Are you featuring industry partner Pages?

10.Have you considered a booking widget?

Are you marketing your tourism business on Facebook?

Restaurants: Rice University study “Dessert Gallery” Fans made 36% more visits

Spent 45% more of their eating out $$

More likely to recommend to friends

Hoteliers: HSMAI study 70% say online marketing has best ROI

69% are marketing via social media

“Facebook is becoming a hotel search engine!” – eHotelier.com

Is your Page set up properly?

Is it set up as a Page (not a Profile)? You can’t see Insights for a profile, so it’s worth the effort to

migrate if you didn’t set it up as a Page originally.

Is it categorized properly?

If you’ve upgraded to the new Page format, check!

It can help visitors find your Page via Facebook search.

The options you have for tabs are contingent on your category

Are you using the full 180x540 pixels for your profile pic? Does it include your logo?

Have you created a friendly URL?

Much easier to add to print collateral.

Much easier for guests to remember later.

You only need 25 fans/likers to claim a Page username.

If someone has illegally grabbed your brand name, you can contest it.

Are you promoting the Page offline? Have you added the Page to your collateral materials?

Business Cards

Signage

Brochures

Print/OOH Advertising

Make It Mobile: QR Codes/MS Tags (making the real world clickable)

Have you looked at Insights?

How are you doing? What content works best?

As of December, you can set date range.

Export (for the numbers nerds among us.)

Have you claimed your Places page?

You might have to create one if no one has already

To Merge or Not to Merge? Are people already checking in?

Try it—you can undo it.

Deals “Digital punch card”

Special offers to those who check in

Facebook.com/Deals

Individual, Loyalty, Friend, Charity

Have you enabled Reviews, including TripAdvisor?

“With Facebook, you can go in and see your friends’ recommendations. It makes it that much more enticing and relevant when, instead of reading a regular review, you’re reading a review from one of your

closest friends. It’s much more credible.” –

Stephanie Leavitt, Carnival Cruise Lines

Have you upgraded to “new” Pages format?

Mandatory as of March 1, 2011 (there’s no opting out)

Notifications!

Post as the Page elsewhere on Facebook

Post as a person on the Page

Feature industry partners on your Page

Your tabs have moved BUT—now you can use iFrames

Be sure to check the photo strip—but don’t get cute, unlike profiles, the five photos appear in random order.

Are you featuring industry partner Pages?

Another advantage of the new Pages format; you can select which liked Pages are Featured in your sidebar.

Have you considered a booking widget?

As of February 2011, you can embed iFrames in Facebook Page tabs.

(FBML did not play nicely with a lot of booking widgets).

Bonus: Facebook Ads?

Pros Extremely inexpensive… up to 2M impressions for $500

Self-serve (if you have limited resources)

Can target geographically, demographically, by interest

Cons Extremely poor click-through rates

Faster ad fatigue than other types of banners

Creatively limited format (similar to paid search, but still interrupt-marketing)

Self-serve (you’re on your own)

Questions?

Kat French, kfrench@doeanderson.com

Quick Link List

http://www.facebook.com/pages/managehttp://www.facebook.com/insightshttp://www.facebook.com/username

(for friendly URLs)http://www.facebook.com/dealshttp://www.facebook.com/adshttp://www.goo.gl

(to create QR code, add “.qr” to shortened URL)http://gettag.mobi

(for creating Microsoft Tags)