When it comes to marketing online, there’s no denying it: Facebook remains one of the most affordable places to advertise. If you’ve been stuck trying to figure out how to boost your occupancy level this year, you might want to consider using Facebook ads for your Airbnb.
Why advertise on Facebook? Here are a few quick reasons:
- Facebook ads can help boost your listing views. You don’t need to have your own vacation rental website to benefit from Facebook ads. You can simply point clicks on your ad directly to your listing.
- You don’t need to be an expert to use Facebook ads. The platform is full of suggestions and there are tons of information sources out there to help you do it well.
- You don’t have to spend a fortune to advertise. Facebook advertising is incredibly inexpensive and unlike Google ads, it’s the same across the board – there’s no competition to give precedence to the highest bidder for keywords.
Getting Started with Facebook Ads for Airbnb
Getting started is simpler than you might think. Follow these easy steps:
1. Set up a Facebook page.
To get started making Facebook ads, you’ll first need to set up a Facebook page. This should take less than an hour total to set up using all the necessary information and images you already have for your listing.
2. Learn your way around the ads manager.
As a first-timer, this can be a bit overwhelming. But don’t let all the bells and whistles intimidate you!
There are 3 ad types you can choose from: “Awareness,” “Consideration,” and “Conversion.” Because your whole reason for running ads is to push more traffic to your listing, you’ll want to focus on “Consideration.”
NOTE: You can tinker with “Conversion” ads if you’d like, but these tend to cost more overall and, unless you have your own vacation rental website where you can embed what’s called a “Facebook pixel,” this is likely not the best route for you.
From here, you’ll need to also decide on what kind of visuals you’ll present with your ads. We recommend going with single lead images for a photo ad, creating a slideshow with several images, or putting together an image carousel.
3. Decide on advertising demographics.
At some point in your advertisement building, you’ll have to set what groups of people should see your ads. Consider the types of guests you normally receive (if you have a consistent type, whether that be age, area of interest, or hometown or state).
The Facebook advertising tools are some of the most robust available on the internet – you can specify almost anything. Be careful here: It takes some testing to get it right. You don’t want to be too broad, but also don’t want to be too specific. The tool will give you an estimate as to how many people will see your ad.
4. Decide on a budget.
Though Facebook advertising is inexpensive overall, it’s easy to spend a lot of money! Before you go crazy, start testing some ads so you have a better idea of what works and what doesn’t.
There are two ways you can set your account up for ad spending:
- Daily Budget: This is an amount of money you set in the ads manager to spend per day until you stop running the ad. So, if you choose to spend $5 a day for 14 days, you’ll spend no more than $70 over the course of two weeks. The ads manager will tell you approximately how many people will see your ad for that much money over that timeframe.
- Total Budget: This is an amount of money you set to spend over the lifetime of your ad. So, Facebook will keep showing the ad to users who fit the demographic criteria you set until you reach this budget allowance. It could be a slow spend over time or, if you’re super broad with your demographics, it could go quickly.
Again, we recommend starting small here and seeing what your results look like before dumping a lot of money into your ad campaigns.
To get a step-by-step tutorial on how to create your first ad, we recommend sitting down with this YouTube video by Jordan Platten of Affluent.co, a highly successful marketing firm based in the UK.
With a little more research and some time, you could give yourself an incredible boost this year by diving into Facebook ads for your vacation rental. There’s a lot of potential for success. Don’t knock it until you’ve given it a try!
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