Anyone who keeps up with the latest marketing news will already know about Facebook’s most recent advertising and marketing tools. But even the most up-to-date marketeer might not know how these new Facebook tools benefit small businesses in the tours and activities sector.
So, while we don’t have time to get into all of the technical details of these new tools, we think they are really useful additions to Facebook’s répertoire and we’d like to at least introduce the new features and explain why they are perfect for small tour and activity businesses!
Facebook’s Small Business Campaign
Recently, Facebook has started to unveil a series of tools and functions designed to help small businesses. “With over 90 million small businesses on Facebook,” said a Facebook spokesperson, “we’re proud to play a role in helping business of all sizes grow and create jobs.” Obviously, Facebook is enjoying the patronage of 90 million businesses (a staggering number) and they want to consolidate this number by making their platform as easy to use, and lucrative, for small businesses. Last year, we published a blog helping readers perfect their Facebook advertising strategy, and we explained how incredibly accurate Facebook’s audience definition power is, and the range of ad types that are available. Adding even more tools to its repertoire is great news!
Facebook’s New Appointment Booking Tool is Perfect for Tours & Activities
Facebook has created a new appointment management tool for businesses that allows customers to book their products and services directly from Facebook. This is perfect for converting customers who prefer not to leave the comfort of their favourite social media app. It’s also perfect for the tours and activities industry, as accurate dates and times are an essential part of everyday business logistics.
With Facebook’s booking tool, customers can make an appointment for the business to approve. Once approved, the booking system automatically sends reminders on Messenger. This automatic reminder system is genuinely helpful for your customers, giving them a positive experience with your brand.
Another big advantage of this tool is that it will probably normalise and popularise booking tours and experiences on Facebook. This is perfect for smaller companies as it puts them on the same platform and level as much larger competitors. A big competitor may have a much bigger and better website, but their Facebook page won’t be any better and the booking tool on their page is exactly the same as yours! Anything that puts small or medium-sized businesses on the same level as the big guys are obviously positive!
Facebook’s New Video Editing Tools are Ideal for Tours & Activities
The Facebook Ad Manager is already great, but it is now even better as they’ve added various new video editing tools. One tool allows you to automatically crop videos, another allows you to overlay images and texts easily, and another tool makes it easy to trim videos. All of these features are available on a standard video editing software, but many business owners simply don’t have time to learn how to use video editing software, or the budget to pay a professional to do it for them. Facebook’s tool makes editing easier. Sure, it doesn’t offer anywhere near the level of detail or control that a professional video editor does, but it’s good enough if you want to make a short promotional video.
Giving small tour and activity businesses the ability to create and edit better video content is a very positive move for Facebook as video (and image) content is an incredibly important part of tourism marketing. With tours and activities, people are buying something that is usually indulgent or romanticised in some way; as such, videos are one of the best ways to sell this kind of product.
Automated Facebook Ads
We’ve talked a lot about Facebook’s various types of ads in the past and now they’ve introduced an automated ads system. This tool creates six different styles of an ad that you can use on Messenger, Instagram, Facebook, etc. The tool is designed to make it as easy as possible for business owners to create dynamic, effective ads. It will ask you a series of questions about your company, your product, the aim of the ad, etc. All of your answers will help determine the kinds of ads Facebook creates for you — and this includes the audience the ads target and the kinds of call-to-action buttons the ads feature.
As many people use social media to research and plan their holidays, it’s always good news for tour and activity businesses when Facebook makes it easier to create effective ads. And they go a step further by also offering detailed performance reports on the ads, helping you figure out which kinds of ads work best. They even offer advice on how you can improve your ads.
These new tools are just the beginning, as Facebook promises to continue innovating new ways to help out small businesses. As so many tours and activity businesses fall into the small-business bracket, it’s really great news for us. If you want to make the most out of your social media management and ads, then it may make more sense to hire the Tourism Marketing Agency to do it for you. If you’re interested, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. However, you decide to manage your Facebook Business account, we hope this blog post has been of interest.
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