As millennials, we all had access to some early age social media platforms. The most known ones were Orkut, Facebook, and Yahoo Messenger. We saw the evolution of these platforms from scratch.
Talking about Facebook, it still remains one of the key players in the social media market. Initially, it was just a source of making new friends. But over time, it became a revenue-generating platform.
For hotels, it has become necessary to be active on Facebook. It benefits them in various ways by promoting hotel events, generating bookings, highlighting their pages with ads and others.
Today, let me tell you about one of these features in detail: Promote hotel events on Facebook.
Table of contents
Why should you promote hotel events on Facebook?
Before the dawn of the internet era, hotels promoted their events using hoardings, banners, newspaper ads, and other offline methods. But, these are the things of the past.
Nowadays, these events have found their place on social media platforms. In fact, Facebook’s exclusive feature pertaining to events has got every hotel’s attention.
So, what makes Facebook events beneficial for hotels? Let’s find out about them.
a. Better reach
As per the demographics provided by statista.com:
Facebook has more than 2.7 billion monthly active users.
That’s definitely a terrific amount of users. If you can penetrate even 0.1% of them, you would have ample data to work.
By posting about events happening at your hotel on Facebook, you start reaching out to the majority of the audience.
With proper optimisation of ads and engaging content, you can connect with thousands of people in a single go.
b. Target custom audience
The best part of Facebook is targeted ads. With multiple filters such as age, location, gender and others, it becomes easy to set your audience type.
To make it more specific, Facebook introduced a website extension – ‘Facebook pixels’.
It provides data of members who take action on your events you have advertised, such as registering for the events or mark them as visiting.
It assists hotels in promoting events among guests who are actually interested in visiting them.
c. Lower costs
The best part of promoting with ads on Facebook is – no minimum budget.
You can promote hotel events on facebook without investing a heavy amount of money.
Moreover, running ads is optional. If you have a good amount of traffic on your hotel’s Facebook page, just posting and promoting events on the timeline is more than enough.
Talking about the cost of Facebook ads, it starts from just $1. I don’t think that should burn a hole in your pocket. You can set your budget depending upon the target audience you want to reach out to.
How to promote hotel events on Facebook?
You may think that I would be boring you with cliche and conventional ideas to promote event on Facebook. But no, I won’t.
Instead, I’ve got some easy tweaks, which would do wonders for your property. Let’s understand how to promote hotel events on Facebook.
a. Act early
When I was a student, I always used to study just one night before my exams. You won’t believe it, but I scored pretty good grades.
However, when you promote an event on Facebook, I won’t recommend doing that. It’s better to plan and start it at least a month before the event.
There are two merits of listing your event a month prior:
- You get enough time to mark an impression on your audience.
- You can promote events regularly.
Once you start early, you can keep on revising your target audience from time to time to create a better impact.
b. Presentation is important
See, a poorly presented ad can never catch guests’ attention. Assume that, I have shared a link to an upcoming event in the town. The moment you open it, a messed up ad appears up.
A shabbily written content (not easy to understand), zero images, missing highlights of the events, and such likes, is sure to hold you back from booking it.
While creating any event, you need to focus on two vital aspects:
1. An enthralling title –
A captivating headline is a MUST to grab guests’ attention. For instance, if there’s a celebrity night in your hotel, you can’t have a headline stating – Celebrity night in our hotel.
It won’t help you achieve the required impact. But, what if the headline would be – Enjoy the starry night with Bollywood celebs under one roof.
Sounds alluring, right?
Similarly, try creating some catchy and mind-boggling titles for your events.
2. High-quality content –
I have told this in my previous blogs, but let me rephrase it again – Content is the emperor.
Be it blogs, brand websites, ads or events, none of them is complete without good quality content. It should be easy to understand and compel guests to register for the event.
Pro-tip: Read the content written for an event at your hotel. If it compels you to visit the event, go ahead with it. But if it's not achieving the purpose, redo the entire thing again from scratch.
c. Use pictures and videos
The basic fundamental rule of promoting any event is using pictures and videos related to it. Let your audience get an insight into how it would look.
Remember – Seeing is believing.
Let’s say I tell you about a happening party I had been to yesterday. After listening about it, you feel like attending one. Obviously, you would like to see the photos and videos of the party.
But, what if I don’t have them. You might think it’s just a bluff and walk it off. Instead, if I showed you pictures, it would give a weightage to whatever I said.
So, it is another mandatory aspect you should check while promoting any events. Also, using high-quality photos and videos will be more impactful.
d. Don’t forget the location
Naturally, you’d be hosting events at your premises. But don’t forget to geotag your location during those events.
The reason behind this is simple – Location-based recommendations.
Facebook recommends events going on in the nearby vicinity of any user. Moreover, it is also visible to the friends of the users who signed up for attending it.
This chain would automatically promote the event as well as your property.
e. Market it on various pages
It’s good, if you promote hotel events on your property’s Facebook page. But, that’s not enough.
You should maximise your reach by doing it over other timelines also. It could be the Facebook pages of your city or social clubs operating in your area.
Once you start approaching these pages, it would widen your reach amongst the audience. Eventually, providing you with an opportunity to gain maximum bookings for the events you host.
f. Tag sponsoring brands
During any sports match, have you noticed the jerseys of players having sponsors logos on them? It helps in two ways:
- The organisers receive financial aid to make all necessary arrangements.
- Sponsors gain visibility and brand recognition.
Even in events hosted by your hotel, there might be certain sponsors. You can tag them in your posts.
The audience following them can see the upcoming event organised by those brands. You can say it’s an indirect way to promote hotel events on Facebook.
g. Hashtags are MUST
Have you ever come across Facebook posts with hashtags in them? Users follow these hashtags to see content relevant to them.
For example, I follow various hashtags about nature and photography. So, when I click on them, I see posts that have these hashtags mentioned in them.
Similarly, while posting about any event in your hotel, use them as much as you can. I’m not saying to bombard it with hundreds of them. But, use at least 5-7 hashtags in the post.
Pro-tip: You can alternatively copy and paste these hashtags for having a better reach. #events #hotelevents #hotel #party #conference #liquor #partynight #l4l #follow #yolo #weekend #cityscape #nightlife #lifestyle #funtime #shoutout #business #banquets #feast
h. Run Facebook ads for promotion
Well, you might be aware of Facebook ads. It’s one of the most sought features by social media marketers.
The best part is that it is entirely customisable as per users’ needs. All you need to do is, create an ad based on the results you expect.
Ensure that you set the correct goal since it will give a suitable CTA to the ad viewers. Also, don’t forget to define your target audience. You can use filters to be specific about it.
As I mentioned above, Facebook ads are not too costly. You can set the budget as per your convenience. Moreover, choose the timeframe for running the ad.
Using Facebook ads is optional. You can skip this option if you don’t want to make any financial investments. But, on second thought, I would recommend opting for Facebook ads at least one time.
Conclusion
These days, everyone wants to attend some events to get a break from their monotonous lives. Some would like to paint the town red, while others may want to go for a jazz night.
They can discover about the events happening near them on social media platforms. ‘Facebook events’ is the most used feature
For hotels, it’s an opportunity to maximise their reach among the audience. So, next time if you have any event at your hotel’s premises, don’t forget to promote it on Facebook.
