facebook advertising – Pink Lemonade Social

How Travel and Tourism Brands Can Attract New Customers Using Social Media

Marc B — Wed, 08 Jun 2022 03:34:24 +0000

How Travel and Tourism Brands Can Attract New Customers Using Social Media

You may significantly improve your marketing efforts for your travel and tourism brand by implementing these basic yet successful social media methods to help integrate your marketing and increase performance.

The travel and tourism industry can take advantage of social media in a slightly different way than other businesses. Pink Lemonade’s clients in the travel, hospitality, and tourism industries heavily rely on social media for their marketing efforts – and have great success using social media to grow their business.

In the travel and tourism industry, social media marketing is a necessity. The internet, specifically social media, is where consumers go to find out about travel, travel planning, accommodation, restaurants, local activities, and much more.

Attracting new customers and igniting interest in your services can be accomplished through the use of social media platforms because social media marketing can generate the best ROI of any online marketing channel, making it integral to your marketing mix. For example, read our guide on Social Media for Wineries – Tips & How to Boost Sales.

Here are a few tips to help you get the most out of social media and integrating it into your marketing portfolio.

Ensure your brand’s personality shines across social media

The majority of successful travel and tourism businesses use social media as a way to show off their personality, but most stick to bland and dry content. Even if you have stunning photos, it’s your captions and other little details that really make a difference. Remember to use a mix of media, as well as placements; posting in feeds, stories, reels etc. Your brand doesn’t need to be on every social platform, just the ones that will work best for your brand, and where your consumers are.

Don’t forget to include a strong call to action at the end of your captions, so that your followers will want to see more of what you’ve got to say. If you ask questions, you’ll get a flood of comments and tags, which will help your content get noticed.

Posts that show personality and humour are more likely to receive comments and tags than those that simply include an image and a marketing message. Let your personality shine through and see your engagement rate soar.

Publish a blog and share content social media

There are a number of social media platforms that allow you to share content in more than just images and videos, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. As a result, blog content is an excellent format that performs well and serves as an effective magnet for social media traffic, and helps bring your audience closer to your brand.

A blog for your business will not only give you great content to post on social media, but it will also help you with your SEO strategy if you conduct keyword research for new blog topics.

The best way to get someone interested in your brand, product or service is to write blog posts that highlight your most important selling points, offerings, knowledge, quality and expertise. This will help you get them to make an in-person visit or convert via your website.

As an example, recently Pink Lemonade began creating blog content for Bonorong Wildlife Sanctuary. In the first two weeks of publishing blog content and sharing across social media, there was a 1,700% increase in blog traffic, with the blog bringing in a total of 15% of the audience for the website in the first month.

Use Paid Facebook and Instagram ads for multiple objectives

The use of geotagging and hashtags in conjunction with high-quality content in your organic social media postings can help you get new eyeballs. Organic social growth can be slow, and with recent changes to algorithms, it is increasingly harder to be seen and grow your social following. Paid advertising can reach and attract new customers quickly.

Even though advertising on both Facebook and Instagram at the same time doesn’t work for every industry, travel and tourism brands are reaping the benefits of this strategy.

To some, Instagram and Facebook serve as an escape from the realities of daily life, allowing them to step away from the pressures of their work and family schedules. Advertisers who grasp this concept can use it to their advantage by presenting ads that give consumers an additional reason to click through, engage, and convert.

Your paid social media strategy will reap the most benefits from retargeting campaigns, which can be segmented by where your traffic is navigating on your website. Remarketing means get better results from your ads when they are only shown to people who have previously visited your website or interacted with you on Instagram and Facebook. You can also send users offers tailored to the pages of your website they most recently visited.

Prioritize Email and SMS Marketing and data collection

Mobile phone numbers and email addresses can be collected as part of your social media marketing efforts, giving you an even greater marketing advantage. As it gets more competitive to target and acquire new customers and conversions, developing a marketing strategy with a focus on customer-data acquisition is the most important way to help your business grow. One of the best ways to generate conversions and acquire new customers is through email, and SMS marketing which highly effective because of its high open and click through rates.

To increase the number of people who sign up for your SMS and email lists, hold competitions, offer lead magnets/downloads, offer early access to sales etc. As long as you don’t overspend, there are a number of creative ways to do this that won’t strain your wallet. If you collect enough phone numbers and email addresses, you will have an endless supply of potential customers to market to, which will not only increase your bottom line, but increase your future marketing budgets with a greater focus on new customer acquisition, whilst saving your budget with your now-increased customer database.

Summing up, the importance of having an effective social strategy cannot be emphasised enough. Social media has become a crucial part of everyone’s life and for businesses, it is imperative to have a strategy in place to ensure that you are reaching your goals and attracting a new audience.

When it comes to integrating your marketing and running paid social campaigns that deliver with limited resources, at Pink Lemonade Social we understand that it can be a challenge. To assist you in determining the best social or integrated marketing strategy for your business, we’re are always available to chat and offer any advice.

GET IN TOUCH!

Your brand’s strategy may benefit from our assistance. As a strategic digital marketing agency, Pink Lemonade Social takes pride in assisting companies with bold ideas to confidently connect with their audiences. We specialise in paid social, email and content marketing, creating content and amplification it successfully. Check out our case study on Paid Social for Auski Australia.

Some of our Travel & Tourism experience includes

5 Facebook Advertising Mistakes Most Small Businesses Make

Marc B — Mon, 14 Feb 2022 01:15:57 +0000

5 Facebook Advertising Mistakes Most Small Businesses Make

Facebook is an incredible platform for marketing your business. Your brand can become successful and bring in large amounts of revenue, as well as awareness, just by utilising Facebook’s business tools. However, you can’t just put in some money, run a few campaigns, and hope for the best. It requires constant evaluation and altering to find the best avenue for your business and the best content that captures your audience. We want your company to be successful, making the time and effort all worth it. Here are five mistakes that companies make when managing Facebook Ads themselves.

Don’t Make these Facebook Advertising Mistakes

You Aren’t Spending Enough Money

Sorry to break it to you but spending $5-10 on Facebook Advertising a day just won’t cut it unless you’ve lucked out. Most businesses will say they’ve given Facebook Ads a go, but it didn’t work out. This is most likely because their budget is not set high enough, thus Facebook doesn’t have enough to work with. Another common mistake is that businesses get excited, create too many ads, and then spread their budget too thin across all ads. As a result, it is significantly challenging to optimise existing campaigns or put extra money towards a specific ad.

Poor Audience Targeting

Small Businesses make a common mistake because their audience is too large, and they aren’t specific with their targeting. There are millions of users on Facebook (over 13 million in Australia) as well as an ample number of businesses marketing their brands. If your audience is too large, it is bound to get lost amongst other content and reach people to whom the ad will not provide value. Facebook offers a variety of features for you to utilise and target your ad correctly, e.g., location, demographics, interests, engagement, behaviours, and automatic optimization. However, if your audience size is too small, your ad may not be delivered correctly and in turn you will be wasting budget by over-saturating your audience. Facebook has a dial that illustrates your audience size, if it is too big or small; use this feature to your advantage, and you will target the correct audience. Remember to test out and change audiences regularly.

You’re Not Monitoring Your Ads

Do not set up your ads, then abandon them for weeks. Although Facebook has a tool that automatically optimises ads, you must check the performance of your ads every day. Ad frequency, conversion rate, clicks, costs per action, sales/leads generated, and ad performance by type and placement are key features to analyse. This is a big part Facebook Advertising, and what we do on daily basis to ensure our clients campaigns continue to deliver. Doing this will help you see which ads are performing, where ads aren’t, what changes you need to make, and if you need to increase your budget.

Pick the Correct Type of Objectives and Ads

Facebook advertising has various ad features and objectives to choose from. It is important to select the right objectives and ad types that align with the ad you are conveying to your audience. Do you want more sales by driving traffic to your website or bringing awareness to your brand, or are you launching a new product? All these desires will have different objectives and ad types to ensure your ad is successful. It is essential to become aware and learn about the different features before selecting one, as it may not align with your intention or audience uptake.

Final Tip, Be Patient

You will not become successful overnight – as Facebook advertising specialists it took us over 4 years to become highly skilled in the area, and with Facebook changing every year, there are always new strategies to be applied. You need to test ads, play around with what your audience engages with and what they don’t. For a business, Facebook advertising is about learning all the different features available and using them to your advantage. Be patient. Some of the best marketers out there are still learning about Facebook ads today and understanding how to receive the best outcome for businesses, creating brand awareness and revenue. Bottom line, if you aren’t seeing results after a week, do not chuck the towel in and give up. Keep at it and analysing your performance, then you will start to see results.

Facebook advertising can provide insane returns, just like anything, if you put in the time and work, you will see results. Your campaign will be successful by taking on board these tips and creating engaging, insightful, unique content. If you need assistance with Facebook advertising, reach out to us today!

Happy Hour: Lark Distillery, Tasmanian Single Malt Whisky

Marc B — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 01:06:40 +0000

Happy Hour: Lark Distillery, Tasmanian Single Malt Whisky

If you have a bottle at home or have ever tasted Lark, you know what all the fuss is about. With a myriad of awards acknowledging that over the last 30 years, they have created some of the best whisky in Australia, you know they are doing something right. Lark not only make whisky well, they know how to brand and market their products with an enticing social appeal. Here’s a bit about Lark in case you don’t know, as well as what we love about Lark’s digital marketing and why it works so well.

Who is Lark Distillery?

Lark Distillery is a small, family-owned distillery in Tasmania that produce a range of Tasmanian whiskies and other spirits, and we know what you’re thinking, “are they any good?” Without a doubt, Lark Whisky is some of the best whisky around. We recently grabbed a bottle of Lark Classic Cask Whisky for Christmas, and it did not disappoint with an outstanding balance of sweet, spicy and savoury notes.

Tasmanian Bill Lark founded Lark Distillery, and they have been crafting and distilling for over 30 using the same methods as their ancestors to produce their whisky, which is a traditional Scottish method called ‘malting’. This process takes around four weeks and involves soaking barley grains in water until they sprout, drying them out until they are ready to be milled into what we know as malt flour and then using this malt flour to make whiskey mash. Bill started distilling Tasmanian bush liqueur from the native pepper berry 30 years ago, and today, Lark is a publicly-traded company with close to 50 employees.

What Makes Lark Whiskey Unique?

Lark Whiskey is a Tasmanian whiskey that is distilled and matured in Tasmania. It is made from Tasmanian barley and pure water from the Lark River. The distillery was established in 1992, making them the first Australian distillery to produce single malt spirit in 154 years since it was outlawed in Tasmania in 1838.

Besides the incredible taste that makes Lark unique, one of the main things is their range of limited releases such as their Christmas Cask, Nola Whisky Bar Limited Release, and others. Each cask from Lark has its own rich story.

Image: Lark Distillery

Image & Video: Lark Distillery

Digital Marketing in Tasmania & Australia

Heritage

This one follows from the point above – but Lark instils their heritage and excellence across all the marketing. Whilst there is an uptick in people supporting heritage brands of late, they have the credibility of a well-established business that is constantly innovating. Even if a consumer hasn’t made a purchase from Lark, like most heritage or established brands, they have built trust and awareness of their brand and products not just in Australia but across the globe.

Pioneers of the Palate

Lark Distillery is known for its passion for producing the best Tasmanian whiskey via remaining creative and dynamic coupled with its pioneering attitude. Constantly pursuing excellence, they endeavour to deliver the best styles and flavours whilst pushing the boundaries of convention. Aligning their values to their target audience, they celebrate their intense passion and commitment for creating the most refined spirits whilst taking their customers along for the journey.

Front & Centre

Whilst their casks’ taste may be complex (like their Frogmore Creek Cuvée Cask tasting of orange oil, lemon drops, almonds and toast), their marketing and product photography puts their product front and centre with clean, minimalistic approaches. The quality of their photography translates the quality of the product and entices would-be purchasers to seek out more. This clean approach is deployed across all their marketing channels, from their user-friendly website to social media ads and email marketing.

Final thoughts

Lark Distillery found a gap in the market 30 years ago and successfully created a product range that not only entices and delights the community but continually evolves whilst retaining their known-for attribute of excellence. They’re in a league of their own amongst their competitors, and their persistent strong value-alignment with their target audience means they’ll always have a loyal consumer base. Whilst they may not fire on the latest digital marketing trends, they know how to implement the mainstays of a digital marketing strategy, and they implement them well.

So, what can your business learn from Lark Distillery? The main lesson is to understand who your target audience is and align your marketing strategy to your vision and goals. This is complemented with a digital marketing strategy that revolves around your target audience and tackling what you can with time/resource restraints and doing it well, compared to firing on all channels.

Easier said than done, right? But we can give you a hand, so get in touch!

8 Social Media Christmas Tips – Marketing Your Business for Christmas

Marc B — Fri, 29 Oct 2021 03:17:43 +0000

8 Social Media Christmas Tips – Marketing Your Business for Christmas

The Christmas period comes around so fast, and I know, we are freaking out too – the year always flys by. With Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, the end of school, Christmas, and the New Year all coming up, it feels like there are not enough minutes in the day to organise it all. Marketing is an essential tool to utilise during the Christmas period, and we have broken it down into 8 of our top tips for your business to be successful and stress-free during the next crazy few months.

Digital Marketing Tips for Christmas

#1. Determine achievable objectives

There are various goals you can define during this period. It is important to have specific campaigns running that align with your objectives. This may mean having an umbrella of objectives under one campaign, e.g., remarketing, brand, traffic, engagement, reach, conversions just to mention a few. Once you know your goals and objectives, it will be easier to plan your marketing strategies over the Christmas period, making sure you have content aimed at different people across your funnel of objectives.

#2. Plan, Plan, Plan

You can’t just sit there and expect everything to come together last minute, a cohesive plan needs to start months ahead. Get together with your team and plan out the coming months, week by week. Invest in software that schedules posts on social media and sends planned emails for you. That way, you do not need to worry about small tasks during the day that take up a lot of time, and you can focus on the more significant issues. It is vital to start this planning process early to fill in the gaps where necessary, and the more posts scheduled, the better. Remember to include time for content turn arounds, whether that’s blog articles, creative for social media emails or copywriting for emails.

#3. Revisit Last Year

The best way to improve your business is to revisit past performance reports and analyse what worked and what did not. Did you allocate enough budget for the period, start advertising early enough, and stay consistent across all platforms? These are questions you need to ask yourself and improve on from the previous years. Look at what worked and what didn’t and then double down and optimise.

#4. Promote Express / Free Delivery

Most people are panicking the last week before Christmas trying to get their hands on gifts. The last thing they need is standard shipping at a cost. Offering free or cheaper express delivery incites people to shop from your company, knowing they will receive the present in a few days. It can also help add a sense of urgency in emails and social media ads by highlighting cut-off dates to receive orders by Christmas.

#5. Stand Out

Everyone is promoting Christmas specials, don’t just be another brand that someone scrolls past. Personalise your campaigns directly towards the individual by using creative that stops them scrolling, personalise email marketing using name fields and promote a range, not product specific. Think out of the box and steer away from doing your standard campaigns. It will blend into what people are used to seeing. Finally, learn to target your audience correctly or narrow down on specific audiences, this will enable your social media ads to perform during a competitive time.

#6. Have A Consistent Branding Look

Although you want to stand out, you need to be consistent across all platforms in relation to branding. Choose your Christmas theme and run with it throughout the period. Incorporate specific slogans, logos, and colours to stay on-brand and stay timely.

#7. Remarketing

Remarketing is important during the Christmas period, keeping your brand and specific products at the forefront of individuals’ minds, especially with competition extremely high on digital marketing platforms. Email marketing and Facebook ads are excellent ways to utilise remarketing to your advantage and get customers to finish their purchase.

#8. Take Time for Yourself

Christmas is a time of joy, spending valuable time with your family and friends indulging in delicious food, and soaking up the memories created. It can be the busiest time of the year for businesses, but it is important to take time for yourself – you don’t want to burn out before the beginning of a new year. Plan early and set a time for yourself to soak up the Christmas spirit. Communicating downtime to customers helps to show there’s a person behind a brand and is not a bad thing.

Get on top of the Christmas period now with these top tips that will have you breezing into the last few weekends. Here at Pink Lemonade, we can help you have a stress-free Christmas, assisting your business with utilising the marketing tools available to you. Sit back, relax, and we will do all the hard work as you watch your sales skyrocket over the coming months.

If you have any questions or want to pick our brains, feel free to contact us, and we will be more than happy to help.

Instagram Update September 2021 – Goodbye Swipe Up Link, Hello New Features

Marc B — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 03:13:27 +0000

Instagram Update September 2021 – Goodbye Instagram Swipe Up Link, Hello New Features

Instagram constantly plays around with new features to improve the app and for users to create more engaging content for everyone to enjoy. Instagram typically tests new elements on a group of selected users before rolling out the new features to the whole app. If you’re an avid Instagram user then you’ll know all about the changes in the past. The platform never stops surprising us, and it can be challenging to keep up with the ever-changing environment for a business account. Here are two changes over the past few weeks that may affect your platform.

Instagram May Be Changing the Way We Re-Share Content

First up, re-sharing stories and posts are taking a turn. Instagram is rolling this feature out to a select group of users to give the company an idea of how users interact with this element and if it will be beneficial or not. This feature allows content to be re-shared through a sticker rather than a direct post. The content you interact with, such as comment, saving, or sharing, will appear under the sticker tray when creating a new story. Stories, posts, and reels viewed in the last hour will be found here, allowing you to select the content you would like to share, thus creating a sticker for users to click on and view themselves.

Instagram is playing around with this new feature as it allows users to be more creative with their story posts and create engaging content that will entice people to be more interactive. The content re-shared through the sticker will appear against the backdrop of an existing story you have made, giving you the freedom to personalise your content. Instagram constantly tests new features, so you may find this rolling out across the whole platform in a few months, or you may never see it again.

The Swipe Up Feature on Instagram Is Being Retired, well actually Transformed

Secondly, Instagram had already tested this feature out a few months ago, and they found it a success among users, thus from August 30th, it is gradually rolling out across all accounts. The swipe-up link is a feature that accounts with large followings regularly use across their stories to direct story views to a website to promote a particular product, share an article, or anywhere the content creator or business wants them to go.

The swipe-up link is transforming into a sticker where users can link stickers to external websites. Thus, all individuals have to do is tap the sticker, and they are taken there. Instagram has stated it aims to “streamline the stories creation experience” and enable more “creative control” to users. It allows people to re-size the sticker and place it wherever they desire on their story to make it more engaging for individuals to see. In addition, you can now respond and react to the stories that have a link sticker attached, which was not possible with the older feature. It was known that the swipe-up link was only available to what seemed to be accounts with over 10,000 followers or verified accounts. Currently, it appears to be the same with the new link stickers, as Instagram has stated they are “still evaluating” whether to roll it out to more users.

That’s all we have (for now) on what is going on surrounding Instagram’s ever-changing features. For a business, it’s essential to stay across what is being introduced into the space so you can be on top and utilise the new features to your advantage. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us, and we will be more than happy to help.

Social Media for Hospitality Businesses – Successful Strategy Advice & Tips

Marc B — Wed, 21 Jul 2021 06:24:58 +0000

Social Media for Hospitality Businesses – Facebook & Instagram Tips & Strategy

Do you feel lost when it comes to social media for your restaurant or café? You’re not alone. These days, every hotel, restaurant and hospitality business is posting on social media, and it can be challenging to cut through the noise. Facebook and Instagram can be powerful marketing tools for cafes, restaurants, bars and other hospitality businesses, from both an organic and paid organic perspective. You just need the know-how, keep best practices in mind and avoid common mistakes.

Why Should Hospitality Businesses
Use Social Media?

Organic social media is free, and paid social media is affordable, allowing you to connect to larger audiences and potential customers in a quick timeframe. Compared to traditional marketing and advertising, it is a great way to attract new customers and build loyalty -it all comes down to an effective social media strategy.

As a business, you might also be unaware that many customers are doing the work for you on social media without you realising it. Incredible looking dishes, venues and locations entice customers to take photos – take a quick look on Instagram, and you might find a range of photos about your business already.

Social Media and Covid-19 for Hospitality Businesses

Social media is an easy and effective way to communicate to your customers and patrons the current state of your business, whether you are take-away only, currently closed or still open with covid-safety measures in place. During the current coronavirus climate in Australia, using your social media to encourage people to support small and local businesses is also a great and effective way to ensure your business continues to operate; don’t be afraid to tell your customers and ask for help. Make sure your social posts have CTA’s (call to action), it is easy to navigate to online menus and offerings and is easy for the customer to become a customer.

Implementing an Effective Social Media Strategy for Your Hospitality Business

You’re on board, you understand the importance of social media, so the next step is to put together an effective social media strategy. As with any marketing or advertising strategy, you should start with clear goals in mind that will allow you to track how well your strategy is working. Goals do not have to be outrageous and can include things like:

Increased comments, likes and saves on social media posts
Increased website visitors
Increased online orders

With your goals in mind, it’s time to research your target audience. Questions that will help include:

Who are the customers I want to reach?
Where are they located?
What are they interested in?
What are the barriers to stop them from becoming a customer?
What would entice them to try?
What information are they looking for?

How to Create a Content Strategy for the Hospitality Industry

Following your top-level research and strategy, it all comes down to your content strategy and planning. Every person has heard the term ‘content is king’, and in the social media realm, this is more than evident. A few quick tips to help with your content strategy include:

Set goals for every channel, for whichever platforms you use (at the beginning, it is best to stick to one or two platforms)
Invest time into creating and curating appealing photography, imagery, and if possible, video – video is the most engaging, click-worthy and converting content on all social media platforms. You don’t have to go to the extent of hiring videographers, but spend time taking photos and videos (not haphazardly), and you instantly have something to work with, just add filters, effects, overlays and you’re done!
Plan out a calendar of content – you want to be posting a minimum of 3 times a week, and if time allows, using features such as stories and reels etc.
Use social media scheduling tools to save time posting – there are many free and paid options out there; just have a browse.
Research relevant hashtags related to your business, industry, location and trends people are using on social media – and have a mixture of hashtags in your content that changes with posts; don’t keep using the same hashtags!

Social Media Mistakes to Avoid for Hospitality Businesses

Whilst there are significant benefits to using social media for hospitality businesses, there are also some common mistakes to avoid when implementing your social media strategies. These include:

Posting content that is not relevant to your audience – can be seen as spammy and turn your customers away
Posting content infrequently
No face or voice as a business – remember it is about being social. The more a customer can see the person, team behind the company the better.
Too many shop now, purchase now posts, too many “comment and like” encouragements in posts. Remember, it’s about engaging with real people, not telling people what to do.
Not engaging with customers; if you want them to engage with you, you must engage back. Reply to comments and messages, and interact in the social community in your industry.
Not showcasing your offering and environment
Avoid negative-geared content and topical content; it can backfire, and you don’t want to be seen as fearmongering or trying to capitalise on topical content.

Whether you are a café, restaurant, bar, hotel or other hospitality business, social media needs to be a part of your marketing plan, including advertising.

How to Use Instagram Marketing Successfully for Hospitality

Instagram connects people through visual elements, including photos, videos and ephemeral content like stories. Whether your business is small, medium, or large, you can be using Instagram to increase awareness, build customers and loyalty. It is a platform to be creative, to drive sales, and connect with consumers on a deeper level.

No matter what industry your business falls under, using Instagram as a marketing strategy is an essential tool. The social platform comes with various features for companies to use and create content to their advantage, including singular posts, carousels, video posts, reels, stories, IGTV, live videos, and a shopping section.

Tips to Using Instagram Successfully

Post consistently (daily or at a minimum three times a week)
Use handles (@) to engage with other accounts
Use hashtags (#) to promote your content further and connect with similar accounts in the same industry
Post a variety of content, including educational, entertainment, inspirational and promotional posts
Utilise Instagram stories and engage with consumers, including using features such as polls, questions, behind the scenes content
Engage with other accounts by liking and commenting on their content
Use your data insights to understand what your customers engage with the most and the best day/time to post

How to Use Facebook Marketing Successfully

Facebook is a highly effective tool to generate conversions and connect with targeted audiences. Facebook enables your business to build awareness, get people interested in your brand, assist consumers in learning more about your offerings, and finally lead to driving sales.

Ensure you are posting with intention and creating valuable, engaging content for your consumers. If they see the same creative week-in-week-out, they will get bored and not engage with the post. Thus, it’s vital to switch your content up and not only provide promotional posts but also think out-of-the-box; create content your audience hasn’t been provided before for more interaction. Furthermore, if your post is engaging and unique, people will like it, comment, share, and save it, driving lead generations and boosting your post. In saying this, organic content gets very little traction, with Facebook and Instagram becoming a pay-to-play environment. Whilst unfortunate, you can achieve great success with Facebook and Instagram advertising without breaking the bank.

Through Facebook, Facebook Ads Manager was created, bringing to life a vital tool for business growth. It allows you to run campaigns through Facebook, connecting to a large audience you intend to target. It is an excellent tool for businesses as you can create unique customer audiences based on various data sources; those who have visited your website in the last 180 days, individuals who have added a product to their cart but not clicked buy, or target people who have previously watched more than 50% of a recent campaign video. Through Facebook Ads Manager, you can create lookalike audiences targeting similar people who take an interest in your business. You can also narrow down audiences and continually test to see which will produce the most results for a given objective.

It is imperative as a business that you create and install a Facebook Pixel on your website, as it collects data about who is visiting your website and interacting with your business, allowing you to retarget specific consumers down the track and use data to target new potential customers

Analysing Facebook Page Insights is another tool any business can utilise to its advantage. It helps you determine what posts your audience engage with the most, what demographic is interacting with your content, what time and day to post and to boost your posts and other essential features that enable you to drive sales and increase brand awareness further.

Facebook advertising can take years to master, and if you are a small business, have a limited budget or have time on your hands, then you can search for online tutorials to get you started before working with a team like us at Pink Lemonade, who have nearly a decade of specialist experience in paid social advertising.

Social Media Best Practices for Hospitality Businesses

Finishing up, here’s a few specific tips and best practices to get the most out of social media for your hospitality business.

As mentioned above, actively engage with your followers; set aside time regularly, and it will help ensure you are not doing it at 11 pm without enthusiasm.
Implement storytelling – storytelling beats selling every time. Get creative with your content, and the storytelling with naturally be incorporated.
Consider influencer marketing, but not first and foremost. You understand that social content is ephemeral; you post today, tomorrow it has disappeared into a million other posts. Whilst influencer marketing can be successful (you can read our guide on How to Work With Influencers here), it can be costly, short-lived and not help deliver continuing results.
Plan for paid social advertising – whilst you don’t have to fork out an extensive advertising spend, running ongoing campaigns or campaigns on and off over the year can help bring in a new audience, drive attendance and bookings, and ultimately increase your revenue.
Make your social an experience; create engaging content, share behind the scenes, highlight your unique points of difference as well as your customer service.

Let me know your thoughts, questions or your experience with creating a social media strategy in the comments section below, or if you need more advice or assistance with social media advertising, feel free to get in touch!

Thanks for reading!

X Marc

Facebook Ads for Musicians – 10 Types of Awesome Audiences to Target

Marc B — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 07:34:42 +0000

Facebook Ads for Musicians
– 10 Types of Audiences to Target –

There’s no shortage of websites and YouTube tutorials teaching you how to create Facebook ads, but the biggest hurdle you will face is achieving sustainable and increased results. It’s hard knowing how to build out strong social funnels and what to look for and optimise when managing social ads – after all, that’s why there are social specialists like us at Pink Lemonade who have been doing this for nearly a decade.

But if you’re a musician or performing artist and are considering social media advertising or trying to understand whatyou can do with it and who are the types of audiences you can target– this article is specifically for you.

With nearly a decade of experience in Facebook advertising across almost every type of industry, I can confidently say Facebook advertising is one of the most effective avenues to reach an audience and get them to engage with your brand/business and convert. Whether that is a purchase, sign up or complete another action you want them to do, it can be done successfully without costing an arm and leg.

Below are the ten types of audiences you can target with Facebook ads, suited to musicians and performing artists, using ads to entertain and engage, making it a strong option for promotion and engagement.

Who Can I Target With Facebook Ads? 10 Facebook Audiences for Musicians & Performing Artists

#1. Target & Reach Facebook Fans & People Who Have Liked Your Page

Now you might be assuming that of course your current fans or people who have ‘liked’ your page will see your content posted on your page, but sadly this is a thing of the past. Organic content (this is content you’re posting on your page without paying costs for boosting or advertising) is shown only to a tiny percentage of the people that actually like or follow your page. Usually, it is seen by under 10%, but more often than not around 1-3%, leaving a large percentage of your fans and followers not seeing your content.

When posting content to your page, yes you can pay to boost this content, and there are several goals or objectives you can optimise towards, including engagement, contacts etc (see below). The downside to boosting content compared to Facebook advertising through ads manager is the limited targeting and ability to ensure your money is not wasted through specific targeting that will get your results. If you choose to boost posts, best practice is to select people who have shown an interest already via engagement.

#2. Target & Reach Your Engaged Social Audience

As well as reaching people that like and follow your page, using Facebook Ads Manager you also have the ability to create a custom audience of people who have engaged with your Facebook and Instagram account. Having a business or creator Instagram account, as well as your Facebook page, allows you to create a custom audience including everyone who has engaged with your accounts, who has engaged with (comments, likes etc.) or saved posts, those that have sent messages or visited your profile. The maximum date range is 365 days, and creating different custom audiences using these options creates a strong social audience to promote your content to. This custom audience can be a powerful middle and bottom of funnel audience – have you ever liked or commented on posts but don’t follow the actual pages or Instagram accounts?

#3. Target & Reach People Who’ve Liked Other Pages and Artists

As a musician or performing artist, you know your sound and art is unique and will be enjoyed by an audience that also likes acts such as… Fans of other select Facebook pages make a great way to target a broader, colder audience who will most likely interact with your ads and convert. Managing ads through Facebook’s Business Manager, in the detailed targeting section, you can target people by interest, demographic and behaviours – and fans of other pages fit into the interest category. Don’t get your hopes too high, as not every page or account is available for targeting; see examples below. Yay, I can target fans of Rufus (who rock), but I can’t target those who follow or like Delta Goodrem – strange.

This limitation isn’t just to the music industry. Managing clients across all industries, I witness the inability to target large retailers or online brands and then sometimes strike it lucky finding smaller niche options that work well. If using this audience type for one of your advertising strategies, my advice is to write a long list of bands, musicians, acts and other interests you think or know your ideal audience will be interested in. You will most likely find two or three out of ten are available to target. As with all Facebook advertising, large, broad audiences aren’t great; you want to narrow your audience down to a smaller, manageable audience size for your budget to ensure you get the results you’re hoping for.

#4. Target & Reach Spotify Users

Using the detailed targeting option in Ads Manager, you can target those interested in Spotify (which are most likely users). As an example, targeting the Spotify interest for 18-35-year old’s in Australia leaves you with an audience size of 1.8 million people. While Spotify doesn’t disclose their subscriber numbers, it’s estimated they have around 7.7 million Aussie users, so the numbers look good.

Using Spotify in interest targeting is also a great way to narrow down your audience, especially if you are running ads aiming to get people to swipe up or click through and stream on Spotify.

#5. Reach Your Website Visitors

If you haven’t installed a pixel on your site yet, stop what you are doing and do that right now. You are losing precious data. A Facebook pixel tracks all your website visitors’ actions and is MANDATORY if doing Facebook ads. The longer you have this installed, the more significant data Facebook accumulates, helping your ads perform.

Back to number five and halfway through the list, is a great time to ask how many people have visited your website in the last 30 days? If you are not using your Facebook Pixel or looking at Google Analytics to check up on your website, then make sure you start from today.

Out of all your website visitors, how many have clicked through to stream music, purchase merch or booked tickets to your gigs?

Understanding what visitors do on your website and how they interact is essential, as you want it to be a smooth, seamless experience for them.

With a Facebook pixel on your site, using Facebook ads, you can get your social ads in front of every Facebook user who has visited your website over the time period you specify (maximum is 180 days), whether they have engaged with your site or not. You can also create custom conversion events (e.g. contacts, booked tickets, purchased) and exclude them so that you don’t annoy your audience if they have already completed the actions you are aiming for.

But targeting website visitors gets even better!

When creating your custom audience, you can separate the audience into multiple categories of people who have visited specific pages on your website.

Here are a few ideas on how you can use these separate audiences:

Those who have looked at your gigs/tour/calendar page might be interested to see you live – advertise upcoming dates to this audience
Those that visited your music page might be interested in listening – promote your new single, album or playlist and get those Spotify streams up
Those that visited your merch page but failed to shop? Use dynamic remarketing or offer them a discount to get those sales.

Do you have a Facebook account? Well, then chances are my pixel has added you to the list of people reading my blog pages. If I wanted to create Facebook ads, I could serve ads to you to read further blogs, to get in touch if you need assistance with paid social media (I wouldn’t, it’s too creepy and not my style), or I could even use the data accumulated by Facebook to create a lookalike audience of blog readers and then promote ads to try and increase my blog readers.

#6. Reach Your Email Subscribers

You already have an email list of fans and followers, and you know how to hit them in their inboxes – why would you spend money to advertise to them on Facebook?

Here’s a few good reasons:

Check your past email open and click rates – they might not have opened, read, or clicked through to your site. They might have also gone to spam or junk.
Multiple customer touchpoints are an important part of marketing – people receiving multiple impressions via different methods are more likely to engage and convert.
Use your email database to create a lookalike audience to find people who are closely aligned with your current subscribers. You need a minimum of 100 subscribers, and the more emails you have, the more powerful your lookalike audience will be.

#7. Target & Reach Lookalike Audiences

One of the best features of Facebook advertising is the ability to create lookalike audiences based on a custom audience. Whether it’s those that have engaged with your Facebook page or Instagram Account, Email list, Website visitors, creating a lookalike audience will produce an audience of around 180,000 people (at 1%) that Facebook deems similar to the original data you based your list off.

In saying this, it doesn’t mean all 180,00 people are exactly like your data source, and one of the reasons again to hire a social specialist is that month on month, and over time, you want to refine the quality of your custom and lookalike audiences, building out full-funnel audiences. If you use wide/large lookalike audiences, again, you can narrow these down by interest or behaviours to make your audience size smaller but also more niche.

Lookalike audiences, on average, perform better than colder, broad audiences such as interest targeting. In the example below, with a client new to Facebook advertising in the online learning industry, we started Facebook ads with limited targeting options (only interests and demographics) and, after 30 days of accumulating data, created a lookalike audience of website visitors to target ongoing. As lookalikes are more closely related than broad interest targeting, and as expected in general, the cost per result will be cheaper for lookalike audiences.

#8. Target & Reach a Local Audience

Have gigs or a tour coming up? Targeting a local audience via location (where you can choose a radius around a location), age and interests is a great way to get your ads in front of a local audience. Promote your upcoming gigs to increase ticket sales and attendance.

#9. Target & Reach Event Audiences & Lookalikes

Creating an event listing on your Facebook page for your upcoming shows can not only be used by your Facebook fans and followers, but it can also be used as an ad. Instead of creating a new ad with a banner or video and a link to your tour page, you can also use your event Facebook posts to increase people interested in going to your event – with all your details in your event listing.

Event listings can also be used to retarget people – want to promote your merch to people attending your events, or album sales to those that attended your event? Event listing data is a great option for remarketing, as well as creating lookalikes for future ads.

#10. Retargeting Audiences

One of the most important audiences in social advertising is your retargeting audience. People visited your tour page but failed to book tickets? People added your albums to cart but didn’t complete their purchase? Although 90% of your budget will be spent on cold and warm audiences, it’s important to remember not to waste the hard-earned audiences you have already brought into your customer flows.

Even if you don’t have anything to sell, there are still ways to use a retargeting audience, including:

Visited or interested in a gig/event – stream music online now
Visited your site or streamed your music – follow on Facebook/Instagram, sign up to email database

Remember, though you can get your ads in front of a vast range of audiences, not all of them are going to engage, interact or convert with you. The average conversion rate is around 1 – 5%; it doesn’t mean you ignore the 95% who don’t. They might just need a little nudge or are interested but not ready to convert yet. Keep all your audience types and the stage they are at in mind when planning on your social media campaigns.

Final Thoughts

As a musician or performing artist, whether you’re interested in increasing your Spotify streams to crack the algorithms, increase awareness of your new music, drive gig books or get that merch selling – it all comes down to the right audiences, the right types of campaigns and the right ads that are mobile optimised and speak to the audience.

Boosting a post every now and then is good, but with social ads, it’s all about improving results month on month. One thing not covered in this article is timing – if you have a new album coming out on September 2nd^, don’t wait till September 1st to start advertising. By September 2nd, you want to have had campaigns running for over a month, accumulating a lot of data to create strong custom audiences, so that come September 2nd, you can target a range of audiences, with a range of ad types to achieve your objective.

Musicians and performing artists understandably can’t sustain ongoing social media advertising 365 days a year like eCommerce businesses, but planning for a 2-3 month paid social campaign strategy that covers objectives across the pre-, during, and post- stages of your promotion will help you achieve the best possible results for you and your art!

Let me know your thoughts, questions or your experience with Facebook ads in the comments section below , and thanks for reading!

X Marc

facebook advertising – Pink Lemonade Social

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Who Can I Target With Facebook Ads? 10 Facebook Audiences for Musicians & Performing Artists

#1. Target & Reach Facebook Fans & People Who Have Liked Your Page

#2. Target & Reach Your Engaged Social Audience

#3. Target & Reach People Who’ve Liked Other Pages and Artists

#4. Target & Reach Spotify Users

#5. Reach Your Website Visitors

But targeting website visitors gets even better!

#6. Reach Your Email Subscribers

#7. Target & Reach Lookalike Audiences

#8. Target & Reach a Local Audience

#9. Target & Reach Event Audiences & Lookalikes

#10. Retargeting Audiences

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– 10 Types of Audiences to Target –