The travel category is the most popular one on Facebook but how do you ensure that your content stands out in such a crowded place? Pamela Whitby takes a look

Dorianne Richelle, Facebook’s Travel Lead, is a passionate traveller and marketer but she is not into gaming.

“I’m totally not but I kept being sent all these gaming apps,” she says. 

However, after using Facebook’s ‘I don't want to see this’ from the drop down menu on her newsfeed the ads stopped coming.

Even Richelle, one of Facebook’s strongest advocates, sounds somewhat surprised.  

“I never get those ads anymore, not even from new companies. The algorithm just knows that Dorianne is not in the market for gaming.”

The point she is making is a subtle, yet important one.

Not only are the days of one-to-many marketing well and truly over, today it’s about using all means possible to ensure that you reach the right person at the right time on the right device and with personal, relevant content.

With almost 1.4 billion people actively using Facebook and travel being the most popular category, there are clear opportunities for travel brands. But Facebook is also a very crowded place with all sorts of travel content vying for users’ attention in the newsfeed. So how do you stand out? 

A subtle but strong focus on mobile

Not since the 1960s, when television overtook radio, have we seen such a radical shift in consumer behaviour. In 2013 digital channels overtook television for the first time and Facebook, with its audience of real people, has been at the heart of this shift. Today a billion searches a day are conducted on the social network and 3 billion videos are consumed.

We are living in revolutionary times, and this shift is being driven largely by mobile

Dorianne Richelle, Travel Lead, Facebook 

“We are living in revolutionary times,” says Richelle, “and this shift is being driven largely by mobile”.

Facebook’s 2014 fourth quarter results show just how big that shift has been; revenues rose from $2.59 billion to $3.85 billion on the previous year, with 69% of that coming directly from mobile advertising revenues.

Three years ago, everybody was talking about mobile marketing but nobody really had a clue about how to start. What Facebook seemed to understand quicker than others, was the highly personal nature of the mobile device. After all, Facebook’s currency is ‘real people’ and not IP addresses, cookies or anonymous email addresses. 

“We couldn’t ignore what real people were doing,” says Richelle.

To cement the point, research from IDC into user behaviour highlights the significant role that mobile plays in the lives of Facebook users:   

• 79% of users keep their mobile phone with them for all but two hours of the waking day
• 63% of users check their newsfeed throughout the day
• 70% of users view Facebook on a mobile device

Jonathan Ye, Starwood’s senior manager, digital marketing social, mobile & emerging technologies Asia Pacific is one that acknowledges Facebook’s early lead in delivering a ‘subtle’ mobile advertising experience, but he also believes that this is just beginning.

Providing it is done gracefully and at the right moment, his personal view is that we’re heading into a world where mobile advertising will start coming to you in the form of personalised rewards that will increase intent to purchase.

Forget social metrics and focus on brand equity and sales  

Three years ago, social metrics such as likes and engagement were how you measured the success of a campaign. That’s no longer the case. Today social is about real business and, as such, requires the sound application of business metrics. Whether it’s about customer retention, cross-selling or new sales, firms need to work out how they measure their success and plan campaigns accordingly.

Take Lufthansa as an example. Recognising that millennials weren’t engaging with the brand, the German airline worked closely with Facebook to change that. By working with bloggers from across the globe the German airline created and then shared around 60 pieces of content with their target audience in Germany and the US. Some of the questions that came up when considering how to measure the success of the campaign included:

• Why am I doing this? Who am I trying to reach?
• Does it change my brand equity? In other words, will people even consider booking with me as a result?
• How will I measure the success of this campaign? In other words, will it drive sales?

By using Facebook’s aggregated data and targeting a specific age group with “amazing” content that would appeal to the interests of millennials, Lufthansa achieved impressive results, says Richelle.

A controlled study by Nielsen saw:

• 14% increase in brand popularity in the core target group
• 530,000 + thinking less negatively about Lufthansa
• 300 million + impressions in the Facebook News Feed (33% via desktop, 68% via mobile)

Know when and how much to retarget

The days of one-to-many marketing may be over but at Facebook where, according to Richelle, the big questions are how often, when and to whom. Of course, Facebook can help define those parameters but you know your customers best.

Retargeting a customer soon after they have visited your site is a powerful marketing tool.

“Targeting a customer soon after they have engaged with your site is best practice but retargeting with the same offer a few weeks later or, worse still, after they have booked is not,” says Richelle.

Not only is this irritating and potentially off-putting, it’s also costly. Why pay to advertise to a customer that has recently bought into your brand?

In Richelle’s experience, the travel brands that do it best are the ones that have strongly integrated social into their core business strategies and simply “reach out to the right people - real people - in the place that is most personal to them and in the way they most like to consume content”.

In other words on their mobile device!  

Great content is crucial but you get what you pay for   

As Jason Antony, assistant vice president for digital engagement at the Viceroy Group has learnt no matter how big your fan base the average new post generally touches less than 20% of your followers. The only way, he says, that you can extend your reach without paying more for advertising is through dynamic and engaging content.

So everything starts with quality content that tells a story in way that appeals to your audience (See how luxury handpicked flash sales market place, Secret Escapes, has done just that).

While Richelle agrees that great content is incredibly important, she points out that in Facebook’s crowded world it has to be ‘both, and’.

She argues that no matter how much money you spend on advertising, if you don’t have the right content, it just isn’t going to work. By the same token, producing great content that nobody will see is a wasted investment.

In summary then, it’s probably fair to say that you get what you pay for but it helps to have the best content possible.

Join EyeforTravel @ Mobile World Congress on March 2 where Richelle and other senior executives from the travel industry will be speaking