Facebook Ads targeting for tours and activities providers

Finding the right audience to advertise to is pretty difficult. However when using Rezdy and Facebook to target your customers, or people that are very similar to your customers you might be able to get more repeat purchases or target the right people at the right moment. In this article we’ll explain how to create a custom audience and a lookalike audience using Facebook and Rezdy so you can maximise the effectiveness of your Facebook ads.

Create a lookalike audience using your Rezdy information.

We’ll explain step by step how to attract customers that are similar to the ones that already went on a tour or activity with you. To easily understand from where we start, watch Facebook’s video below.

Types of Custom Audiences

There are many types of custom audiences on Facebook and they are growing every day.

Customer List or Standard Custom Audience. This is a list that is compiled of emails, phone numbers, or Facebook user IDs that Facebook will match with its users. Facebook will match approximately between 60-80 per cent of the contacts on your list. Previously, uploading this list had to be done manually but now, Rezdy can allow you to export your email list to Facebook.
Lookalike Audience. Once you have generated a Custom Audience, you can request Facebook to create a broader “Lookalike Audience” to target your ads to. Facebook can search for patterns and characteristics that are similar to your current users, leads or customers and create a much wider list of very similar users who have never interacted with your business and can be potential customers.

Export your email list from Rezdy to Facebook

Find the customers in your Rezdy Customer tab. You’ll see the following buttons.

Click Export to CSV.

Open the file, delete all columns, except:

Email
Phone number
First Name
Last Name
Zip / postal Code
City
State / Province
Country
Date of Birth
Gender
Age

Facebook uses these fields to identify your customers. In the next steps we’ll expain how to upload your customer list and find a similar audience.

Note: You need at least 100 customers.

Note: If you use the Rezdy Mailchimp integration to send automated emails, you can automate this process by connecting Facebook to Mailchimp.

How to Create Custom Audiences

To create your first Custom Audience, go to the “Audience” section of the Facebook Power Editor or Ads Manager.

In the Ads Manager, it is under the Tools section. Select “Audiences”.

facebook_audience facebook ads

In Power Editor, it has its own section, just under the toolbar right beneath your ad account number:

Since this is your first Custom Audience, you will need to create a new one by clicking the green “Create Audience” button.

A popup window will open and ask you to pick which type of audience you would like to create:

facebook_audience2 facebook ads

Select Customer File, and upload the .csv we just created from Rezdy, and map your audience’s information to Facebook.
facebook_audience3 facebook ads

How to build your “Lookalike” Audience

Now go back to your Audiences tab and create a Lookalike audience. Set your source as your customer file. Select the country you want to target. Select how many audiences you want.

facebook_audience4 facebook ads

To build your audience, adjust the settings accordingly. A small audience will have more similarities with your core customer group while a larger audience will be less precise, but will offer you a greater reach.

Create Facebook ads and go

Now you can create Facebook ads and select the lookalike audience we just created to target.

When should you do this?

Facebook features such as Custom Audience and Lookalike Audience, is a very powerful tool for the tourism industry. Lookalike audiences are particular useful when most of your customers are:

Repeat customers. If you have many repeat customers, there are probably more people out there that have very similar interests, but are unaware of your activity. Lookalike audiences is perfect to advertise to these people.
Very specific segment. For example, when all your customers are backpackers between 19 and 25. Who are traveling, uploading pictures with many different people, call their parents now and then and login from different locations all the time. (they have a very similar behavior on Facebook). Lookalike audiences is designed for you. Facebook will very easily be able to target the right people.

What to do when targeting many different people?

If your tour or activity is targeting a very diverse range of customers (different ages and different backgrounds), you might be better of setting up a campaign of Facebook ads focusing on brand awareness that targets people that are traveling in your area.

facebook_audience5 facebook ads

Not sure whether social media is for tours and activities?

We’ve written a social media ebook that helps you get started.