As an increasing number of travelers are researching their destinations online, social communities have become a sounding platform for many of today’s leading travel companies. According to industry statistics from eMarketer, more than 96% of US leisure travelers said travel review sites influenced their purchases, 44% of respondents said that they looked to internet reviews, and about 1/4 of respondents said they turned to Facebook for recommendations and reviews from their peers.
As a result, online reviews have increased dramatically and membership based travel companies are on the rise. Campaign, a UK based communications magazine recently highlighted our work with Secret Escapes, a growing member based travel company. The AdParlor team has grown the fan base to over 300K fans in the UK and according to Socialbakers is now as one of the fastest growing pages in the territory.
Working with Facebook’s Custom Audience targeting we were able to segment fans based on their existing membership in order to effectively target Facebook users who have not yet joined the travel community. In addition, Lookalike audience targeting posted impressive results – boosting CTRs on Secret Escapes’ ads by 134%; while increasing acquisition volume and sign ups. Additionally, AdParlor has executed a mobile-only Facebook campaign, which has yielded 85% higher CTRs and 20% lower CPCs than its corresponding desktop campaign.
In the article, Steve Taylor, head of digital strategy at PHD was impressed with the usage of Custom and Lookalike Audiences “to find exactly the audience most likely to want to know about the brand and share their discovery with their friends on Facebook”. Secret Escapes now recognizes Facebook as their 3rd pillar of marketing (Google, TV & Facebook) after generating competitive results to the other mediums.
AdParlor continues to find great success in using the Custom Audience and Lookalike Audiences targeting capabilities from Facebook and it’s great to hear that our clients agree:
“We started 2013 with search pay-per-click and brand-response TV advertising,” Tom Valentine, the managing director and co-founder of Secret Escapes, said. “We’re delighted we’ve been able to add paid Facebook advertising as a third pillar.”
You can read more about the Secret Escapes campaign here: