Social media advertising is constantly evolving, and it is important for tour operators and other businesses in the travel industry to stay up to date with the latest trends in order to effectively reach their target audience and achieve their marketing goals. As we enter 2023, there are several key trends that tour operators should be aware of in order to effectively navigate the social media advertising landscape. Here are the top 4 social media advertising trends in 2023.
1: Resonate With Consumers
Consumers are looking to be able to connect with brands. Relatable advertising is important as consumers are increasingly concerned about how external factors such as the economy, war, and a looming recession will impact their lives and financial decisions, especially with purchases like travel. These users are cautious, but they are still spending money. Therefore you must be able to overcome concerns about external factors by resonating with consumers through your advertising.
Give yourself time to test your ad campaign targeting strategy for a longer period before expecting consistent results. Expanding the campaign testing period allows you to truly identify which types of images and text resonate with certain interests and audiences. When marketing tours, TOMIS recommends spending time discovering the needs and desires of your audience and testing and measuring creative to be able to resonate with consumers in your advertising efforts.
In addition to increasing your campaign testing time, ensure the landing pages for your advertising channels reflect the context of your ads, avoid using manufactured scarcity in your ad copy, and address internal questions consumers may ask themselves about why they should go on a tour. Using these techniques will allow you to more effectively resonate with consumers.
- Increase advertising campaign testing time.
- Ensure that landing pages for your top advertising channels reflects the context of your ads.
- Don’t use clickbait or manufactured scarcity in your ad copy.
- Address internal questions consumers may be asking themselves rather than simply positioning your business against the competition.
2: Short-Form Video Content
Short-form video content was the most popular and effective social media content format in 2022 across many industries. Short-form video content is expected to continue its domination into 2023. TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts are the platforms that have been the majority shareholders in this space while other social media platforms are shifting to expand on short-form video content. TOMIS has observed success with short-form video content with many of our clients across multiple verticals.
Popular features such as TikTok’s infinite scroll encourage consumers to make an immediate purchase as users have the fear of not being able to find the product again. Recent insights from the 2022 Ad World conference showed that 37% of TikTok users discovered something on TikTok and immediately went to buy it.
While short-form video is currently a popular and effective format of content, advertising best practices should still be followed when using short-form video. Ensure that the video content resonates with consumers and is relevant to the landing page.
3: Using AI For Ad Copy
Artificial intelligence (AI) can be effectively utilized for many purposes in tour operators’ marketing efforts. It can quickly produce blog content, ad copy, and more based on a simple prompt. AI should not completely replace copy produced by humans. No AI will know your customer base, target audience, value proposition, or product better than a human can.
The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in social media advertising is expected to continue to grow in the future. These technologies can help businesses to optimize their campaigns and target the right audience more effectively (AI wrote this paragraph).
- Leverage AI as a tool that can improve your work rather than replace it.
- Use AI to generate a rough draft of a blog post, ad copy, etc, and work from there.
4: Attribution & Third-Party Data
Many people struggle with tracking due to the IOS 14 update and other privacy updates. Third-party data which has become more restricted with privacy updates includes website analytics, social media interactions, and app usage. On the other hand, first-party data is data that a business owns internally as it is able to collect information directly from its customers.
If your business has a smaller advertising budget, a company with a bigger budget is going to be able to retarget faster on social media. This means that you have to find a way to leverage first-party data through other channels such as email marketing or SMS. Another method is to find the path to purchase, to find the path to purchase one must work backward from a conversion. Establish the most common first-touch events and the most common last-touch events. Once this is done you can put the pieces together to determine what must be accomplished before a conversion takes place. While there is no definitive solution to attribution, here are steps you can take to effectively measure your ad campaigns.
- Utilize UTM parameters to help track your ad campaigns.
- As 3rd party data goes away, strategies that leverage 1st party data should be established.
- Find The Path To Purchase
The landscape of paid social advertising for tour operators is constantly evolving and it is important for businesses to stay up to date with the latest trends in order to effectively reach their target audience. By keeping the top 4 social media advertising trends in mind and implementing effective strategies, tour operator businesses can effectively utilize social media advertising to reach their desired audience and achieve their marketing goals.
