Dive Shops Advertising on Facebook
We all know that facebook is a great way to get traffic. If you are just consistent with your posting, have some great photos, are engaging with your audience base, and do everything right, you will get loads of free traffic. This is obviously great traffic. In the scuba diving tourism industry this traffic generally tends to be past customers which hopefully attract their friends to be new customers and hopefully visit your shop again themselves. It is important to always keep an eye out for new business though. This is where paid ads come in.
Facebook offers advertisers some incredibly powerful tools to target their ad audience pretty precisely. You can do some pretty amazing things. First off, you can set the locations you want to target. This is extremely helpful if you know that the majority of tourists to your area come from only a few countries this can narrow down your audience and help you get the most bang for your buck. You can then choose the age range for people to target. Generally kids aren’t your customers, so it is generally advisable to set the age range at atleast 18+. Depending on your location it may be wise to raise this even more. If you are a dive shop in Cancun, Mexico with a young crowd heading that way every spring break, 18 might be appropriate. If you are running a dive shop in Rangiroa, French Polynesia, the visitors to your region are likely a bit older as it is a more luxurious destination that weeds out a lot of the spring break crowd. You are also wise to set the languages that you are able to serve your guests in.
The next thing that you will want to do is set interests. I have seen a lot of dive shops just type in Scuba Diving as an interest and think that narrows it down. Well it does, but there are still over 10 million people who have that as an interest. Facebook gives you the power to market to certain pages. If you run a shark diving operation it may be wise to type in the name of some other shark diving pages as you know these people that are associated with those pages have similar interests. If you are a location that is full of great wrecks, find a wreck diving group and tailor your ad specifically for them. Get a nice photo and type some catchy print to capture the wreck divers attention. A good facebook ad campaign will have multiple ads and photos which are customized to the audience they are targeting. Wreck dive photos for wreck diving groups, shark photos for shark enthusiasts, nudibranch and seahorse photos for those interested in the macro life.
To take facebook advertising even further, it is possible to put a certain script on your webpage that identifies your computer to facebook. So if you had a potential customer sifting through the 10 dive shops that are located in your region this gives you the chance to get back in front of this potential customer in a non-intrusive sort of way. This is something that helps sway divers in the direction of your dive shop rather than your competitions.
There are also a ton of other things that you can do to help your facebook ad campaign be a success. If you are interested in speaking about your marketing goals for your dive shop we are always interested in helping you out. Our plans are all customized for your needs and your budget. We also offer a free install of google analytics on your site and will send you a detailed report after 30 days. Click here to send us your information.
