Track Online Advertising with Facebook on Your Vacation Rental Desk Website
If online advertising is the next step for your vacation rental business, you'll want to be able to track that investment directly on your website. We make it easy by giving you a one-step integration process so you can track how people are using your website.
What is Facebook Advertising?
Much like Google, Facebook offers paid advertising to its vast network of people who use the platform. In the same way that you can track page views, interactions, and other relevant data on your website through Google Analytics, Facebook uses their own tool called a Pixel to track specific events on your website that can help you decide how to best spend your advertising dollars.
Your Facebook Pixel sends a small message to Facebook every time someone interacts with your website. With the Pixel installed, you can see who's viewing your website content, such as looking at your rental photos, or who's checking specific dates on your availability calendar. More importantly, you can track online bookings through your Pixel to determine how well your ads are performing and track your business growth.
Tracking Your Inquiries
Both Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel are supported through your Vacation Rental Desk website. With one easy step, you can track data on every page of your website, including page views, email inquiries, and rental bookings.
After creating your Facebook Pixel for your rental, simply copy the tracking ID code and enter it into the Facebook Pixel box in your Member Dashboard under Settings » Website & Photos » Web Tracking Codes. Once you've integrated your code, go back to your Facebook Pixel and see that the status is now "Active." As Facebook begins gathering data from your website, you'll start to see Pixel Traffic displayed on your Ads Manager dashboard as well as data for what people are doing on your website.
Create Your Ad Campaign
With the Facebook Pixel set up on your website, you can start creating ads that market your rental to relevant audiences on Facebook. These ads can target multiple specific actions such as website clicks or bookings, also known as conversions.
Set a daily budget for as little as $5 a day to put your rental in front of Facebook users who fit your targeted audience, thereby spending your advertising dollar where it's more likely to reach users who are interested in checking out your rental.
Evaluating Your Return on Investment
After you run your first ad campaign, you'll be able to evaluate your return on investment (ROI) to see if your spending sustainably leads to increased bookings and more revenue.
Try a cost per conversion calculation to determine how much each conversion actually costs. This way, you can determine if your business can afford to advertise at your current cost per conversion rate or if you need to adjust any factors of your ad (audience, content, run time) to try to get more conversions for less investment.
Even more, a return on investment calculation can show you how well your ads are working to increase your overall revenue. To do this calculation, you'll first need to determine your average reservation amount, for example, $1,500. Your average reservation amount can be found by running a Reservation Income Report for the property on the Reports tab of your Member Dashboard. This will clearly show how much increased revenue your business has seen because of ad campaigns.
Go a step further and adjust your profit calculation based on your own rental expenses to see your actual profit for your rental. Do this by first determining your profit per reservation after your own rental expenses, and then subtracting your cost per conversion.
Often, it takes time to figure out which ads work best with your business, so try a couple different types of ads with different audiences before evaluating your overall ROI.
Start Advertising Online with Facebook
Many vacation rental owners and managers have found success with Facebook advertising, so if you're looking to try your hand at paid online advertising, or if you're just not seeing enough return on your Google Ads, try creating a Facebook Pixel and setting up a few ads to reach a whole new audience of potential guests.