Using Online Advertising Intelligently for Visitor Attractions

Using Online Advertising Intelligently for Visitor Attractions.

As people exit lockdown, no doubt the first few weeks of visitor attraction bookings will be satisfying pent up demand. But what happens after then?

In this blog we talk about how digital advertising should be used strategically as pent up demand starts to diminish. We share which audiences should be turned back on first.

Using this online marketing strategy across our own set of clients, it’s a proven way of maximising online ROI for zoos, adventure parks, theme parks and farm attractions.

Compare Online Advertising to a Sales Funnel

A sales funnel or sales hopper goes back to the salesman of the 1960’s when they needed to keep filling up the hopper with new sales enquiries to get more conversions coming out the other end.

Essentially online conversions are similar, you need people to visit your website to get more people to buy tickets. But, we know people are stimulated to visit your website through word of mouth, organic social media and your email marketing list. You don’t need to turn all online advertising channels on all at once.

This group of strong supporters can also be monetised further through selling merchandise online.  These will be your top fans and probably will also pay for adoptions and to attend virtual events.

Using Online Advertising Strategically

Facebook, Instagram and other social platforms have huge targeting potential. The smart marketing money only turns on all targeting when it needs extra sales.

Below is our 1,2,3 strategy for maximising sales and spending money wisely.

Strategy One:

For all visitor attractions, we can track those who arrive on the shopping cart but don’t proceed to a sale. Once they leave your site, life gets in the way and they may forget about you. This is a hot group who went as far as starting the online ticketing process and just need a gentle reminder through advertising to come back and buy a ticket.

An additional audience in Strategy One is targeting those who have been on your site in the last week but haven’t purchased (and also do not fall into an abandoned cart audience). This reminds them they were recently interested and shouldn’t miss out. Pushing ads out to these audiences will increase conversions for pennies.

Strategy Two:

You should be tracking all those who engage with your social media, have shown an interest in a previous event or been on your website. This group have engaged with you in some way so are a warm audience. Should you still need more ticket sales after priority one, this should be the next group of audiences to be turned back on for online advertising.

Strategy Three:

Whilst we have plenty of pent up demand and you have plenty of website visitors, you may not need to go beyond Strategy 1 and Strategy 2. When pent up demand dissipates, this is when you need to reach those who may not have heard about you. It is time to fill up the hopper and push people from cold to warm, and from warm to hot to eventually an online booking. Social networks enable you to be highly targeted for reaching new audiences.

It all comes down to tracking and custom audiences.

Tracking enables you to fully optimise the advertising journey.

Tracking also enables you to measure what is working and prove a ‘return on investment’ to your Directors. It does involve a little expertise but definitely worth doing. If you need Agility to help, please email us at hello@agility-marketing.co.uk

We’d also recommend you read our digital marketing blog about changes that Apple are rolling out which will impact on your Facebook and Instagram ads.

This blog was written by Anita Waddell, MD of Agility Marketing, a boutique marketing agency specialising in Digital Marketing for Visitor Attractions.