he HUGE rebound in AirBnB and vacation rental / short term rental bookings coming out of COVID has resulted in more listings than ever before - and growth is showing no signs of slowing down. Is your marketing and visibility strategy good enough to make sure you’re booked as much as possible?
Sure, you may have the best AirBnBs out there, beautiful rentals in beautiful environments decorated to look as perfect and picturesque as possible, but unless you’re aggressively marketing your rentals and getting as many eyeballs on them as possible, you’re leaving a lot of untapped potential on the table.
We’ve put this list together to give you some ideas for things you can implement, immediately, to supercharge your marketing efforts!
- Be active on Instagram
- Keep in touch with guests after they leave.
- Mouthwatering Description
- Local travel sites.
- Thought leaders and travel bloggers.
- Intelligent pricing.
- Listing across multiple channels.
- Get reviews on multiple channels.
- Advertise on Facebook.
- Text directly with your guests.
Be active on Instagram
This one is fairly self explanatory. Make an instagram page for your rental business, and use it to promote your rentals and your brand. Use all the best photos you took of your rental and ask your guests to take some too!
Instagram is possibly the best place to showcase your rentals and AirBnBs. Discerning travelers often use instagram to find the best places and rentals to stay, and more importantly, travel bloggers and thought leaders often look for places to showcase by browsing instagram.
It is also important to note that the fastest growing AirBnB user demographic, millennials and Gen Z-ers are incredibly active on instagram. If your guests have a good stay, you can also ask your guests to promote your on instagram, tag your rentals page, etc.
Keep in touch with guests after they leave
Keeping a dialog open with your guests after they leave is one of the best things you can do to make sure they come back again and again. Most other consumer facing industries do a really good job with this. Airlines, online retailers, and pretty much every consumer goods brand keeps customers in the loop forever, using channels like text and email to inform them about discounts, sales, events, etc.
Hospitality, on the other hand, is really really bad at doing this. Once guests leave, the only brand they have contact with is AirBnB or VRBO or wherever they booked through. This is great for companies like AirBnB because they keep guests constantly booking through their platform, but unless you’re doing the same, you’re missing out on a big opportunity to keep guests in the loop and significantly raise the chances of them coming back.
Enroll your guests into an auto-emailer that you’ll use to keep them informed about your rentals, more engaged with you on social media, and top-of-mind so that the next time they’re thinking about taking a trip, they’ll think of you first.
Mouthwatering Description
The amount of bland, boring, and forgettable descriptions we see on AirBnB listings is absolutely staggering. While pictures are easily the most important part of your rentals listing, a great description is usually one of the things that will push a guest over the edge. Conversely, a poorly written, typo-filled and forgettable description can easily stop a guest who would have otherwise booked.
We’ll outline how to write a great description in another post, but know that titles should pop, it should be tailored to your typical audience, and it should be concise but eloquent.
Local Travel Sites
A lot of people who travel tend to be fairly old fashioned. And while they’re browsing, they look at ads on local travel sites, newsletters, etc. If possible, try to get exposure and visibility here.
Travel bloggers and through leaders
As the vacation rental industry booms, so too does the ecosystem surrounding it. Especially the number and reach of influencers, short term rental bloggers, and thought leaders. More and more rental businesses are rapidly growing, and consolidation is most definitely happening. Branding your rental business is more important now than ever, and one of the most impactful ways to increase awareness, reach, and visibility is to engage with the thought leaders, influencers, and bloggers that people follow.
Intelligent Pricing
Dynamic pricing is a must. Incorrectly pricing your rental is the easiest way to get crushed by competitors, and lose out on tons of potential revenue.
Luckily, there are many solutions out there, like buoy which help you achieve the most optimal price for your rental.
List across multiple channels
If you’re only listed on AirBnB or VRBO, you need to change that. Listing across all possible channels is absolutely critical. If you’re just listed on one of the rental sites, like AirBnB, cross listing on other sites like VRBO, booking.com, tripadvisor, and others can double or even triple your visibility and the number of eyeballs on your listing.
The people who generally use AirBnB aren’t typically on VRBO or Booking, so there isn’t much overlap between the audiences. As such, crossposting isn’t just a way to show the listing to the same people. You’re showing it to totally different people and massively increasing chances that it’ll get booked!
Of course, the more rentals you have and the more channels you’re posted on, the harder it gets to manage calendars and sync everything up. That’s why we suggest using a PMS like Guesty to manage your calendars and rentals.
Get reviews on multiple channels
When your guests leave, they’ll typically leave a review on the site through which they booked. Usually AirBnB or VRBO. However, getting them to leave reviews on other channels, like Facebook, Google and Yelp is huge. Search rankings for businesses are greatly impacted by the number and quality of reviews.
Since very few rental businesses are actually doing this, you’ll be at an advantage if you start getting your guests to review you on google, facebook, yelp, and others.
Advertise on Facebook
If you haven’t got a facebook page for your rentals, make one. And if you do, think about advertising on facebook. Even putting in $3 day could get thousands of incoming visitors - any of whom could be a potential visitor.
Text directly with your guests
Texting with your guests is one of the hottest new trends. Aside from directly talking with your guests, texting with them is one of the highest touch point activities you can do to keep engaged. Automated texting when they arrive, asking them for updates while they’re there, and reminders related to checkout and departure make a big difference in how your guests perceive their stay.