The Essential Guide To Marketing Your Vacation Rental
Marketing a vacation home rental can seem very difficult to someone not familiar with the industry. Many people think they have to place classified advertisements in papers across the country or that only real estate agents have long lists of people that travel to the area. Here are some key pointers that can make your vacation rental marketing initiative easier than you would expect.
Research your market
Know the demographics of people coming to the state and your region for tourism. Identify the states and countries that send the most visitors to your area. Identify the major destinations people travel to in your state or region. A great source for this information is your state’s tourism website. From this information you can begin to get a sense of your target audience and demographic. Research your Vacation Rental (VR) competition. What are they priced at, how does this vary by type of home, location etc. Identify what the key amenities are in terms of the minimum and the premium. Again, this information is not difficult to find. The Yellow Pages or any vacation rental website in your locale will give you this information easily. I can’t stress enough how important it is to have information in business. You will be amazed at the profit-making opportunities that are out there in front of people’s eyes that they ignore just because they don’t research or analyze their target market and their competition enough. Make an excel spreadsheet with 2 tabs. One for visitor statistics and the other for competition statistics. Update these every 3-4 months at least and you will be surprised how much smarter you get about your business.
Position your Vacation Rental
Position your Vacation Rental as a luxury property, a low cost/value Vacation Rental, a family friendly VR etc. Having a sense of this positioning will help you when you message and draft copy to actually market your property. Being everything to everyone is almost impossible these days. Niche marketing is a must. And afterall, you only want to find one buyer at any time. Chances are that there is enough demand in any of the niches that you pick so that focusing on one segment actually broaden the appeal and potential customers for your rental property.
Price your VR appropriately
Pricing will be one of the most important decisions you will make on the marketing your vacation home rental (VR). You will want to ascertain if prices change based on a home’s size/bedrooms etc, location, and season. You must get a sense of what the going rates are. Keep in mind that you must be market competitive. This doesn’t mean always being the lowest price. Don’t give in to the initial first thought about the price. Treat it as a project. Research multiple pricing models, multiple price points and evaluate the pros and cons of each model and what the ultimate bottomline profitability range is likely to be in each model. Pricing alone can be a great marketing tool if done right. People give a lot of importance to the price so you should give it a lot of thought and analysis as well.
Vacation Rental Amenities (Equip your Vacation Rental)
Now that you have your Vacation Rental you need to think of it as a product. Equipping the rental property is like designing a product. In this context, you will need to have a sense of what other competing properties have in the way of amenities and in the context of your positioning strategy. What are the basics that you absolutely need to have in your vacation rental? What are the nice to haves? What are really great things to have? Your amenities are like product features. They support your market positioning, pricing and also enable you to differentiate yourself from other Vacation Rental owners. Think carefully here and identify key features you want to highlight in your market messaging. Having a genuinely great product makes marketing way more effective and cost-efficient. The best product does not necessarily mean the nicest. Just that it’s best for its target market segment. That’s what you need to keep in mind when ‘designing your product’.
Promote your VR
Now it's time to get the word out. There are several things you will need to do:
i. Place several listings on larger VR advertising sites. You must list with more than one to get the market reach you will need to drive inquires.
ii. Get a web site. You really need a dedicated website for your property.
iii. Photo’s, I can’t stress the importance of photos. Photos sell your property and help to take an element of risk away from the prospective renter who has ever seen your property.
iv. Free classifieds: You can use your vacation home listing HTML address or your website (ideally) to drive prospects to from these sites.
v. Send an email to friends and family and support network . Consider offering them discount if they book and also offer them a referral fee/bonus if they get a rental for you.
vi. You may want to consider large university alumni magazines as these have VR listings within their classifieds.
vii. Depending on the size and expense of the property you may want to reach out directly to local city magazines and classifieds and have a real estate agent place a MLS listing.
viii. Inform local real estate agents and inform them of your referral bonus (i.e 10-15% of the rental revenue)
Go ahead with your VR to price, equip, promote, and rent your VR home…and be successful in doing it.
