A well-thought-out Airbnb marketing strategy can have a huge impact – leading to an increase in occupancy rates and higher earnings from your vacation rental.
There’s a lot you can do to make your rental attractive. For instance, you can decorate and style it well, stock all of the essentials and offer extra amenities. However, this alone won’t be enough to guarantee you a full booking calendar. If you want to reach your target audience you will need to get savvy with your Airbnb marketing.
What’s the use of having a fabulous Airbnb property if you’re not promoting it properly? It’s time to put into action a vacation rental marketing plan that will yield results. You don’t need to spend a fortune. Check out these affordable vacation rental marketing ideas, designed to help you increase listings exposure and secure those all-important bookings.
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Refine Your Airbnb Listing
Your Airbnb listing is the first thing potential guests see on the Airbnb website, but many hosts don’t use its marketing potential to the fullest. Keen to get more inquiries and boost your occupancy rate? Then start rethinking your Airbnb marketing strategy by adding Airbnb listing optimization to the top of your to-do list. Yes, it will take a modicum of time and effort to create stunning photographs of your rental and overhaul your Airbnb listing title and description – but we promise it will be worth it!
Airbnb marketing starts right from the moment you select a cover photo for your Airbnb listing (go for an image that’s eye-catching and best presents the key selling point of your rental). It’s essential that you paint a vivid picture of your property. Treat your target audience to an engaging journey that showcases your home.
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Embrace Social Media
The amount of time we spend on social media is constantly increasing. Therefore, it stands to reason hosts should promote their vacation rental properties via social media channels as an essential element of their Airbnb marketing strategy.
Vacation rental marketing experts suggest hosts focus on freebie tools. We’re talking about the likes of Instagram and Facebook. These platforms will allow you to post stunning photographs of your rental, you can also add trendy local hashtags and share useful tips for travelers in your area.
If you’re keen to improve your Airbnb marketing strategy we suggest you embrace content marketing. If you arm yourself with knowledge related to your area you can create a bunch of posts that will appeal to travelers, e.g. “Top 10 Restaurants In The Area” and “Best 5 Local Delicacies You Need To Try.” There’s a good chance you will be able to share this type of content with numerous users – driving more traffic to your Airbnb listing.
We’ve already touched on the power of social media. Use it well and you will be able to easily engage your guests, e.g. if a guest tags your property on their own social media page, make sure you “like” the post and make a comment.
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Implement Email Marketing
Implement email marketing on a more frequent basis and your Airbnb marketing strategy will go from strength to strength. Email marketing may sound slightly less glamorous than utilizing social media, but it certainly has its advantages and should be included in your Airbnb marketing strategy. Email marketing has a long and varied reach. Sending emails to inquiring travelers will enable you to communicate details relating to your property or offer a special deal.
Looking for new ways to increase recurring bookings? Keep in touch with past guests via email in order to stay at the forefront of their thoughts. Struggling to decide what kind of emails you should send to Airbnb travelers? Start with a monthly newsletter, giving updates on your property e.g. amazing new amenities you’ve purchased for your property rental. Share enticing stuff about your area – such as great places to visit or upcoming events prospective guests may find interesting.
A word of caution – don’t overload your guests’ Inbox with too many emails. Your aim is to make your guests feel welcome, not the target of endless spam email messages!
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Be Active on Vacation Rental Forums
Becoming an active user of vacation rental forums is one of the budget-friendly and effective rental property marketing ideas you might wish to follow. A vacation rental forum is a great place to communicate with other hosts. You can learn about the Airbnb challenges faced by others in the same position as you, you are not alone!
Joining a forum will also help you to improve your vacation rental management activities by learning from experienced hosts. Share concerns and ideas, come up with solutions and implement new strategies.
You can also use your Airbnb marketing strategy as a way to benefit from word of mouth advertising and promoting your Airbnb listing. If you take the time to develop a good relationship with other hosts, they will be more likely to send business your way. Be friendly and work on building your credibility to secure referrals from other hosts.
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Get Listed on Local Tourism Sites
Marketing experts inform us that setting up your property listing outside of Airbnb can help to promote your vacation rental significantly. Why not try to include this step in your Airbnb marketing strategy? The more platforms your property is listed on, the more views it will get – and more views can lead to more bookings.
Tourists and travelers can use local travel websites to find hotels and hostels. As a host, it’s important to explore alternative platforms aside from Airbnb. Make sure you don’t limit your reach by ignoring other platforms that can be useful for boosting your occupancy rate.
Earn More with a Successful Airbnb Marketing Strategy
Vacation rental marketing activities don’t necessarily need to be costly. There are affordable ways of achieving higher visibility for your rental properties, for instance, you can learn simple SEO principles and put them in action on your website to improve its ranking in the Google search results.
Looking for more ideas for your Airbnb marketing strategy? Check out this guide for pro-hosts: The 2019-2020 Guide to Vacation Rental Marketing. This practical manual will help you to dive deeper into vacation rental marketing, providing you with valuable insight and knowledge into how to market your property so that your Airbnb calendar will be always resplendent with bookings.
Remember: Your competitors will be waiting in the wings, so make sure you have a comprehensive and effective Airbnb marketing strategy that provides you with maximum exposure and attracts potential guests.