vacation rental advertising
Vacation rental advertising is a crucial part of making your vacation rental investment a successful venture. Have you ever thought how can I market my vacation rental or what is the best way to advertise my vacation rental home? This is not a question that is easily answered if you don’t have a lot of expereince with vacation rental advertising. The truth is you only truly understand what is effective vacation rental advertising by trying out the advertising yourself and seeing the results come in. If you don’t see results when you advertise your vacation rental than obviously your doing something wrong and your efforts are not having a major impact on your overall vacation rental advertising campaign. The thing is that as vacation rental marketers we have the time to test and try new markets and conduct advertising experiments.
However a vacation rental owner doesn’t usually have all the time in the world to try and test new rental advertising tricks or techniques. With that said vacation rental owners need to go forward with their advertising in a direction that is stable and is going to produce reliable and stable advertising results. Let the experts expreiment with the new technology and marketing platforms and stick with what is known to work or you may get frustrated quickly and give up on the idea that advertising your vacation rental home online is the best way to produce bookings.
There are new forms of vacation rental advertising emerging on the market and one of the newer advertising techniques is social marketing. Although that social marketing can be effective form of advertising vacation rental home, is it the best and most effective? In my opinion the answer is simple NO! When advertising your vacation rental property it is important to use some social marketing techniques as social marketing is a phenomenon that will be embraced even more as it develops however I believe that you should’t put all of your eggs in one basket and focus only on advertising your vacation rentals on social networks like Facebook or Twitter. I know that there are people that would disagree with me on this and would say that it is the best way to advertise a vacation rental but for me the truth is in the pudding.
I have seen alot higher returns from our marketing with other forms of advertising than social marketing. Now don’t get me wrong it is important to implement social marketing into your overall vacation rental advertising campaign but it shouldn’t be your advertising campaign. I believe that as time goes on it will be even more important so it is good that you grow your vacation rental advertising unilaterally including social marketing. You should build your following on social networks so you can develop an audience as it social marketing becomes more effective. I have recieved alot of traffic from social marketing but not as good convesrion to actual bookings as other traditional forms of vacation rental advertising.
I have included a couple of tested vacation rental advertising techniques that help getting attention to your vacation rental and increase your chances of renting your vacation rental online.
1) Create online advertisements using classifieds ads. You will want to create advertising in different websites an example of a classified site would be Craigslist. Craigslist is just one classified site however there are thousands of websites you can use to advertise your vacation rental. It does take alot of time to create these online advertisements and the bad part of this vacation rental advertising is that as more people place ads in the vacation rental section your vacation rental ad falls farther down on the list and in some cases within a day your vacation rental ad is no longer on the first page, so you’l need to post your vacation rental ad often to stay at the top of the list.
2) Create a website for your vacation rental property. A vacation rental website designed to advertise your rental property is one of the strongest tools you will have in your marketing tool box for advertising your vacation rental. Your vacation rental website will be your home base and you can get very aggressive and creative when you have your own private vacation rental website. If you don’t have a vacation rental website that is designed specifically for your vacation rental than your competitors will have an advantage over your vacation rental property. Make sure you get a vacation rental website that is not a template or a flash website these type of vacation rental websites will work against you and will be as if you don’t have a website. So don’t waste your time going this route get a professional to design a website for you it will pay for itself with a little advertising if you do it right from the start.
3) Write articles about your vacation rental home and nearby attractions with a link to your website, so people who are interested in the attractions in your area may consider your vacation rental home when visiting the town of your vacation rental. People who are traveling to the vacation destination your vacation rental home is located will often search for local attractions and conduct research before traveling so if you write about topics that would interest potential travelers than you have a chance of capturing a lead as a possible booking for your vacation rental home. As you write these articles you will want to place your website link in the article so that people will click on your link and they can land on your website helping to give you more traffic and hopefully turn traffic into a rental booking. Another good reason why you will want to add your link to articles you write is because these type of articles (if they are quality content) may be picked up and syndicated to other websites and the more links you have on different websites the more “credit” you get from the search engine, because a link from one website to yours is in essence a thumbs up from that website to yours.
4) Conduct Keyword Research & SEO Your Website
Conducting Keyword research is a very imprtant part of advertising your vacation rental online. Keywords are what people tyoe into search engines like www.google.com , www.yahoo.com and www.bing.com to find what they are looking for. They science behind keyword research is researching the keywords that your potential clients or renters would type in when they are trying to find a product similar to yours. For example if your vacation home was in Arizona a potential renter might type in vacation rental home in Arizona or Resorts in Arizona. There are many variable to consider when choosing the best keywords for your vacation rental advertising. Such as the competition of those keywords, the amount of traffic they will generate etc. etc. If you need help picking the perfect keywords for your vacation rental advertising contact us we can help you get started. Once you have found the best keywords for your vacation rental you will be able to use this in all of your online advertisements, website, blogs and any online advertising.
Here is an article with more details about advertising your vacation rental using keywords http://www.villamarketers.com/community/seo-keywords-your-key-to-marketing-vacation-rental-homes-part-1/
5) List Your Property On 3rd Party Vacation Rental Websites. This one is a bit tricky because in many cases the 3rd party vacation rental listing websites charge for every vacation rental advertisement you post on their website and many of the vacation rental websites dont produce the amount of rental bookings for vacation home to make the investment worth while for you. It is a good idea to advertise your vacation rental on websites that offer free vacation rental listings. Here a couple to get you started
www.fantasticvacationhomes.com Free Vacation Rental Listing & Advertising
www.TrollTraveler.com Free Vacation Rental Listing & Advertising
