5-Step Marketing Blueprint For Your Short-Term Rental

By now, you have a well-designed space with great photos and a compelling listing description.

That’s all you need, right?

For some hosts, the answer is yes (congrats if that's you, by the way).

But if you were like us and had to fight for every booking in the beginning, then there are some things you can do to go the extra mile.

The next step is to start promoting your listing so that potential guests can find it.

There are a number of ways to do this, including social media, paid advertising, and word-of-mouth. And there are advantages and disadvantages to each method.

Social Media: Social media is a great way to reach a large number of potential guests quickly and easily, but the content you post will quickly disappear from everyone’s feeds. The key is to post regular updates, share relevant content, and use relevant hashtags.

Paid Advertising: Paid advertising is the fastest way to get your listing in front of potential guests who are already interested in booking an Airbnb. The key is to target your ads correctly so that you don’t waste money on ads that no one cares about.

Word-of-Mouth: Word-of-mouth is one of the best ways to promote anything, because people trust the recommendations from their friends, family, and peers. The downside is that you need to have a lot of guests staying with you, which can be difficult in the beginning.

You can probably guess where we’re going with this, and you would be correct...

This too exists within its own ecosystem of subsystems where they all interact with each other in a very delicate balance.

If you were to put your listing on Airbnb and call it day, it might work out in the long run, but the downstream consequence is that you have entered as a guest within their world and are subject to their algorithm and changes within their platform.

On the other hand, if you were to take a more proactive approach and actively promote your listing through multiple channels, there’s less reliance on one source for bookings, and therefore a stronger foundation for success in the short- and long -term.

As each piece interacts with each other, the ecosystem of advertising will begin to produce a steady stream of bookings and happy guests, leading to even more bookings as they leave rave reviews and tell their friends about their amazing stay.

You may even find that you can sustain yourself through direct bookings, bypassing the fees and rules of a platform like Airbnb altogether.

But it doesn’t happen overnight.

It takes dedication, patience, and a willingness to water the tree of success consistently in order to see it grow.

With that said, if you choose to actively promote your listing, be consistent and don’t give up, here is how we would approach each one for ensuring a full calendar.

In almost all cases, you really should be on social media as an Airbnb host.

The best platforms to use are going to vary based on your target audience, but in general, you can’t go wrong with Facebook and Instagram because of their large user bases and engagement with visual content.

Create a business page on Facebook for your property. Be sure to share your listing there and promote any special deals or discounts that you may be offering.

You will want to post an image or short story that is related to your listing at least once per week, and use relevant hashtags (examples below).

You can also use this page to run Facebook ads that target people who are interested in booking an Airbnb, who have traveled recently, or who have just arrived to your area. However, the laws are constantly changing and they may limit the people you can target due to housing regulations.

(We are constantly running into issues with our ads getting automatically flagged for discrimination, triggering a manual review that almost always gets overturned.)

Again, this is where your customer avatar comes in, because you’ll know exactly who to run ads to.

The creation of Facebook ads can be quite complicated and goes far beyond the scope of this guide, but we may be coming out with another training on that soon.

Other than that…

Instagram is THE platform for sharing photos, and what better way to show off your amazing property than through those beautiful images you created earlier?

Because you’ve already taken the time to create them for your listing, this should be a breeze.

You will want to post a picture (along with a short story) with some relevant hashtags once every 3 days or so, which sounds like a lot (but can be easily scheduled out using the Business Suite).

This will help you stay top of mind with potential guests who may be scrolling through their feed and looking for somewhere to stay.

Remember, the key is to be consistent and use relevant hashtags so that your content gets seen by people who are interested in what you have to offer.

Here are a few relevant hashtags to get you started:

#Airbnb
#travel
#vacationrental
#vacation
#shorttermrental
#shorttermrentals
#holidayrental
#holidayrentals

However, there are many many (many!) more hashtags that can be specific to your area.

The great thing about Instagram is how easily one of your photos can go viral and be seen by millions of people (if it is a good one, of course).

Furthermore, if you know how to edit video, you can also post short videos on Instagram as well as Youtube, which are great ways to show off your listing in a more engaging way.

In fact, before Airbnb started removing link mentions in the description, our clients saw a significant increase in bookings after adding a link to the Youtube videos we created for their property.

Paid advertising on Google or Social Media is a great way to fill up your competitors calendar if you do it wrong.

But if you do it right, you’ll be able to get your listing in front of hundreds or even thousands of potential guests who are already interested in booking an Airbnb for your area. The key is to target your ads correctly. The best way to do this is by using Facebook Ads and Google AdWords.

For Google Ads, you’ll want to create a search campaign with relevant keywords that guests might use when looking for somewhere to stay.

For example, “airbnb in (your city)” or “vacation rental in (your city)“.

But where do you send people?

As you can imagine, Benjamin found out the hard way that it was a mistake to send people directly to our listing page on Airbnb, because they would often get distracted and click away to another listing.

The lesson?

Just because you paid for the click doesn’t mean people will do what you want them to do.

So instead, we send them to a landing page on our website that has one purpose: to get the person to book, or at least give us their contact info if they don’t (that way we can follow up with them later).

There used to be a time when it was a good idea to send a flood of bot traffic to your Airbnb listing because their algorithm would start ranking your listing higher, and give everyone a message that your listing was about to be booked solid (so better hurry!).

This is still true.

However, their algorithm has started to take note of how many people are coming to your listing and leaving without making a reservation - so it's more difficult to "game" their system in this way.

This can actually penalize you for it if they don’t end up booking anything…

So in our opinion, it would be better to send traffic directly to your own website or landing page, where you have full control over the message and can focus on converting those visitors into paying guests.

Not having to deal with Airbnb’s policies, fee’s and predatory review system is just the cherry on top.

If you aren’t familiar with how to create a landing page, there are a number of great tools you can use, like Lodgify, which lets you create your own direct booking site without any coding knowledge.

You can also use your Facebook page to create a “book now” button as well and confirm reservations manually.

Now, if you’re using Facebook Ads, the process is a little different...

You’ll want to create a lead generation campaign and use your images and descriptions to capture people’s attention.

The goal here is to get people to sign up for your email list so that you can follow up with them later and continue to promote your listing, long after they’re gone (a weekly email about new events or tips for your area is a great way to create loyal/repeat guests).

The great thing about Facebook Ads is that you can target people based on interests, demographics, and even behaviors.

*hint* Customer avatar *hint*

For example, you can target people who live in a certain city, who have expressed an interest in travel, and who have been to your city before (or might be traveling to your city soon).

This way, you’re getting your listing in front of people who are already interested and likely to book.

There’s a lot more that goes into successful paid advertising, but these tips should get you started on the right foot.

Word of mouth is still one of the best ways to get customers in any industry, and the short-term rental industry is no different.

So encourage your guests to leave a positive review on Airbnb, HomeAway, or any other listing sites you use. And don’t be afraid to ask for referrals from your happy customers!

Give them a discount on their next stay or offer a referral bonus for anyone they send your way who makes a reservation.

If you can get your existing guests to promote your listing to their friends and family, you’ll be able to tap into a whole new network of potential guests.

The key here is to provide an exceptional experience that will make people want to tell others about it, particularly on Instagram.

There are a few ways you can encourage/facilitate word of mouth marketing from guests that are happy with their stay:

Create a business card with your listing information and leave it in the room for guests to take with them.

Add a “refer a friend” discount to your listing description. For example, “Get $20 off your next stay when you refer a friend”.

Send a thank you note to guests after they checkout and include your business card.

Ask guests to write a review on TripAdvisor, Yelp, or Google.

Add social sharing buttons to your website so that people can easily share your listing with their network.

Encourage your guests to take pictures and post their trip on Instagram, tagging your account.

As we close out this 5-Step Marketing Blueprint, it should come as no surprise that everything we've just covered is only scratching the surface.

There is much more to hosting than meets the eye.

Becoming a "Master" Superhost is about creating strong foundations, setting expectations, and attracting the right prospects to our vacation rentals.

At the same time, it's also about driving revenue, constantly staying one step ahead of guests (and their shenanigans), and delivering an experience that raises the bar for everyone within your market.

It's why you've been reading up to this point right now…

You have a need to become a better Airbnb host. You're seeking a solution. You're thinking it could be here.

And you'd be correct - so keep reading...

- Benjamin & Sheila Harty
Skyline STR