Direct Booking Marketing 101

While a direct booking website is critical for any successful short-term rental business, you need a marketing plan to attract potential guests. So, where do you start?

In this episode of the Hospitable Hosts podcast, our special guest is Conrad O'Connell, the founder of BuildUp Bookings, a digital marketing agency specializing in search, social, and email marketing for vacation rental businesses. He is also the author of the book "Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing."

Conrad shares expert insights and actionable tips on what areas to focus on as you build a marketing plan for your first direct booking website. The conversation covers various topics, including brand creation, effective email marketing strategies, and search engine optimization.

Press play now to discover how to enhance online visibility, build trust with guests, and increase direct bookings.

If you prefer to read the highlights, we've got a summary of the key takeaways below.

Why Do You Need a Marketing Plan?

Conrad explains that marketing and advertising are essential for any small business. He points out that OTA platforms can undoubtedly drive you a lot of bookings, so it's all about the kind of business you want to build. If you are happy with being reliant on just one source of traffic or one channel, it's OK.

"But for people who are looking to build a business that's diverse in terms of its sources of traffic and income, or you're just trying to build a brand, you certainly can't do that off the back of just an OTA like Vrbo or Airbnb," emphasizes Conrad.

Focusing on direct bookings will allow you to reduce your dependency on OTAs and build a sustainable STR business. Hospitable can help you automate your hosting routine, making your business more efficient.

Start with a Brand

"Your listing needs a brand," underlines Conrad. "The key is to have something people can search for that's unique to you," he points out and suggests "starting with a name, something that people can find online."

Conrad thinks that your first win with direct bookings is when someone goes on Airbnb, finds the name of your property, searches it on Google, finds you there, and then makes a direct booking. "That's probably going to be your first 10, 20, 30 direct bookings, where you're using the OTA like Airbnb to create awareness," he explains.

Don't Try to Do Much at Once

Conrad points out that one of the main stumbling blocks people make when transitioning to direct bookings is "thinking that they need to be doing three or four or five different forms of media advertising simultaneously when they probably need to be doing one or two things well." So start with something small and gain some level of competency with one thing before you move on and try to do ten things simultaneously.

"I think one of the most obvious low-hanging fruit things you could do from a cost perspective is just marketing to past guests," Conrad explains. He recommends using WiFi marketing or digital guidebooks to collect email addresses for email campaigns.

Attract Potential Guests via Organic Search

Conrad states that search is a critical driver of traffic for hosts. "When we look at our clients' Google Analytics accounts and see where the majority of traffic and conversions comes from— it's search. And when I say search, I mean Google," he clarifies.

Conrad doesn't recommend focusing on competitive keywords to drive more traffic to your direct booking website from Google search. He illustrates this with an example." The job of your homepage is not to rank for 'Orlando vacation rental.' A brand is the first job. So again, 'Conrad's cool cabinet rentals.' Let's ensure we show up on the first page for people searching for that. And then the name of each listing."

You may start a blog and focus on less common 'long-tail' keyword phrases, but carry out keyword research before writing content. "Content could be something that you could, even as a single property host, have a lot of success with by building it, making it comprehensive, talking about your expertise, your knowledge of the market," Conrad emphasizes.

As the conversation continues, Conrad recommends some tools hosts can use for keyword research and analyzing traffic and gives some practical tips on building trust with guests who land on your site. He also shares his opinion about where things are heading regarding direct booking in the vacation rental industry.

Tune in to the full episode of the Hospitable Hosts podcast to gain practical insights and discover effective strategies for building a solid online presence and taking your STR business to the next level.