All about Branding with Christine Myer Noiseaware

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If you know your customer avatar like that, you know exactly who you're speaking to, you know exactly how to present yourself online, what your branding is on point. I pretty much guarantee that 90 of you have not put your hand up and there's a reason why. It's just something that you never really think about. When you're doing all of your marketing, you're doing all the things. And branding is one of the last things that you think about and it's one of the most important. So I invited on Christine of Noise Away, she's head of Growth, and I watched a fantastic little webinar that they did recently where they broke down the stages of branding and I pretty much messaged both Madison and Christine. I said, listen, let's just do that. Let's do that for my world. And we were able to break down what each thing meant. It was a really fantastic interview and I'm looking forward to you to watching or listening to this. For all of his free content that we're giving you is go to hostfully.com they are the sponsors of the podcast. They make sure this podcast goes ahead. So just go to the hostfully.com go and get your free digital guidebook. Sign up, get your free digital guidebook and if at any point in the future you want to upgrade, just type in boostly2m in the promo code section. You get two months free. Also as well, if you want to get more help with your social media content, you want to learn more, educate yourself more with how to increase your direct bookings and you want to join a community of book Direct people and you want to do it yourself. And book Direct membership is my thing. The boothly access that we have, it's 9.99amonth full money back guarantee. You get access to all the social media content, you get access to all the tutorial videos you need and you get to get listed on the bookdirectmap.com which is the fastest growing paid listing website for hospitality businesses in the world. So please go and check that out if you want to. Please go and check out Hostfully if you don't want to do any of them or if you're already a part of it, of all of those things, then please make sure that you listen or watch this podcast episode with Christine from Noise Aware. But most importantly, like I ask on everyone, is that you implement the the advice. All right, without further ado, please enjoy this episode, this conversation with Christine of Noise Aware.

Awesome. Yeah. So Christine, I work with Noise Aware head of growth. And I'm actually in Dallas, Texas in the U.S. yeah, I've been working at Noise Aware for about four years now and absolutely love it and I'm excited to be a part of this. I've worked for only startups, which has been a lot different than most people's paths. Before this I was actually working at two different startups, one kind of right out of college and both of them were education technology. So it's kind of thriving right now and I still keep in touch with both of them. And then I actually ended up getting into the vacation rental industry and short term rentals in general because I started actually managing a few properties in Costa Rica. I had a friend who was living there and I was kind of helping her with the marketing and the branding and got a little taste of what it's like to actually be a property manager. So I've cleaned toilets, I've, I've done it all, I've checked in guests, I've had a lot of nightmare stories and good stories and then that actually had me stumble across Noise awareness. Yeah, then I got started once I met both the co founders at a networking event, which was actually the same place that they met to start the company. So it's kind of like a place of magic, I guess, because it brought us all kind of together. But yeah, and then now I'm here and Noisewear is basically a noise monitoring solution for short term rental hosts and managers and it allows them to know if there's anyone doing any sort of mischievous things at their property, maybe throwing a loud party or just getting a little too loud in the evening and they're able to get an alert and then deal with it before it escalates.

So it all starts with knowing the target audience. So in just simplistic terms, please, if you could just break down what target audience means to you. And most of all, how do you explain to a host how they can go about discovering who their target audience or customer avatar would be?

I mean, I think early on one of the things I remember most is we were like, we could market to anybody who has a short term rental, but we have to figure out who the ideal customer is. And so there's certain characteristics that sort of make up the type of people that you're looking to actually target. So yes, you may have, you know, an Airbnb or a short term rental that's in a specific location, but it's, it may not be fit for every single person. So once you sort of identify like, what are those Characteristics, who are those people? And honestly, it kind of comes from when you first start marketing and you first start doing things, you start to sort of find these characteristics once you go out in the market and you interact with guests. I mean, the biggest thing that we did was we actually ended up doing an exercise where we had a bunch of sticky notes, we grabbed a whiteboard and like a big wall and we had one member of our team actually take us through this. And we actually do it ever so often because the landscape of where we're at in the world and travel in the short term rental industry has changed so much. I mean, there's so many new brands that are kind of popping up and people are changing. And so kind of what we did was figure out like, what are those characteristics? And we just write them down on sticky notes like really, really quickly. And then we see where there's groupings that kind of come, come out of it. Everybody's very different. But once you kind of figure that out, you're really, then as much as possible about those people and how you can specifically market to them and find them on the Internet, which, you know, can prove to be difficult at times. But once you've identified it, you know exactly how to talk to them, you know what they like, what they don't like and you can really kind of nail down some of your brand and your marketing and it can be huge.

I like to think we know our customer avatar and our audience really well. We are on a farm in the middle of the North Yorkshire mowers. It is set up for a child friendly property. We've got play area, we've got baby lambs, you know, we've got animals, we've got loads of walks. It's super, super safe. You know, it's got, you know, it's in the middle of the countryside, people come and relax, but then they have time to spend, you know, playing outside with kids and whatnot. So we know already who the majority of our customer audience is. Say for example, that you were chatting to a host and they were talking to you about, about branding. If I was in the middle of a city center and it's not so obvious who your branding is, what sort of advice would you give on maybe trying to establish who about 80, 20 is a, who we're going to talk.

To most for what we did, and what I think a host can do is sort of just start to find out like some similarities of some of the people who have shown interest in your property because they probably have more people that are somewhat similar to them that are going to show interest a lot of times, I mean, in the beginning days, like asking some questions like, how did they find out about you? Why were they interested in the property? Or even bigger, like, what was their type of stay? Because I think, you know, when you're in a city center, if you start to find that you're getting more business travel folks, then you're going to want to start to focus towards, like, how can I make sure that, you know, I'm saying it's a quiet place, you know, or it's, it's near a subway or, you know, kind of public transportation for somebody who's traveling there. Or how can you add more to your guidebook? There's sort of different things that you can kind of do once you learn exactly like either the type of travel or what was kind of their main purpose. You know, we sort of learned in the beginning days that there, there was a lot of vacation rental companies that were kind of a husband and wife duo. So we kept hearing like, oh, hey, I'm, you know, my husband and I will talk this over and then we'll come back and we'll talk to you. And so a noise where we were like, wow, this is really interesting like that, you know, these people are running their businesses as a kind of a family unit and we should talk to them about how like, you know, they can get better sleep and they don't have to work 12 hour or 24 hour days when they have noiseware installed and stuff like that. So we kind of thought about ways that we could look into any of the problems that they were dealing with or the things that they were sort of seeking. And I think the same thing with, you know, somebody who's seeking a specific property, like they have a reason that they chose yours. Once you kind of find that, that niche that you're a part of, then start to, you know, kind of layer that marketing.

So for most people, when you go, what is your why? You know, most people just look blankly staring at the screen right now, can you let me know? And what everybody's watching, knowing what this means and more importantly, how, how to work out what your why is?

The biggest thing in the beginning is figuring out really kind of what your core purpose is and what drives you to, you know, build what you're building. There's something there. So there's kind of two things. I think there's the core value, like what do you want to provide? You know, you're providing some sort of space that's providing an unforgettable travel memory for your specific traveler and that kind of like customer avatar. But the other part of the why is just like how do you want people to feel when they interact with you? Like, how do you want them to remember their stay with you and their interactions throughout that? Because I think, you know, specifically with the short term rental industry and even just us as a company, we realized that our brand was so much the people and how we interacted with people. And then I think too as a host, like their entire stay and how they interact with you and the house and everything is sort of like a part of your brand. And so if you know how you want them to feel and then what drives you, then those two things kind of come together and I think can really have you feel like you're explaining to people, like, hey, this is why I'm doing it.

Is there any other little tidbits that you can give to people when it comes to researching so simple little tactics and tips that we can sort of put into practice? And what really should you be looking or what should we all be looking to learn at this part of our journey of finding our discovering our brand?

Definitely. I mean, I think the most interesting thing is that social media and then obviously the Internet is an amazing place. I think the biggest thing is there's always something you're striving for. You always are striving to be better and get your place better, whether it be your listing or anything. I remember when we were managing properties in Costa Rica, I was looking at, you know, lots of different property management companies. And I was, I was looking for ones that I was striving for, not ones that I thought I could be better than, but ones I was striving to be a lot, you know, more like. And they probably had more money, they probably had a, you know, more specific group of portfolios. They probably had already gone through a lot of their branding experience. But once you kind of learn, like, hey, I really love what they're doing here, like, it's gonna spark creativity for you to figure out. Like, how can I do that for how it fits me? You know, a lot of people may think of it as like copying. I remember in the beginning days I was always like, I feel like I'm like copying other people, but I'm like, no, they're doing something right. Like, you know, there's all these big companies and big brands out there. There's something that they've already figured out, like, use that concept and then you Know, kind of figure out how it fits into what you're trying to do. And obviously, like, back to kind of your why and your customer, like, how does it fit into those other two pieces? You don't have to do exactly what they're doing, but there's going to be something there that kind of sparks.

Why should hosts and business owners look to stand out? And what tips can you share with them to do so? And why would it be beneficial for, most importantly in the long run to. To not try and be vanilla?

One of the biggest things is find things that people are not already doing that you could do that are unique in the beginning. And I'll share a little example because I think these things kind of always help. But in the beginning of Noisewear, like, we're not this, like, super cool. I mean, I think we're super cool, but when we're going to conferences, we're kind of like, we're noise monitoring. We have these noise sensors and they're breaking on parties and they're making sure that people, you know, don't destroy your place. But, you know, we felt like we had to go in and kind of be professional at the vacation rental market, conferences and trade shows. And then I realized I was like, let's just be fun and cool. Like, the people in this industry are so fun. So we would send out emails and be like, hey, we will buy you a drink at the bar. If you just meet us at the bar, we're going to be wearing these super neon bright shirts. They've got florals all over them. Because we were coming out with a new sensor that could work outdoors. And so, you know, we really looked at companies. Like, a good example is Chubby's. They're kind of this different brand in the US and they may even be international, but they really stand out in their marketing and they're hilarious. And we kind of looked at what they were doing and we were like, how can we be different and stand out at these conferences? So people kind of say, hey, I take notice to that. And we're not like everyone else who's kind of standing at their booth handing out pens, just sort of chit chatter. Some of them are sitting there talking on their phones or being on their computer and not really engaging. And we tried to actually go out in the crowd and talk to people, be like, come over, hang out with us. Like, we're going to the party later. Are you, can we buy you a drink? Like, nobody's gonna say no to that. And then people are also Kind of caught off guard because they're like, wow, these guys are really friendly and really nice. And, you know, I think that's a big piece of, like, just don't be vanilla. Like, stand out. Like, there's. There's gonna be value in that.

If you could give any advice with taglines and what are the sort of gems and advice that you could pass on to help a hospitality. But hashtag live home from home, whatever your tagline is. And if you're on the replay, put hashtag replay and what your tagline is. I would love to know what. How you describe your property in a shortest way as possible. So, Christine, if you could just please share some advice on taglines and how people can discover.

A little interesting. But how I've done it is I always think there's time. There's time to find, to be creative. I think from research, you're gonna find things that you kind of like. Like, I always, like, will see things that I like, and it'll give me inspiration. Like, I love people who can give up social media. I can't. That's like my source of inspiration. So I love, like, following so many different things for whatever I'm sort of trying to figure out. I think the second thing is kind of like words and phrases that you like, you'll never know how they will sort of pull together. So stop trying to, like, write out the full thing or the like, putting home and home. Like, think of two other words that can replace that. Or I think the one that I stayed at in, like, California, it stuck with me because it was called farmhouse, farmhouse oasis. And it was an oasis, like, this beautiful backyard. And I'll remember it. Like, I still follow them on social media and I still think about it, and I could recommend them. And it was just two simple words. So I think that, you know, that kind of names the property a little bit, but I think I'm sure they have some sort of tagline that kind of goes into that. That made me remember the farmhouse oasis part. But, like, thinking about those things and those words that people loved about your place, and I would even be surprised that someone may use a really great adjective to describe your place in your listing. Reviews. So reading those reviews and pulling words out and I mean, putting stuff in a doc or writing it on a whiteboard and then kind of keeping it there and in front of you is huge.

I see so many people get stuck in how they should be talking online, chatting online, as in the terminal editor use. People go down the route of going Real formal or. And then, you know, when they're not really formal offline, you know, what are they main mistake that you see people make when posting online and the language that they use specifically from like a branding and like a personal branding sort of point of view. And it doesn't have to be hospitality. This could speak. This is an all business conversation, really.

I mean, I think there's two things. I think there's being short, like long winded, saying it in so few letters and words. We always, we always write down copy at Noisewear on the marketing side and it's always long and then we just cut it down and it's, it seems like you're making the sentences seem like you're sort of speaking poor English, but you're not. You're making it quick and easy for someone to digest rather than them feeling like they have to read a lot because the world has become so quick and so fast. Like people just don't have time. I can't remember the last time I read an email that had more than four paragraphs. I just, you know, it's almost like, oh my gosh, someone, someone shorten this for me, make it quicker. And then I think the other thing too is ship it fast. Like, don't wait to make something perfect and really get it out there as quickly as possible because within 48 hours that post is way down in the feed. Nobody's gonna see it. You've gotta, you've gotta kind of be quick and that's where you can also be short. And then I think the last thing, I think I said two, but I'll add a third is we always say write like you're writing to your friend, not your grandmother. So I always think that, you know, I'm talking to other people out there that are very similar to my friends and my family. And that's just like the world has kind of become that way. And especially in social media, things are just more like, hey, we're all friends and we're all talk to each other and we're all communicating. Especially during this time. I've seen it so much more, you know, where people are just sort of being way more real with content and way more specific online. And they're not writing some formal story about, you know, Covid. I mean, they're just kind of talking in realistic terms, like do the same thing for people that are looking to travel. Just be, be a little bit more real.

I really like that. And it's something that will resonate and it'll stick with me, like, the one takeaway that I've personally got is talk to. Like you're talking to your friend and not your grandma is 100% right. And I think that's a real good one. And I wish that everybody would. Would take heed to that. There's a lot of people who are using this lockdown, this quiet time in their vacation rental business to study, learn, and educate themselves and, you know, grow. Grow their mindset and grow like they're learning. And again, that will help them on the other end. So if somebody is listening to this, whether it's live or on the replay, and they're thinking, you know what? I really want to. I want to get going. I want to get the creative juices going on this. Where would be the best place that you could say, right, this is where you should start. This is the first thing you should do when you come into to implement it. What. What would that be?

Well, they're probably at the best first place because they just listen to you. And I talk about it for, like, 30, 40 minutes. But no, I think the first thing is whether you're first starting out or you're kind of looking to. What I like to call is revamp. I mean, we revamp our brand probably every eight to nine months. It may not look like it, but there's a lot that we do in the content and the design to continue to kind of make ourselves. I would say, with the times. That's a weird way to say it, but it's sort of. Sort of true. Kind of. You got to stay up to date. You can't look like you're from the 1990s. A lot of people at work would probably laugh about this. But I make a dumping doc. I just start to, like, dump my thoughts. Because half the stuff is just swirling around in your head, and you're trying to figure it out. And you've probably somewhere had a really great idea, whether it's on a whiteboard or putting it in a quick doc. Just, like, start dumping the information and the stuff that you kind of want to start to do. And also start to just go research and find ways you can find inspiration, and then go back to starting and kind of writing like, why am I doing this? What types of customers have I had? What have I loved? What have I not loved about the way that I've been perceived? And this would be. If you're kind of, like, revamping or even if you're sort of starting to make a brand, I'm sure there's a lot of people who just have a name of a listing and they haven't really created like who they are and what they want to be, how they want to be remembered by their guests and then from there just kind of let things start to flow and set up goals of like what you want to accomplish out of, out of creating a brand.

Someone wants to reach out to Noise Aware after this chat. Where's the best place to start? Do you have a favorite social media channel or is it the website? Where would you like people to go?

We love answering things through Facebook messenger. So that's a great place if someone wants to contact me directly. Like I'm, I'm so happy to talk about this kind of stuff. I love it. My email is christineoiseaware IO. I'm always happy to answer things. And like you kind of mentioned, I think there's a lot of people right now sort of looking for other things to do. And I loved that idea of like survey your customers. Like that could be the other great place to start is just sort of survey people who had previously been with you. Like I know I'm sharing a lot of information with different people and kind of reaching out in different ways.

So if anybody wants to find out more about noiseware and the products that you have, where's the, the best place to go? Where are you? Are you worldwide? Like give somebody a little bit more of a reason to come and check out Noise Aware website afterwards.

Well, you can also kind of see how we, what we've done with our brand. I mean, I think that because we built the first noise monitoring sensor and solution that we had to actually kind of build that category. And I'm sure a lot of you are sort of on the coattails of building the category of short term rentals and airbnbs. Like there are still people out there that have never experienced it. So when we found that there's obviously those stories, we've all seen them of the party disaster. Like no one has any idea when it's going to happen. We would never want to tap into anyone we know or that we don't know. So we wanted to kind of blanket the whole industry and say, you know, hosts have a way to know about something before it ever escalates, before it ever becomes a problem. It's just a simple alert and 75% of noise issues can actually be resolved with just a text message finding out about that issue before it ever escalates. And that's kind of where we come.

In, as we always do with our interviews, our boosted podcast interviews. We finish with quick Fire questions. Now, obviously, in the times that we are in, I'm calling it the quarantine quick Fire questions. Okay, so first one. And again, if you're watching this live or on a replay, please let us know the answers in the comments to your questions. If you could be isolated, if you could be on lockdown with one celebrity or famous figure, it could be dead or alive, who would it be?

I think it would be Will Ferrell. I need somebody who can make me laugh.

That's a good one. Will Ferrell is a great one. If there has been a movie or a TV series that's been placed on that watch list and seen, you've and you've taken full advantage of it in lockdown. Seeing that we can't go anywhere. What has been that movie or TV series or what's one that you could recommend to everybody that is tuning in?

Oh my gosh. If you haven't watched Tiger King, you have to. It's the most insane series. It's the thing you never thought you needed to see.

Tiger King is the one. I can definitely vouch for that. What is the one thing, the one thing that you've missed the most being able to do since being on lockdown?

I think the one thing, and it sounds crazy, but it's probably going to an office with our team. Realize how much we collaborated and had fun together. And those happy hours. I really miss it.

It's funny. This is becoming a common answer is like being around people. What has been your favorite purchase in the last six to 12 months? That's been under $100.

That one's easy. It's a milk frother. And I have become my own talented barista at home. So I'm making what my husband likes to call frothy coffees every day since I have trying to quit my Starbucks habit. So yeah, it's like 12 bucks or something, but it was like the best purchase.

Yeah. I'm so jealous. I need a barista in my. In my life right now. I mean, it's got this degranulated. Not the best. I'm looking forward to walking into a coffee shop. So do you have a favorite podcast or YouTube channel or something that you would just put on whether you're traveling into work or going on a walk or wherever someone that you plug into your to your earphones or somebody you spend time out to look for. Did you have any recommendations, podcast or YouTube channel?

Channel Passion of mine is listening to like Murder mysteries. So I love my favorite murder that's kind of like to take a break from work, I would say other podcasts, I just love when people kind of share ones that are specific to like marketing, branding or like the psychology of consumers. So heard Adam Grant talk a couple times and he's really great. So yeah, no, just I kind of listen to random ones here and there. But if I have like a guilty pleasure, it's my favorite murder.

Nice. I like that. Well, we will put all of the show links, we'll put all the links to everything that we talked about, including the quick fire questions in to the show notes and the final one is what is your number one piece of advice that you would pass on to a hospitality owner who would like to increase their diary book?

Honestly, right now I think with COVID and people itching to get out, figure out ways and especially through, I would say even through Instagram, I've seen so many, but I also haven't seen enough. Figure out ways to market your place when everything starts to open back up travel wise and think of kind of creative ways of like what are people gonna want most? Is it that family connection with people? Is it going somewhere that's outside of their own apartment? Like, like I'm sick of my space. We can imagine that the majority of the world is as well. Like that is what is going to be kind of the next big thing, I think to get direct bookings and make sure that they're, they're linking right to your website and you have that kind of core brand that helps them book your place when everybody's ready to travel again because quarantine will end.

Thank you so much, Christine for doing this and for taking part. And if anybody does want to reach out, please do go to noiseaware IO but from me, thank you very much for joining in. As always, all I ask for you to do for all of these live videos, six weeks of live videos every night, Monday to Friday. All I ask is going to be three things. Number one, like this video so it gets the Facebook algorithms going. Number two, leave a comment and leave promote your business little link to your website Facebook business page. And number three is share this video, share it on your wall, on your business page, in a Facebook group. Try and spread the word of what we're trying to do here. And if you want to get more advice and tips, go to booster.co.uk if you want to get a five step guide to more direct bookings, a little free guide, I put together booster.co.uk five steps. We will be back again for another live video very, very soon. If you are watching this or listening this back into the replay, thank you so much for doing so.