How to boost your airbnb listing [Live Case Study]
5 Jul 2021 · 11 min
Mark Simpson walks through fixing an underperforming Airbnb listing in Jávea, Spain. He brightens photos, rewrites the title with an icon, converts text to bullet points, and adds social proof. The first five photos matter most: lead with the pool and bedroom.
Chapters
Before we start today's episode of the Boosted podcast, I have got some exciting news to share with you. For the month of July, I am giving away one month trial of the boostly content creator. Now, you may be asking and you may be thinking, well, what is the boostly content creator host that I have come into contact with in the five years of doing Boostly? And when I say to them, you need to be posting every single day on social media, you need to be emailing, emailing your guest and your list, they always say to me, I haven't got the time. And I can't think of a better month to promote the boostly content creator than July. Because right now everybody around the world is busy, busy, busy, busy. And they haven't got the time to think about the marketing or the social media or the emails, when in fact the best time to do marketing is when you're at your busiest because that means that you always have a pipeline coming through. So I created the boostly content creator for busy hosts. Now what do you get? Every single month you get 30 to 40 pieces of fresh social media content that you can use for your social media channels. LinkedIn, Instagram, et cetera. You also get video templates which are designed to stop the scroll on social media, which is really powerful. Email templates designed by expert copywriters that are working so well. Georgina Bearman messaged up in our Facebook group to say that she used one of the email templates and got free bookings, direct bookings instantly, which more than covered the cost. You also now get website headline generator tools. You get a money back guarantee and you can cancel anytime. The price is only five pound a month. And right now when you sign up, you go into the boostlycontentcreator.com you add to your basket in the coupon code section, you type in July and you get the first month free. Now that is only available for the month of July. After that it's five pound. If you don't want to continue, you can just cancel at any time. But please make sure that you go and you use the boostly content creator. My goal is a month in the month of July is to get 1,000 new hosts to register and sign up. This is how powerful I know this tool is because the email templates in itself are providing a massive return of investment and I would love for you to come and join. This is for new members only. Just go to boostlycontent creator.com add it to your basket, put in coupon code July and I'll see you on the other side. Right now we've got that out of the way. Let's get on with today's podcast episode. All right, welcome back to the Boostly podcast. And as you will know by now, hopefully you saw yesterday's episode or listened to yesterday's episode. I am building out a live case study, the Boostly tune up, or whatever I end up calling it, and I'm showing you exactly what I'm doing. And I'm working with Janek and Tim of Casa4u in Javier. They're very kindly let me into their business. And what I'm going to be doing over this little series is I'm going to be showing you how I would tune up a business, give it a fine tuning, just to make sure that it is all firing on all cylinders and making sure that it is bookable as possible. So, as I explained yesterday, there's a specific training that I go through first, which is called the listing site. So making sure that you're listed everywhere. What I'm going to do today is we're going to delve into one of the property, one of the places, one of the OTAs that they haven't really spent much attention on, but it is coming up a lot in the searches, especially in Spain, and that's Airbnb. So we're focusing on one apartment. This is one of 15 that they have on their portfolio. This apartment is they're finding it tricky to shift, but there's a lot of traffic on Airbnb. It's coming up a lot on the search results. So it's one we're going to delve a little bit of time into and what we've done and what I've done today, and I'm going to walk you through exactly what I did do is we had a look at the listing and we amended the listing so we turned it from being a little bit fugly into being bookable. So again, what I'm going to do is I'm going to flip my screen, I'm going to show you what we have done, and then I will come back at the very end and explain what we're going to do next. The first things that I am doing for this listing, so this is the apartment that needs to get booked out. And one of the first things we're doing is taking advantage of the fact that Airbnb, booking.com et cetera, have got such big marketing budgets and they've got the crowd. So the first thing I've done is I've changed the title. The title before was very generic. It didn't really say anything about the actual property. So we're just amending it and we're adding in an icon. Now, as you may know, emojis are forbidden, but you can get a couple of icons to sit in which will help it stand out. So one of the first things that we've done is we've changed it. I've asked for Janek and Tim just to check on the Dutch because my translation isn't the best. And same with the Spanish as well. So what we've also done is with the pictures. So I'm going to save this for a second. What we've also done with the pictures is we've just amended them so we, we cut down on the crappy pictures and we've basically added in nice bright shiny ones. So what's also important, what we're going to do is we're going to be adding on the captions, which again, is. Is really important to do. Now, one of the things that is important is that we make sure that we've got one that's going to stand out. So again, with everybody, everybody has got pull pictures, but we haven't really got. There's not really a lot we can work with. So I want one of the swimming pools to be something that will stand out. What we will do is we will change these around as well, so we might be able to maybe look at this one as being one of the standout images. But again, we could also potentially, potentially use this one of the. Of the bedroom as, as well. But one of the main things remember is that those first five pictures are everything. So what we can do is we can amend this round here. And again, what we want to be doing with the images is using the captions just to describe with what they're seeing, because the captions do count. So we're going to add a caption to every one of these. So, for example, with, with this. Communal swimming pool that guests can enjoy after a day at the beach. And again, if you wanted to do all of that, you can do, actually give you an option where they can enhance the picture. Lovely. And then again, what we're going to do is we're going to go into the, into the next one. Now, one important things to show and to describe is that when we're doing this, we, we're basically explaining to the guest what they can't see in the picture. So, for example, with the, with the one on the. Down on the Balcony, balcony seating to enjoy a coffee or a meal, friends, family. And again, you can sort of explain that the balcony is, you know, is safe, secure, and, you know, it's just a step out from the living room. Step out from the living room to enjoy the sights and sounds of Javier. So again, something short, sharp and sweet, it just really does help. And again, Airbnb offer that function where they can enhance the picture. Now, again, what we've done here, something I recommended that we go and look at, is to add in an experience. So make, make it, make it look like it stayed in. So again, we put a bottle of wine in. You could always fill up a glass half full. Just again, it implants the user that sat there, the future potential guest that's seeing this, that this could be potentially them sat at the table. Now, because the actual apartment itself isn't the biggest or it's not the most inspiring, so to speak, what we want to do is we really want to be selling what's nearby. So again, less than 100 meters from the apartment is the stunning Javier Beach. So again, we can add in the experience shot right there. And again, this is what we're looking to do with the listing. So this is the two big changes that we've made. And what the final thing we're going to do is we're going to go in and we're going to look at the actual description itself. So we go back here. One of the final things that we're going to do. So one of the big problems, I believe, is that the listing has just been done in. In Dutch. And again, as you'll notice, we've got big blocks of text. So what we're going to do is we're going to take that big blocks of text, and what we're going to do is we're gonna, we're gonna spread it out. We're gonna tell the, the future potential guest everything that they need to know, but we're going to tell it in bullet point form because as we all know, when guests are on a listing, they don't really read, they look at bullet points of best, and we're really going to sell the main features of this. That's one of the final things we're going to do. So when I'm finished, I will let you know and I'll give you an update and then we will, we will come back and see how it is getting on. This is what we have. So the first bit, we've included a review at the very top of the listing. Ignore where it says Netherlands and Espanol. I'm going to translate it in a second. But I just wanted to show you because I've just shown Janek and Tim. So this is actually a tip from Danny from Optimize My bnb. A shout out to Danny. Really good idea, actually, to already just box off the social proof right at the very top. The next one is one of mine. So what I love to do is to get in as soon as possible that you are a professional. There's still a big stigma around Airbnb, but it's people that are doing it for a hobby or it's a spare room, et cetera. So by instantly showing that you're a property manager, by instantly showing that you're a business, people will take you a lot more seriously. And also as well, by putting in a business name, it's encouraging people to go and run a Google search to find out more about you, which is great because then it has that ability to then get a direct booking the next bit. Like I said, we've just turned everything into bullet points. And again, it just. Just makes sense. Danny talks about this, Sean talks about this, Jay Massey talks about this. Any Airbnb person will tell you that bullet point says best, really? Precisely, in as little as words as possible, go over the main features of your unit, your property. So again, 100 meters from the beach, on site, secured parking for one car, fully equipped kitchen, relax with a drink on the balcony, enjoy the sea views, swimming pool, on site. Instantly, it tells you more about the property. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to fill it out and when I come back tomorrow, I'll be able to show you. And I'll show you another little tactic on Airbnb that we're going to do for Casa for you as well. Okay, I'll be back tomorrow. I hope you're enjoying this.
More from Mark
Airbnb Pricing Strategy That Beats Your Competition (Higher Rate + Higher Occupancy)
2026 Predictions: AI, Direct Bookings, Regulation and the Future of Short-Term Rentals