Live Branding Call with Piers from Grow Your Bnb

That would have been bad if I didn't record. All right, everybody, we are live around the world on the Internet. You can also do a little test for me, everybody, if you're joining in with us. If you want to just go on to any of the social media channels and let me know that we are live and give me the thumbs up. So welcome, welcome, welcome everybody to a very, very special live video. I am here with Piers and from Grow youw BnB and we've got Boostly Academy members with us as well. So if I just do this and I hit here, you can see all the Boost Academy members, you can all give us a little wave because you're all right now on the Internet. I'll put you back in a second. Just wave. All right, so what we're going to do this evening, first time that I've ever done this, if this works, we'll, we'll try and make it in a, in a regular occurrence. But we are going to do a very special live branding masterclass Q and A with Piers. I'm going to let him introduce himself in a second. Members of the Boostly Academy get exclusive, exclusive access to this in our Zoom call. They've got exclusive access to ask questions as well as everything else in the Boostly Academy. If you want to find out more, just send me a message. Markuser.co.uk but let's go for this, Piers, if you could do me a massive favor and to everybody that's watching, could you just please introduce yourself the name of the business and what we are going to talk about today.

Yeah, so, hi guys. So Piers here from Grow youw bnb. So firstly Mark, I mentioned earlier, very, very excited to be here but also very excited to see a lot of new faces because there's some, I can actually, some clients of mine I've actually worked with like Mark mentioned. So my name is Piers. I've basically got a company called growbnb. I help operators like yourself take next level into branding. So you, you know, with Mark, there's other people in the industry who talk about, you know, direct bookings or long term bookings and stuff. I talk about just brand in general. So if you're creating a business off short term rental, I basically help you put it out there in every single aspect. And today I've got some exciting. To be fair, Mark, when I wrote this and when I actually asked you a question about what should I cover, I thought I'll try and make it something special for you guys. The things that I don't think a lot of people are talking about in the industry and I'll show you some screen and yeah, hopefully go through a lot of details about branding your service accommodation, which is what we call in the UK but also short term rental business. So can I find out who, whoever's got cameras on by the way, who isn't from uk?

If you can give me a wave or something, that'd be amazing.

Wave your hands, put it in the chat. Who's have we got? A lot of UK based people.

Okay.

Shirley in Spain, who is from the uk.

Okay. Yeah. Liam, I can see you there. Yeah. Hi, Liam. Hi Claire. Hi, Paul. Right guys, yeah, thank you. Does anyone know me? Have you guys seen me before in any social media groups? Anything? Liam? Yes. All right. Okay. Right. So it'll be exciting. So yeah, so my company is called growbnb and I've been working with individual operators who's just started their service accommodation business or short term rental business to. Currently I'm working with somebody who's a management company has got 200 properties and we're really structuring their brand right now and you know, to make them one of the biggest management company in the uk. So I'm basically consulting them to create a brand. But. Right, so Mark, you okay for me.

To share screen and start.

You've got full control so yeah, please share the screen and get stuck in.

Right, okay. So look guys, I'm going to go through one thing I didn't mention to Mark was I wanted to make sure that I don't waste a lot of time going through slide by slide. Right. But also I wanted to cover three major things today so you guys can see my screen. If you can please give it a thumbs up or just a yes on the, on the chat we can.

Cool.

All right.

And we've already got, we've already got people. Sorry Piers, I will keep going in. I do apologies in advance. We've got people asking for your Instagram handles but we will give that everything at the end. We'll let you know, you can reach out to Piers. So sit back, relax and we'll get.

On that lovely stuff.

Yeah. And by the way, please make sure as we're going through any questions you have, drop it down in the chat. Like Mark said, we're going to do a lot of Q and A at the end. So. Right, so I've already mentioned but I did want to tell you guys who I am. So it's peers obviously grow bnb.com that's a part of My company who, who helps operators like yourself. And yeah, so I've helped people from one unit, great, amazing results to people who's got 200 units at the moment. And how do I do that is by three things, marketing, advertising and branding. And I'm going to touch base all of that today. And I think one of the things I'd love you guys to, if you're just thinking about it right now is once I cover marketing, advertising, branding, I'd like you to just mention where do you think you are right now in the journey of your short term rental business because that'd be quite interesting to know more. But I personally worked on 645, I think we counted last week, short term rental properties so far and that's boosting those individual properties as well as different brands. And like Mark mentioned, I'm currently working with somebody from Australia in Sydney and we've, yeah, we've done some great, great changes to their brand and I'll quite happily share that in a minute as well.

So.

Yeah, and the other thing is I'm a very passionate individual about the industry.

Right.

I've. If you guys, obviously you guys haven't seen me much but I, whenever I share some stuff I want to make sure it makes really kind of the relation between bookings behaviors which is what I'm going to touch base on today, which is a lot of different types of guests but also guest booking behaviors. So firstly, are you guys aware of guests having a certain booking behaviors?

Yes.

If yes, give me on a chat. Yes. No, I'd love to see that.

Actually you're just going to see me as a nodding dog on the video. I'm just.

I've actually put myself into the mode and I can see some people going yes, yeah, cool.

Perfect. Perfect. Right, so guys, look, this is what I'm going to touch base today. Three things which is marketing, advertising and branding for short term rental or service accommodation business. I wanted to make sure like there's so much stuff that I could cover between this topic and that's what I do days in, days out. But one of the main thing I wanted to give you as an overview was why people think differently when they, when they first get their unit and a lot of time here, I think we all know this. When we first got our unit we all wanted to just get ourselves lives on OTA, right? So Airbnb and booking.com, that's generally our phase. Now what happens is as a short term rental business I've realized that there's actually three and working with different level of, you know like units. People who's got just started like one unit. What they thinking? And they're thinking, okay, marketing. Now what marketing really is is, is about preparing a product for the marketplace. So now let me set. So when you first started you must have thought oh let me get a logo or let me get a website. Go to mark, get yourself a website. You think that's a little bit of, you know, website presence and you've got a little bit of presence coming through, right? Or you might be thinking okay, you know what, let me list my property on ota, which is what effectively we all do. That is just marketing for you. That's nothing different. In a nutshell all you're doing is you're preparing a product for a marketplace. There's nothing to us branding or anything like that as a short term rental. Then we started looking at the other factor which was how can we take it a next step forward? And we started looking at some of the advertising and we thought what is advertising? Looking at how people working in shops and rental industry we saw that advertising is probably in a nutshell, a product to a marketplace. But also it's a message that you constantly used about your business. Now a lot of people don't use the same messaging on their business right now in their short term rental business. Now for example, you become, when you start hitting advertising phase, you start becoming consistent on your message via all the marketing platforms, including OTAs. Now does everyone here by the way have a company name?

Yes.

If yes, give me. Can you write down what your company names are in the chat? I'd love to know some of your company name because I'm sure there's some creative names out here. But yeah, I'd love to know some names and I'll read them out for you as well. Grazier Cottage.

Love that.

Anna Sanfil Guest House.

Love that.

Oh right, it's going off. Enjoy the pools. Love that. Okay, like somebody's mentioned very boring name. Now it says Kinterline House. Now just to give you a heads up, by the way, it's not boring, it's probably you've named that because how you felt. You've not named it because how your customers are going to look for you online. Absolutely.

Fine.

Ayr Holiday Apartments. Love that. Harrogate Stays. I think I've seen Harrogate Stays before Mark. BNR Service accommodation. Bikroom actually is a client of mine. We've worked together before. BNR Ad. Ginger and Gold. Yeah, Liam, we've spoken Before. Lovely. Right. So look, there are some crazy good names out there. Now what my thing is, what is advertising is actually all these company names I'm currently seeing, are you guys consistently using your company name again and again through all your platforms? So if somebody sees your listing, my question is, can people actually say it is your company rather than, oh, it's another property? So if people can see. Yes, yes, I can see that. Great. And I.

Yes, yes. Cool.

Also, it's my company.

Yes.

It's on booking.com social media. Brilliant. I try to love that. Okay, now the extras is this is what happens in advertising and I know Mark's covered quite a lot on this as well, is he's promoted people to go into Facebook. You know, do Facebook challenges, go into Facebook marketplace, go into Facebook groups. Now, I don't know if you've guys have done Facebook group promotions. So for example, if you, if you go, you know, let's say you guys invest in Northampton. If you go into Facebook, just literally search and put Northampton and then go into groups, are you guys aware there's loads of like group pages, which is like property to rent or it could be item for sales? Anything that is actually think, yeah, anything that is related to what a local market would do in a group. You can do that on Facebook. Facebook group, by the way. And I will touch base that. And I've done a video on this, so I'll happily send that to Mark if he wants to send that across to you guys to do. But also you guys start thinking about advertising and a lot of corporate booking websites. So what happens after marketing is you start being creative. What you're doing is you start looking at, you know, branding your company name or putting your company name out. You also start looking at opportunities elsewhere, which is like, let me put myself in city or any like, better than hotel, you know, night your night in. There's so many free website, you're trying to promote your business. But eventually what we felt in growbnb and how we've been working with, with many, many operators like yourself is we focused on branding. So there's a stage where we, you know, I get customers coming in marketing phase and going, pierce, I. I've got a logo, I've got a company name, but I've never used that before. Right, so we'll take them into advertising phase and then we'll take them into branding phase. But what branding is, is the message you receive from others. Now what happens when you master the platform from marketing and advertising? So when you take both of them together have a solid plan in place while it's focusing on each customer's type. So you've got guest types, you've got guest styles and their booking behaviors and they're the things what we take as a part of branding. Now if you see this four major things we've talked talk about. We've talked about marketing, we've talked about advertising but we're also talking about the guest types styles and their booking behaviors. With then all that put together you will then also start targeting different clients and automatically using each platforms is feature and automation. Now in a nutshell, let me show you like let me just give you an example. So Mark, you alright me sharing Google my business?

Yeah, absolutely, go for it.

Yeah.

So I'm going to show you a client of mine we're currently and Mark's been very kind to introduce me to this client and we he had literally no brand presence and he'd be quite happy for me to share. This is we started registering he had no Google my business presence and then we did this in a week second listing. So that is on a search box that I've never done by the way. So that is our listing we created for this client and that happened. And look at that property by the way Mark, I know we're both excited to work for this client but look at this property. Right, the view. Yeah.

So the backstory with James is he came to us asking about a website but he wanted more than a website. He wanted to have the full marketing service. And we were chatting to him, me and Tom and we're saying well we don't do that but I know someone who does and that's when I got peers involved. And it all started off as a WhatsApp group group chat and it's so amazing to see the progression and now we're able to jump in and start creating a website. So this is why I'm so excited to sort of showcase peers because the ability of what him and his team have is really good and it's the power of what he's showing you as well. So I want everybody just to pay these little attention to the little nuggets and yeah, it'd be super exciting to see what comes of it.

Yeah.

So thanks Mark.

And that's something I do want to mention guys. It's not about what we've done in Google my business. What we did first was we understood what the client requirement was. What Mark said he went this client needs a done for you service. Are you available to do Everything for this. Yes we were, we also looked at what investment that he's already made and he was kind of just actually on a marketing phase where he had logos, you know, he had listed on all.

The platforms, he hadn't done much of advertising and then what we had to do is we had to first shot this up and then be able to take him into branding phase which is where now Google, my business and stuff comes. So just by what I've spoken about today I would love you guys to type in on the chat. Where do you think you guys currently are at the moment either in marketing, advertising or branding? Because branding is where you know that you are Google's number one in the box in your investment area. You know the guest habits, every single platform you've used are systemized to get you like the type of customers that you want rather than random people booking. But I'd love to know where you think you are at the moment. Cool. Anna Advertising.

Love that.

Anyone else? Bikram, thank you so much. I know you, thank you so much. I know we've worked together. I've really enjoyed working with you. Moving from advertising to branding while I'm here Paul, I think we've spoken before. Pretty sure Advertising I think working towards branding Mark, love that advertising. Okay, cool. Jilly trying to bun but not the results I would like but I have some fab competition locally.

Cool.

Perfect. Okay guys, so thank you so much anyone. I think if anyone is confused by the way and that's probably just because this terms might be very new to you right now because I know one of the big thing I say and Mark obviously you put this out there as well is I call this short term rental business as three things. Property investing, you guys are everyone's investing in property right now be rent to rent or own to or Hotels or BnBs. The second one, it's a hospitality industry which is what Mark keeps you know banging about in the industry right now. But last but not the least for me I say it's a marketer's business because you need to know how to market your properties if you do today, you know, if you follow me on social media, on Facebook, I posted two days in a row. Both my clients from this month got a 30 nights lead and they would have not got that without us working on their brand. And I quite happily say that as a proud member so and that's because we take brands, you know, pretty much businesses like yourself into branding first then understand a little bit around what I call the next thing off we all know there's different guests and different types of guests. But the thing is, are you guys currently targeting this based on your certain booking behaviors? Now can anyone talk about like anyone know anything about booking behaviors right now or what? What do you think is your client's booking behaviors? Anyone on chat would love to hear from you.

And this will be totally different from all over the world. As you know, we've got quite a worldwide audience now with Helen jumping in from Spain as well. Booking behaviors are very, very. This is the craziest thing about the last year, like March. We could have had this chat in February 2020. And I think a lot of it could have been very similar answers. But obviously now with everything that's happened, it's very, very, very varied. So there's some really cool answers coming in.

Love that. I love that.

Yeah.

So Jane, I love that Sunday night can't face workbooking behaviors. Love that. Mark, very short notice contractor.

Brilliant.

Love that. So last minute contractor bookings, where are they normally hanging out? Are they in Airbnb? Are they in booking.com? are they looking at your website? Are they looking at your Google my business and want to make you that phone call before they book really late? All this is, is a booking behavior, Geeta. I love that larger groups now trying to book with us. Okay, where are they looking to book? So you've got larger groups which is your, for me, that is your types of guests. But actually where are they looking to book you? Because that's where your branding come in. Are they looking to book you through OTAs? If so why? And what sort of customers are looking at your listing going and what are they reading on your listings? That's, you know, I keep asking myself that same questions. 90, 90 day large groups. Okay, Mark, is that 90 day booking or.

Spanish?

Very last minute bookers, Shirley. Love that. Okay, and are they. So when they say last minute, I think the question you've got to ask yourself, Shirley, is is it because they use in a certain, certain platforms, is it, is it again going back into OTA and are they reading your, your, your listings or you know, for example on Airbnb, are you trying to promote a very holiday maker last minute bookers or does it say something which is effectively saying something like 30 nights booking get 15% off because that allows you to track your longer term clients payday bookers. Okay, Claire, Love that. I'm seeing a lot of trend around a very small night booking. Liam.Booking.com. okay, so a lot of your booking behaviors are at the moment through booking.com and I'd ask why and why are you, you know how can we start looking at the other platforms that's going to allow you to get those longer term bookings. So one of the things we do is in a part of Grow youw BNB is we focus on branding that allows you to match your guest booking behaviors who are looking to book with you long term.

Right.

So although we love, you know, smaller nights booking. Mark's made a video about this. I've done a video about this as well. There's a lot of changeover, there's a lot of management and effectively you probably want to not do them. You probably want to get someone who can stay with you long term. Sarah, you've mentioned saying they don't check direct prices and tend to pay more. Love that. Okay. Are they checking your direct prizes on your websites or is there any other way they can find you? Would love to know. Just need to get away. Okay Mike, I think again that's probably just because you're maybe some of you, you know most of your properties are in a holiday holiday location and that's probably why retired couples or families guys I think a lot of time with so larger group often six months ahead at least website and OTA Louise and I love that Brilliant business bookings and mixture from ota. Okay cool. Right. So if you see here there's direct OTA listing website across the board. Love that they're finding OTA look for us direct in Google my business and website call to check if available. Now Bikram I know that because you're my, you're my client. We've done that before together guys here Bikram has mentioned on the chat if you look at what we've mentioned he said they're finding OTA look for us direct in Google my business which is what I specialize really well on and website which is what Mark's been working has worked with Beccram before and then they call to check if available. That is one of the biggest good booking behaviors right now. If you want to get long term bookings.

Cool.

Book direct from website. Mostly retired couples. Perfect. So guys look one of the Google my business. What I want to show you today was actually a booking behavior. Now what happens is let me show you an example. Hopefully anyone don't mind me actually googling your company but I'm just going to quickly show you here an example. Right. So I'm going to check. We often convert go. Okay cool. Mark, can you remember a company Name any of your booster academy member.

Well, who would like to put their hand up? If you just put your business name in the chat, we'll see who the first one is and then we'll, we'll let her peers do a little Google search. So the first one up was Shirley Graham Cuervis. Elena.

Yeah, love that. Okay, right, let's have a.

About the free.

Okay, right, let me, let me show you an example. Right, so first thing.

There we go. So C U E V A S Helena, where's your name come from? Sheila? I've always wondered this. Obviously Cuevas is cable. What's Helena? Is that like local to the area?

Okay, so one of the booking behaviors you're going to see is this is what happens. So if I knew the company name, I would have just googled.

And what I love about your brand.

Right now is Shirley, I can actually see a lot happening around a lot of ads and I can see you're constantly using your company name through every platform. As a result, you're being searched on Google.

But now the next thing is that's your investment area. I'm going to do and type service departments. Renata. Now that's where you're going to have challenges. Now let's have a look. This is where most of your direct bookings are. People would not know your company name but what they will do depending on your guest booking behaviors. Now obviously in the UK they, they are quite keen to use service departments as a word and then they'll put the location. Are you actually being. Right, so these are your competitions right now, Shirley. I think looking at where your listing name is.

Let's have a look.

Yeah, so looking at. Right that. Now I can't see your, your listing pop up in the keyword. It could be a different keyword.

Let me try.

Maybe it's a holiday. They might call it holiday apartments.

It's a cave house. So yeah, that'd be. That's basically the brand is a cave house. So that's more down the niche route. But again it's like, again the purpose of this and what we're trying to do is try and get into the mindset of the guest. Now if a guest is looking for a certain type of accommodation, that is cave house, different type of experience, then yeah, fantastic. Or would they be going down the route of searching for something else, which is always good to do. This type of. Type of search and service accommodation is a little bit different. We don't really do that in Spain as much, but it's good to Sort of run these sort of searches to figure out what people are typing.

Yeah, absolutely. And maybe not. They, you know, you might have a key. So one of the things I'd advise you, everyone to know is what is one of your major keywords that your potential customers are searching you for Now? You know, working with an Australian client, we started finding out that you know, holiday apartments used quite a lot there rather than service department or service accommodation. So that is where your booking behavior starts is knowing what your customers are searching for you. Rather than actually looking at your company.

Name, they're searching those keywords and that's.

What we call an SEO as well. So in our backend system what we do is we, when we onboard a client like yourself, B, you have one properties or you know, more than 200 proxies, we look at what your booking behavior or your guest booking behaviors are. Who have you been serving before and ideally how can we get your long term bookings. That's what I'm interested in. I'm not interested in getting you smaller nights booking. My job is to make sure that we understand your booking behaviors. We then start looking at, you know, one of the things we do in onboarding is we actually saying what are the types of customers have you been serving constantly and then how can we start? And believe me when I say this, there's so many customers who's gone. Piers will never get 30 nights booking and literally in the first week we've landed them with 30 nights booking. So every properties that you guys have right now and your investment area will have somebody looking for 30 nights lead. The only difference is a, is your brand being seen properly and the right way and secondly, are you optimizing your listing for longer term bookings rather than short term bookings? So one of the advice I want to give you today guys is two things.

One is brand awareness for your company. Secondly, a profit pricing which is going to allow you the 30 nights booking rather than smaller nights booking. So you know, if you watch me on YouTube and stuff, I constantly put out my client results. Most of them are 30 nights per king and their chunk bookings. And that's, I'm guessing everyone here would like a 30 nights booking. Right? A profitable 30 nights booking. I can see a bit of smile going on. Yeah. And that's, that's what it's all about.

Liam.

I know, I know we've spoken about this. Absolutely. And that is what our industry is right about is brand something. Well and then you do you know what you'll eventually branding Wins you will attract those customers that you guys want rather than the customer that's they see you online. So at the moment, if you feel like you've just listed a property online and you feel like you're getting bookings because you've listed, let's change that with brand awareness. Let's get a brand out there and then attract customers that you want to attract. And that's what a brand builder is in a nutshell.

And I think what's important as well, it's not like you're going to have every single guest who's going to be booking for 30 nights, but it's nice to know that you are appealable and bookable for it. And just again, it goes along the lines of a lot of things of what we talk about. It's thinking about the person, your customer avatar, think about what their booking behavior is. I really love that term booking behavior. Taking yourself out of doing the search and put your hat on of a guest and what would they be typing to come and find you? And Shirley, I did a little search there for cave house accommodation Spain and you were on the first page of Google which is fantastic work. So well done you for putting some good keywords on the website, et cetera. But yeah, I love that. So here's. Have we got anything else to share on the screen or would you like to open up?

I'd love to do a Q and A actually. So I hope this obviously has been useful but I'd love to know furthermore into just any questions you have around brand builder.

Yeah, so when it comes to it then everybody, we do have some questions that the Boostly Academy members left in the group, the those that couldn't make it. So what I was going to do is I'm going to read them out just to now to yourself, Piers, and some really good questions in there. If you have questions, those that are tuning in live, I'm going to give you two options. Number one, you can put it in the chat or we can unmute you, you can join us on the stage and you can ask your question live to Pierce. So whilst you're you're thinking about what that question may be, let me just go and pull up the questions that I had from the group. One of them is a really good one and I'd love your opinion on it, Piers. And it was from Claire, Claire Carter. She said what protection should you put in place with your brand to stop others from copying. And I find this a really good, good question to ask because you can go down so many different.

Yeah.

Roots with it. But when it comes to brand building, when it comes to, you know, other people, maybe in your local area or someone in your niche who gets like quite envious of it and then wants to copy.

I'll tell you a funny story actually.

So in Birmingham, right, I've worked with.

My first ever client. We did some amazing work. They only had one unit, right. But somebody, they were working quite closely. They were business partner before they split out and they had individual properties. The person worked with me, I did, you know, we did everything and then the person who was there or partner copied exactly the same way we did stuff. And one thing we realized was you can't stop people copying from something. But what you can do is them not to understand the booking behaviors. Now what that's one of the things I do is we will only create listing based on what your customer booking behavior is and what your calendar says right now. So for example, let's just talk about Airbnb. If you've got like a one night booking in between, like let's say in June, like 13th of June or whatever.

If you're trying to optimize your listing.

For monthly booking, you're probably wrong because.

You'Re never going to be searched or found on a monthly search if you've already got a one night booking in middle of June.

Right.

So how do you optimize your listing based on getting at least 14 nights booking? So one of the things we've realized in Grow youw BNB and working with, you know, like probably 600, 650 plus properties is we have maybe we found maybe 20 ways to list properties on Airbnb. We've got all the patterns ready depending on what you look like. Again, I'm going back into what I said to you. If you come on board and we look at you've got one night booking in between, like June, I'm going to say to you, look, you're not going to get a 30 nights booking because you can't do anything with that. But how do we start looking at filling your calendars with bigger nights booking? So Mark, the question is going back to you can't stop people from copying, but what you can do is optimize based on your type of calendars and yeah, that will stop people worrying about what you're changing and whatnot.

Fantastic. Okay, so let's go into another question. And Paula's left some really good ones. She left three different ones. I don't know. Okay. If you can see them, I Don't know if you want to attack them in any order. We've got what colors are good for hospitality? What are the best places to have your where are the best places to have your brand in or best things to brand other than color scheme and logo, what are the top five things your branded should focus on? So some really good in depth questions and you can probably create on each one.

Are you going through your Facebook group?

Yes, in the booster area.

That's the one. Right, Great.

Okay, so colors, so what colors are good for hospitality business and if there's a set. Do you know what? One thing I've realized is branding with colors is very, very important. Like as you probably know, if we say Coca Cola, what colors do you remember? There is always a color red that you guys will remember.

Right.

No matter what. That's the whole way. If you look at Google, you'll start remembering the different colors.

Right.

And if you look at what we've done with grow your bnb, we've started being a little bit cheeky and we've got a bit of Airbnb going around, but not exactly the same color. And that is very, very important. Going back into is there a right color? There's no right color is actually how you want to represent your brand, but it's about being consistent with that color. So when you're promoting something, how do you then become so consistent actually promoting that again and again. But I don't think there's a right or wrong color. What are the best place to have your branding or best things to brand? Right. Best place to brand is I believe at the moment, as everyone is going back into OTAs and people staycations coming back, we're going back into a little bit of normality. If you can get yourself out in Google, believe me guys, at the moment, as much as you can have great websites, you can have great OTAs if you invest in Google. That's where the business is. Because one of the booking behaviors in uk you probably guys have seen it, especially in UK operators, if somebody wants to book with you long term for 30 nights or more, they will have some silly questions they still want to talk to you about. And it could be asking saying do you have a car park now? My thing and Mark, I don't know actually this is a good time for you and I to chat about this and obviously academy member would love to know as well is I've always believed that if you don't have a great brand presence, would you think a customer would like to book for 30 nights or more would leave their bank detail through that website.

It's a good question. Do we have any answers in the, in the academy, yes or no, when it comes to branding and brand presence, do you feel that the branding. And again, you can look in your local area as well. You can look at people in the local area. Is there somebody that always springs to mind when it is accommodation? I mean that's the. I think that's the ultimate goal when it comes to something like this is when somebody thinks of accommodation in the local area, whether it long stay, short stay or regardless, who do you think comes up? And I think that's the, that's the sort of, that's the sort of key to it. It's all. All comes down to how you put yourself out there. Whether it's search results like peers is I say that him and his team are fantastic when it comes to Google search and making sure that the branding is on point. But yeah, let's see what some of the phrases and people are coming back the same.

Perfect. So let's have a look. I'm loving that. Yeah, no, great. Some of the things that, that's exactly why I wanted to share was just lack of trust if poor branding. So I think that's again going back into, you know, some of my clients, which we've always said and we've seen a proven track now is we always wanted to go website and Google my business hand to hand or Google presence hand to hand. Because if you do that together, your customers will have better experience with your trust. And if they see your brand name all over Internet then they go into your website, they'll quite happily then take out their bank card and go, right, I can book with them for long term and punch in their bank detail through your website and that's what we want to do, get you some direct bookings. But you've got to build that brand trust first. So let's go back into other thing other than color scheme, logo. What are the top five things your branding should focus on? Okay, so today something I've already covered is alongside your branding, you need to know every single guest that you guys are currently serving or you've served before. Now. If it's family, why are they coming down? If it's, you know, if you've got staycation, if they're coming down for two nights, if they come in for four nights, what is it? If it's a contractor booking, where they working? If you write down different types of guest booking behaviors and I think One of the things you've probably seen in UK right now is Hong Kong clients right now, they're moving to the UK right now. And most of the operators who have been getting 28 plus night bookings have been Hong Kong clients at the moment. And that's how do you then optimize your listing based on clients who are relocating at the moment? Right, so all of this is going back into, apart from branding, know your types of guests, know your types of booking behavior. So write down who they are and then think about where are they currently searching for you. So are they looking at Airbnb? If so, why? And how can you get them out of Airbnb to book you directly if they're looking at direct bookings, how can you build that trust as a brand to be able to book through your website rather than you worrying about answering that phone call because they need to talk to you? So it is going back into, I think the two major things I want to talk about is guest and the booking behaviors.

Some really good answers coming in from the question that you asked and Liam just said. Looking at last year's data, we found that they were 55% first time visit was for leisure and then 20% family visits and then 20% business, which is, it's really interesting the data that you have. I think you're sat on a, on a gold mine of data, really everything that you need to know. Because we can all talk about assumptions and what we think, but at the end of the day what you have in front of you is everything. And gif. I asked about what phrases guests are using to find us things like Google Analytics and Google Site Kit. Those things are really powerful in giving you some form of a clue of what somebody is typing in to then stumble across you. It's not 100% accurate, but it gives you a kind of a good idea.

Yeah.

And just to let you know guys, if you've ever used your Google, my business backend after your listing is matured, let's say about three months down the line, Google actually gives you some kind of insight on what and how you're being currently found. So what we do as a part of again of Grow BNB and Brand Builder is we then start taking that data, start checking that into your branding. So that because we've already known that Google's telling that this is how you're being being found in Google by your clients. So we're taking that physical data and then start spreading around your photos, your OTAs, your website, and that's how we start bringing that consistency through all the platform.

Mark, I think let me.

I'll also share like one of the things I love about data, by the way, is let me just quickly show you one of my client. I've just had a client call. I finished my client call just before this and he's a very new investor in the UK right now in Northampton, and we were talking about his performance. I don't know how often you guys currently look at your back end on Airbnb, but I want to show you something. What we did so we effectively boosted the first week. What we do is we boost their Airbnb accounts. And what we realized was this client.

Was performing fairly poor, but not, not massively bad. But the, the time we changed their account, we realized how quickly they. They start picking on the View. So actually, I'd love to know here, how often do you guys check your Airbnb backend data? I'd love to know that. Do you do it once a week? If yes, I'd love to know on the chat if you put yes, once a week. Yeah, Shirley, love that.

While you're getting into that section, I'll just, I'll read out what's coming in. So we've got once a week. Once a week. So I think it's going to be average.

We are being found not enough.

Guest who we've missed. Okay.

Right, let me show you a, an example of what I meant. This is going to give you guys why we believe that data is so important based on how you guys are going to work in your existing business. Because if you're not looking at this kind of data, then I would advise you go back again, look at your branding, but also look at your Airbnb just back end just to see that the views are your brand. That's what's allowing people to see you at the moment. And my next question is how often are you changing your listing as a brand? Right. And how often I mentioned earlier, how often are you optimizing your listing based on your calendar? So. Right, Mark, I'm going to quickly show you my screen on Airbnb, one of my clients account on Airbnb.

Is that all right?

Yes, fine. As long as there's no.

Yeah, there's no. Yeah, it's not going to show anyone's detail just so that I can show you why what I mentioned earlier.

And obviously we're looking at Airbnb, but I'm assuming what we're showing you can replicate in any of the PMS's etc.

Yeah.

So I'm just going to hopefully that should just only show the data and what we've done.

Okay.

So like for example, this client was onboarded end of April, right. We did the change literally about this here time. And then you can see how.

Similar.

Listing versus them, they've always been dominated by similar listing. The change we made, they have now gone and actually started working around and dominating their competition. And I know this is only going.

To go up and this is purely.

Based on one property. And I'm quite pleased to say that the same time we did this in 24 hours, we landed this client 17 nights booking. So for me it's not just about direct booking, it's not about long term booking, it's about how do you maximize every single platform to get you those quality booking right now.

Yeah. So to answer your question, Tracy, that sort of data there is what Airbnb would show you. It's what booking.com and you'd have to log in directly into the extranet because what that is doing is that showing you, comparing against Airbnb data, you wouldn't really get that in a pms. But it's interesting to see, you know, with changes. And this is how you can always test was with what we've always said this, the beauty of the Internet is that nothing set in stone, you can test something, see how it works, see if the title or the description or your pitches. Because at the end of the day, even though we are all about direct bookings, even though we are all about, you know, cutting down on commission costs, we have to be utilizing these OTAs because they are so powerful. That's money that they spend. And so little tweaks here and there doesn't mean you have to be checking every day. I mean the average here is about once, once a week.

Yeah, I love that guys. And please, yeah, please keep that going. And I think rather than only checking once a week, I'd love you to optimize it based on your calendar because that would give you a return that you want even through OTAs. Mark, you all right in me going back?

Yeah, absolutely.

Right, so next thing here, so I've got. What are the steps you should create, go through to create a brand, your brand for someone that's really not sure where to start. Claire, I think again, if you were in today's. I don't know if Claire. Is Claire here today? No. So Claire, if you watch this video, I think I've kind of gone through that earlier through different phase of marketing, advertising and branding. So yeah, and that, that is where you're going to start. You're going to start with marketing first, then go into advertising and then go into branding. So next one, Claire, what protection should you put in place for. Okay, so we've gone through that earlier, Mark.

I think the other ones are just people saying that they can't make it. But what I would love to do. And we'll just finish off on this. Well, we'll give the opportunity for somebody to unmute themselves and just ask a question directly, have a chat with Piers. So if you'd like to do so, just say yes in the chat box or just, just let us know or raise your hand. Paul. So Paul's here. Piers. Are you okay with this, Paul, to ask a question?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Let's go for it.

Hello, Piers. Nice to see you again.

Mark.

How are you?

Paul, how's it going?

Excuse the darkness. My ring light has failed on me. I need to get a new one. Rubbish. Anyhow, I have a question. So I feel like I'm doing fairly well on Google, my business. I usually come up number one. Number two, I've managed to get above booking.com, the ads and these types of things using Google Ads and a little bit of SEO, tweak, tweaking about. But I wondered if you had a hack or some solution. So if you were to look at my, my listing on Google, you go into Google my visit hotel, there's a string of photos along the top.

Okay.

And the one that's right in the middle of mine is a shot that customer took in my toilet. Now it's nice and clean and that type of thing, but that's not what my avatar needs to see. Have you got a hack or some way of sequencing those photos or some way of making sure that they come up in Maybe if you've got 10 photos at least you know the first five are going to pop up rather than a picture of a coffee tray or a box.

So is this on your Google my business did you say? Right, yeah. Okay, so you're right, me sharing my screen.

Feel free.

We can do it together. Yeah, go for it. So if I type in Sandfield guest.

House or Oxford Guest House.

Guest House.

That's it. Sandfield. Yeah, that's me.

Okay. So is there picture in one of those photos?

Yeah, that's right. It's in Google somewhere, Paul.

That's right, yeah.

And you do you do know that it depends.

Is that the one, that one and.

The 12 pictures to the Right. Of it.

Okay. Right. You will need to bombard your Google my business with no photos. Just add as many photos.

Flood it.

Yeah.

Even if they're repetitive, it doesn't matter. Right, doesn't matter.

If you can angle this way, angle that way. The bedrooms. Do it and upload them.

Just flood it like when I used to be.

Yeah, and it will work.

A lawyer. Just give them loads of stuff and I'll never find that one thing that I don't want them to.

Okay, I know, I know, I know.

Roger that. Easy, easy. I'll just hammer it. Brilliant. Flood it.

Basically, there's no algorithmic date or anything like that. It just literally goes on a. Yeah, it does.

And then the more. So what's going to happen, Paul, is the more you're going to add the other pictures are going to get more views because at the moment, believe it or not, that picture is getting a lot of views right now. So if you go back, you're getting a lot of view in that.

Yeah, there's like 198,000 compared. Everyone wants to see this toilet.

I know.

So you've got a bombard with other pictures that's going to get more views as a result of that, that's going to start pushing down.

Okay, cool. I'll go through my file and just upload everything.

All right, good, good, lovely, thank you.

Nice to see you.

Yeah, no worries. Well, I've got a question here from Claire as well on my question about brand protection. I mean more alongside the intellectual property protecting brand name logo pattern, no accommodation that currently is going through. Okay. Caught from another property that has set up using. Okay, Claire, great question. Now that is probably more legal side of the branding, which is, to be fair, I've never gone through that before. Obviously we've seen similar names floating about different companies and brand. Now I would suggest again, people do copy you and believe me when I say that I've seen that happening quite a lot and as long as it doesn't create conflict between what you're trying to invest and that's going back into branding and marketing or advertising, somebody who can copy a name doesn't mean they can brand properly. Right. And they're two completely different things. It's maybe they can copy your name, but they might not be able to brand as well as what you guys would do. So going into. Back into legals.

Yeah.

There's nothing you can do right now apart from taking them to the court and to be able to get your name back depending on who's used it first.

I think that that is a perfect place to put a pin in this because there's a lot of stuff being said, a lot of stuff being shared and I know there's a lot of note taking being made. So I really do appreciate your time, Piers. Now, one of the main reasons why I wanted to get peers in there and into the academy is that a lot of people come to me and say, I need somebody that can do a done for you marketing solution. And I don't do that. I haven't got the structure or the systems in place. And I've said this to Piers many times. I've been looking for somebody like Piers for so long that offers a done for you solution. So I'm really excited to get him in here to show off his expertise and the case studies are there and say the results are fantastic. So what I encourage everybody to do. As you all know, I'm a massive fan of outsourcing. When you are super busy, just like now with the season properly starting to kick in and there's loads of things happening, but you still know the importance of it and if you haven't got the time and you want to find out more, then I really do encourage everybody to reach out to peers directly. You can go straight to the website, you can book in a call. And what I love about Piers is he is totally honest. If he won't lead you down a garden path, he won't try and sell you something that you don't need. And this is where I have so much respect for what he's doing and everything that. What the team are doing because the results are fantastic. So if you're thinking I need to get better at this, if you're thinking I want to find out more, if you're thinking that I just want to just do this and just let somebody who knows what they're doing crack on and give it a good go, at least have a conversation. Then I really do encourage you to reach out to peers and peers. What is the website? What is the domain? How can they go.

So you can. You guys. So there's different ways to reach out to me. I think people, some. Some people know here that I'm very active in Facebook. But grow your BNB is where you can find me. Grow your bnb dot com. You can book a call in there. You can also see all the clients I've worked with, by the way. So, you know, I'm quite very transparent on who I've worked with and how many clients I've worked with before. But yeah, I've got YouTube videos on branding you. But best is if you would like to book a call with me, feel free to do. It's literally a discovery call. I like building brands, by the way, and I am genuinely, if you look at my Facebook and stuff, you speak to my past clients, I'm all about your benefit because I want to make you guys money. Right. And the only way that's going to happen is people like Mark, myself just giving you guys advice behind, yes, you can. You know, you guys have done this and you've invested in Mark and maybe a lot of other things, but where we come is where you've gone. Actually, do you know what? I don't know what to do. I don't have time for this. I want to go get more properties but before that, let me get my brand out there first and that's what we're going to do for you. We will do the work for you. Fantastic.

So even if you're a bed and breakfast, you know, even if it's one rental accommodation, still reach out and have a chat because you never know, there may be some synergy and you may be able to work. So I just want to say, Piers, thank you so much for coming into the group and for sharing that. Thank you, the Academy members, for joining in with us, which has been fantastic. And thank you to everybody that has tuned in from outside of the Academy. This is something that I wanted to test for the first time and I know we've had a lot of viewers, which has been, which has been great. We've had a lot of people tuning on Facebook and LinkedIn. We've now got LinkedIn Live and Facebook. So if you're watching this thinking, I would like to be part of the Boost Academy. I'd like to be part of these zoom calls and have the experts Q and A them. Just go to boostlyacademy.com and check it out if you, if you've never heard of it or just want to find out more. We've, we've totally changed it. You can join anytime and you can find out more about going to boost the academy.com but from everybody here and let's get everybody back on screen. We're going to do like I normally like to do when we end one of our group calls. I love to do a big group wave, a big group cheesy wave. So I want to get all cameras on, make sure the microphones are off. Let's do a nice big cheesy wave for the camera and I'm just gonna do a little picture and then we'll. We'll. We'll call it a night. So from me to everybody, tuning in on the count of three, let's make the screen nice and big so I get you all phase and I love you on account. 3. 1, 2, 3. Give us those cheesy waves. Ah, look at that. You all look lovely. All right, everybody, thank you so much for being part of it. Thank you very much for Pierre and we will see you all.