Marketing Review for Jackie Robertson and Lorena Duknic

Foreign. Podcast. We're in episode 42 and we've got another marketing review lined up for you. One business that is in Scotland, one business that is in America, really enjoyed doing these tonight. It was a last minute request in the WhatsApp group for the Daily Boost. Booster.co.uk Daily Boost. If you want to join, have a look at how Jackie with her property and how she's really selling her property with her photos. The photos, when they first load up, they tell a story instantly. You know what type of clients that she want, who her ideal guests are. So fantastic. Please do check that out and also as well go and check out the sponsors of the podcast Hostfully Hostfully.com you get one free digital guidebook where you can wow your guests but also as well give them all that important information about how clean your properties are and how to check in, et cetera, digital guidebooks that you can send to them before they arrive. You don't have to wait anymore and have that laminated copy on the kitchen table. If you want to go and Upgrade, put in Boostly 2M. You get two months free. And it supports this channel supports and you know, it helps fund it. Which is, which is, which is fantastic. So really do thanks to Hostfully. And finally, if you want to come and join the book Direct membership, you go to booster.co.uk bdm every single month. You get 30 pieces of fresh content for your social media so you don't have to worry about what to create. It works on Facebook, it works on LinkedIn in it works on Instagram, all the images are cut to the right size and it is a, it's a, it's really is helping hospitality owners. You also get training videos and you get listed on the book Direct Map. That's the book Direct Membership. Listen to this podcast or watch it. If you watch on the YouTube channel, get your pen and paper out, make notes, make notes on your phone. But most importantly, I want for you to engage in the comment section and then let us know what you're going to be doing next to put those changes into your business.

The Boostly podcast is to begin. Make sure you like this post comment bookdirect and share this video in Facebook groups. But now let me hand you over to your host, Mark Simpson.

Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, welcome wherever you are in the world. Thank you so much for tuning in. What we're going to do is as we did last night and as we've done on all of these, we are going to go through the form One by one we're going to go through the answers. Now the person we're going to be helping first of all this evening is Jackie. Jackie Robertson. Business is in Scotland. My pronunciation of that is absolutely shocking. I do apologize. But let's get, let's get started. Where are you basis based in Scotland? How many years have you been running the business for? 6. Which of these best describe your property? Single rental property. Tell me about your business. What is your unique selling point? So again it's remote luxury. Breakdown of your guests is leisure. What is the average night stay? Three to five nights. Which of the following best describes how you interact with your guest? So hands on. I send them guest commute confirmation email, I contact them pre and post date and I interact with the guest during their stay. And I'm interested to ask this question and throw this question out to everybody that's watching and tuning in with me. Which of the following best describes how you interact with your guests and how are you thinking of changing with COVID 19 and the policies when you do reopen? Who designed your website? I paid somebody to do it for me. How many visitors do you get every month? I'm just going to make a note of this. More than 500 plus. When was your website created? So it was created in 2017. Do you have access to Google Analytics? So yes they do have access to Google Analytics. And are you happy with your website? It could bring me more bookings as everyone would do. Which of the following companies do you use? So just moving over to Supercontrol, which of the following online travel agents are you listed on? Haven't broken down which of those yet. Do you pay to be listed on any websites? Best Scottish Cottages, my other business and online marketing platform. Not commission based. Do you email your guests after stay with Special Offer News? So they got mailchimp and they are using it which is. Which is awesome. What is your overall occupation level? So the occupation level 85% to 100% direct. So high number in here and again the percentage of total direct bookings are very very healthy. 75 to 100% on average. How much money do you spend on Commission? Costs you so 0 to 200 pounds. And how would you say the majority of your new bookings come in? They book directly on the on the website. Which of the marketing channels have you attempted in the past? Facebook ads, email marketing which you wish to have a go at but don't know how. Facebook ads and Instagram ads. So would like to have a little bit more there. What is the One bit of advice you wish you had received before you started your business. I wish I had joined Facebook earlier and wave a magic wand. How would you like your business profits to look in the next six months back to normal. Where do you feel that you struggle the most when trying to achieve your goals? More strategic Facebook ads for target audience Couples honeymooners Juggle to hone down my select interest groups in the UK on Facebook. What is the biggest pain point in your business right now? Need updating. Too busy working on my other business and promoting other properties to be impartial and critical of my own website. Okey dokey. Instantly one of the first things that I notice when the website comes up is this lovely little pop up. So everybody should see this. These pop ups are really handy because what we want to do, and I say this a lot, what we want to really do with our website is we want to get people from the slow lane into the fast lane. And the fast lane email marketing. The slow lane is when somebody lands on your website. The slow line is when somebody maybe likes your Facebook post. Slow lane is maybe somebody who comments on an Instagram photo. The fast lane is when you get them onto your email list. This is probably one of the reasons why Jackie's bookings are, you know, direct is because she has spent a considerable amount of time utilizing email marketing. If I was to do anything slightly different here, I would put here, join our VIP list, maybe give your brand a little bit of a unique name. There are some fantastic services, free services that you can create really nice looking pop ups. Sumo.com so someone could put that in the comments. Sumo.com we had Noah Kagan on the podcast this season. Noah Kagan is the founder of Sumo.com he's got a great little business there. And again what are the main things that they do is they help you grow your email list. One of the main things that you, you should be avoiding doing and again this is what Sumo gives you the ability to do is you shouldn't be having a pop up on a mobile experience. You can have it on a desktop experience. And as far as I know, and these rules do change all the time, I'm no SEO expert but Google do not punish you for that. They are more likely to punish you for having a pop up on your mobile. Let me know what you notice in the website. What's the first thing that you notice whilst you're putting that in the comments? I'm going to tell you. The booking button is highlighted in the top right hand corner. Again If I was to do anything slightly different, I would actually color this in maybe a red color which matches here. So you've got booking or you could go book now, which again is more of an indication like an action button. And again here you've got the accommodation and availability and rate. So you've just got check availability rates and. And accommodation. The pictures scrolling through are stunning. And again, it really tells me everything that pretty much does what I need to know. I. E. It's by. By the beach. It's a romantic getaway. And again, I haven't, I haven't. I haven't seen this website before. Like I say, I can see it's got a hot tub. I can see the lake in the background. That's a bath. Really cool. Again, romantic. Again, this is something I'll be taking Laura, my wife. It wouldn't be a place I'd be bringing the kids if I'm coming here. It's just going to be, you know, the two of us on a get. And again, I'm getting these from the pictures. The pictures really do sell it, which is awesome. It wants me to find out more. And again, the more that I look at this website, the more the stats that Jackie shared with us makes more sense. Accommodation, romantic holiday hideaway with hot tub. Unadulterated luxury honeymoon hideaway for two. I would personally get rid of all of this. It's just a lot of, a lot of proof that doesn't need to be there. I would be getting rid of this and I'd be moving this somewhere down to the bottom of the website or even putting it on a separate page. It just looks a little bit like a little bit messy just to get the point across. Kept these two here but obviously update them then it's more than enough. Let's just quickly move us back super quick to one of the things that we discovered with boostly websites. You can easily use icons. Icons and pictures tell a thousand words here. All right, so you don't no longer need to have all of that text in. You could simply just put the highlights. You know that you can cater for pets, you can cater for children or a baby at special request. But again I would be focusing at the first part on your, your target, target audience here. You know, I would have it as where yes, we do do that but it's not an. It's not an essential. One of the best hot tub views in Scotland. Again, I love that. Again, I love all of this. A little taster, private spa, sauna, our accommodation, luxury accommodation we're growing. All of this is so cool. And again have that social proof. So remember I told you and showed you reperso, instead of having all of this here, I would in fact maybe look at getting reperso, getting those social proof reviews. So this is the hook, this drags me in and then the more that I am scrolling down I want to find out more about the business, more about the accommodation. If you put a bit of social proof in here, again, it's just knocking down more barriers, wants me to find out more. Then I find out about the hot tub and the views, all of this bit here, etc, etc, and again, even though you've done so well at the top here to get people to go to the booking, you're missing it at the bottom here. So people go down, down, down, down, down. Yep, I'm ready to book, ready to book. Where's my booking? Again, I'd be looking just like we do on the Boostly website at the bottom you're ready to book, book now, book direct. I'd just get something like this and put it in at the bottom maybe right about here. So there's nothing really about the owners, Ian, Jackie and family environment and press, you know, there's, there's not that much, you know, we want to picture people as, keep saying this, people buy from people, all right, People buy from people. So getting a little bit more about you in here if they want to know more. You were talking about attracting the local market. Now again, what I would be looking to do in and around a 300 mile radius of here and particularly, I mean the beauty of it is, is that there's only one property, all right, so you can go back and contact all of your previous guests, anybody that stayed with you over the course of the last say six to 12 months prior to this, anybody that's maybe got an anniversary coming up because you should be collecting this information if you are very heavy on the honeymoon from, you can be collecting the information along the lines of when did they get married? If you've got anybody coming up in the current, you know, maybe over the course of October, September, November, etc and you know that that's when they got married, then you can be sending out a message just to say, hey, you know, we've got accommodation, you know, treat, treat, treat your, treat your loved ones for a, an anniversary getaway. And I just want to say say thank you so everybody can give Jackie a big round of applause. Please hit that like button, that love button. And, and again, if anybody knows Jackie Please do tag Jackie in and just let her know that we've done her business. So next is we're gonna go to America. Lorena Ducknik from the business is the Rush Russell in Nashville, Tennessee. Beautiful Tennessee. So a little bit a little little known fact about me from 2002 to 2008 I was a soccer coach and I used to travel around America teaching soccer for five six months at a time. The first state that I ever visited back in 2002 was Tennessee. Our base was in Memphis. It was a fantastic location. It's a great place to have a drink. Lorena has had the Russell for one year. The property is a B and B and hotel. Do we have anybod else who's got a bnb in a hotel? Please let let let us be known in in the comments there. Tell me a little bit more about your business. What is your unique selling point? We're a technology driven and concierge less boutique hotel in East Nashville. Intriguing. Has already got my attention. We are located in 115 plus year old building that used to be a local church. Amazing. Our main mission is giving back to the community. So out of every stay we donate a generous amount of our profits to local Nashville organizations who fight homelessness. Fantastic. Fantastic message there. Breakdown of the guests is leisure what is the average nightly stay at your property? Between three and five nights. Which of the following best describes how you interact with with your guest? Virtual I communicate with the guest via email phone However I do not interact with them during your during their stay. What is the Facebook business page? It's I'm really looking forward to checking this out. Facebook.com Nashville we'll get involved with that in a second. And the business website? Who designed your website? I paid someone to do it for me. How many website visitors do you get a month? More than 500. When was your website created? 2019 do you have access to Google Analytics? Yes. Are you happy? I need to change it. Which of these companies do you use for your online booking engine for your website? Webres Pro which of the online travel agents are you listed on booking? Expedia, Airbnb, TripAdvisor? Do you pay to be listed on any websites? It's so which ones Commissions or promotions that are required to be do you email your guests after their stay? Yes. Which software do you use? Mailchimp. So again it's great to see somebody else using mailchimp. What is your overall levels of occupation for the year? Bearing in mind this is their first year of business? 66 to 75%. 0 to 25 of them are direct. So ideally, you know, we want to be getting that number into the next bracket on average. How much money do you spend per month to commissions? It's round about 30 grand a year. 30 grand to 60 grand a year. Which is, which is a, which is a lot. So obviously we want to try and reduce this. How would you say the majority of your new bookings come in word of mouth? Which of these marketing channels have you attempted in the past? Facebook ads, Google email, whatever. PR agency, influencer marketing. What do you wish you could have a go at but don't know how? All of them. What is the one piece of advice you wish before you started your business? Corona is coming. Prepare. Hahaha. I like that. Where do you feel that you struggle pricing? We are just now getting a software that will allow us to keep a competitive pricing without a ton of research that needs to be conducted on our own. What is the biggest pain point? Corona and getting guests into our hotel. Sharing the word, how safe we are as we work on a concept similar to Airbnb. How did you find out about myself? Signed up to some emails at the Point. So what do we notice here? Stay here, change lives now. What a. What a lovely, lovely little, little tag. First of all, there is a little chat bot working in the bottom right hand corner which, which is cool. Which means it's got, you know, a direct chat to. To your Facebook business page, which is cool. One thing I want you to get rid of is this here. Get rid of these things right here because all these are doing. They are benefiting two people, Hotels.com and TripAdvisor. They are not benefiting you in any way, shape or form. What I would look to do would be to either get a background around this text, stay here, change lives or sort of manipulate the image a little bit. I do love it. Really does show off this, the church like feel instantly. I do love that. And I know you've got your book now button here, but what I want to do is I want to spread out this menu across the top and then get the book now button in the top right hand corner here in again in bright orange. Have the menu going across here with a book now button here and you've got this here instantly. Stay here, change lives really does sort of speak out. I know you've got this here. COVID 19 we're currently open but again it's kind of hidden. I'd be looking to put in another little button just under here. Maybe be a White background with Black wording saying COVID 19 information okay. Our technology driven concierge less boutique hotel in the heart of East Nashville. Every stay helps experiencing someone experiencing homelessness here in Nashville for our rooms for rooms program. I love that. Again instantly talking about who you help book now advantages in the new normal. So again COVID 19 cleaning prevention small crowds, contactless check in small venue. This is fantastic. I love this. And again this is the crazy world that we live in. But straight away as I come onto the website I am instantly told about the new normal. Then we move on to our rooms and suites, our story and explore Nashville again. I love that. So again people can go and find out a little bit more. And then we've got what looks like Instagram images here, free Nashville guide, which is cool. And then we've got images, images, images. Alright. So if I was to do one thing I would expand this a little bit. So I would have just like we've got on the Boostly website where you've got here our rooms and suites. So if we just come down here a little bit. So what we offer so you could put that in so down here where it says for families. So separate out, have a section for our rooms and suites or have our story right here, take our rooms and suites and move it down to a next block and then have explore Nashville in the next block and then start writing your blog. The blog is just your case where you can start putting more information in. You can become that local knowledge person for East Nashville. You can start talking about things that are happening and again it's super simple to do. Everybody can get going with it and it's super important also as well getting an FAQ page, again this is super easy to add in. There's a WordPress plugin that will get you started. But for 2020 and Google SEO, having an FAQ is one of the best shortcutted ways of getting visible very quicker. By having an FAQ section to your website. I think you've got a fantastic, fantastic setup and I love how you're talking about the new normal and the COVID practices that you are doing. It just needs expanding a little bit more. I know that you have a contactless check in and you've got no staff on site from what I can gather. But again, talk a little bit more about you and your team. So again people buy from people even though you're not going to be greeting them on site. Talk a little bit more about the team, talk a little bit more about the rooms for Rooms program. Again, that's sort of, although you do mention it, change lives, have it on the homepage because again, you'll be amazed at how many people won't go anywhere else on your website apart from the booking page. So try and have it where 80% of your information is on that homepage. Yours is definitely one of the first websites that I've seen where they clearly state the new normal, the COVID 19 cleaning, prevention processes and whatnot. So again, fantastic. And also as well, don't forget there's two things that people are worried about before making a booking now based on the recent surveys and stats and studies that have been done. Number one is the cleaning and the safety aspect. Number two is the cancellation policy. Just knock down any barriers that there may be. Again, I know you haven't really got an on site team but again it would be cool if not you there, get a picture of this. Who is the real Mark Jantz? So it looks like you've got your Instagram connected up to your Facebook. I would spend that little bit of extra time to put a little bit more text around and explain a little bit more about what you're doing here. But you know what, you're posting regular. I love how you post in recipes. I mean you've got really cool pictures here. So what I would do differently, a little bit different if I would, I would take this post, the post here where you've got the advantages of the new normal. I would pin pin this post which frees up your cover picture there to get in your six best pictures. So again it could be six really cool pictures, the one of the stained glass windows etc. Etc. If you've got a really cool video, again you can use your video here and again I'd be using this picture there. It's got the branding, it's somebody that is well known and again I think that would be be really effective. You've got a, you've got a cool page, we can definitely get more people on there. It's just a couple of tweaks. You're using your email market in which is awesome. I again would be for yourself go back and watch the video episode where we talked about the staycation where we talk about how to get in front of guests and what you can be doing. And again you can go back to that and I'll make sure that you get the link to it because it's a couple of little tweaks, a little things that you need to be doing and you'll be absolutely flying on this. Again, you're going to be getting people traveling from the surrounding states, so you may be even getting people from Memphis, you may be getting people from Arkansas, from Alabama, you may be getting people coming from North Carolina, South Carolina, the surrounding states, or even people in Tennessee who are just wanting to come in and get away with you. Really push the message of what you're doing, who you benefit and who you're helping. Again, it's just a couple of tweaks with the website, a couple of tweaks with the social media and again, go and watch the video on staycation and how to take advantage of that of who will be doing the staycation, which will definitely help you survive and thrive on the back end of this. I love what you're doing. Keep going on the influencer route. I think that's going to be super powerful. Whatever tactics you've been doing, please keep doing on that because I think that's going to be the most cost effective way and the most effective way for you to get seen by a lot of people. If you're struggling and thinking about how to get out of this, I hope tonight you've been able to pick up a couple of tips and tricks. I love how Lorena explained about the COVID policies advantages of the new normal. I think every, every everybody should be doing it on their websites as soon as possible and again take into a fact that the key things that are putting people off from booking right now is safety and cancellation policies. So try and think about that. Think about what you're going to be doing, what your policies are cle and obviously cancellation and let everybody know if you want to go and check out the podcast from this series boostly.co.uk podcast. We are in season eight so you can go and find out all about it in there. All right everybody, have a great evening, afternoon or morning. Wherever you are tuning into this from. If you're on the replay, please do let us know and as always, rate, review and subscribe. Go and tell everybody about what we're doing. Two more episodes left of this season and then we start Project Kickstart. Until then, until tomorrow, have a great evening.