Secrets of a Successful BnB Host: Proven Marketing Strategies
8 Jul 2024 · 36 min
Georgina Berman runs an 8-room B&B in St Anne's and gets about 80% of bookings direct through her own marketing. She uses Google Ads, SEO, keyword tools, and social media reels to fill rooms, and built a guest email list with Mailchimp to keep people coming back.
Questions this episode answers
July 8, 2024.
Eight bedrooms.
About 80% direct bookings.
50% off the first three months with discount code BOOSTLY (signup via stayfi.com/boostly).
Chapters
Want to take control of your bookings and find some independence from Airbnb? Meet Stayfi, the game changer in guest data collection and marketing. Now, Stayfi been around for a while, I've talked about a lot, but let me just delve into a little bit more about what Stayfi is and it does. So remember the last time you went into a coffee shop and you wanted to use the WI fi? What did you have to do to get the WI fi? You had to give him your email. Stayfi works exactly like that, but for your short term rental or your medium term rental business. And the beauty of it is that you don't just get the lead booker's details, you get the whole party. And this is fantastic because of a stay of maybe four people coming at your property, you've not just got one email, one piece of data, you've got four. And this is so important to boosting your direct bookings is to build a solid database. Now after the Stay stay fight, encourage you to keep in contact with your guests and they give you the tools to do so as well. They've got email, they've got sms, you name it, they've got it and it's all automated. Now I reached out to Stay Fi and I asked them, what can you do for the Boostly peeps? What can you do for the Boostly crowd? And they have given us 50% off your first three months. Now that's an exclusive. Now to do that you need to go to stayfi.com forward/boostly b o o S T L Y. Stayfi is S T A y F I dot com. When you're signing up, you've got to put the discount code in Boostly B O O S T L Y. Then you get 50% off your first three months of every vendor, every supplier, everybody that that we have recommended over the years. The ones that everybody comes back to me with and saying that was the one, it was Stay Fi. I'm a massive fan of them and I'm so happy that they've agreed to sponsor and partner with this podcast and this show. And now it's time for you to reap the benefits. Go to stay fire.comforward/boostly. Use the discount code boostly and you get 50% off to your first three months. Right, let's get back on with the show.
Okay everyone, welcome back to the Boostly podcast. This is a podcast that gives host the tools, the tactics, the training, most importantly the confidence so you can go out there and get yourselves direct bookings we do a miniseries on the Boostly podcast where I get to introduce and interview hosts from all over the world so you can learn their tips and tricks and all the things they do in their business which you can put into your business as well. And this is always great fun. I always learn something. And today we've got an old friend of Boostly, somebody who has been in the Boostie community for, for many years. She's fantastic. I've seen her on television appearances as well. So I'm going to mention that we've got Georgina Bearman of the Seacroft Bed Breakfast and Bar. She is the owner there and I'm really excited to dive into this because recently she's been learning all sorts of marketing tactics and even showing me a thing or two, which is. Is amazing. So welcome along, Georgina. Thank you for joining me.
Thanks, Liam. It's probably about time we did this, so.
Oh, definitely, definitely. As we've said beforehand, there's a few people within the community that, that we want to try and come and do this. If you can introduce yourself, Georgina, and your business, if you give us like the elevator pitch.
Sure. I'm Georgina Berman. I've got the secret breakfast and bar in Lydon St Anne's. It's a eight bedroom bed and breakfast and we asked, we trade all year round. Obviously we have a peak season off season. We're trying to boost that at the moment. What else can I tell you? Um, gosh, we were on the Hotel Inspector. We did the first crazy step in marketing we ever did. So people may remember. I've aged a lot since then. I think the stress has got to me.
Do you know what? I didn't know you were on that until you told me. So I then went out and dug out the episode and I love, it's a guilty pleasure of mine. So actually watching that and for any of our us kind of listeners to this, there's something where an expert goes into bed and breakfast and hotels up and down the country. They go in and they basically say what could be improved and all this sort of stuff. And when you went on that, Georgina, what was your. Just talk us through briefly the thought process of going on that and how did it help?
Yeah, I question myself quite often about why we did this. I knew when we took over the Seacraft it was doing nothing at all. So we were starting really from scratch. And then we got to the point after a couple of years where we knew we got a good product, we got a good service, we got it going. But we'd literally got. Nobody knew who we were, we were invisible. And so I've got a business studies degree but I did it a long time ago and obviously, so digital marketing's come on board and things have changed quite a bit since then. So my way around that, without knowing about digital marketing at the time was what, how, how can I get some national coverage? I thought, well, I'm not going to deform in a bed, I'm going to do the hotel inspector. But at no point did I ever think they would come even, even right to the very last sort of. The application went in in the September 2017 and even up to January 2018 I didn't think they were coming. And then they said we're coming next week. I was like, oh wow. Yeah, that was that.
I mean that's, that's pretty much going from 0 to 100 miles an hour to go. Do you know what, I'm going to start doing some more marketing. I'll go on telly. You know.
Everything'S extreme with me. Once I get an idea, I mean everybody who knows me just like go for it. We're all going this way and that's what we're going to do. It has been, it was an interesting thing to do, but it has been the gift that keeps on giving. And every now and again I get quite a number of phone calls when it airs because it keeps cycling.
That's brilliant. And this is the thing about Evergreen kind of marketing and like you say, they repeat those shows. Often people do Google after they see the place. I mean I do it, I check out the place and see what it's like now because they want to know. And of course once they're on your website they're more likely to book. So what a great move. And my first lesson from this is be brave and just put yourself out there. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So whereabouts is the property? And just tell us about the general area. Just what is it like in that area? And bear in mind, we've got UK and US listeners.
Okay, so for anybody who is outside of the uk, I mean the northwest of England, on the northwestern coast, about one hour west of Manchester, we're a little bit south of Blackpool, a little town called St Anne's. It's part of a dual town called Lyddons and people who are keen golfers might know Rob Royal Lithium. We're about a nine minute walk from there actually and two minute walk from the beach. So it's quite handy. So yeah, so our sort of cousin is Blackpool. So anybody locally will know for Blackpool Tower and all the facilities we have there, we're kind of a little bit more sleepy than that. It's very flat. There's lots of things to do for young children. There's lots of bars, restaurants and cafes. It's sort of a more chilled vibe, really. So nice.
And a lot of the time, I mean, on the Booshki podcast, we, we were talking to hospitality owners from all over the world. But you've actually got. It's a bed and breakfast as opposed to a short term rental. Yes, exactly. Like, I know, I know Harrow and a few others are like, yes, more, more bed and breakfast owners and, and things like that on there, but who is it that tends to come and stay with you and what do they tend to, to like to do in the area?
So actually I could probably answer this more fully this week than I probably would be able to normally having done a bit of an assignment on it. But we have, we've gone beyond the customer avatar to a customer Persona. So generally speaking, we capture the nostalgia. People who are sort of chasing nostalgia from their childhood. So our client base, usually around age 50 to 65, they've had experience of coming to Blackpool historically with their families. Often they'll bring grandchildren with them. For us, with our eight bedrooms, it's quite steep accommodation. We tend to sort of accommodate adults rather than children, that kind of thing. It's just, it suits our, our offering better, if you know what I mean. We're just not, we're not kitted up. We don't have the space to be honest, to offer anything else. That's, that's where, where we're at.
One of the things I wanted to jump in there and just talk about is I know that, I mean, we're all about direct bookings at Bruce Lee and you shared a stat with me just before we went live. I want you to share it again.
Right, so I'll tell you, being on CV is the most amazing things ever. And as a result of that, one of the Oods from Bruce Lee actually recommended Boostly to me in another community group and that's when I joined. So it was a bit of an eye opener, realizing that the booking.com is the Airbnbs really are there to be used to suit yourself rather than the other way around. They're not doing me a favor. And I spent probably, especially after lockdown, I spent. It was like my life's work to move to Book Direct. So we're looking at about 80% book direct at the moment and I want to get it to 100%. I only ever turn them on when I need it. That sounds rude, doesn't it? I don't mean to. No, I only utilize them when I need to.
So, yeah, I mean, that is amazing. And you know, just to be at 80% direct bookings, there's so many people listening to this, which is just like. Yeah, I'd love to.
It wasn't like that, it wasn't like that at the start. Literally it was 100%. And I remember paying out something like, I mean, bear in mind I only got 8 bedrooms 1August when I should have been full with my own gas. I paid out some £860 to them in commission. So, yeah, and I, I, when I joined Boostly, I think Mark probably will tell you that I thought he was a dodgy guy and that he was after my money and I wasn't going to give him any money until he gave me something. And the thing that he gave me was the Google Ads training and that was the best thing. I saved myself so much money doing that and I joined Boost immediately, so.
But it'd be excited to know there's more of that training coming as well. I, I saw a message today where some of that is being, being added to and, and redone as well. So as we record this, there's more exciting stuff on the way. But everybody listening to this, if you're, if you're watching this and you think, you know what I'd love to be 80% direct bookings. And if you'd love to be in that position where you can just switch on the OTAs to top up your direct bookings, then just put me in the comments because. And we'll see if there's a training video we can share on this thread on the live. So if you're on the podcast, go and find us in the hospitality community on Facebook or go and search Boostly Facebook page and you'll be able to pop that comment there and we'll see if we can share a training with you on that. So take me back. Why did you get into hospitality? Like, I know this is one of those madness crazy. Why did you, why did you. Hospitality?
No, I woke up one day. No, I actually have a family background in hotels, so. And I grew up in one. I think I started working hospitality at eight years old when I first took my first breakfast, my first guests. So both, well, my parents had two boarding houses and a pub and then they decided they were going to do something completely different. And then after I did, believe it or not, I didn't like school so much. It just was far too boring for me. I wanted to do exciting stuff like business. So I decided that I wasn't going to go to university. I wasn't even going to do very well at A levels. I was going to go and go and do a HND in hotel and catering at my local college. So I passed that. I decided that it was then time to do a degree and then in between times something happened where I was all. I was working for Whitbread at the time as an in house trainer for Beefeater and I wanted to sort of, sort of nurture that and there wasn't the training available so I ended up doing a post a PGCE after my degree and then ended up teaching for 16 years. So I had a massive like top time out and then all my entire family have always, always had their own business and there was always that sort of at the nagging the back of my brain I wanted to do my own business just to see A if I could do it and B to see if I can make it rock. So I started looking and then I found, found one that was run by really successful in the local area by an ex head teacher and his wife and they were, they spoke my language at the time completely. And then by accident, it's almost like the planet's aligned. I found this one and the people had it were ready for retiring. He hadn't been very well and they'd literally run all their trade down. It was doing minimal, in fact it wasn't. It was. We couldn't even finance a mortgage on it at all. So we had to. Yeah, look outside. That's a whole nother story. We did it eventually but they weren't keen and then, yeah, when we finally got going, I think post, post Covid we were, as I put on the bit, my notes here, ticking. The vat. Not the va. Yeah, the VAT threshold. So, yeah, it's worked out, it's really well. So madness. Complete madness.
Absolutely. Anybody in hospitality has got to be a little bit crazy to do this, haven't we? But we enjoy it as well. So what would you say getting into this has been the biggest wins and the biggest challenges so far?
Anybody that remembers during lockdown and pivot, do you remember that Leo with Mark?
Yeah, that just reminded me of Fred Ross.
Yeah, exactly, yeah. So for anybody that doesn't know that during lockdown when everybody was tearing the hair out, I had the Bright idea that on the Friday when a lockdown was announced, by the Monday, I was going to open up as a bed and breakfast and takeaway. That has got to. Looking back now, that's got to be the. One of the biggest, scariest moments of my entire life. Literally all my plans, A, B, C, D had all gone out the window. There was nothing we could do, but we had that.
And you know, that sticks out to me because I remember you saying, hey, we're just going to start offering like afternoon tea and bits and pieces and things, which you do. And I was just like, that's so awesome. And you built up quite a big sort of demand for it, didn't you? I mean, very popular.
Yeah. Bear in mind, we've got a teeny weeny kitchen. I think it's just like a standard oven, like you would have in a house. It's got four burners. To give you an idea of what we're dealing with, I think we turned out something like 64 afternoon teas on Mother's Day, one of the years. So. And the way that we did. Yeah, that. Yeah, both. Yeah, both years we, we did quite, quite well with that. But we were also doing. We started with hot breakfast deliveries. So that was funny. I mean, it wasn't funny in, in the respect that it was humorous, but it was, it got me outside, I got to meet people. I found out what being a delivery driver was like, you know, it was, it was interesting. And we didn't do it to make a profit. We ran at a loss. Not a loss, but we broke even. But I used as a marketing tool, so every time we took anything to anybody, we put a brochure in, in the bags. And that has helped as well. They got people within the. In the community still ringing us now saying, we had an afternoon TF from you during lockdown. Have you got any availability? You've got family coming up.
So that's, that's superb. And they say, I mean, Warren Buffett says this, which is bet on the business, not on the market. And when the market was awful. As we all know, like, the dreaded Covid is still so fresh in the memories, like. But actually the fact you just went, I'm not going to give up. I'm going to do this, this and this. And use it as a marketing opportunity to showcase your business, become part of the local community as well. Because I'm sure you're known more so I'm sure you were known before, but it's a case of now, you know, you're a big character. But when it comes down to just getting out there and doing these afternoon teas and doing something locally for a service in the community, then ultimately people remember that. And money follows attention. If you've got their attention, they're more likely your top of mind for them to recommend if somebody says, where should I stay? So that's, that's awesome. And was there, was that your challenge or your success? Or does that, is that two together?
Probably interrelated somehow. It was like problem solve, problem, problem solved. So yeah, it was, it was, yeah, it was, it was a difficult time. But the benefits of that were we got into a lot of community groups and we are, we are known across the area now. People, people know us. There were a lot of bed and breakfasts, three or four at least. I mean, bearing in mind it's a small area, but three or four, they, we lost them. They just went under or they left or sold up. So in fact, a couple of the big hotels went as well. So, you know, survival is key. We could never have seen that coming. So it was literally. Talk about pivot. I was very good at the Argentine tango. Now you know pivots. But yeah, with two left feet.
Well, one thing I really want to dive into, I know you're doing this awesome marketing course at the moment and I want to talk about actionable tip. Actionable tips. That has worked for you that.
How long you got.
Yeah, I was going to say, I know that you're going to be being honest.
Just a minute.
Feel free to dive in. What, what kind of tips have worked for you so far and why.
So we talked about, we talk about the customer avatar and I was telling you about the customer Persona. That's a more in depth sort of research of where you actually your customer is and where they sort of hang out digitally. They think they call it netanography or netography, a psychographic. So it's not just looking at demographics of where they live and how much income they do, it's where they hang out online. Are they in Facebook, are they in TikTok? Are they, are they in Instagram, are they on LinkedIn and so on and so forth. Could go on forever. So that was been really useful. I picked up a couple of things as well that if you guys, if you haven't got a website, get one. Literally, it's your shop window. Don't rely on any of the OTAs. Get your own and get your own PMS to go with it. You know, check out as well some of the Little freebie tools just to check on how fast the websites are running and where there's any orphan things and things that are slowing down. The SEO which has been quite useful sort of to get in front of. And more recently keywords and this we've got a very dedicated lecturer, I'm at Manchester Metropolitan University and he's like, his name's Dave and he's like so the guy you meet down the pub, he knows like loads of stuff, he's just a geek and he, we've been learning about these keywords and, and basically if you go on, I think there's, well, it's called keywords everywhere. It's free. I think if you go on it, or there is a free trial if you go on it will tell you all the keywords that you are commanding for your particular website. And that's been really good. It also there's another one called Site Checker as well and that also tells you which keywords are trending if you subscribe to that as well. And that's been quite useful because from my perspective with Google Ads, I just make sure that we are covered on Google Ads and that it's, you know, we're either bidding on it or you know, we've got some traffic from that particular keyword. So that's been really good.
This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Hostfully, the leading property management software in the short term rental industry. Now, according to Hostfully's researches, property managers who upgrade from a basic PMS to top tools like Hostfully see at least an 11% boost in revenue. That's because Hostfully saves you time, letting you focus on growing your business with features like channel management, free listing on Google revenue management tools and discounts on integrations. But don't just take my word for it. Hostfully has plenty of success stories. A property manager I know in Manchester saves about a day's work each month thanks to their advanced owner report generator. Another in Liverpool has cut guest communication issues by a third and somebody that I know in Miami went from six properties to 50 in just a year. Now, you listening to this podcast and you being part of my world, you get a special deal when you sign up. All you need to do is go to www.hostfully which is spelled H O S T-F-U L L Y.com forward/boostly. There'll be a chat box, start a chat, mention that you're part of the Boostly world and you'll get a unique discount. Now I recommend Hostfully to many, many, many people. And We've built over 100 integrations with our websites into them. And I know firsthand how much people love working with them. I love working with them. I'm so proud that they are sponsoring this podcast. So I would encourage everybody go and check it out. Www.hosefully.com forward/boostly. Right, let's get back on with the show, shall we?
That's really cool. I think not everybody does Google Ads and also not everybody knows what keywords to use or even what keywords are. I think everybody listening to this, if there's one thing you do go and just do some research on these things, there's great free tools like ChatGPT where you can just go what keywords? This is who I am. And what keywords do you think would be popular for this type of business as well? So there's lots of these kind of free ways to, to get started, isn't there on choosing your keywords and to just figuring this stuff out Hopefully.
I think one of the things I've learned this week is actually if you people are searching using questions and if you find out what questions they're asking and you put that onto your website as an answer, then you're actually very simply making your, your page, your, your website pages more visible. So one I found out is where I live, the tide never comes. The sea never comes in. I can, some days I can walk an hour straight in a straight line out to find the water. This is great for walking the dogs but often it doesn't come in. This one time it came in the daytime. So and we got out onto the beach and photo it was 2 meters high is unheard of. And then we videoed it, stuck it on a reel and put on there does the tide or does the sea come in? And St. Anne's and we've had like the insights have been phenomenal on just on Facebook alone I think about 4,000 touch. You know, just look at it. So it's great. And loads of comments which has been brilliant. So that's final question.
People are using social media as their search engine now especially like Instagram obviously. And they're actually putting this stuff in, aren't they? And just by putting it into Google if not it'll bring up those social media searches. The. And thank you for, for pointing out the, the frequently asked questions. So you know, you know, are there dog friendly places nearby, stuff like that. If you're dog friendly then you want that question on there because when somebody searches is There any dog friendly places in St Anne's? Well, if you've got that on your website, you're more likely to, to get seen.
There's another one as well which is quite key. It's things to do, things to do in and then your area and if you have that on Facebook or any social media channels and your website, then you're going to be because not. I found that in my area it's not even by the larger hotels that some things aren't covered as well as they do other things. So not boy with, with everything but I did a little bit of a small content audit which is if you use meta, it shows you how well you're. Your posts are performing and if you, if you look through it the ones that way I'm kind of answering the questions seem to perform a lot better and you don't have to be an expert at this. Most of what I, what we do here is a lot of trial and error, you know, so it's the best.
Way testing, split testing and that. And just while we're on this, Craig will like this. Craig Webb because one of our top things which people search is the top 10 fishing lakes in Norfolk. You know, like where, where I'm based and, and I didn't realize this but that brings loads of traffic across to the site even though, you know, like we none of our places are particularly close to the fishing lakes but it brings traffic to our site which helps search engine optimization. So when people are listening to this and thinking well what, what kind of content, what sort of things can I do really? It's not just the kind of stuff we think about as holiday makers and people who go. But think about the niches. You know, like you mentioned golfers and stuff like that and you know, where's the, where's the best golf shops around? Whereas you know, the sort of things that potentially your guest avatar is thinking they'll need stuff, you know, during their stay. So there's so many different avenues you can go down and that's, that's really cool. If you could go back to the start, what would you tell yourself? If you to go back to your start and tell yourself one piece of advice from when you were looking at buying the Seacroft More research.
Do more research. When you buy a property, make sure you research the adjoining properties. That's for one thing, because you don't know who you're moving in next to and you can't rely on the people that you buy it off. We had problems. I'm not going to that. But yeah, I do research with local council and find out who your neighbors are for one. Believe in yourself, you know the answers are out there. We've got so much technology that can answer questions. I mean I can do a little bit of everything. I don't particularly like doing accounts but I like spending money. It's all good, so get yourself an accountant. But you know there are snippets of, I mean I'm spending most of my time on the digital marketing because that was my weakness that was identified after being on the tv. But there, there are little tools and things that you can pick up like I think it's called Google, Google Digital Garage. So they make little tiny little snippets of training that you can go on and learn and they do it really easy. It's really basic stuff that leads up to sort of advanced level which has been really useful. We found that financing a B and B was difficult. Things changed from buying a residential property to financing a bigger property. But to look outside the main banks, that was useful. They were expensive but we got out of that. If you believe in yourself and think you know you can do it, then that's great. And the final thing that I would say is that people, well Marks likes to say this but people buy from people and they like to see you. So if you can factor that in, even if you're a short term rental and even if you don't, if you're not on site, if you can, if they can see you and meet you, they, they may, they form an opinion of you and it's really hard to complain with somebody you already know.
Well, definitely, definitely that I'm going to use that as a sound bite that I got really into digital marketing since being on telly. You know, that's an awesome, awesome sound bite. But you mentioned tech. You're getting into tech more. Is there any pieces of tech that you use in your business that you'd like to share with, with people listening?
I've got a lightweight laptop that's been the best thing ever. It goes everywhere with me. I think I take. It goes, it goes into Manchester three days a week with me and I sort of. Everybody's got these really clunky, heavy laptops and I've got a really lightweight thing but it packs a punch. It's really good. There's sort of equipment wise so I could, I could say that anywhere it goes out. It takes bookings face to face. It comes on holiday with me. I know there's been a Debate on whether you should do stuff on holiday. Well, I'm quite. I control the time that I use. So if I've got a free morning, you know, a couple of hours maybe, then I'll. I'll address anything. We've got a digital phone. That's been brilliant. You're in when you have digital phone lines. So I can take a phone call from Jamaica and it'd be like I'm at home.
Yeah, nice.
So I can ring them from there as well. It'd be fine. So that's good. I quite like that.
I like that. I like that. Them digital phone lines are just so important and often one trick I use for that. So I've got a digital phone line that I've set up and then I set up a WhatsApp to that digital phone line so I could actually have WhatsApp to that business number. Not all of the digital phone lines will let you do that. But it's definitely worth checking to see if it does because then you can also. WhatsApp. You know, people can WhatsApp. You and your guests can. And you can share videos.
Oh, that's too much. That Liam Sim agent.
It's good fun. It's good fun. So what does the future of the C Copy Seacroft Bed Breakfast and Bar look like?
So we focused on getting the place running and going through the main months. I think for me now they want the last. The final challenge is to. To boost the. The winter months. And that's okay. You can have as much digital preparation as you like. But if there's no demand then. Then. And they're not looking for it, it doesn't matter. But you can have anything. All singing and dancing. If there's no demand, it's no good. So is coming up with some ideas to bring them in. We've sort of started building on. We call them winter warmer weekends where we do bed breakfast and evening dinner. Who thought that? And so that can. It's selected weekends in November, December, January, February and March just to get people out after pre Christmas for shopping and then post Christmas for. To get over it. To get over Christmas, you know. So that's worked out. We run around 50% occupancy for that. So it's just knowing what direction to go in. I have threatened to put live music on if. Because we've got local singers and things. If we do sort of tend to fill up. So that's just in its infancy. Is getting that out for us as well. We have an aging avatar at the moment. So we're looking at redressing that. So one of my, my tips is know your social media and who goes on them, you know, so we are the next generation. Well, our generation are on Facebook generally and the next generation generation downer tends to be Instagram. So that's where we're sort of heading now. And I'm sort of trying to embrace TikTok, which is hilarious. So I find myself watching that more time than putting stuff on it.
But it's, it's really inspirational. And this is the thing I love about interviewing hosts who are just willing to go, do you know what? That thing worked. So I'm going to try the next thing because I've seen the last thing work. So now I'm going to try this. And actually it's kind of like we learned how to learn by, by doing what we do, don't we? It's a case of your, your appetite to succeed gets bigger when you see the previous thing work. And that's, that's the great thing about what, what I can see you doing here. And yeah, it's just awesome.
So it's, it's been surrounded by a bunch of friends. They are now and, and other students from the University of the Forever taking selfies. I've never ever been around people that take so many selfies in one day. I, I love that thirsty selfies that go around every day. I'm in all of them. So I don't know where this content's gonna hit anything. But they're all students. It's going somewhere, I'll find it one day. But no, they've been an absolute inspirational bunch from all over the world. I absolutely love them all to bits. I've learned loads from them and they're like, no, Instagram's really good. Let's do reels. So anybody out there, the, the main focus really for us is, is any short and long form video content. Because long form videos are better now. They've got more sort of interest in them. So don't, don't be scared. Just find somebody in your family who's comfortable in front of a camera and get them say something doesn't have to be perfect, just has to get done.
What is the resources that you'd recommend people to go and check out? I know this marketing course, especially if they're based here in the uk is one that's had a big effect. Is there, would you like to mention that one or is there any others you'd like to mention?
Is I'm doing a master's in marketing. So you need a degree before you do that. It's incredibly intensive having a flicker. I always do things with the bestest of intentions and having a full time job and a full time masters perhaps wasn't the best. But anyway, running with it, I got a distinction. Well, I got two distinctions so it can't be so bad. So yeah, so that, that's, that's good. If people don't want to commit to that kind of. Or that level because there's a lot of theory involved, then the CIM Chartered Institute of Marketing, which I think Gay will tell you about, he's doing awesome. He's my sidekick now or I'm his. I don't know which way we're going.
To get him on the podcast. Definitely he needs to be on here.
So, so yeah, so that they have some excellent courses. Obviously they're paid ones. The, the free courses. Anybody that's got access to LinkedIn learning, absolutely amazing. You've got a wide variety of choice of stuff on there. And then the Google Digital Garage, they do courses for free and you can cover quite a wide area from making your own content to search engine optimization, which is. It can be quite intensive and in depth. It's a bit, it's right up there with accounts.
Awesome. And is there anything we've, we've missed along the way on this podcast or any direct booking tips that you'd like to, to share with the listeners?
And direct booking tips when you have a guest? I think well, yeah, basically one of my key things was to develop my own guest list on mailchimp and I constantly remind them that I'm still here where I send out weekly. I won't say reports. It's not a report, it's sort of. It's not even a newsletter. It's written in Marky Mark format, isn't it? You know, like Dear John, like personal and I. And often the funny thing is I get replies back from them like they're replying back to my email. I've just written it to them, which is quite sweet, but it's just, just to remind people that you're still here and then look after the ones who are your regulars. You know, give them the information first. Give them, give them something. Give them a discount code to use for which they often forget to use actually. But give them something just to keep them coming back in and then when you've got them here, make sure they book for the following year. It's like Auntie Wayne, right? Just ambush them. But yeah, no, people, people buy from people. Once you built a relationship, you know, they keep coming back year after year. So do that. That's the best thing I found.
So very good advice. So we're going to share how people can get in touch or come and you know, sort of book with you in just a moment. But just before we do, just for fun, if you was to invite two people to dinner, well known people, it can be living or posthumous. But who would you invite and why?
Oh God, that's really hardly. We never, never prepared that.
I don't, I don't give you any prep for the, the random questions.
No. Well, I did tell my husband that if he showed up at my wedding, this is Pierce Brosnan, that I wouldn't be marrying him. So he's a bit old now.
But yeah, we've got Pierce Brosnan. We know why.
Yeah, he was fit. I don't know so much now, but yeah, he would definitely be on my list. I can't think of anybody else. I've just.
Oh gosh, you can just have Pierce Brosnan if you want. Romantic, romantic, candlelit.
Yeah, that would be great. Just let it go, everybody.
Awesome. Okay then go ahead, Georgina, share how we can come and follow you on social media and come book the Seacroft Bed Breakfast and Bar.
So for anybody who wants to follow me on social media, you'll find me on LinkedIn. It's LinkedIn.com I think it's forward slash iron. And then Georgina Hyphen Berman. That's where all the sort of marketing and learning and interesting things that I find sort of hospitality wise are going to go in. And from there I'm going to be doing hopefully a study coming up. So if anybody's interested in helping me with that and that would be great long term for me, I'm going to be looking at setting up something around content marketing and digital marketing for hospitality owners. Well, that's going to be sort of the back end of the year. So I'll be looking for some, some people to help me with that. If you want a book, you can find us online@theseacroft.co.uk and for Instagram, I've written them all down at Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. It's all at Seacross and. And then YouTube is at Seacoft at Seacoft Bed Breakfast Bar 2363 because the others are gone. So there we go. YouTube. Check YouTube out.
I like that. That is somebody who has prepared, who has done a marketing course, who goes, these are my links I like that. Everybody take note.
Have your links prepared, which isn't it on there. Facebook contains the most of everything. So that. That went crazy after we were on the hotel inspector, but sort of the rest of them are sort of growing slowly. In fact, I was looking at my Twitter feed. I don't think I've been on Twitter for three months, but it's X now. Does it count? I don't know. Oh, there's threads as well.
You're on all of them. Amazing, Amazing. I mean, this has been really fun, Georgina, and I knew it would be fun times flown on here. And yeah, I've definitely picked up, first of all, the, you know, the hospitality feeling, you know, like, I can see you're an awesome host and also the fact that if there's any marketing that you haven't tried, if you're listening to this, just going, no, I don't do Google Ads or I don't find out Facebook or I don't do any marketing. Well, everybody can do it. And this is something which I know that you want to share. So the last thing for yourself, Georgina, is, is there A, anyone you want to give a shout out to? And then B, do you have a mantra for us to. To see us out, see us off?
Oh, gosh, yeah. I want to shout out to Jamie, he's my husband, who puts up with me. He's a quiet one of the team, you know, so he's like, oh, God, what's she done now? And the great team of lecturers and my fellow students at Manchester Metropolitan University who are doing the MSc in digital marketing Commun. What an eye opener. That's been. What a blast. So, yeah, that's good. So mantra, definitely never give up. Just never give up.
Nice. I've definitely got that from. From this podcast. And thank you so much for sharing your journey. I've certainly learned things and I hope you listening to this have done as well. If there's people you know who get value from the Boostly podcast, please share this with them and come and carry on the conversation on the Facebook hospitality community. Quick search on there or find us and you can come and join other hosts in the community and ask questions. And yeah, thank you so much, Georgina. This has been really fun. We'll see everybody on the next podcast.
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