The main benefit of online advertising for your business
30 Sept 2021 · 1 min
A short Boostly podcast episode by Mark Simpson focused on preparing for the slow season. Mark presents an actionable tip to "change or amend your marketing," emphasizing the flexibility of online advertising and the ease of updating websites, Airbnb listings, and social pages versus traditional print ads. The episode also includes a sponsored segment promoting Hostfully (a short-term rental platform and digital guidebook), encouraging listeners to visit hostfully.com and book a demo.
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Welcome back everybody. So I've got a little treat for you today. Recently I did a little bit of training all about 10 different ways how you can get ready for the slow season. And I thought, well, what better to do than to chop these tips up and share it into the daily podcast because they are so actionable and things that you can be doing right now in today's episode is a little segment of that. Now, depending on what you're listening to, you can go back or go forward to find out the episode that suits you best. But this is all me helping you about bookings in the slow season. So make sure you've got a pen and paper to hand and get ready to take action.
Change or amend your marketing. Now, the beauty of the Internet is that it's flexible. The beauty of the Internet is that you can change it like that. It's not like when, you know, my parents first opened the farm way back in the 90s when it was heavily reliant on print advertising where in January or February you had to sign off on the advert for the whole year and it stayed like that for the whole year. Now you can change your website like that, you can change your Airbnb listing like that, you can change your Facebook page like that.
Okay everyone, I hope you're enjoying this episode. I want to take a super quick break to talk to you about Hostfully. So I've been telling you all about their award winning platform but one of the great things about this company is that they are very eco conscious in the world of short term rental management. Go check out their blog right now@hostfully.com they have a few interesting articles about how you too can make your business more marketable to the younger generation that that is really talking about this topic and taking it very seriously. Go to hostfully.com and as you are there and whilst you are there go and check out their digital guidebook. It's free to get started with and also booking a demo call about their award winning PMP property management platform. They're the exclusive sponsors of the Boostly podcast. They have been for many years and hopefully for many years to come. So for me, to all the team, thank you and let's get back on with this show.
So again, when it comes to the slow season, when it comes to maybe fall or winter or spring or summer depending on where you are in the world and the Aussies are really going to mess up my explanations and how I explain seasons here because obviously you're coming to your summer, but this is where you need to start to change the pictures and the layout and the things that you have. For a lot of people you're thinking, oh, that's such a pain in the ass. I've never done this before. But some of you who are already on the ball with this and have got a Dropbox folder for autumn and winter and you've got a Dropbox folder for spring and summer and you could literally just change your pictures as you go. But if you think about it, if you're now starting to think about a winter vacation or a fall vacation and let's just say northern hemisphere for this. So if you're now starting to think about autumn and you're starting to think about winter and you're going to do a bit of research, you wouldn't want to be looking at a property that's got bright blue sky, swimming pool, you know, hot, everybody's in shorts and T shirts because that's not what people are going to relate to. So with your pictures that you put on your website and I'm thinking of the first image, so the first image that people come out when your website loads up, if you've got a current picture right now that is of bright blue skies, a very summery feel to it, you can now start to go and change it to a more of an autumn feel. You can maybe go start to feel of a more winter feel. So again, when it comes to autumn, you, you feel about warmth, you feel about the higgy, you know the Danish term where it's log fires, hot chocolates, etc. Etc. Or if it's winter and you're in a, in a snowy location, this is where you're going to start now to get your beautiful white snowy pictures. But I would start to amend your website now and you can definitely start to earmark a date when you will start to change and amend the pictures on the OTAs as well. Now I say this with the OTAs because I'm assuming right now, seeing recording this on Tuesday 24th August is that you're all fully booked, you've got guests, you know, well into say September and what you're starting to looking for now is those autumn and winter E bookings. So amend and change your marketing, never just set and forget. And the cool thing is that if you act now or if you act in Q4, quarter four, the last three months of this year is that when it comes to next year, 2022, you will be in a beautiful position where you'll have your spring and summer folder on Dropbox or Google Drive right here. And you'll have your winter and your fall as well. Now, another thing that you can look to amend is the words or the copy that is on your website or the pictures and the words that are on your listings. So again, right now and again with booking.com, obviously, you're very restricted in what you can put in the words that you use. But with Airbnb, you get more of a full range with the text and the copy that you can use. But if, now, if you're focusing on how close you are to the beach or the amazing outdoor activities that are available in and around your area, change the wording to be more, you know, of something to do in fall and winter. Maybe focus on more of, you know, board games, you know, Log Fire, Hot tub. We'll definitely talk about things like Hot tub later on, but start to have different copy. But you can just copy and paste. And again, the beauty of Google Docs or Microsoft Word, if you fancy that, is that you can have the copy ready to go. So you can just copy, paste, paste and personalize again, the Internet, social media, your website, your listing sites. The copy can be amended like that. So again, it's definitely something that you need to start doing.
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