The Power of a Google Searchable Brand

In this video we are going to talk to you about the power of building a brand on Google that is searchable. This is one that you're going to need to have a pen and paper on because myself, diamond from ICND and Conrad from Build Up Bookings share with you a tip that each that we wanted to give to you on number one, the power of Google. The power of Google my business, the power of a Google profile. Then we talked about how it is so important to build a searchable business and then once we've gone through that, I brought into your referrals. So there's a lot to dig into here. You're going to have a lot of takeaways from this. Please make sure that you reach out to Conrad and please make sure you reach out to diamond afterwards from the channels that they all share at the end. Make sure you do stick to the end because we give you some really valuable pieces of advice on how to tie this all together, whether you've got one property or whether you've got 10 properties. So please make sure you do that. And also as well, this is one you're going to want to share around. This is one you want to tell people in your network, Facebook groups, etc about. It's a big episode packed full in one hour. So without further ado, let's dig in. We're going to start with Diamond's tip, then we're going to go into Conrad's tip and then we go mine. This is free flowing. It's not a normal structure to a podcast. I wanted this to be free flowing and the end result is a fantastic episode. So I look forward to getting your reviews, your feedback and all the cool things. We've got a video on YouTube, the audio is on the streaming sites and we'll, we'll take the little segments of this and we'll post it all around Instagram etc as well, LinkedIn, you name it for the reels as the shots and all that cool stuff. So my name is Maximus. I've been given the host the tools, the tactics, the training, the tactics and the confidence to go and get more direct bookings. Let's dig in. Okay, so thank you very much for doing this, Diamond. If you could just please spend a couple of minutes just introducing yourself icnd and how you came to working there and all the things in between.

Okay, sure, Great. Thanks for having me today. Always lovely to see you and Conrad, happy to do this call with the three of us. So I'm Diamond Fransen from Intercoastal Net Designs or we shorten it to icnd. We are a vacation rental website designer and digital marketing agency based out of Ocean Isle, North Carolina. We're independently owned. We've been independently owned by Brandon Saltz for 24 years. We have close to 50 employees now and some of them are on our web design side and others are on our marketing side as well. So where I fit into that puzzle is being iCND's brand manager. I work all of our partnerships with, you know, partners. Like here I have on the screen with you two, our PMS partners and every kind of all the partners in between. Also promoting ICD's brand itself and getting our crew and our staff ready to visit all the conventions. Like we have staff out today in Kansas City at the VRMA Spring Forum. So shout out to those guys and girls out there. But definitely coming to ICND was I moved from New Jersey to South Carolina and I was recommended by a friend. So referrals at its best, you know, to not only find new places but also find employment as well. So happy to be here. Today I'm just going to really focus on Google Business profile or as formerly known Google My Business. And for vacation rental managers, this is, you know, this is eligible for property, vacation homes that are part of an agency or vacation rental manager. You know, these aren't for those singular properties that are just out there, just kind of starting from, you know, singular home. These are services that you know, are linked to a service, a vacation rental manager service. You know, I see these vacation rental managers coming in to ICND and one of the first things I, I look at is their Google my business or Google business profile, you know, are they set up, are they optimized? Are they even in the right industry category? And I think those are the one things, those, you know, the first things I always kind of steer people to go look at, you know, do you have the right industry, you know, set up? You know, you may have a vacation rental managing company, but do you have maybe real estate? You know, is that an option that you can either add or take away? If that's not what you, you know, you're doing? Setting up your correct industry is always important. And then look at your hours. So I don't know if a lot of vacation rental managers understand this or know this, but you could have operational hours for your physical building or storefront, but also your service hours. So that's, I find that something that people miss. If you have 24 hour maintenance service or you have 24 hour call in reservation service, you can set that up as a subset of your business hours and have those there so people can see them. Physical address really important, especially for people coming in from out of town that need to pick up, you know, a key or something at the office or go there for, you know, pick up, maybe they're getting a package delivered there, having that physical address and beyond most what some of my most important tips I always give is keep those photos updated. You know, I know driving into a new area, not familiar, don't know where to go to maybe get, like I said, a key or a package or something. And having a picture of your building in your Google business profile is paramount. Because I'm like, you can do the 360 view. You can see like look for other landmarks to know where you're going. Because at the end of your trip, if you've traveled a long time, you're tired and you just want to get to where you need to be to get to your vacation rental. You know, photos, like I just said, are very important. Having those realistic footage of what's going on. And one of the most underutilized, I think option that I see is the posts. So posts are something that you can do very similar to a social media post. But this post you can link out to one of your website pages that talks about specials or events happening in your area if you have them. So you can link your Google my business post to a page on your website. They do expire after some time, so you do have to go back in and update them frequently, especially if you're doing a post about specials. But utilizing the post option I think is really important and then checking all your amenities, you know, making sure that especially if you're a condo or a hotel, if you're in that business category, having all your amenities checks is also something to just go in, make sure they're up to date because they help you optimize your Google business profile for sure.

So Conrad, do you have any questions or any, any sort of thing to add to that for diamond before I go on with mine?

Yeah, I think I'm always curious too about maybe a step before what diamond was saying. Everything she said made a lot of sense to me. The only thing I would maybe consider adding on is like reviews. I don't know if you touched on that piece, but like having a lot of reviews obviously is good. Having a lot of good reviews is even better. Right. With respect to, you know, I've done brand searches before. I'm sure you have as well. Both of you as well. And you go and look and they have like a 3, 7 out of 5 stars on Google. And that's like red flags, like alarm bells ringing, like what is going on with this company? Right? And I actually use it as a vetting tool for myself on my side of things. So I go look at someone as a consumer, you know, considering booking a place. I'll go look at their reviews on Google and consider if I think this is a place I might want to stay or give my money to. And I know that, you know, consumers, guests think the same way. So reviews maybe would be one piece I'd slide in there. You know, stimulating reviews is not the most easy thing to do in the world. But a lot of it is just like asking, like asking your best guests. A lot of our clients have it in like their post departure out communication, hey, leave us a review if you had a good experience, that sort of thing. So I'd say that and then a piece that I would say we, you know, if we go one step above that, it would be why is someone searching for the actual name of the company in the first place? So the piece that I think is actually really important is brand, like having a unique brand that people actually want to look for and search for and seek out. That's actually one of the most valuable things that I think you can do. Because whether you have one property or ten or a hundred or a thousand, the best thing for people to have is at least something to look for that's unique to you. If you call your property the beach house and it's the same the beach house as in 5,000 other places all around the world. Nevermind just even your market, I think you're really going to struggle to actually generate people finding you specifically based on a platform search on Airbnb or Verbo or something like that. So my logic would be that if you can get people actually look for your company, that's the best thing in the world because then they've narrowed down the options of every host in the market even to a professional manager, to just you specifically. And that would apply in my mind, whether you're a single property host, what I call a pro host who maybe has multiple listings, or whether you're a property manager and you manage for other people. So that would be, my logic is, well, how can we tie the brand in so people look and find the Google, my business in the first place, you know, to diamonds from Diamond's Point from a second ago. And then what would make them actually Want to stay with me? What do I offer that other people don't? And that's maybe something that, you know, you'd want to dig into and see how you can grow further. For sure.

That's actually what you said, just kind of is really good when I was talking about amenities, you know, what do you offer that no one else has? You know, that you can check off in those amenities on your Google business profile. So, you know, what do you have? And to touch back about your point where views is, a lot of times, you know, I use it just as like you as a vetting process. You know, I go to a, you know, a place, a restaurant, whatever, and like, oh, they have, you know, 200 reviews, but none of them were responded to or the bad ones weren't responded to you or the good ones weren't, you know, nothing was responded to. So my advice always for vacation rental managers is respond to your reviews. Take time, an hour, hour and a half if you can, once a week, and respond to those reviews. And I've said it before on other podcasts and webinars, so I'll just kind of tie it in here as well, is that if you're really short on time, respond to those reviews that have the orange star next to them because those are your local guides, your Google local guides. So sort them to the top and respond to those first because, you know, they do carry a little extra weight there than the other ones. And if you have to answer a review offline, have a message that says, you know, I'd love to talk to you. Here's our office number. Please call. Here's our hours. That way you're not getting into a back and forth, back and forth with a guest about something that is private and needs to be handled in a private, personal manner.

So here's my question and something that is really important at the moment because Google is changing a lot with Google Vacation Rentals. Google my business. So in the past, and I pretty much can guarantee will be about 60% of the audience will have a Google business listing for their vacation rental property. And as we all know, this is starting to really change because in the past Google just allowed it, although it is against TOCs in terms of services they did. Now there are active bots going around and taking them down because they want everybody to pivot over to Google Vacation Rentals. So what we're talking about here is not to list your Google Vacation rental as a management company per se. It's when you've got 2, 3, 4, 5, plus properties. Then you can set up a Google my business and base it on the fact that you are promoting your overall branded company. Is that correct? Is this what we're talking about?

Yeah, this is exactly what we're talking about.

Yeah. My experience with that, Mark, is that you basically need like, if you read the terms of service and the terms of conditions, that's on the allowed list on Google, you basically need an office. I mean, that's basically what you need. So in theory I actually have a client that I work with that has like two properties, but he actually has a legitimate verified Google my business profile set up because he has a coworking space. And then he actually has like a sign even on my coworking space like name a property manager. So there's little workarounds that are like following all the rules and you know, Google shouldn't take you down where you have like signage, et cetera, but it basically has to be an office. That's basically what needs to be verified on that side of things. On Google My business. My business. Yeah.

And obviously Google Vacation Rentals is starting to pick up a bit of heat now. There's more property management software tools that are synced into the Google Vacation Rental program. And obviously if that's the easiest way to get listed on Google Vacation Rental at the, at the moment. But I love that little hack that he did. He added in a little co working space on the property.

Yeah, you have to have, you know, a postcard mailed to a physical location. So that is, you know, that is a workaround for sure.

Yeah. The way I see that though, Mark, is this to me is an and not an or. So it's not Google My business or Google Vacation Rentals. I think in a perfect world it's. And if you have the means and capability of doing so, yeah, Google Vacation Rentals is probably where they're going to keep pushing most likely. We'll see. Because it doesn't seem like they've been quick on the uptake to monetize that product really aggressively. I was wrong. Like if you asked me two years ago, I would have said, oh yeah, Google is going to have Google Vacation Rentals and then they're going to do what they've done with hotels where it's going to be like commission based or you're going to have to do like hotel price ads and actually bid on, you know, your property or your properties to show up on that block and show higher. That hasn't been the case yet. At least with the clients that we work with, they're listed in there, but it's just a matter of time, right? Google's going to monetize every Surface they can, as long as they don't get antitrust at first. Right. They're going to figure out ways to do that. So I think the good part is for some people, the 60% maybe you mentioned a moment ago, Mark, perhaps they're out of luck. They may really not be able to go down this path that Diamond's talking about. They may just not have the ability to do so and follow the terms of service. But for the people that can, obviously everything I think we talked about here is pretty valid. But the Google Vacation rental I think is an. And if you can do both, fantastic. If you're only eligible for one and you can do it the right way, I think you're definitely on the right path there for sure.

I think you can. Everybody can, everybody's got more than one property. Say you can set yourself up as a management company on Google Business listing. Absolutely fine. That's, that's perfect. And you can start driving reviews for that and as well, when the time comes, you can get your individual units listed on the vacation rental. So it's definitely not an or, it's definitely a noun, which is perfect. Diamond is anything else you wanted to, to add before we move over to Conrad and comments, please?

No, no, definitely. I think if you are struggling, they make it really easy to update and manage those listings. You know, you could do it right through your search results on the map itself. Tidbit is that the Google Business Profile app that was once used by a lot of people is slowly going away and it will be disabled, you know, in the next several months. So if you're used to using just the app itself, start transitioning yourself and your team to go do the updating on the search results from the map area itself. And know before anything, you know, make sure you're verified. You know, that's sometimes the key thing that people misses and you find that maybe your competitor goes in there and steals your listing by chance because you didn't verify your listing. So stay up to date, be verified and always optimize your times and your images as they change. You know, I know, Conrad, you're going to talk a little bit about branding, but you know, we've seen businesses change maybe or modify their logo over time and they still have their old logo or, or, you know, maybe bits of their old name in their listings that they never really updated because it was something we'll get to one day. Well, now's today to get that updated.

Somebody who said this once, and I can't remember who it was, but it's very true, is you've got to treat Google like your homepage, like your shop front. And if you leave it stagnant, it's like a lot of people, it's their first impression of your business and your brand. And you're right if it's got an old logo or out of date information, you're already sort of fighting an uphill battle to sort of turn a looker into a booker, so to speak. So, yeah, 100% really good. Really good. Like, Conrad, obviously you've. You've added questions and opinion and stuff, which is fantastic, but we don't know anything about you, so we need to find out. We need to find.

I thought I was doing like the international man of mystery thing where people just did a voice and I don't actually have to do the intro.

International man of mystery. And let's find out the person behind the scenes and behind the zoom. So can you just give us like a big sort of who you are, the. The podcast, tell it all and how you got here, and then go straight into the topic that you want to sort of divulge more information on, please?

Yeah, for sure. So, Conrad o'. Connell, I'm the founder of Build Up Bookings. We're a marketing agency specifically working with vacation rental managers. And I wouldn't be doing, you know, fair justice on a podcast like this with diamond from ICD if I don't mention that I did start at ICD and I worked there from 2014 through 2016. So obviously, you know, something that was a part of my journey in getting started. But I did leave in 2016. I've been solo ever since. But I think we have a nice, friendly, you know, good to have a friendly chat.

Oh, definitely.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it's.

It's all good. We were, even before we started recording, I was mentioning, oh, say hello to this person, or I got that from this person and things like that. So, yeah, all good. Obviously, I learned a lot there that I've taken with me and hopefully, you know, added a few new things along the way too, as well. So, yeah, basically our focus is primarily on search, social and email marketing. That's pretty much what we focus on. We do kind of more website builds today than we have in the past. That's a growing area of kind of our focus that hasn't been a huge focus to date. But it's been, I think, an opportunity for expansion for us. But most of our clients are in leisure markets based in the us Although we have worked with international people in the past and most of the time they come to us needing help with SEO. That's probably the area that I have the most knowledge in personally. So I just talk about that somewhat regularly and frequently. And it's something that I think maybe people come to us drawn in learning more about SEO or even on the paid search ad side as well. We have the most clients that we work with need help with those two things in particular. So yeah, that's been our focus. We, like I said, since 2016. I, you know, try to share what I can. LinkedIn has kind of been my focus over the past year and a half or so, really promoting a lot more stuff on there. I do have a podcast that I started with Paul Manzi from Venturi that we've been publishing now for, since October, so maybe about five or six months now. We've missed a few, but we've been trying to do it every week and that's been fun. It's called the Heads and Bed show, so you can definitely check that out. I think we have like 1/50 of the reviews that Mark does. So, you know, it's small, but it's. Hopefully it's growing and we'll get it a little bit bigger over time. But on that show we talk about anything marketing. So we don't do a lot of interviews or things like that. It's mostly just Paul and I, our take on all things search, social, email. Paul is more of an owner focus, homeowner focus. I have more of a guest focus. So I think it's a good back and forth on that piece. But yeah, that's kind of the background or at least a few links for people to check out and research on their own. But they're probably not listening to you or myself promote myself. So I'd rather go in the direction of giving a little bit of advice. So I touched on it a second ago with diamond, which is that I think the most valuable thing to do in this like, area that we're focused talking about here is what would make someone actually find your brand and make your brand actually like something that people would seek out. I think that's the important question. And I was talking, talking with someone earlier today about it and we were talking about these properties that, and I'm sure you've seen this before, Mark, that go like viral on Instagram and They have like a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, three hundred thousand followers on Instagram. And inevitably what I see them sometimes like not do a good job on is they don't sometimes have a website that's like mistake number one. Like the Airbnb profile link will be like their Instagram link. That's like sin number one. We've already, we're already off on the right foot, the wrong foot. And then you go and search them on Google and you usually can't even find the property. In some cases, like very few properties that I find that have that level of social success try to figure out and how to turn it into actual direct booking success, which seems like a huge miss. I'm sure, you know, you could help them in many ways in that respect. But that seems to be the thing that they've actually figured out the hard part, in my opinion, which is that they've made a property that's so unique that people want to search for it and they want to look for it. I think the people that struggle with this are people that have commodity properties. And I don't mean that in an insulting way, but it's just they have the same two bedroom, two bath condo as everybody else. That's the hardest thing in the world to market because everybody has the same thing in that building or in that resort or something like that. So the more unique your property, the better this stuff works. But I think it can work for any property to some degree. It's just there's kind of a sliding scale of like how unique and how noteworthy the property is. But as you go along that scale, as you build properties that are more unique or they have certain characteristics, or to Diamond's point from a few minutes ago, they have certain amenities. As you go up that scale, in my opinion, you become more and more valuable as a brand. And I think that's one of the most valuable things in the space that we're in, in the short term rental space that we have, is people looking specifically not for, you know, property to stay in Destin, Florida, or not even the name of a specific area or a sub area or a community, people that want to stay at that particular rental and all the clients that we've worked with over the years that have people looking at the property detail page level for that exact property, those are always the ones that typically have the most direct booking percentages. They have the highest revenue they can charge on that stay. Because you've now gone from comparing one property to 10,000 to one of one and people are basically willing to pay, not whatever, but, you know, a very high market rate for that property because they're drawn to it. So if there's something that I would say focused on someone to focus on, you know, in the context of what we're talking about here today, it would be, how can I get my property so unique that people want to stay in this one particular, not the one down the street, not the one over here, not this one. And then how can I have a name that's actually unique, that people can find me very easily when they go and search and find my profile on Google or they find my website or whatever the case may be? So that's my. That's my frame.

So when it comes to this, because you're right, a lot of people say they've got property number one, and that property number one is just say property number one. They don't think about giving it a googleable name, searchable name, etc. Then they go to property number two and it's like, right, well, I've got probably number one. I've got probably number two. What's like some tips that they could do to go and to go along from going, okay, so I'm no longer just a single property owner. Now I've got two properties. I'm now building this thing called a brand and a business. Like, where and how do you give anybody like that sort of tactics and tips on how they can sort of begin this, this. This journey of branding online?

Yeah, there's a. There's a book that we covered a while ago about branding, and it's specifically a book, I think it's the. Oh, I'm going to blank on the name right now, of course. Lovely. Live. I'll look it up while we're chatting here. But the premise of the book, I know all the. I know all the content of the book. I'm blanking on the name right now. But the premise of how you want to name things is you want something that's actually unique, that people. It's, like, easy for people to pronounce. It's. No one else is using it, obviously. Stay away from, like, trademarks and things like that. I was actually talking to a client of mine the other day who said just because they have BNB on the name of their company, Airbnb was actually potentially even considering coming after them for trademark violations. So even though the beginning part of the name didn't have any sort of connotation with air or anything like that, just even having BNB on the backside of it could be considered an issue from a trade.

What's happening? That's why smart B. Hospitable. It's why so many people have had to change their names. Yeah, 100. Yeah, definitely go with.

Go ahead.

It's easy to spell too. We see a lot of names that are, you know, very hard to spell and then they just get lost in translation or they don't understand, you know, why they're not getting the results that they're looking for in search. Because people just can't spell it. It sounds fun, but you can't spell it.

I can speak firsthand to this, our family business. So our family business was called the granary, right. And I never knew there was so many ways to spell the granary. But yes, there is. To the point where we had a property that was about 20 miles away, 20 miles south of us. They would get book ins and people would appear at their property and I'd be like, oh, where's the Highland cow? Where's the farm? And they're like, oh, no, we're called the granary because you want the granary. And it's like, I was as G R A I N A R Y, but everyone would spell it G R A N A I Y or G A I N E I Y. See, it was a problem because we would. Our name was never Googleable and we could speak firsthand to it. How, how so important to make it easy to. To spell when you're going on to Google. Now you've been doing a bit, I can see doing a bit, clicking. Have you been able to find that book?

Yeah, yeah. So it's hello, my name is Awesome. I feel terrible. I forgot the name of the book because she's gonna be like, isn't that a good name? It is a good name, but I forgot about it. So, yeah, it's called hello, My Name is awesome by Alexander Watkins. Maybe Mark, you can toss the link in the show notes. It's like 10 bucks too, by the way. It's very affordable. So, yeah, this book is unbelievable because it makes you go through the process and you are forced, essentially you're forced to really go through and come up with a name that's unique. If you actually open, you know, go through the process diligently and focus on it. And it avoids all the things that, you know, we're talking about here a little bit too, with respect to, you know, trademark issues or say it out loud. There's a thing in the book where they talk about the Radio test. So you would say it out loud on like a podcast and then when people go and search for it, would they actually be able to find that property based on the radio test? So that's another good one for sure there to go through that process and be able to come up with a name that's unique. And then of course you have to go find an open and available.com is what I say. But maybe, Mark, if someone's based in the UK, they may want to.uk or.

You know, different options, loads of alpha domains. You can, you can pretty get pretty much anything on the end now that you want. Doesn't have to be.com.co.uk, you can, you can go down any route. But yeah, what was that name of the book? Hello. Manet is awesome by.

By Alexandra Watkins. So that's the name of the book. And yeah, we, we always try to find the open and available com but that is very challenging. Sometimes we'll find names that we love, that the client loves and then we have to sometimes, you know, toss them to the side because someone wants to as the.com and it's used for something else and it makes it a little bit more challenging. So, you know, certainly I try not to go into the their TLDs. I'm like a dot com truther, if you will. But you know, if you have a name that you love, maybe there's a way around that. A lot of domain marketplaces nowadays offer financing. I feel like that wasn't a thing in the past. So you can take a $2,000 domain name and split it up into 12 payments or 18 payments or something like that. So, you know, those are other options available to you. But I believe the domain is super important, super valuable and I think skimping on the domain and picking something that's not really what you want to focus on or not really tied into, you know, like people can't find you online when they go look for these alternate TLDs. I think it can cause issues. I've seen it with clients that we have that don't have the dot com. It tends to cause problems. Emails get delivered to the wrong place. Not too dissimilar from what you're describing a minute ago, Mark, where people show up to the wrong place and don't know kind of where they're at. The same thing can happen, I feel like in a digital sense where they're like filling out emails to go to the wrong place and things like that. But yeah, that I feel like people.

Are just so used to putting dot com on off the end of everything just naturally that if you do add a, you know, something, you know, a special, you know at the end that they're just not even used to using that or typing it that they don't think to go do they just automatically, you know, are like oh the grainery.com or, you know, there never is another option to most people, you know, that they're not in the business every day and doing it like the three of us are, they don't think of adding an extra, you know, additional domain on there for sure.

I think, I think of like, I think of like my mom. Like, like if it was a non dot com, all of us here could figure it out, no problem. I feel like my mom, I love her, but she's just not gonna be able to figure out a non.com domain. It would be a challenge for her for sure.

So you've got the domain, you've got the name. And we talk about Google being the first impression of your business. So obviously Google business listing, Google my business. That's obviously a key thing. What, what else should you be doing to sort of protecting your brand name and making sure that when somebody Googles you, it's you that they see. What, what, what else could you be potentially putting in there?

Well, I think diamond touched on this a second ago, but one thing that we have is like in our base kind of setup is that even if you're not active on those social platforms, obviously when you're starting, you may have limited bandwidth, budget time, all those things at least try to go claim all the handles at the bare minimum on these social platforms. So much better for you to have an Instagram handle and just like log in once a week and just maybe like a post or something so it stays active than to let you know, someone either accidentally or maliciously go attempt to hijack. You know, you were saying this a minute ago with respect to the Google profiles, Diamond, but I think the same thing could apply to Instagram page, a Facebook page, et cetera. So I think that's another base level thing that you can do. At least protect yourself by having that thing, even if having that social profile claimed, even if you don't have the budget or the time etcetera to like go and post on that all the time. It's something that I think is like the base level thing. So that's part of our kind of base thing that we would include people to do as well, suggest people.

And I would Tag on the end of that is even if you are, you know, at the very beginning stages, you know, one, two, three homes, take a moment and sit down and think. Think big picture, think big dreams, Think, you know, big blue sky. You know, think about what your business could be in 2, 5, 10 plus years and say, okay, if, you know, I'm doing this big blue sky picture of what my business or what I want my business to be and what it could be, take time to do that thought process, think about it and then go see what else is available out in the market at this time. Social handles, Conrad said, you know, claim your business listings, claim your. All the different types of URLs that you can get. Claim them if you can. So at least you have them. So as you're building and you're growing and you're expanding your brand and doing all those things that Conrad touched on, you can definitely have them in your toolbox for later in the life of your business. So you're not scrambling at the last minute, you know, and then trying to find something or buy something for a huge price that it was going to be free. Like if you're trying to buy, you know, a handler URL off somebody, you can just have it in your toolbox waiting for you to use it.

Yeah, mass massively congratulation. You want to come back?

Yeah, we didn't say this yet, but it might be the most important piece that we haven't touched on yet, which is having a direct booking website that's not just built and out and ready to go, obviously, but actually ranks for your brand name. So when people go search, yes, they're going to see the Google profile in many cases on the right side. But on the left side, you know, in the top number one organic search result, they better see your website there. And one thing that we didn't touch on yet is that the OTAs love to bid on your brand name as well. So I'm sure you've experienced this in the past. We see this all the time with clients now. It happens more, I would say on like the hotel resort side, but it definitely happens on the vacation rental side as well, which is that, yeah, let's say you're ranking number one organically. Okay, great, you've done a good job, you know, good on you. There's. But then you'll see Airbnb and VRBO and booking.com in some cases bidding on your actual branded search results. This happens to our clients all the time and the math is just kind of quick Example of what we've seen in the past, sometimes 20 to 35% of that traffic may get zapped away if you're not running branded paid search as well. People try to debate this with me sometimes and I struggle to, like, meet them on their level because I'm like, you're going to pay like 50 cents a click. It's so inexpensive. There's so few people searching for your brand that once you've got them that far, don't blow it. Like, don't blow it on a $5, $10 decision, you know, maybe at first, on a monthly basis on having a branded paid search campaign running. And you're going to be able to run branded paid search, have expanded site links, you're going to dominate the top of that result, and that's what you want. I mean, even if Airbnb is beneath you on the page organically, you still want branded paid search because then you're two or three of the top links.

So I also have that conversation with so many people. My response now is, yep, you're probably right. And I'll just leave it there away and then I'll let them come back to me.

Oh, so you're like a patient call man. See, I'm not.

I'm just like, yeah, you're probably right. And then I let them go away. I get them, get them to go and look at it and then they'll come back later. So I've actually got a video on this because I, again, I am just such a big fan of bidding on your own brand name, protecting your own brand name. There's a YouTube video, but everybody can go and check out. It's just type in boostly.co.uk bid on brand. It shows you how to help protect yourself. And you're right, you're paying pennies instead of dollars. And it is so easy to set up. Even if somebody thinks, ooh, Google Ads, that's kind of tricky. That sounds really.

It's not.

It really is so easy to do and you're paying pennies to the pound. And when, when we all sign these T's and C's on booking.com VRBO, Airbnb in the T's and C's. It actually says when we sign off the ones that we don't read, it's like, yeah, we can actually bid on your brand name and we will do so. And it's happening more and more. And you're right. So many people who have built massive social media followings and you see in the links on their Instagram, on their TikToks, on their Facebook. It's always pointing them back to their Airbnb listing. This is such a simple fix that so many people can do. And for me, it's like, show off your brand. Don't call yourself an Airbnb business. Call yourself your branded, whatever name you're going to come up with, whatever it's going to be. Well, we've gone through some nice little tips and everybody's going to go pick up the book to help them. But it's like, don't call yourself. If you're in a taxi and they go, the taxi driver goes, oh, what do you do? Don't say, I'm an Airbnb business. See, I'm a, you know, short term rental management company. My, my, my, my business is da, da, da, da. And it's, that's what we need to get everybody doing and proudly show off what you do. And don't be afraid to send people to, you know, your direct booking platform or whatever platform you're going to send to, but don't send them back to Airbnb because we're literally doing their job for them. Bananas.

So I know I've, I've talked about this a little bit in the past where, you know, it's really, you know, Conrad, you're talking a lot about Yale branding, and I definitely can appreciate that. Where, you know, vacation rentals in itself is now somehow gotten confused with Airbnb, the same way a tissue is, you know, confused with the, you know, term Kleenex. You know, hey, what'd you do this weekend? Oh, I say stay in Airbnb. Oh, I stayed in a verbo. No, you didn't. You might. Yeah, like, you didn't. You stayed in a vacation rental property that's managed by people or a company. You know, you may have found them via Airbnb or VRBO or whatever, but you actually stayed in a vacation rental property. So, you know, I know I get this a lot and I talk about this a lot where, you know, exactly what you said. You're, you're in the cab. What do you do? Oh, I work for air. You know, I put properties on air. You know, Airbnb. No, like you, you can, you can have more, you can do more, you know, and like I was saying, think big blue sky. Like, there may be a time when you get more properties underneath of you that you can pull away, you know, if you can, from that, you know, that platform into your own direct booking site.

Yeah. 100% my my one that I'm going to add and it really ties in nicely with both diamond and Connors. Google business and searchable brand is you've got everything in place so people are going well I've got these things in place. I've got a direct booking website I'm ranking for my brand on Google which is great so if somebody searches me I can find it. So how do you actually get people to do that? And the best and this is my little tidbit to add to it the best way to start this and the best way to do this is to go down the route of referrals and the simplest way is anybody who has stayed with you in the past and this could be in the last week, the last month or the last year everybody should hopefully and if we're sort of coming at this with our market in how everybody should be starting to build a list. An email list is key for anybody because social is how you grow but email is how you become profitable and it doesn't matter whether you've got a phone number or whether you actually got the proper email address. What I would be looking for everybody to do is at some point in their post stay communication whether this is a phone call from your guest success manager, whether it's an email that's part of your automation or a text message that you're doing yourself is I would be reaching out to them, to the guest and say hey is there anybody as cool as you? We you really loved you. You left the property amazing. You were one of our best guests. We love it. Is there anybody as cool as you that's looking for a place to stay? The whole do you know anyone Is key in this process because you're not asking them to stay again because that's like a could come across as a salesy message. All you're doing is asking if they know anybody who is as cool as them that needs a place to stay that could be somebody that's coming to stay for an event. It could be somebody that's coming to stay for X, Y, Z or just anybody who's looking for a getaway and what that does to the person on the other end is that they will then because they know like love and trust you because they've gone to stay with you and about a great experience then they're going to be more inclined to recommend you to their friends. It could be a social media post, it could be telling people at the school run it could be be part of their little network group etc they can talk about you. But the most important thing about this is that when you ask them for that referral is you've got to give them a name to Google because they'll go, yeah, sure, how's the best way for me people to send you? And again, I see it a lot and I see it in Facebook groups. They just go, yeah, just give them this link and it takes them to Airbnb. No, you want to say, yeah, sure, here's our direct booking website. Here's. So when they go to their friend group and they go, oh, where did you stay last week? They'll go, oh, I had an amazing experience. I stayed at Insert, insert building property name. And you know, how do we get in contact? Well, hey, Google this business or put this domain name or whatever and say, ask to speak to Conrad, has to speak to diamond, has to speak to Matt. And that's how you start to become the go to. That's how you start to become a Googleable brand. Is that when you have a guest who is talking about your property and instead of saying, yeah, I stayed in an Airbnb, they go, I stayed with this company was fantastic. Next time you're going to Orlando, next time you're going to the wherever, insert location. Check them out, because they've got this business, they've got all these properties, X, Y and Z. And it's referrals is the main way because as business owners, as hospitality owners, just as people were always chasing new money, we're always chasing the next booking, the new guest, the new money. When the true profit is to tap into the network of the people who have already stayed with you. The people have already had that experience of staying with you and tapping into their social network. That's my little tidbit into this.

So Conrad mentioned, you know, when we were talking about Google business, you know, profiles, how he uses the reviews to vet places where he wants to eat or go to or enjoy or experience. Very similar mark to what you're saying is, you know, if I'm looking for something, I'm going to go to my friend group and be like, who went to Nashville recently? Where did you stay? What did you do? So I'm using, you know, my first line of way of search before I even get on a computer or do anything, is asking my friend group, you know, like, oh, hey, I heard you guys went to Nashville a couple months ago. Where'd you stay? What'd you do? And that's my first line of vetting, you know, then it's like going to Google Reviews, then going to the direct booking site, you know, and then going doing my own. So it's this multi touch process along the line before I even get there to experience you know, that weekend or that vacation.

Yeah, 100% and I'm not sure the exact step but it's something came up recently where it's over let's say over 90% of all consumer transactions are done on the back of social proof in some way, shape or form. And so it's such a high buyer motive from us and if we've got somebody in our friend group who we again we know we like and we like all the things that they like the, it's such a common thing to be able to, if we see a friend who's on vacation and the most time when people post on social media is when they're on vacation. That's when you see a story pop up or an image or whatnot and they want to show off to people back home and they'll tag up a place and they, if they tag them in, you're going to go and check that place out and if you, if you, if, if you've got a buyer and a future potential guest who's looking at their friend who has got all the same attributes, all the same, no like wants and trust as, as the person staying there, they're going to go, well I can see myself being there. Let me find out more about this. And it, you know, it's like you're saying claim the social media handles, make sure you, you create a googleable brand and business name and, and then get people talking about you and you'll be amazed at how many guests will do so by just asking. And that's a good book. It's Ryan Levesque. Just ask and you'll be amazed at how many people will actually be your super fans, your number one marketing machine if you just, if you just ask them and that's my little thing to add to this Conrad, anything you want to add to, to, to that or anything else you've heard today?

No, I think if you, if you set up your brands, people look for it, they find it on Google and they see good things, they go to your website and they book and then you ask them to keep booking. That's like a nice little circle, you know that like can keep going, you know and infinitely in theory, right. The more guests you get, the better you're going to do. So I think that puts a good, a good ending to it for sure.

And it's what everybody wants and it's the thing that people struggle with the most is how can you build something, how can you build somewhat directly that will stop people booking from a. On a third party when you can have your bookings come on your own world, your own policy, is your own land. So there's no middle person interfering with anything. And this is exactly it. We've laid like a nice little, nice little foundation. So mission completed from podcast episode. What I wanted to achieve. Thank you. Thank you, Conrad. Okay, so this is a great little part of the show. Can you just please, diamond first and then Conrad, just explain to people how they can find out more about you, about icnd, about the podcast as well. Drop that in and then we'll do. Conrad, after you.

Yeah, sure. So if you're looking to get a custom built website or a digital marketing service for your vacation rental market, you can go to icoastalnet.com see how we combine the net and the com there. Sometimes that gets confusing too, you know. But yeah, icoastalnet.com you can reach us out or just simply icnd.net if you want to go in that direction. Definitely. Check us out on all streaming platforms for our podcast, Vacation Rental Ninjas, a marketing podcast. Myself and my co host Anna, we come on, we only do once a month. You know, I know you guys are a little bit more frequently than we are, but we do drop an episode once a month. We just had our season two, episode two just dropped a couple days ago. So be sure to check out Vacation Rental Ninjas, a marketing podcast on your favorite streaming platforms. You can find intercourse with designs on every single social channel out there. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube. I just mentioned this the other day. If you are sleeping on ICMD's YouTube channel, get yourself over there. We don't post as frequent as we may want to, but the content over there is very meaty, very chewy. You can dive in and really learn a lot from a lot of the episodes. You know, we record webinars, lots of stuff. So if you're sleeping on that and you want to do a deep dive, check that out as well. Or you can just simply call us. We have people. A live person answers the phone. If you call, put that, put our phone number in the show, notes Mark. But please, if you call the ICND phone number, a real person will answer during business hours.

So that sounds crazy. Are you going to.

I would never do. I would never do that, Mark.

That's awesome. Okay, Conrad, thank you Again, so much. So how can people find out more about you? Where do they need to go to?

Yeah, so definitely, if you're listening to this podcast, you might like the deep dive that Paul and I do on the Heads Bed Show. So just search the Heads and Bed show on your podcast app of choice. You should find it easily. If not, go to buildupbookings.com click on the show tab in the top and you'll find us there. I'm actually Most active on LinkedIn, so if you're looking to reach out to me, that's probably the best channel in that particular way to do so. And like diamond, we're kind of all over but that's the place where probably the most volume is getting put out. So if you like it, that's a good place to check it out for sure.

We practice what we preach, we make sure we've got all the channels, we make sure everything is there so that it's easy to be able to link it all together. Hey, thank you so much for this. It's a jam packed one. I guarantee this is one people are going to need to listen back to again and again. If you go to The Boostly website, boostly.co.uk blog we'll have everything, all the links will be available in there, plus a full transcription of this episode. But yeah, thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. My, my idea when I came up with this podcast episode was just to bring together two people that I love to follow. I love the podcast, just come together and just talk marketing for an hour, which we have done so and we've been able to tie it all nicely together where I feel like we've laid a, a foundation of, of what every single host property management company, short term rental company, whatever you niche you want to put yourself in this world of hospitality should be doing to making sure that guests can easily find them on booker, which is what we all want to do. So thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in and we'll be back together very soon in a few days with another episode that's coming out. So thank you very much and we'll see you all very soon.