Top Tips To using Google to gaining more Medium Term Bookings

All right, so Chris, first and foremost, can you just please give us a big intro where you are in the world, that lovely company that's behind you. And, and we'll, and we'll dig in with this today's interview.

Hey. So I'm Chris from Design Living. We're a Cardiff based medium term state service department provider. We are pet friendly, as you can see. That side, there we go. So we cater mainly to like the film industries, relocation, anyone with a pet in between homes, things like that. I'm currently running my business from out in Sweden in the mountains. And that's it for me.

Brilliant and award winning, don't forget award winning as well. So what I want to do, the reason why I wanted to get you on is to chat about the different type of niches when it comes to medium term rentals or business guests. Because everybody assumes when you think business, but it is contractors, you know, builders, tradies, etc, but it can delve a lot more deeper than that. And so you've obviously built up a portfolio based, you know, I say working remotely, which is fantastic, but we don't want to talk about that. We want to talk about the, how to attract and how to appeal to these different types of companies. Because if, if anybody in here who is watching this and is trying to get in front of medium term guests, which is like, you know, staying for more than just a few days, it can actually turn into big contracts. You need to have a different way of thinking when it comes to this. You can't just, you know, sit and wait for the booking to come in on Airbnb or booking.com you do have to be proactive. So what I wanted to dig into is the, the proactive ways that you're going about and finding these companies. So first and foremost, let's just dial back. Can you just list off in your experience with who you've worked with, the different types of categories and niches when it comes to the, the medium term guest and, and what companies there are related to.

So there's obviously the contractor market, but along with that you've got relocation, so you've got families coming from abroad on contracts to like universities, stuff like that. You have the healthcare professionals, you have the film industry. There's also like law films, sending people to different cities for trials and things like that. They last up to two, three months sometimes, so they're good to reach out to. And we also do little bits with estate agents and referrals there. So estate agents always get inquiries for stays under six Months, They. They can't house them. So we do a lot of work with local estate agents filling that gap before. Before the people get to Airbnb and stuff.

So this is good. So we've got relocation healthcare, film companies, law firms, estate agents, universities. The first sort of stage of this would be when you were going ahead and building this list. How did you go about it? What were you doing? How were you reaching out to these people and how did you find their details? First and foremost.

It'S quite basic, really. You just think of the industry. So say you get a guest for Airbnb who's come from a healthcare. Healthcare company, or they booked through Airbnb through you. What we tend to do is we tend to just find that company's details straight away. We search them online, then you get the top 20 competitors in the space, and then we just reach out to reach out to them by phone via email, try and build a relationship and go from there.

So have you got any examples? Because it's. This is really good for people listening. It's. It's, you know, we can say, well, you could do this, but if there's any examples, you can walk us through. But I'd be. That'd be awesome. And what were you sort of typing in to find their competitors?

Okay, so I'll go with film companies, because I did this quite a lot. So there's a company called Badwell Studios in Cardiff Bay. So what we did there is we reached out to, like, through LinkedIn, originally researched bad Wolf Cardiff, and then we found all of their production coordinators because they're the people that book the rooms. Then we reached out to them through there. We rang their office, we emailed, we sent some cakes, lots of little bits just to make sure they knew what we did. And there was more than one point of contact as they change over quite regularly. Once we've done that with them, we found other companies in the area. So the location, they tend to all be in a similar sort of location. And we googled them, asked the people we'd spoke to if they had any other companies they'd worked for, and just gradually, slowly but surely built up a list of names in the area and began to reach out to them as well through LinkedIn, through email, through calls, through cakes, everybody.

So cakes is a big one. That's lumpy mail.

We talk.

We talk about this a lot. So you know when you're speaking to them and when you're reaching out to them, what is the general gist of the conversation? Are you going in and trying to sell them straight away? Are you taking a different approach? How are you reaching out to these companies originally? Cold. I.

I'm not a very good direct salesperson, so I'm, I just play to my strengths. I like, I just get on the phone, I'll have a chat with them, see what contracts they've got going on, not directly sell, but make sure they do know who we are and that we're available. And then I get one of the team now to reach out afterwards to then go a bit more direct as they're a bit better at that than I am. So it's more, it's more about building a relationship because you want them to use you repeatedly over the coming years rather than just sell the room once and then move on to somebody else. You want to build a long term thing.

I think that's a big one. So obviously you're not comfortable selling direct sales like you said, but what you did is you reached out and you hired somebody that could do that on your behalf. You like having conversations with people and building a relationship with people, that's great. Then followed up from that, you have somebody that's calling and actually doing the selling. Now the next question is you have that initial contract, you have an initial consultation, that initial chat, you leave your details, you show them the portfolio, you tell them who your niche is, etc, which is great. What is the general lead time from you hanging up the phone to the next person getting in touch. And then the second part to that question is how many touch points and how many times are you, are they reaching out to them over the course of say six months to a year?

We, we depending on the industry, we reach out regularly. So like the film industry, reach out once a week, just a sort of a newsletter, email sort of thing, or we ring the people, book in just to chat. Hello, how's it going? Do you need anything? But I would say over, over a six month period, the average is probably once every two weeks. That can be like a generic email you send to all of the industries of what you've got available. Something a bit more personalized. But it is, it is about the relationship rather than the sale. Because once you build the relationship, the sales comes afterwards. We have quite a few companies that just ring us directly when they're staying in Cardiff now, so they don't bother going anywhere else and that's where you want to be.

So the next question is your niche is obviously pet friendly accommodation, furnished accommodation, how much do you attribute your success to sort of diving down on that niche compo compared to say somebody who is just going for the anybody. I would you say that that is a tribute to like people pay more attention to you, I. E. Film studios or could this be something that you know, anybody can do, doesn't matter if they haven't doubled down on any shit.

I would say relocation. It helps a lot being pet friendly because it's very hard to find pet friendly accommodation full stop, let alone pet friendly accommodation for three, four months. So we get a lot of people who are in between homes moving countries with their pets, having work done on their house and they all come stay with us for three, four, five, six, sometimes 18 months. Things go wrong on there, wrong on their refurb. But that's, that's the sort of, yeah sort of win you can get from niching down. You'll get the right customers for you for longer periods.

So relocation and how do you get in contact and how do you find people who are on the relocation? Let's just say before you answer that question that we've got five properties in say York. We can definitely do pet friendly style but we want to get in touch with people that are in middle of a like a relocation or a move. How are you going about building up those relationships and how are you finding those leads?

So a lot of this is SEO, Google placement and also there's Right Move and Gumtree so you can list on those through Open rent. You can pay to be listed on rightmove as serviced accommodation for medium term stays. When you do this you appear as short term stays in rightmove and that's what a lot of people coming from abroad use to utilize, used to find their, their medium term stays in the uk. They don't, they don't know where else to look so they just, they search right Move and comes up, comes up on top.

So when you've been speaking to whoever you're building relationships with, you obviously specialized and sort of again niche down to one to two bedrooms. That's like your, your, your wheelhouse in this retrospect when you're, you're speaking to people and let's just say the properties that we have sleeps five free beds with one one bathroom. What would you say then that would open the door potentially to. Is that like a, like a contractor world or is this still families? Would you say like relocation would be the vibe like what sort of route would you recommend somebody with that sort of thing going on?

We've got four or five, three beds now in, in the Cardiff area. And they all work really well for families on relocation. So the relocation market, again, we get bits of bits from the estate agent. So like referrals from them. When there's a family in between homes, they tend to come to us. I would also say the, the longest contract we've got is actually with healthcare professionals. So they've all got, similar to contractors, they've all got their own bedroom, they all want their own separate space, but they're down on a contract in the, in the Heath Hospital in Cardiff for nine months or so. So they booked for the nine month in that upfront and they pay two months in advance.

How did you get those contracts? Was that you being proactive or did somebody book with you on one of the platforms and then you built the relationship?

Yeah. So originally Care joined the company, booked with us through Airbnb, but since then we've had four to six new bookings from them all six months. Plus they originally booked just, just the one month to test this out, I think. But then the team reached out, we made, we made the relationship and now where they go to for Cardiff and.

What are they predominantly looking for, like healthcare? Is that the free beds, did you say, or are they looking for the one? Yeah, they're, they're looking to travel because it's. This is something that I've noticed speaking to a lot of people in America. In America, the traveling healthcare professional is much more common than what it is in the uk, so to speak. But are you now finding it that the traveling healthcare market in the UK is starting to pick up, particularly in areas like Cardiff?

And what though, we've always had a trickle of it, but yeah, recently since, well, it's, since we've made the better relationship with the industry, it started to benefit us more. I think it's always been there. We just haven't been top of their mind to be able to monetize it, basically. Wow.

And when it comes to building relationships, apart from sending cakes, what else are you doing in that retrospect to be in that top of mind? Because you're not the only accommodation provider in Cardiff that is potentially in their Rolodex. What are you trying to do? That's what stands you out from the rest that they do go, let's get in touch.

We, we all, we, we take monthly payments as well. So rather than them paying say 18 grand for a six month contract up front because they, they don't know if they're going to last the 18 months, the six months or they're going to last nine months or three. So we let them, we let them pay a month ahead every month to stay with us. That gives them their bit of flexibility. Their budgets are easier for them to maintain. They're not paying out and trying to get money back afterwards. We're very easy to book with as well. So if they, if they ask, we have something available nearly all the time. We try, we try to schedule our calendars to look for the long stays. So we don't, we don't allow a two night booking, say a month in advance. We just don't allow it. Yeah, so we found that companies know they need the accommodation about seven days before. Usually they're not very well organized so they'll ring you on that week and we try and make sure we have availability for them to come to us and the more availability we have, more often the more they come to us.

It makes sense from like a purely buy. Yeah, it's a purely buy in point of view from a, from like the buyer's perspective. You know, money loves speed and it hates friction. So if, yeah, you know, if they keep coming back to you and say, hey Chris, what you got? And you go, sorry, nothing. Then slowly over time they're going to be like, they've never got anything. There's no point, I'm just gonna go elsewhere. You see what I mean? It's like McDonald's and the milkshakes. Then the milkshake machine's never working. So by the time you know, someone wants a milkshake, they're not going to go to Mackie's. So yeah, having inventory, being clever with your calendar, being proactive in the reach out and catering your prop or catering your business around what you've got and then discovering what your niche is and then, you know, tried and tested and experiment over time.

Yeah, definitely. It's, it's not a quick fix. There's no. To build the relationship it takes time. So you've just gotta, gotta keep plugging away. You'll speak to some people that won't like you and it is what it is, you just move on. Basically.

Yeah, that is a part of sales, obviously. You know, there's loads and loads and loads of people out there. There's loads of potential contracts that you could get. You're not going to get a home run every single time and you know you are going to have to eat glass in that retrospect. You're going to have to, you know, call a few people, just establish some relationships, some you'll have a perfect relationship with some. Not so much. Obviously, you've. You've really doubled down on this, got the contracts and the properties have just grown on the back of it. So well done.

Yeah, we tried. Try to get the contracts first and the property second.

Yeah, yeah. Because this will be the last sort of question I wanted to ask, and this is something that will definitely pop up. Say you have a conversation, say. Say you've got four properties, right? You've got four properties in Cardiff. You call somebody you've got that great relationship with and they contact you and say, hey, we need 10 properties. What is normally your. Your answer to. To that? What advice could you, could you pass on to. On to somebody?

We would try and help them find the, find the accommodation, because the relationship, even though we're not getting the money right now off all 10 properties, would be worth more in the long term. So by helping them find the accommodation, like, you'll, you'll learn to know other operators in your area, so you'll know the good ones and the bad ones, who has what sort of properties, who you can refer to. So, yeah, we refer to other companies in the area to make sure that our contact is able to bring us and get what they need. Yeah, we might not be able to provide it, but we still give it to them best we can.

Absolutely. That's. That's the exact answer I would give out. I would always say, and we'd always used to do this. It was like, give me 30 minutes and I'll call you back. And then in that 30 minutes, you know, you've got WhatsApp groups, you've got your Facebook groups, you've got, you know, your, your little black book of people that have got similar accommodation to you. But, you know, you can get access to their calendar and see it and then call them back and just go, yeah, we can. And that's the, that's the main thing. Instead of saying, no, you, you, you then keep that. Yes. Going and you help them as best as possible. And if you can sort out a little kickback with the people that you're putting properties in, then even better.

That's. Yeah, you can usually do that, but it's not, it's not the overall goals.

No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Brilliant. Right, so relocation, healthcare, film companies, law firms, estate agents. How are you collecting this list on Google? Are you doing it yourself or are you outsourcing and a member of your team is, is. Is creating this sort of database for you?

It depends. In the past, I've Outsourced out of the company usually, usually to the Philippines or Bangladesh or somewhere like that. And they've just gone and scraped contacts, email addresses and then we've cold reached out from there. Yeah, I tend to reach out through LinkedIn because it's my face. So if we're doing any LinkedIn outreach, I tend to do it at the moment. But other than that. Yeah, it's mainly outsourced. We build the lists, we email. Yeah, go from there.

And what are the tools that you've got in place to implement this? If you've got a CRM.

Yeah, we use Zendesk. So all of our calls, Facebook, WhatsApp, all sorts, emails, everything comes into one place.

And Zendex is Z, E N D E S K. Go check that out. And what, what, what, what are the other tech stack that you have behind the scenes? What's powering the the business?

We use ClickUp. So and Avantio, the pms. So we link the two together. ClickUp's more of our operational data days and Avantio is our booking booking engine and OTA dispersion.

Brilliant. Anything else that's behind the scenes or have we got those main three?

I. Yeah, I try and limit my tech stack, otherwise I go down rabbit holes and never come out. So those, those are the main ones we use Avantio, ClickUp and Zendesk. They're the three.

Appreciate your time. Now there's going to be a lot of people watching this who are maybe at Property three, Property five, who want to scale and grow, but want to do it in a way where they're not totally stuck in the business and they want to do it in a way that will mean that they're not always trying to find the time to do so. We're not going to be too busy. You've obviously achieved this. You do it remotely and it's been amazing to see from behind the scenes. And what's more exciting now is you have got your own mentorship program starting up. Can you just give us a little breakdown of what that is going to be? And if anybody wants to find out more, where's the best place to get in touch to ask you about it?

Okay, so it's going to be one to one mentorship with me. There'll be one call and one hour call a week where I'll deep dive into any of the problems you may be having. Any of the bottlenecks help you get clarity on where you want to go with that. You'll also get access to all of like my systems. All of like the templates we use ideas on where to reach out, all of our contacts. If you're needing a va, we can find a VA for you and stuff like that. And this will be spread out over six to eight months, originally paying monthly because if you don't like it, I'll give you your money back, no problems there. And we'll work through it, building you and your business to get you where you want to go over the six to eight month period. Best place to reach out to me is there. Chris. Design.co.uk Drop me an email just saying mentorship and I'll give you a call.

And design. For those who are listening and not watching the video, it's D y z y n-z y n.co.uk make sure you go check it out. And obviously there's LinkedIn as well. How do I find you on LinkedIn?

Chris Ballard.

There's not many Chris Ballard designs out there, so you'll be able to find them easy enough. Epic. Appreciate that, Appreciate this and yeah, congratulations and looking forward to checking in later on. Thank you.