MTR Marketing Tips to Stay Booked

Hey everyone. Um, I'm just going to say, um, good evening. Thank you so much for tuning into the She's Got Assets weekly live stream. We have a really fun topic tonight, all about marketing and staying booked. I got a lot of questions about that. So if you guys can see me and hear me, please type something in the comments. Just let me know you're out there. I super appreciate it. Just type a, hey, I'm here. Let me know where you're calling in from. And I'm going to get started. I'm going to load some stuff on the back end, and we're just going to kind of go over marketing and some tips and tricks to stay really booked. So I think that's the most common question I get. So please let me know where you're calling in from. Um, if you want to learn this, let me know. Just type something in the chat. I also am doing a master class on Friday, so I'm gonna do an announcement about that. So yes, it's going to be a good presentation. So let me just, um Let me share my screen really fast. So there's a lot of clicks on the back end. I'm sure it's hard to watch me do all this, but let me know that you're there, where you're calling in from. Give me some reactions, that's super helpful. So I'm going to present. Okay, share my screen. Let's— hopefully this works. Um, okay, that's not the right— to figure out what I'm doing in the back end here. Okay, hopefully this is the right screen. Okay. Okay, I think this is working. I'm gonna try— I'm just gonna leave it in this mode. But if you can see this and hear me, like, please let me know. That's super helpful. I'm gonna try and get more in full screen mode. I'm actually at one of my midterms, and I can't talk and do this. Let me get the back end sorted a little bit, if I can do Presenter mode. Hold on. Share view. That's not it. I don't know if it's going to let me do it. Yeah, it's not letting me do it. Okay. Well, we're just going to go with the flow here. All right, you guys. If you're here, let me know. Jump on, say hello. Let me know where you're calling in from. Hope everyone is having a good day. I'm actually calling in from one of our midterm rentals. We had a showing. I don't typically do in-person showings, but I did that today. So I'm going to get started here. Sorry, there's so many windows. I don't have my double screen that I normally have. So, okay, everyone's been really patient. I appreciate it. Okay, so tonight we're going to talk about marketing tips, how to get your midterm rental listed up and running quickly and stay booked. Some of this might seem kind of basic, but it's all really important. So if you're not doing this, Please take it to heart and let me know if you have any questions. And I'm also, like I said, I'm doing a masterclass. I'll be coming more of this soon too. So I'm going to dive into the presentation. This is a quick one. There'll be lots of time for Q&A. So if you have questions, hang on and I'll be sure to answer those. Okay. So we're going to talk about marketing tips to get your midterm rental up and running quickly. I'm hoping everyone can hear me and see me. If not, just let me know. I'm assuming you can. Just gonna check the comments really fast. Um, actually, yeah. All right. Okay. So a little bit about me. If you don't know me, um, I'm from Northern California. I never thought I'd be in real estate and it's been a long journey, but I, um, full-time in real estate now. I used to be really private about being a landlord. Now I'm all out in the open about it. Um, but that's a little bit about my background. Um, previous to being in real estate, I was, um, an agency co-founder, um, and then I became a full-time investor and kind of a serial entrepreneur. I have lots of hats. I'm the founder of She's Got Assets, a course author, REI Playbook, and the MTR Playbook. And we have Cedar and Porch Properties and trying to buy houses. Kind of a mouthful, right? Um, I'm sure you've all heard this a little before, so I'm just going to keep going quickly. If you have not, please subscribe and check out the podcast. Lots of great content, lots of really great interviews. I like to get in the weeds on things and just unpack different strategies. So check that out. You can find it at She's Got Assets, all the regular places. And then again, we are on YouTube too. All my content is there. So I think most of you probably understand midterm rentals. I'll just touch on this quickly before we get into the meat of it. You can 2x or more your cash flow compared to long-term rentals with just a couple turnovers a year. I really— I believe we're providing a needed service, right? A lot of times we're serving families that have been displaced with insurance claims, and they're so grateful to have a comfortable place to stay. And I just think you get more freedom from your investment and you're not dealing with turnovers and like high maintenance guests and things like that. So this is resonating. Let me know. I'm just gonna check the comments really fast. Just one second. Yeah, if you're listening to this, just let me know, make sure, let me know if you can hear me and see me. Okay. Because I can't tell sometimes. Let's see. All right. Okay. I see a few people. Let me know. And I'll keep going. Promise. Okay. Hi, says yes. But that says yes. Awesome. Thank you guys so much. Okay, we're gonna keep going here. All right. So I think we kind of all know the benefits of midterm rentals. If not, like, let me know, but I always like to just make sure I'm starting out. Um, with the basics, right? Okay, so we're gonna break it all down— how to get your listing up and avoid all the common mistakes I think I see and things that I think keep you from getting booked. There's a lot of nuance to this. When I'm coaching students, we really do a deep dive and do an audit. And, um, but everyone that implements these strategies typically stays booked. So I don't— I can't cover everything. Again, I will be doing a masterclass, so be sure to check that out. They're really going to break it all down, some of the most common mistakes that I see. So, um, You know, I think the first mistake is people will come no matter how you market your property. You know, it's really important that you take good pictures, you optimize your listing. We're going to dive into that. But there's— please don't use bad pictures. These are just some examples, like not tidying up, awkward angles, you know, using your iPhone. Like, you really can't do that anymore. You need professional photos. I feel like I say this all the time, but it's really true. Please don't do this. I find this just recently actually sent me these photographs. I just updated the slide and literally there's a guy lying on his patio and saying it's a relaxing place to stay and this is his decor. So this might be your vibe. I think for most guests when we're charging a premium, they're not looking for this kind of vibe, but I would not recommend this. It's a little surprising anyway, so please don't do this. Please don't put yourself in the pictures. Hopefully that's pretty obvious, but I just had to share that because my friend sent it over recently. So would you want to stay here, right? Like, the pictures look really bad. I don't think the design's very good either, but just make sure to tidy up, right? Or like, would you rather stay here? Like, it's nice and light and airy. I'm actually at this property right now. I'm just doing a little work over here. So it's, it's nice and bright. It's not cluttered. You can tell, you know, it has some style to it, but it's not overdone. It looks comfortable and stylish. And I think photos are one of the top reasons guests choose to book, right? So that's super important. So don't overlook that. And again, high-quality photos, Hire a photographer. I, I definitely would recommend like a real estate photographer. Don't have your friend do it or someone that does like wedding photos because they really want to— they get the right angles right, make sure they're highlighting the right amenities that you want, like the washer dryer, all that stuff, storage. Um, so that's— it's super important and it's a one-time cost. You're never going to have to do that again. So please make sure you have good photos. Um, and according to Airbnb, listing with professional photos, you can receive like 20% higher earnings. And professional photos in my market Portland, Oregon is about $200 to $250, right? So it's not a huge investment and I think it'll pay dividends for a long time. So please be sure— I'm going to change my view here. Yeah, there we go. Please be sure to make sure you have really good pictures, right? And I think the other tip I'll say here is a lot of times I teach students to get their places booked before they're even furnished and then they get them furnished and get guests and they haven't photographed it, right? So make sure you document your listings if you do that strategy, right? We're going to gloss over this. Oh, I didn't— I thought this was hiding. Let me see if I can go in presenter mode. Okay, I can't do that. Okay, so definitely show, don't tell. Another tip is Airbnb. If you do— if you are in that platform, which I recommend, they'll actually match you with a local photographer and they'll just deduct the fee from your first listing. The only downside is they actually keep the photos and you can't really get them. You can download them, but you don't own them. So I don't totally recommend that, but that is something you can do. And then the other mistake I see is like waiting to get everything perfect on your listing, like maybe waiting for, you know, all, all your dishes to be in place. Like, get your listing out there. Please don't delay that because people book last minute and you can miss out on like a great booking if you're waiting till your listing is perfect and everything is in place. So just get it out there. Um, don't wait, you know, you don't need to photograph everything, right? You can just photograph a couple rooms and you can test your market, you can test demand, test the price. I mean, don't put bad pictures out there, but don't— I think just take a massive action. I think listings are really the best way to test the demand and your pricing. You know, do all your research, do your comps, but just get your listing out there. Um, so it's just an example, right? Um, waiting to get your rental listed, like, you make no rent, second month rent collected, right? If you get your listing up much quicker, say you collect $6K, then you're collecting like $12K of rent, right? So this can make a major difference in your bookings. If you're not— if you're just— if you're a new listing, right, make sure to get your listings out there quickly. Don't overthink it, make sure they're professional. But you know, you maybe, you might be missing like, I don't know, a couple pillows or something, or whatever it is, right? Or maybe kitchen supplies haven't fully come. Still get your listing out there, right? Just don't wait. Um, the other big mistake I see, this is a big one, especially if you're doing like the hybrid strategy, hybrid and filling your gaps of short-term but mostly focusing on midterm. First of all, make sure your calendars are up to date because the they won't show your listing if it's not current, right? If your calendar has been blocked off or something, if you're not using software. I typically don't use property management software for midterms. But the biggest thing I think with, um, if you are doing the hybrid strategy with short-term and, you know, focusing on midterm and maybe filling in your gaps with, um, short-term stays, if you have a booking and you have a couple, you know, spotty bookings here, like, you know, someone is come looking to come in August and they look in, you know, the next month and they see these like spot that you won't even show up in the search results. So you definitely want to make sure your calendar is always as open as it can be. And that if you are on Airbnb specifically, why do we do what's called the duplicate listing strategy? You have one focus on midterm, one on short-term. That's what we focus on in the course. But that's just a tip that if you are really trying to get midterm bookings and fill in the gap, you can have, you know, make sure that these are— your calendar is pretty tight, tight, and it's not— these aren't like spread out super far. If that makes sense. So keep your calendar as open as you can so that you show up for these longer bookings because people are looking— typically they might look for 30 days or 3 months or 6 months and you won't be found if your calendar is not, not well managed. All right. So we're going to kind of go over the 7 steps for a midterm rental listed and like essentially optimize, right? You're going to set up your space, get your photo shoot done. I like video and virtual tours because guests can see it. Typically they're not doing in-person tours unless it's insurance. You wanna draft your listing. We're gonna talk about that, how to optimize it, make a list of where to list, right? I'm gonna go over some of the top places that I'm at to stay booked, and then you're gonna post your listing. Just gonna check the comments here. Richard, loud and clear. Awesome. Okay, thank you. I appreciate it. Okay, so yeah, and this is like very high level. There's a lot of nuance that goes into all of this, and we probably will have time to do some audits if anyone wants to like share their listing. I promise I'll be nice, but I typically find a lot of things that can be improved on listing. That's what I do when I'm working with students. Um, so the key tips here and like staying booked and optimize your listing is, you know, you want to, um, make sure it's optimized, that we're showing all the amenities, like what's the location, is there parking. I think being pet friendly is super important. Most people have pets, so you're missing out on a huge audience if you're not pet friendly. Um, So fence, yard, you know, family dedicated workspace, washer dryer, fully stocked kitchen. These are like the common amenities that you want to kind of make sure that you're highlighting and putting in your listing and not making it like vacation focused. Um, I'm a huge fan of ChatGPT. It's amazing. Um, you know, definitely leverage it for your listings. Here's a prompt example. Like, you're a midterm rental expert, you know, you're a real world-class copywriter. Craft a compelling listing description for a fully furnished midterm rental property with flexible Located neighborhood and city. And there's certain keywords that we're sprinkling here, like flexible lease terms, you know, monthly booking, fully furnished, extended stays, long stays, pet friendly. We want to make sure that we're really putting in those, those words into our listings, right? Those like important keywords that lets people know that this is the model that we're doing, right? Because not everyone does that. And that really does help you get found and stay booked because you're letting people know that you are focused on that, especially like on a platform like Airbnb, which is you know, typically been more short-term focus, right? So that's super important. And make sure that you're kind of giving ChatGPT feedback. Like I'm always talking to my phone, giving it feedback. I use it for lots of other things, but you can give it tone and style feedback. It tends to get a little flowery in the language, right? So you can say like, make it, you can adjust the tone, give me 10 alternatives, you know, 10 more descriptions. And I don't like that. And I'll just, and I like the voice option 'cause it's just much quicker and it'll give you You can just kind of bang it around until it feels right. But you definitely want to optimize your listing, right? And so you want to say something like, these are like keywords that we're really focused on, like temporary housing, extended stays, you know, fence, yard, dedicated workspace, high-speed internet, right? So here's an example. Definitely take a screenshot of this if it's helpful. Again, this is in the course too, but, you know, at your company name. So at Cedar and Porch Properties, we offer flexible stays for those encountering home repairs and a relocation. We also work directly with insurance companies and policyholders in need of temporary housing. So this is letting people know, hey, like if I'm a homeowner, they understand that I've been displaced, right? We offer flexible lease terms. This was like on Zillow, right? So you have to— you're tailoring it to each platform a little bit, but make sure that you're doing this on your listings because not everyone, you know, typically Zillow was more long-term focused, Airbnb is more short-term focused, right? So just make sure that you're sprinkling these keywords. And, and as you get like leads and listings, look at the language that they're using. They're typically saying a family's been displaced, or, or, you know, we're looking for a 3-month stay. So make sure that— and you'll get to a feeling for that kind of language. So make sure that you're always kind of looking at that. And I have examples on the course, so you can take a screenshot of this. I'm just checking questions. Okay, let me know if this is making sense so far. I'm just going to stop here and see if there's any questions. Don't see any so far. Um, okay. All right, so, okay, so that's an example of like an optimized listing, right? And every channel is a little bit different. You don't have to customize it too much, but definitely there's a little bit of nuance of it. So there's a lot of places to list. I'm a big fan of being like everywhere you'd put a long-term rental, but I'd say the top, top places you need to be are Zillow, Airbnb, and Furnished Finder. Again, that's just the top tip of the iceberg as far as places to list, but I would say hands down you need to be in these places 100%. Um, you know, Airbnb, even if you're doing midterm, you need to be on there. Furnished Finder is not just travel nurses. I get insurance leads from there all the time. Zillow, I get insurance leads all the time. It's not just long-term, right? So be in all these places. And there's a lot more, like anywhere essentially that you'd put a long-term rental, I'm going to put a midterm rental. This helps me stay really booked. Um, and the other really key place to be is in the midterm rental insurance databases. Um, so if you're not familiar with the niche of midterm rentals and insurance. Essentially, a family has been displaced due to flood or fire, and they contact their insurance, and their insurance company, you know, they're not a housing company, so they're going to partner with these third-party companies like ALE Solutions, Cedric, THD, CRS, right? And they're the ones, and they kind of interface between the insurance companies and the families, and they will reach out to you, and they do have their own databases, so make sure to list on them. I find that they're often going to these places. They're often going to Airbnb and Furnished Finder, right? These are the most popular places because I think it's a little bit easier for them to find properties they can share with the families. And families are looking here too. But I do get direct leads from the insurance databases. And here's another tip, right? When you get one of these leads and they're like, hey, you know, it's typically— it's like they'll say, I'm from X company, I have a family that's been displaced, they're looking for a 2-month stay or something like that. And then you know it's insurance. And I always make a point of being really responsive, right? Asking what their budget is, ask them what type of damage it is so that way you know how long they're possibly going to stay. And always mention, hey, you have both— if you have multiple properties in the area, let them know that, right? Or if you don't, you can say I have got a great network so that you're becoming a resource for them and then they'll come back to you, right, when they have other listings and there are other families in the area and they need to place that specifically for insurance. Um, but you can use like ChatGPT or Google to find more temporary housing databases and I have a full list in the course, but these are just very high-level ideas of where you need to be to be omnipresent to stay booked. You can also do direct outreach to temporary agencies. Like, I typically, as I'm— as over the years I've built up like my own database of relocation specialists, insurance housing specialists, search specialists. You can go on LinkedIn and look for these folks, but just as you get inquiries, make sure that you are actually that you're kind of saving their information. I typically send out like a weekly email when I have vacancies just to stay really top of mind. That really helps me stay booked. Um, so that's really high level. I think it's important, like, high level— being on all the platforms, keep your calendar up to date, make sure your listings are super optimized, good photos. And then if you, you know, you need more help, I am doing a live masterclass this Friday at noon. So it's totally free and you can sign up, and I'll be sharing a lot more information on midterms and marketing and all that fun stuff. So you can just this QR code. And yeah, so I'll leave that up for a minute. If anyone has any questions, and check— hey, Brandon. I saw Brandon at a networking event recently. But yeah, if you guys want to put your midterm listings in, I'm happy to do like a live QA if that's helpful. If you have questions or need more help with midterms or optimizing or coaching, that's one of the things that I do. I love working with students. But feel free to chime in with questions. I'll hang up for a few more minutes. Um, I might even bring up like a live listing, um, and you guys can kind of see. I can kind of analyze it a little bit if that would be helpful. Let me know in the chat if you want me to, um, actually bring up one of our listings to show you. Just let me know. I'm gonna stop screen sharing here and I will put that in the chat. And if you're watching the replay, um, feel free to leave a comment or a message and I will get back to you. I'm just going to put the masterclass in the notes here or in the chat. Okay. Feel free to ask, like, if you have, if you have a rental you want me to look at or any questions about staying booked, I'm really happy to answer that. And sometimes these are like really small tweaks, but they really do make a big difference, right? Making sure that you're marketing yourself, and that does help you stay like really booked, right? And if you are full, make sure that we're leveraging our network and referring leads around. That's super important. That would— that's what this group is about. Um, so I don't see any questions. I'll hang on for a few minutes. Be sure to register for the, um— well, that was weird. Register for the master class. I'm just, I'm just gonna put my face up here. Uh, be sure to register for the master class. If you can't make it, you'll totally get a replay. Um, and I'll just pull up one of my listings really quickly if people kind of want to see, we can kind of do a little bit of a deep dive on it, like what I think a good listing looks like, if anyone is curious. So let's just do this. Let's see. I'm going to pull up an Airbnb listing here. Um, let's see. Hold on. I didn't prep this ahead of time, or if anyone has one they want to share, I'm happy to do a deep dive on it or do like a little audit. Okay, so let's see, view, share. Okay, so I'm gonna just, let's see, I'll actually, I'll just share my screen here. Okay, so go over here. Oh my gosh, I can't find the tab that I'm in with the livestream. Okay. Oh my gosh, I have too many things open. Let me find where I'm at. Okay, it's not— okay, StreamYard. Okay. Oh my gosh. Okay. Take this off screen. Share, share screen again. Again, if anyone wants to give me one of their listings, I'm happy to look at it, but I'm just going to pull up Airbnb here, make sure that's working. Okay, let me slide on this. Okay, there we go. So this is just— I'm going to kind of go over best practices of like an Airbnb listing specifically. I think that's really helpful because I think I see a lot of mistakes here. So hopefully this is a quick audit. It's one of my listings, so hopefully I don't find any problems with my own listing. But it's always good to keep your listings fresh, right? Um, so, um, just quickly, right, we want to have a really good title here. We, you know, you want to focus on like long stays, extended stays, pet friendly. We're not making it like vacation mode, right? So it's really important to have an optimized title. You want to have your best pictures front and foremost, right? Like, so all the living spaces, like the living room, the bathroom, the kitchen, all that stuff. Don't have like 4 pictures of your couch. I see that a lot. So make sure that you're really like putting your best foot forward in these, in these top photos. And then your description, I sometimes I see this, people don't use all the space here, right? So usually you can put like a short description here. And then you can put a longer description, right? So I'm saying about the space. I'm mentioning the amenities. I'm mentioning in like a dedicated office, fully stocked kitchen, floor heating, gas fireplace, ideal for temporary or extended stays. Right? And I'm also mentioning that we have properties in the area, other properties, in case this one isn't available. People can reach out, but really emphasizing like long-term amenities. I like to put the amenities in kind of a bulleted list form, like work-from-home-ready dedicated office, right? Um, adjustable height desk, extra monitor, um, super fast high-speed Wi-Fi, single-car garage, pet-friendly, private yard, right? Gourmet kitchen, um, See, any, anything like that, like cozy amenities, just things like that would make that, you know, really the pet-friendly, the things for extended stays. And what I really want to emphasize here is, yeah, we always want to brand ourselves in these listings, right? So, um, you know, contact Cedar and Porch Properties, right, to schedule a viewing. Feel free to grab a screenshot of this that we're also putting these keywords again in temporary housing, extended stays, right? And people can actually get us off of the platforms too if we want them to find us online. So that was really really quick. I hope that helps. Um, again, if you are interested in the masterclass, be sure to sign up. I dropped the link below, and I don't see any questions. I was a little late today, so, um, thanks for hanging in there. It's like I'm still sharing. I don't know why. Maybe the screen hasn't refreshed. But, um, yeah, thanks for tuning in, everyone. I appreciate it. If you're watching the replay, um, be sure to drop any questions in and sign up for the masterclass. Even if you can't make it, you'll definitely get a replay. There's lots of really great, um, information that I'll be sharing on that midterm rental. So, all right, you guys, it's been a long day. Um, I, yeah, put a fence in today and did some other stuff. Always, always interesting, the life of an investor. All right, and also just a couple things. Um, I will be doing a couple speaking events in, uh, Portland, Oregon. I'll be at Investor Labs on September 11th. Really excited about that. It's called She Builds. I'll be speaking with some other developer and someone that does cottage clusters. So super cool. So let me know if you need a link to that. And then I'll also be, um, in actually in Dallas doing kind of a meetup there with Jenny. So if you need a link to that, I think tickets are almost sold out, um, they sold out really quickly. We opened up more spots. So if you need any of those links or the link to the masterclass, let me know. But, um, any, any questions? I'll last, last call for questions. All right, I'm gonna sign off. I don't see any questions. Again, if you're watching the replay, feel free to comment. I hope this was valuable. And I will talk to everyone soon. All right, good night.