Smashing your goals with Holiday Rental Software: Build your brand

  • Episode 7
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  • Kelly Odor
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Build your brand with holiday rental software.

In this episode, we cover how holiday rental software can help you build your brand using your logo, photos and property listings. 

In the Podcast Pointer, we look at calendar booking widgets to help you attract direct bookings.

For more information on how Bookster holiday rental software can help your business, check out https://www.booksterhq.com/

The important bits

● [00:00] - Intro 

● [01:02] - Build your brand 

● [09:40] - Podcast Pointer 

Key takeaways

● Holiday Rental Software will help you to build your brand:

1. Add your logo to all email automations about your bookings. 

2. Add your logo to your guest area

3. Add your logo, brand colours, gifs, images, videos into your email marketing to potential guests.

4. Instantly upload your branded photos to the channels you work with, like Airbnb.

5. Instantly upload your property listing descriptions to the channels, once you have written it in a style that matches your brand ethos. 

Next Episode

In the next episode we’ll be returning to look at how to attract direct bookings. 

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Transcript

How can holiday your rental software help to build your brand? Building a brand is vital for helping you attract more guests, attract more repeat bookers, and get more recommendations from your existing guests.

Did you know there are often tools built in to holiday rental software to make it easier to build your brand? That's what we're going to discuss today on smashing your
Minute 1
goals with holiday rental software.

But before we get started, I'd like to share with you an article that will help.

If you are not using a holiday rental software yet or you're thinking of changing software for your short let business on our website, booksterhq.com.

You can sign up for free for the article with questions to ask during a holiday rental software demo, an essential document if you're considering making any change.

But now on with the show today we're covering an exciting topic, really from a marketing perspective, how to build your brand.

But firstly, what is a brand? A brand is the identity and the story of your company that enables you to be distinctly recognizable in comparison to other similar companies who are nearby or even further afield.

So you could think of it in terms of Pepsi and Coca-Cola
Minute 2
and Tesco's own brand Cola.

These are three very different companies selling an arguably identical product, or at least very similar, but no one confuses these three brands.

Well, why is that? Well, they've each worked to sell the experience of drinking their product, the feeling that you get when you buy their drinks, the image that you create of yourself when you are drinking from their cans.

So in general, when you're drinking Tesco's own brand cooler, it's about feeling thrifty or frugal, but sexy isn't on that list, but it may be on the list for a Coca-Cola drinker.

And that is down to the dedication of creating a brand that says, this product is cool, it's sexy, it it's attractive, and it comes down to really good marketing.

Minute 3
But things like your logos, your colors, your slogans, the images that you use, and it partners up with that kind of marketing side of how you promote yourself, and that's what's gonna help you attract new guests and repeat guests.

And once you've built that brand and you've built that reputation that goes with it, you can then think about charging more just like a can of Coca-Cola costs more than Tesco's own brand cooler.

So how does this impact you? Well, you also want to be recognizable both by your potential customers and your past customers, because if guests don't know your brand, then they have less reason to book with you or rebook with you.

If they think of you as an Airbnb, then when they come to rebook in your area, they'll go back to Airbnb.

But if you have managed to present to them your brand,
Minute 4
you've presented to them a story, something recognizable, something that they can hook onto and they enjoyed the experience with you, then they'll think about coming back with you.

And that's the key.

But there are tools within holiday rental software that can help you with this.

So let's make a start with your logo.

Something that has the name of your company written in a style that suits your company.

So if you are environmentally conscious, perhaps you want to have it with maybe some green hues built into it, maybe the image of a tree or a vine.

And this logo should be on your communications with your actual guests and your potential guests.

holiday rental software can help by including your logo in the places that your guests are gonna see and help you build that relationship.

So each company is going to vary, but the logo could be added to your automated emails
Minute 5
that are sent to your guests and onto your guest area.

This means that every guest who books with you will be able to see your logo in all the email communications about their booking and every time that they access your guest area.

Following on from those automated emails, you've also got your marketing emails.

These could be sent to your current guests, your past guests, or people who've just asked to keep in touch with your business.

So within email marketing, you can build your brand by creating this look and feel that's gonna help you really just stand out from your competitors.

And the fun bit is that you can just play with colors, your photos, your videos, you can make gifts, you can play with the style of your writing, whatever you want, that's gonna help your business be recognizable and create that demand.

So the content that you include could build your brand too.

So consider what is it
Minute 6
that you write about when you write marketing emails? Is it just about you or is it about the local community? Or is it something you are passionate about or something that the business is involved in? Let's think about an environmental theme, assuming that you are holiday rental and your ethos is all about being green, being environmentally conscious and supporting guests who have the same kind of beliefs and ethos as you do, you can help build your brand by talking about things that are going to be relevant to environmentally conscious guests.

So thinking about your, your green cleaning items, environmental projects that are happening in a local area that your guests can join.

You could add a section devoted to other environmental initiatives in your community or stunning natural walks that are nearby or accessible from your property.

So really just think about who you are as a company, who your guests are, what your ethos is,
Minute 7
and think about how you could build that brand, how you can be more recognizable with a story about yourself and about your guests.

The final branding that I'll cover today is your listing content for the channels that use your words and your photos.

So Airbnb for example, and it's worth being aware at this point that some channels do not use your own wording such as booking.com, so you'll have more difficulty building your brand through text in that channel.

But let's start with text.

You can style your wording to fit your brand style and your property management software will be able to share that with the channels.

So whenever you think, okay, it needs a change, it needs refreshing or an update, you can change that wording in your holiday rental software and then it will be instantly shared with all the channels.

Now what I see a lot is people using rather standard wording
Minute 8
to describe their holiday rental.

There's really very little difference between property A, property B, property C, because I think some holiday rental owners are thinking about the practicalities.

I must talk about what's in the property, what rooms there are, what bedding there is.

But it's an opportunity to put your personality and the company's brand into the style of writing as well.

So have a think about how you can do that.

And then let's have a think about your images.

So you can have a lot of fun with images, preferably using a professional photographer because that makes the difference.

You don't need to just have standard shots of your room.

You could choose items that will match your brand colors and incorporate these into your holiday home and then take photos of them so you're building that brand recognition through your brand colors within your photography.

And then you can upload these branded photographs into your holiday rental software,
Minute 9
which will do a couple of different things.

Firstly, it's going to check whether or not these photographs are a high enough quality or a high enough resolution, because if they're not, some of the channels will just refuse to post them.

So you'll end up with a listing on some of the channels with very few photographs, and then it will pass them all to the channels instantly and it'll do it all automatically.

So you are not needing to go into each and every channel and update your photographs each and every time because your holiday rental software is gonna do that all for you.

And whenever you want to add new photographs or update something, again, go back to the holiday rental software, put them in and it will update them for you.

So you don't need to, Let's take a moment here.

I'd like to remind you that if you'd like to try out Bookster and the tools that we offer, you can register on booksterhq.com for free, and you can check out some of the great tools
Minute 10
that will help you run your short let business.

Moving on back to the second part of the podcast podcast pointer.

Each session will look at one solution within BTA to help you overcome a problem.

Today I've selected the calendar widget to help you attract direct bookings.

This lets your guests make a booking on your website using their mobile or on their desktop.

Letting the guests make a booking on their mobile phone is particularly important.

There are stats from 2023 showing around 40% of holiday bookings are made using a mobile device.

So your booking process absolutely has to work on mobile or your guests will simply walk away using the calendar widget.

Your guests can see when the property is available, they can see the prices that they'll need to pay based on the dates that they want and the number of guests that they are,
Minute 11
and any extras that they're looking to purchase as well.

And as soon as they're ready, your guests can go through this super slick booking process to book their dates and pay your deposit.

You can drop this into any website, including Squarespace or Wix or WordPress.

So when you are ready to take your own bookings, you can do this and reduce your reliance on channels and pay less commission.

You don't need any fancy code work to add this into your website.

It's just a piece of code that either you or your web developer can drop in and away you go.

We'll be coming back to direct bookings in the next session because I love this topic.

So I hope you can join me then.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Smashing Your Goals with Haldy Rental Software.

If you liked the episode or you know someone in the haldy rental industry
Minute 12
that would enjoy it, please leave a review on pod chaser.com, apple Podcasts, or wherever you download and listen to your podcast.

If you've got any questions, please do get in touch.

You can contact us on our Facebook page, which is booksterhq, or you can contact us through our website and there's more information there.

And you can ask for a demo on how Bookster can help you at booksterhq.com.

And remember, we believe that experiences matter.

So whenever you are choosing a software service, make sure you choose one that considers your needs and the needs of your team and your guests.

More Episodes of Smashing your goals with Holiday Rental Software

  • Episode 7 - Build your brand with holiday rental software - Text 'Build your brand with holiday rental software' and 'Episode 7' with a Bookster logo.

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