Heads In Beds Show - Marketing Properties Based On Location vs Marketing As 'Collections' For Your Vacation Rental Website

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

In this episode Conrad and Paul talk about marketing properties only based on location vs marketing them based on common amenities or attributes. They get deep into the sauce on all things marketing property presentation. Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagramTwitter🚀 About BuildUp BookingsBuildUp Bookings is a team of creative, problem solvers made to drive you more traffic, direct bookings and results for your accommodations brand. Reach out to us for help on search, social and email marketing for your vacation rental brand.

Welcome to the Head to Med Show presented by Buildup Bookings. We teach you how to get more vacation properties, earn more revenue per property, master marketing, and increase your occupancy. Take your vacation rental marketing game to the next level by listening in. I'm your co-host Conrad. And I'm your co-host Paul. All right, Paul, how's it going today? level by listening in. I'm your co-host Conrad. I'm your co-host Paul. All right, Paul, how's it going today?

Well, you know, we're slowly making our way into fall here, even though the thermometer is 71 degrees at 10 a.m. in Minnesota. Last week, I thought we were talking about, or two weeks ago, we were talking about cold weather and now I'm back up to this, you know, ambiguous, maybe we're in the beach market, maybe we're in the Northwoods, I don't know. It's an interesting time. We're in the heart of the conference season. You were just at Burma and enjoying all that. So this is that time of year where I think people

are running around a little bit with a little bit of hair on fire and starting to get to that end of the year, do the books, maybe see we're up or maybe down or flat, all those things. So fun time of year. How are you doing? What are things like in your neck of the woods? Yeah, way too late for a BRMA recap because you're probably listening to this several weeks later at this point as we record in advance as the literature knows. But no, I'll get on my side of things. I think the BRMA was definitely lighter than it has been in

years past, that's for sure. Some of the feedback I've seen on LinkedIn stuff is somewhat fair. I mean, it felt a little for me like, and like we kind of repeating some of the same themes and things like that. So I don't know, I'm not going to pretend to be an expert and understand exactly what's needed to fix VMA. That's not my job. I can only, you know, we talked about this for a record, we can only control what we can control. And I certainly can't control VMA. So it is what it is. I will say this, we're all going to go to one place and see you like a dozen my clients in one spot, you know what I mean? So it would really be a bummer if that didn't end up working out in the future

where it's like people end up getting more fractured or more split into different things. Like I think we all want, you know, to take a political but it's like we want VRMA to be great. You know what I mean? Like that's what's ideal for us is that everyone goes there, there's lots of activity on the vendor side, there's lots of activity on the property manager side, they're all there, they're there to learn and so on and so forth. I think if I had one quick commentary on it,

it would be that, which is that why are we not doubling down and tripling down on like educational content for the property managers? Because it's going to sound like a weird one. Maybe I don't, hopefully this is not a cancelable offense. This feels like a nightclub problem to me. What, if a nightclub is struggling, what do you want? It's just like get a bunch of young, beautiful women there. And I feel like that would solve your nightclub marketing problem is like the men would then follow the young, beautiful women. So it's like, how do we get all the property managers there? I feel like it's doubling and tripling down on educational content, kind of like we talked about here in the heads of bed show.

And then therefore that in and of itself solves the vendors not being happy about the number of leads they're getting problem because in that scenario, like you are now there's there's so many more possible beautiful women to get with aka AKA more profitable individuals that you want to talk to. So that would kind of be my quick analogy there, would be like, whatever you're looking to problem set, it's not like, how do I make the vendors happier? It's like, how do I get more, let's do a better one. How do we get more fish in the ocean

so that the folks that are there fishing can catch them? And then that alone will solve the problem set. So that's kind of my feedback. I mean, again, you're listening to this several weeks later. Like maybe people have moved on from beer-making at this point in the fees, it's gone at this point. But that would kind of be my reaction would be like, it's not that there's not an interest and a passion there. I think anyone showing up to the BRM event this year, by the way, on the property manager side, is like definitely the type of

client I want. Because like you probably had it down here. You probably are looking forward and like maybe your 2025 prediction or expectations are slower than 2024. But you realize like, you're still in it, like you're still going to do the same thing. Like there's sure you could have saved a few thousand dollars knock on, but like you went there, you're there to learn, you were there to get better. You know, why not make the most of it? Why not learn and try to get more out of it? So I don't know, man, like maybe this is the week from the chaps that moment, you know, a little bit in this respect of people coming and you know, listen to our show still and going through these

things during like a little bit of down years, like those are the people are gonna be successful through your show now where it's like, oh, why is so successful, you know, in the future? It's like, Oh, why is so successful, you know, in the future? It's like, well, during the slower times, like I was working on my business, I was making it better. I was improving my marketing. I was improving all these things. I was improved my website, which is what we're going to talk about today a little bit. And that made me have a better outcome when things picked up a little bit more. Yeah. I think that's generally I've seen, you know, cost being the thing and education

and why are people going. And I think that's what that's with any conferences is really understanding why are the people going. And I think if you can educate people, there's certainly value there. But I think it's hard to stomach what was it, 1500 for property managers to come in, bringing four or five team members or something like that. I know in years past, you could, you could bring larger groups along

to get more education out of it. So I hope that they can bring things together and ensure that that's a valuable experience for both the property managers and vendors moving forward. But how do people get to websites, Conrad? How in this space do people find your website when they're looking for a vacation rental? Yeah, so I really like this. This was your topic idea, I'm pretty sure. And I like this

one quite a bit because this has come up a few times recently. And I will say I've changed my thinking. So I think it's always good for us to do episodes on things that we change our thinking on or approach on slightly, because I think the listener can hopefully understand like, marketing changes over time, like what works well a year and what two years ago might not work as well today. Or you might find something new where it's like, oh, I didn't think of it that way. And then we start trying to do it that way, we find some success. So this idea came from people often, most commonly, I would say like my the way my brain worked before is like I have vacation rentals in

pick a destination, obviously, obviously, I'm there in the Myrtle Beach area. So I'll say people search for North Myrtle Beach vacation rentals, they come to my landing page, it's my job as the SEO person or the pay search person to get people to that page as efficiently as possible. Hopefully I rank high up in Google organically or hopefully I can get traffic from Google inexpensively from running Google ads. They come to my page, I offer them a great experience. They find what they're looking for, they book and I give them a better rate and I offer a better service than booking through an OTA. So that's why my direct book marketing efforts will be successful. I still think there's a ton of truth to that and nothing on my opinion

there has changed really much at all to be honest with you But I started I would say earlier my career working with these like single market I really search for destinations I think that painted my context a little bit too much of one way where it's like this is how people search and I've changed My approach recently because I've started work with clients that are like a little bit different in how they approach it So for example, you and I both have a client that we're gonna talk about today that we've worked previously Who doesn't say like this is the area that I'm in, and this is the one I'm serving. Meaning they're not saying like, I'm in Myrtle Beach, and that's the only thing I'm serving. They're more saying like, I'm buying

properties within an X hour drive of X city. So for example, the client that we're talking about is like, I'm gonna I'm gonna have a bunch of cabins within a three hour drive of Washington, DC. I'm going to offer people an experience that's getting away that's Hey, a cabin in the woods, and they almost don't care or don't have a really strong preference of exactly what town they're in. So the light bulb moment for us, I'm coming up with this episode idea,

is realizing that a client like that, or a property manager like that, maybe I should say, can have a lot of success in marketing their listings as I am a two-hour, 15-minute drive from where you live, I'm a cabin in the woods, it's very peaceful, it's serene, it's a nice property. That person is going to search in a very different way than someone who's searching on the cabin in the woods, it's very peaceful, it's serene, it's a nice property. They're going to stop person who's going to search in a very different way. That's someone who's searching for like cabins in area name cabins in, you know,

Asheville, North Carolina or Boone, North Carolina or Gatlinburg or something like that. Both searches exist. I just wasn't always doing a good job for much of my career and trying to optimize around cabins near, you know, Washington DC or finding a romantic anyway, that type of search I wasn't doing as good be a job and like understanding how that worked. Now that I've been able to work with this client and you have a few other examples of even working with these ideas of collections or like non-geo area pages, I think have been

something that's been really successful. So that's the topic today. How do you organize properties in your website? I think the skip to the end here really quickly is that you and I probably suggest that you may end up wanting to do both. You might want to have a page that really shows areas or cabins at a certain geo area. Yes, like we're talking about, that's the quote unquote traditional way of doing things. But you might also have a lot

of success if you start to position your properties as this is the best beach getaway, you know, a two hours drive from Charlotte, North Carolina. This is the best mountain getaway, a two hour drive from Atlanta, you know, Georgia. This is the best you know, lake that you can visit outside of San Francisco, California, that sort of thing. So it's a bit of a different positioning, and I think you and I both learned about it.

So what's your take on it? What's kind of your process through this and some of the clients you've worked on recently? Yeah, I mean, I think this is one that the focus more went in this direction around COVID time, because it was not just about, we're gonna travel anywhere anywhere it's okay we got to do drive to destinations and do things like that so I think that's where specifically when

we talk about like cabins near me or something near me that was when we really started to push more of those types of campaigns moving now the fun part about that was we at that point we had quite a few companies we were working with that were in the northeast. Cavins near ME, I gotta tell you if you're doing that with a main property or a Vermont property or something like that, that main abbreviation really really gets you there. So that's that's just the funny little story of it. But I do I think that as people are more thinking about the experiential side of things, it's not just about I know where I'm going,

it's okay, so what is something in a two hour, three hour radius, or what is something that's drivable, or what is something that people are looking for specific types of accommodations, not necessarily the dash nation, people are looking for specific types of activities and doing things like that. So again, thinking about focusing on keywords that are more related to maybe a venue or

again distance to a larger metropolitan area. Now is that going to work for every area? No, certainly not. And that's why we have to look for different keywords. And we do have to separate properties differently for different travel needs and things like that. But this is something that admittedly I probably over focus on the keyword side of things and making sure that we are, you know, if you're on the, you know, if you're in Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach vacation rentals and then all the individual property levels and going down like that,

that's not how people are always searching. People don't always have that destination in mind. And probably we've seen social media contribute there looking for more inspiration for an, you go on Instagram, you go to TikTok, you do some of those searches, you start to see the pictures and the accommodations themselves, and then you start to look for an accommodation.

So I don't know, I think you hit the nail on the head with, it's going to be beneficial for you on an SEO side of things to do both because there are going to be people doing searches for the location plus vacation rental. There are gonna be people looking for romantic getaways and doing things like that or staying on the beach or staying within a certain proximity

to something specifically. So I still skew more towards the location specific because I think it also, it's not just about the website, it's about what Google is pushing more through their own travel platform as well there. But that organization, I think it does, it just helps people to understand, if it's a location, if it's a two- understand, you know, if it's a location

It's that if it's a two-bedroom condo if it's a five-bedroom cabin Let's make sure that we're giving people that outcome so that when they land there They're seeing the actual results that they want to see they're not seeing You know if you have a hundred properties all hundred properties located in different Locations and different, you know venues, different property types, I think breaking it down as granularly as possible really does give that user a better experience if you have a certain number of units in each category. I think that's kind of that asterisk of

build them out as much as you can, be comprehensive, but make sure you're not giving people like an empty pencil where they're going to a specific location or a specific type, and there's only one rental in there or two rentals in there. That's not the experience that people are looking for. But how are you, when you're trying to structure these, what are ways that you're really identifying where people are doing those searches or that's what people are looking for?

What are those topic researches that you're doing there? Well, I think it's a good lesson that I've had to, again, learn is that you nailed it, I think, a moment ago, with the Instagram inspirational side of it, because that was something where, again, early in my career, I would have said, like, oh, these people aren't actually looking to travel. They're just more looking to be inspired

and stuff like that. I mean, no better example than my own marriage, where my wife just sends me endless Italy Instagram reels or TikToks or something, and it's like, yeah, I want to go back. But like we have kids and like a life and like money is kind of a, you know, a factor there. And that's going back. So it's, it's more so just like, I won't say the word that I'm going to say, but it's like inspiration, P O R M. Like I won't say that word where it's just like, I'm inspired to go to Italy. Like I want to go there. It looks beautiful, but I'm not like looking at flight tickets. And maybe the

classic example would be like, this is a purely awareness or like some people Think of this idea as a funnel. It's a top of funnel idea, right? I see this, you know, scream real about this beautiful destination in Italy I want to go back but it's like not something we're pulling out my credit card and booking Whereas I think you and I spent a lot of times in our career Trying to actually go towards someone searching for like places to stay in Rome or like best, you know Roger didn't best, you know luxury hotel in Rome when I did that search, you know, logic and best, you know, luxury hotel in Rome. When I did that search, you know, a year ago, when we were booking for a trip there, I was like, all right, there's four choices, which these four

are gonna make. And it was very bottom of the funnel. I guess the one like thing that I would say maybe as a way to think about this visually for the listener is that this there's this idea that a marketing funnel simply just as linear, it's like, x number of people are in the top, then it's x minus some percentage or an X minus some percentage of the bottom. I guess, in theory, that sounds nice, because like, you could just put someone in the top and

they kind of, like, you think of a funnel, you think I put water in the top, and I don't know if it goes to the bottom. But that's not at all how marketing funnel works, because the marketing funnel is full of holes, people are falling out of it all the time, or they were never really interested to begin with. So when you and I spend a lot of time talking about, like, the bottom of funnel stuff that we've done for such a long time, where it's like optimizing for that last search that they're

going to make before they decide where to stay. It's easy to go into that world because you think like, this is where the majority of the searches are occurring that are very high intent. Let's live in that world and we don't worry about the other world. But I think some of these Instagram people had it right where it's like, people are willing to consider your destination, but you've got to show them what it is to be there. Like you've got to actually like create a little bit of intrigue,

a little bit of, you know, desire. And when you manufacture your own desire, this is where some of these folks are completely correct. You actually really aren't competing with anybody at that point. If someone sees Instagram real and it's a beautiful cabin in insert destination here and they like the way that cabin looks or where that property looks, then it doesn't matter. Like, like there's no real alternatives. There's not really like, oh, I can stay at this one or this one. That's kind of when you play in that bottom funnel world. That's what you're playing with is like you are competing against Expedia and Airbnb and all those other people that you can win to be clear.

And then you and I have won millions of dollars direct bookings for clients. You've driven so many leads on the owner side playing that bottom funnel, but it is problematic because you are competing with everybody else. I think there's what I'm getting at. I think we're both heading on this thread a little bit is like, these are different types of marketing. They can both be successful. Perhaps the most effective companies going forward are ones that can kind of

figure out maybe if they could leverage both or they can, what, what are my properties? What, what am I uniquely suited for? Can I do a better job of energy? And the example I always give is like, if you manage 105 condo units in a building, the best marketing you're probably going to do is just marketing Google ads around that building. So not trying to bid on like, you know, Myrtle beach vacation rentals or something

like that, right? To give that example of bidding on people searching for like Ashworth Condo rentals, which is the building, you know, not far from where I'm at here in North Myrtle Beach. And it's like, you should spend triple the budget, quadruple the budget on that keyword versus bidding on the other things because yes, it's bottom funnel. It's actually very competitive because there's a lot of people going after that same term. So that's also the misnomer that people get. Oh, it's a long tail keyword. It must not be very competitive. That's not true at all. Some long tail keywords are very competitive and they're limited by search

volume. So you really are like competing in two ways. One, there's not that many people looking, you're trying to capture all their attention, but so is everybody else. What do you actually offer that's different, that's unique and so on and so forth? But there's also something to be said for like, what does that building offer? Or if I was like the manager of that building, I would think like, what amenity can we have that like other people can't have, or they're not willing to invest in? Or where do do the dollars make sense what do people actually desire and I think that's where some of these more collection pages have come from is you know for example you said cabin singer me that's a funny story about the main example that's a good one but um we have a client that same

point that we're talking about earlier where the best converting stuff that he has right now is like cabins with a hot tub so people aren't even they're just like they have this almost like this vision in their head of like they're gonna go stay in a cabin in the woods somewhere, they're gonna sit in a hot tub, relax in the back deck and like, just chill. Like, that's the vision they have in their head when they're going and searching like, cabins with a hot tub.

And then we'll be put in the ad copy, like, you know, a one hour drive, two hour drive from where you are, like, that's super impactful, because they're like, then they start to connect right away with like, here's what it is that I want, you're offering it, this connects deeply. Then I go look at the website, like, use the landing page, it makes sense, like, I understand where I'm going. And they don't care about the destination. What I

don't know, this is just TBD at this point, how long is that going to last? You know, is this something that's a temporary travel trend? Or did we change our behavior forever because COVID? I don't know what the answer is. But I do know that like, in a perfect world, and you have some examples that we talked about before we record, you probably want to have a section of your website that's like, search our properties. And it's like by area or by type, you know, and then you

probably want to have one that's like, explore our collections. I do like by area or by type, you know, and then you probably want to have one that's like explore our collections. I do love that word. I don't know where I first saw that, but I love that idea of like a collection. This is the luxury collection. This is the pet friendly collection. This is the hot tub collection. This is the other things and go between those two things. To answer your core question originally, you were asking of how I do the research. I think it's actually combination of both, again, almost like the demographic questions we were talking about earlier, I think it is data driven, you can go to HRS, and you can see what people

are looking for. Right. So the hot tub example, like very clear search trends, and people looking for cabins with a hot tub, pet friendly, also being the next most common one, there are people looking for cabins that are pet friendly. So those are like, you know, the obvious ones to kind of pick up off the ground. But I will say, a lot of people search for this idea of a romantic cabin or a couples getaway. That is that that is a search concept that maybe I would have found another guarantee would have found it. But the

search volume indicates that it's like moderate. When people come in on a keyword, they really convert really strongly like to the point where I actually pitch the client on this, we haven't done this. But I'm like, when they come in off that page, I think we could genuinely position the property differently. So if you just come in and you're just looking for a cabin in insert destination, like Asheville, for example, in North Carolina, and then you come in and do a search

for like Asheville romantic cabin, and then I click on that cabin. Those are two very different people coming in, like their intent. I would argue that you could, this is just a pie in the sky idea, but like it'd be awesome if you clicked on that property detail page and it was like,

oh, our welcome package is automatically added for you with rose petals on the bed and a bottle of champagne in the fridge. And this is perfect for couples because reasons one, two, and three, like the proximity to whatever, this and that. If you position the property differently, you're actually taking that next step further

of like, this is what I searched for, this is what page you brought me to. Now you're trying to speak more to what I'm after. And that can work a lot better than, again, let's do that same thing. What if they came to that same property detail page, but it was, they came from a pet-friendly search? Well, maybe I want to talk about the fact that there's a dog washing station outside.

I've got a cage already, so you don't need to bring a cage with you, to house your pet. It's pet friendly. We have covers on the couches. Your dog can like have a good time here. You know, I can, I can actually use different copy, different messaging to make that more successful potentially by having that on the page. So I think that's like, I think there were steps away from like where we could be down the road from like, like you said, the website landing page experience, by

trying to better understand like what the person's after versus just like what a lot of our property descriptions look like, we're just kind of like trying to capture a little bit of everybody. I mean, not really like, you know, but it's like, hey, this property is pet friendly. Hey, this property is good for couples. Hey, this property is good for a small family. And this property is good. So you want to appeal to a wide group people in some respect. But you also realize

that like by doing that, it's kind of like, we try to sell you a Packers jersey. No matter how nicely I talk about it, you're never going to buy a Packers jersey, right? I'm going to sell you a Vikings jersey if you're going to buy one. Yeah. I think that what I've seen the transition-wise is before, I can remember writing a lot of ... Talking about your romantic getaways, I can remember writing a lot of that in blog posts and blog content. And now it feels like we've taken it that next step and actually made these collections and these travel-specific type

of pages for just the individual units, which again, I think it was just lacking before. And it is, we're just kind of closing that circle and closing that gap and ultimately giving people what they're looking at. And ultimately giving that traveler, that searcher, whether they're gonna be a traveler or not, that outcome where they can get to a more direct, they don't just have to read the blog post and then click on a link and then click into an individual.

I mean, we're really shrinking that journey, even shrinking that funnel, I think, and maybe reducing some of that leakage where people are coming into some of the right spots there. But I think that that's something that it was necessary because some of those organic, some of those blog posts were bringing in organic traffic and organic traffic for keywords that were probably pretty important. I mean, it is vacation rentals relating to experiential travel. We just didn't do a good job of connecting those dots.

So again, I like the concept of these collections and they're better for different areas, different regions. We've talked about before here now. If you are, if you're just in that smoky mountain, you know, you're just in Gatlinburg, Pigeon Forge, you know, Suburval, Where's Valley, that type of stuff. Yeah. And then maybe you're grouping yours more based on those locations, but then the travel amenities that you have there as well. I think if you're in a more, you know, a more national type of market, national more agency, maybe you are, you're bringing in the coastal side of things. You're bringing in the mountain getaways. You're bringing in all these different locations and areas.

But I think I remember some of those old library sites that had 300 pages, 400 pages and seemed very extreme. But what they were doing, the foundation of what they were doing, there's a lot of good SEO organic principles there. And they were going very, very granularly down to some of these keywords. I don't know if they were doing the keyword research, they were just generating all these pages, but I don't think more pages on a site

is necessarily a bad thing. Now I don't think it's necessarily a good thing either. You can't, you don't just put pages on the site to fill up the site so that Google can index more. So, you know, try to find that cycle down the road there. But I also don't think you should be afraid to add pages if there is value there. And I think with any of these kind of categories and pages that we're talking about, you don't want to just fill up your site with junk pages. You want to make sure that you're getting people to those right locations so that they can, again, trying to simplify that funnel as much as

possible. And if you can do that by creating some of these pages and doing some of the research, again, we know what's in Search Console, we know what's in some of these locations, we know what's driving the traffic now. Coming back from our, you know, listening to our Search Console episode, we're just just talking about the lingo there, I think that's kind of a nice carry over there of, hey, these are these great keywords. These are the pages they're pointing to. Oh, all this great content is just going to my homepage. Are people actually making it from the homepage down to this collection, the Smokey Mountain

collection, the Hot Tub collection, the Pet Friendly collection? If they're not, make sure you have a page to land them so that they do have a better experience and ultimately they are converting more once they get to the site. And then, you know, again, take away those potential pitfalls as much as you can. Yeah. One person I ran into at VRM, to go back to that really quickly was Amber Carpenter, who's with the BeatRips at the moment. And she coined this term a while ago, or she coined this idea a while ago of it's merchandising. You know, your vacation or into website is merchandising. And if you were to talk with someone who's excellent at merchandising a retail store, a Louis Vuitton is

merchandise very differently than target, right? Like, right. It's like I'm gonna put out five things or like Rolex, like if you're into watches, like Rolex puts out like five watches, you can buy half of them. So it's like a very different type of experience. And I guess like, maybe that same concept needs to roll over into like, we talked more about like, how many can you put on the page? Well, I'll give you this example. We have a client where there's some search demand

for like cabins with private pools or cabins with pools in this given market, but there's actually very, very few properties, period, that have that amenity. So we're talking like maybe a handful, in this given market that actually have a private pool. It's very difficult to do this market. So they only have like two or three properties that meet that criteria So we have a page for it because when people come in on that page and they search they convert it pretty much the same

Clip as some for other pages that have like a hundred units on them So that's part of it too And we talked about this on the triangle episode again a little while ago So you can scroll back and feel some that one we talked about the guest desire Which is something that I think a lot of people don't really focus on, but if the guest wants a private pool with their cabin and they're going to a market, but there's like 10 properties that have a private pool and you have four of them, you're actually dominating the market. You may not feel that way when you're putting up a landing page that has four

units on it doesn't feel like you're dominating, but you kind of are in the sense of like you're preventing your, you're presenting them that thing that they want at that moment. Your page can rank well in Google organically, your page can potentially you can run ads against it. And sometimes he's like a longer tail collection pages. Funny enough, Airbnb doesn't rank as well as you would think on some of these keywords. I looked at Airbnb recently and they have these concepts, if you will, or like these collection. I'm sorry, I think it's called categories, members, Airbnb categories, right? Where it's like A-frames or cabins or ski getaways, or even everyone where it's like golf,

but it doesn't really like work that well. Like you click on it, it's just kind of like, all right, where it's like A frames or cabins or ski getaways or even everyone where it's like golf, but it doesn't really like work that well. Like you click on it. It's just kind of like, all right, like here's a bunch of the gift you click on, like the, oh my God, properties. That's just like, here's one in like Switzerland. Then here's one in Florida. Then here's one in Montana. It's like, okay, like these are all vastly different, you know, things. I don't know if a lot of people search in that way. I don't know if someone's, of course, there's some people out there that search this way, but I think a lot of people don't search where it's like, I'm willing to go anywhere. Like, you know, show me interesting properties and I'll go there. I think they see something and then it clicks with them.

And then they, they're in that direction. But as a local property manager, if you're listening, you're probably a local property manager, you're probably marketing to a set that's, you know, within a drive distance or within a few handful of markets on the flight side of things, right? Like you're probably not marketing to like everybody in the United States or everybody in the world. So like what Airbnb does isn't always relevant. In this

example, I would say at all to what you're doing, because you can make a collection of properties that people care about in your market, understand what those guests desires are, and get a private pool in a market where there's very few private pools and really stand out from the crowd, even if you have two or three of them. Because like that inventory is actually kind of rare versus like, I've got a two bedroom, you know, two bath condo in Gaptonburg, Tennessee. That's awesome. But like, so does everybody else. Like that's the, if you know, if you have 50 of those, like I would argue my two property page with like private pools will probably convert better than a 50 unit company or a 50 unit page. That's just like all the two bedrooms Gatlinburg, cause that's just not unique enough. And like the marketing to that is not

going to be unique enough where people are like, Oh, this is amazing. Unless you strike some good balance of like costs and affordability and those sorts of things, right? That could be a carve out is like, what I offer is unique because of these reasons. I'll give you a really good example really quickly. I know we're kind of on time here, but we had a client a while ago who started doing free beach gear with every single reservation, every single stay. So it was like, that was a unique hook where it was like, you get a kayak and you get a beach towel and you have these shares almost kind of stuff. And it's like, oh, that's nice. Like that's a hundred, $200 of value, quote unquote. And I don't have to lug it with me. So it's

like, that's part of it too, is like, there's almost more of a psychological benefit there than like I could just go to the beach store and like buy these things or like deal with them. But the fact that I just got the property and like all this stuff was sitting for me there, I think this helped their conversion rate tremendously, even though they were marketing so-called commodity properties. Like they had the same beach houses as most of their competition in terms of size, you know, location amenities. They weren't really that stand out, to be honest with you. But I think their traffic inverted really well. It just taught this original idea so much so that I think their competitors just copied it, basically. They're like, all right, well, we'll do free beach

care, too. You know what I mean? This is just a funny way of going about it. Another thing from me, I mean, when I first started in 2013, Lenin's, a lot of people didn't buy Lenin's. You'd roll up to a vacation rental, and there was nothing on the bed. Now if you walked into a property There's no linens like you someone look at you like your foreheads I'm actually a first time guest booking an Airbnb and walking into a vacation property with their linens They would just like be like that's ridiculous. Like let me see from this caravan one star. Yeah, I gave over right away Right, so it's like standard change of the time

And I think that um, that's kind of what we're talking about here today ultimately to kind of put about this one It's like standard change over time. Well people desire changes over time, this idea of a collection, how do I merchandise to go back to that Amber Carpenter idea, how do I merchandise my properties to show them off in different ways? It could be used in this way. Here's a page describing how these could be fitted to this category. It could just be you're looking for a place in Gatlinburg or that you're looking for a place in Myrtle Beach, you're looking for a place in Galveston, Texas. We got that too. I think if you show them in different ways, you're going to lead to the best outcome. So that's kind of the broader idea behind behind today's topic. Yeah, I think you have to meet your travelers where they are

I mean it is if that means it's some inspiration on the on the social side Then yeah If you're it means that they're doing these specific searches not for the city but for no different types of travel That's why you have to meet them So I think that's that's think that's half the battle here, is just continuing to understand where people are entering at the top of the funnel or in the middle of the funnel and creating some content or creating something

that's going to be a value for them and meeting them there and ultimately leading them down that conversion funnel there. Right on, awesome. Well, a bit of a shorty today, but hopefully this was like a one topic episode that people get some value on, collection pages, area pages. What do you need? The answer is yes. You know, the answer is yes. We appreciate you listening. Make it. Yeah, make it all the way to the end of the shorty episode. So if you have any thoughts, comments, feedback, etc. Two things you can do is pop us a message on LinkedIn. Our profiles are in the show notes. You can scroll down there and click message send us something there. I also need a review, go to your podcast app of choice, follow us on your podcast app of choice, you get new episodes,

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