You may have heard from your friends and many other people that Facebook is not the most-used social media platform any longer. Well, even if it is not the most popular one, it still houses close to two billion people. That makes it a gigantic target marketplace for vacation rentals.
Even if Facebook is not the most popular platform, it still is indispensable. You can’t not market on Facebook. Go by this logic, if they are not on Facebook, they are unreachable. Or put it like this, if you don’t find them on any other platform, you will find them on Facebook. This simply means that even if the popularity is lower currently, it has an established base that is larger than any other platform.
What is meant by Facebook Marketing? Well, it is as simple as it sounds, Facebook allows your target audience to book your vacation rental directly from Facebook. They won’t have to go to a listing website or your website.
This calls for newer marketing techniques. You definitely need to add this new arrow in your marketing quiver. Further, you might save on the commissions of travel agencies by bypassing them. Let’s delve deeper into some tips and tricks of marketing your vacation rental on Facebook.
But before we get into the nitty-gritties, get a gist of the top revenue-boosting marketing techniques from the below slides:
Contents
Start with the basics
As obvious as it can get, you need to have a Facebook page for your vacation rental property. The page should be regularly updated to generate engagement. Leaving it stagnant will reduce the interest of the existing fan base, let alone increase the same. So, having an active Facebook page goes without a say. However, this doesn’t mean you can put up any and every piece of content. You need to find out your target audience and what will convert the lookers into bookers. Content comes after these prerequisites are met.
There are a few more key details that you need to take care of while creating a page. First of all, don’t just create a page. You need to select the proper category. Select vacation rental in the ‘nature of business’ field. This will help Facebook feature your property in relevant searches.
Next thing is to include a ‘book now’ button. This is a call to action button under the shop now category. This is an essential button. You don’t want your guests to be inconvenienced, they may choose not to book if it is highly difficult to find the book now button.
Write a thorough ‘About’ description. Don’t just leave a one-line description. Not only does it imply a lack of effort, but it also reduces your credibility and professionalism. Instead, write a catchy description that engages your target audience.
Strength is in numbers
It is rightly said, strength is in numbers. Keep your numbers strong. Your page should have at least 500 to 1000 followers initially. To reach this milestone you can try a few things.
- Invite all the past guests through email to like your Facebook page. This could include a collage of their happy moments spent at the property or something lucrative such as a discount coupon on their next booking if they follow your page.
- Next, you invite your suppliers, contractors, and other business associates. This is simpler, they grow as you grow, that’s incentive enough.
- Linking your Facebook page and website goes without saying. This is a confidence-building action as well. You are giving your prospective guests reasons to believe your genuineness.
- Giveaways, contests, prized polls are the final nail. These involve giving prizes to lucky winners who do a few tasks for you such as inviting 20 of their Facebook friends to your page. You may give a recently released premium perfume or a bath basket and similar unique prizes.
Once you have the required number of initial followers, you are ready for the world at large. You can opt for campaigns and even more interesting marketing tactics from this point onwards.
Facebook Ads & Page Promotion
So you have 500 likes, now what? Is that it? Will that meet your revenue targets? The answer is a big NO! You need to accept the fact that likely only 5 to 10 percent of your followers will be actually booking your vacation rental property. That means you need more followers. There are ways of promoting your page to get more followers.
One such way is Facebook Ads. By clicking on the ‘promote page’ button, you are taken to the page where you can set a target audience for your ad. This might be based on location, interest, or people who have liked other related pages, such as that of your competitor. You may also include an age filter depending upon the nature of your property. Further, you can schedule when your ad will come out and for how long will it keep repeating.
These factors will contribute to your cost. Depending upon how you narrow down your target group, your cost will vary. Further, it will also give you an approximate idea of the number of likes received per day. You then add a payment method and you are all set!
Facebook Places
While creating the page, you need to activate Facebook places. It is done as part of your adding the address. This is used by the guests to ‘check-in’ on their social media as they check in your vacation rental.
‘Check-in’ appear on the guest’s timeline, and on the timelines of people in their share-preference. This is part of a word of mouth publicity; however, some guests might have a privacy concern and might not check-in. As another option, you can encourage them to check-in privately by restricting their share preference to ‘only me.’
Now you would ask what good will that do? Well, your page will display the aggregate number of checks-in. The greater this number is, the higher the chances of your property getting more bookings. When people see the numbers rising, they gain greater confidence in booking your property. Even the ‘only me’ checks-in appear as part of this aggregate number.
However, you need to keep one thing in mind–never fake these numbers. Artificially boosting them will never give you the same response as the organic ones. Artificial ones will be short-lived.
Content Cues
Even though your purpose is increasing sales, it should not be explicitly put out there. Your page should not be an aggressive sales pitch. But that doesn’t mean that you won’t post sales pitches at all. So what is the right ratio? Well, based on analytics, the ratio should vary somewhere around 80-20.
This means, that 80 percent of your posts should be engagement oriented and only 20 percent should be sales-oriented. Sales oriented posts will include ‘book now’ posts, deals and discounts, local partnerships and discounts, etc. Engagement posts include drone videos, a virtual reality enabled videos, property images, satisfying guest images, local and property events, and so on. The engagement posts are there to create the buzz.
Keeping trends in mind is very important. Presently drone videos are some of the most popular ones on Social Media. So make sure you keep your audience engaged. Marketing is a continuous activity and you’ll want to keep your content time relevant. Prepare your rental property for special occasions; build marketing campaigns for Halloween and Black Friday on social media. Facebook gives you insights and analytics, so, keep posting more engaging content.
Last but not least is the timing of your content. A vacation rental is mostly browsed in free time. So, don’t forget to post on weekends, holidays, and after office hours. This doesn’t mean you won’t post on weekdays.
United we stand
Promoting local businesses could be an engagement driving force. What this entails is that you promote certain restaurants or bike rental businesses and the like. This process involves partnering with the local business. Once you have such a partnership in place, you can start promoting them on your page.
The best part is that they will do the same for you. You can offer discounted dinner reservations to your guests and the restaurant will do the same for you. This way, not only do you reach out to your fan base, you will reach out to their fan base as well since there are likely a lot of uncommon fans.
These are a few insights into how to market your vacation rental property on Facebook. It is an evolving social media platform with a maximum number of users. You need to keep an eye out for new developments. Another common tool is Facebook groups, however, they have restrictions on marketing. Even so, you can get content ideas based on what is trending on Facebook groups.
Keep in mind that you can’t rely on Facebook marketplace only and your listings need to be robust and available in multiple places on the internet. You should list your property on every new website, for example, rentaltrader.com. The idea is the more you list, the greater are the chances of getting bookings. For any more information, feel free to fill our web form or give us a call.
