Marketing Strategies

Introduction

In addition to this website, staging.ownerswebsites.co.uk/, I also manage three other personal websites. Two of these are holiday rental websites, one UK and one overseas and then there is my wife’s portrait artist website.

Each of these websites has its very own ‘marketing strategy’, a rather grand term that essentially describes the role and effort required for each website to successfully bring in visitors and business. Understanding the marketing strategy that your website is currently following will determine whether your website is (at this moment in time) predominantly a Sales platform that brings you bookings, or a Fulfilment platform that processes bookings from other Sales activities you have done.

If you aren’t receiving the desired level of bookings it is very likely you will be operating your website along the lines of a Fulfilment platform strategy and you do not have robust Sales activities in place.

The good news is as websites get older, and visited by more users they will start gaining Google’s trust (measured in something called Domain Ranking) and they will naturally start performing better as Sales platforms. So, the more successful your website becomes as a Fulfilment platform, the quicker you will find it transition to a Sales platform or Sales/Fulfilment hybrid.

Note: No money has been spent on Google Adwords, external Search Engine Optimisation, TV campaigns or radio commercials for any of these websites. God forbid I have also yet to appear on any TV shopping channels!

Of the four websites listed below, two currently operate as Sales platforms and two as Fulfilment platforms

1. “Google Search by Business Activity” Model

Let’s start with this very website you are looking at – www.ownerswebsites.co.uk. This is an established website that is very much operating as a Sales Platform website.

The Strategy

Unlike all the other websites below, this website primarily relies on Google Search Rankings – namely people searching for terms relating to my business such as “Holiday Home Website Design”

Delivering This Strategy

Owners Websites ranks highly on Google today because it is a frequently updated website with a considerable number of pages rich with text content. I refer my customers to the ‘Knowledgebase’ sections when they need help and this in turn helps my website gather clicks and improves its visibility.

Each page is SEO optimised with keywords implanted in the text and meta data.

Competition

There aren’t a huge number of competitors that specialise in this marketplace, and those that do don’t work particularly hard on their SEO. This is an important factor that makes this a successful strategy for Owners Websites.

How would this work for a Holiday Home though? In a more competitive holiday home market, for example the Lake District with its abundance of holiday agencies, it can be very difficult to achieve a high Google ranking. The way this can be achieved is to identify valuable search terms with greater specificity. The more specific your search terms get the less competition you have and the greater opportunities your website has for being found.

Here is a range of search terms on a sliding scale of search term specificity:

• “Holiday Cottage” (Impossible to SEO for your website – too broad a term and popular)
• “Holiday Cottage in the Lake District”, (Very Difficult – very popular)
• “Holiday Cottage in Windermere”, (Difficult but achievable with work)
• “Dog friendly Holiday Cottage In Windermere” (Very achievable)
• “Holiday Cottage in Windermere suitable for spaniels with floppy ears” (This is the sort of thing you get when you pay an anonymous SEO expert for a ‘Guaranteed first page of Google’ service)

The first time I achieved a top page Google ranking was actually by accident several years ago. This was for a cottage we used to own in Coniston and all it took was a simple blog about a pizza takeaway service that had just opened in the village. As there were no other pizza shops in the village our holiday cottage shot to number one on Google for Pizza in Coniston related enquiries. This obviously isn’t a perfect example but it ably demonstrates how easy it is to rank highly on Google for search terms that nobody else is using. Despite some initial annoyance with the number of orders for margarita pizzas (!) the traffic it brought to the website propelled it up the rankings for much more desirable search terms.

2. The “Booking Engine” Model

If Owners Websites offers the example of a frequently updated website, Casa Tonica is an example of the opposite. This is also a long established website but one that is operating today as a Fulfilment Platform website.

To be honest this website was created in a rush to get bookings when I think we still had the previous owners’ furniture in it. It’s a very early website of mine, built using ancient software tools, terrible slideshow design and is a bit of an embarrassment if I am completely honest. But it works..

The Strategy

Approx 80% of customers that book through the website are in the main repeat customers, with the remaining 20% searching for the name ‘Casa Tonica’ on Google having previously found the villa advertised on Airbnb/VRBO.

The website acts as a booking vehicle; a means to process bookings rather than a Sales & Marketing tool

Delivering This Strategy

Thinking of your holiday property as a brand rather than a business is the key to this kind of advertising. You definitely won’t want to be using your gmail account to contact guests. Each guest communication includes a logo image and business email address to reinforce the brand. The property has branded business cards with clear messaging to book direct and avoid some seriously hefty booking fees.

When you rely more on repeat business it makes sense to go further to make your guest welcome. This can take the form of welcome packs, discount incentives for next stays or following up each visit with a branded message. Keeping in touch, keeping things personal all will help. Spending £50 to install a French VPN so a repeat customer can watch the Tour de France in French may encourage the customer who has paid £2500 the past two years, to maybe stay again next year.

Casa Tonica only lets 15 weeks of the year but in 2024 is fully occupied with 100% direct bookings

Competition

There is far too much competition with Villa Rentals and Sales in the area to consider search engine optimising this property for holiday visits so Google Ranking is unimportant to this website

3. “Google Search By Business Name” Model

Dunkeld Cottage, another older website has had a little more love and care invested into it (mainly by my wife) who in the website’s early years had been blogging walks and pub crawls. It is still an aging website though that is going to be updated this year to accept instant payment and have some achievable SEO keywords embedded into the site. This website currently operates as a Sales Platform but it will also become a Fulfilment Platform once the payment integration has finally been completed.

The Strategy

The website brings in about £4k of bookings per year with the remainder coming from an Airbnb listing. Bookings tend to come from people who have located the property on Airbnb and then Google the name of the property to book direct and save on the booking fees.

Effort Required to Achieve This

If you are keen to migrate bookings from an agency such as Airbnb to your website you need to make sure there are clear connections from your listing to your website so that users can navigate from one to the other. In almost all cases agencies will not provide a direct website link but there are plenty of clues you can offer your guests to make it easy for them to find you direct.

Having a clear distinctive brand is one clue. ‘Dunkeld Cottage’ for example is a fairly unique name. By way of comparison if your property was called Rose Cottage it might be more difficult for prospective guests to find your particular Rose Cottage on Google. In this case I would write up my agency listing as ‘Rose Cottage in Kirkby Stephen’ (for example) making sure my website clearly referenced Kirkby Stephen of course

4. “Social Media” Model

Creations By Chloe is a new (<12 months old) website for a business that is highly active in social media (predominantly Facebook and YouTube). This is not to be confused with paid Facebook advertising. The website currently has very little organic traffic so is currently a Fulfilment Platform. This is expected to change as the website becomes more mature and gathers more customer interactions/sales. Then it will become a Sales Platform in its own right.

The Strategy

Social Media is the sales & marketing agent. It draws followers and interest from members of Facebook communities looking to learn new skills and people looking to commission pet portraits before directing them to the website to complete the sale.

As the website is still young, its ability to act as a Sales funnel is currently limited but this will grow organically the more it receives visits, subscriptions and transactions through the social media channels. As more content and events are added to the website the faster the website’s search engine ranking will improve but in the meantime the website acts as a booking vehicle for the Sales activity generated through Social Media

Effort Required to Achieve This

Many holiday home owners find success joining facebook communities but many also make the mistake of joining fellow groups of owners who then just send each other updates on each others properties! Far better to search out groups of dog owners (if your holiday accommodates dogs of course!) or walkers for example.

Engaging on social media is more than just joining a group. Use it to post coupon codes offering deals, highlight late availability. Keep active – once or twice a week and get your brand visible. Post awe-inspiring photos that people will feel drawn to click on. Connect to people!