When it comes to online marketing, some channels are better than others at getting direct bookings for your holiday let.<\/p>\n
A listing site advert, for example, is more likely to generate bookings for your website than Twitter.<\/p>\n
Or is it?<\/p>\n
Social media has a very good place<\/em> in your overall marketing strategy, but perhaps not in the obvious way you imagined when setting up your Facebook or Twitter pages.<\/p>\n So let\u2019s clear things up right now \u2026<\/p>\n Social media is unlikely<\/em> to get you direct<\/em> bookings.<\/strong><\/p>\n Why?<\/p>\n Because people usually aren\u2019t in buying mode when browsing through their timeline.<\/p>\n What social media does brilliantly<\/em> however, is build trust and grow relationships with your potential guests. And this<\/em> is what could have secured your latest enquiry, albeit indirectly and often without your knowledge.<\/p>\n Consider this scenario \u2026<\/p>\n Mr Jones wants to book a beautiful cottage in the Scottish Highlands for his wife\u2019s 50th. It\u2019s a special occasion, so he wants to make sure he finds a real gem.<\/p>\n He sits down at his computer and starts his search.<\/p>\n Finding your website, he takes a look around and is impressed with what he sees. He knows it would be perfect for them. But he\u2019s worried. It\u2019s his first time booking a holiday rental online and he\u2019s heard of a few scams in the news recently.<\/p>\n So he continues in his quest.<\/p>\n He finds another place that also looks great. Meets all their criteria and is around the same rate. But again, the same trust niggles apply.<\/p>\n He goes back to your website and sees that you have links out to your Facebook and Twitter pages. So he heads on over to those to take a look at what you have to say.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve posted pictures. Made updates on the latest events. Recommended restaurants. Given ideas to people looking at staying in the area of what they can do to make the most of their holiday. You\u2019ve displayed some personality<\/em> in a way that didn\u2019t come across on your website, and<\/em> made yourself available via another means.<\/p>\n Mr Jones heads back to the other website \u2026 alas, there are no social media profiles and he can\u2019t find that same accommodation anywhere else online \u2013 not easily anyway.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a no-brainer.<\/p>\n Mr Jones contacts you via the enquiry form on your website<\/em> to make his booking.<\/strong><\/p>\n This is a common scenario.<\/p>\n Ultimately, you don’t know whether the person that booked through your listing site advert or via your website, actually decided to book because they found your Facebook page as well.<\/p>\n And importantly, seeing it was active, and that you seemed to be knowledgeable on the local area and very personable, they felt confident that you could be trusted and would ensure they had a memorable stay.<\/p>\n Of course, some people may have followed you\u00a0on Twitter or Facebook before<\/em> finding your website or listing site adverts.<\/p>\n This is where social media comes into a class of its own for widening your marketing reach.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve already started to form a relationship with them (without even being aware if it), building that all-important trust factor.<\/p>\n And since people like to do business with people they know – all those updates you\u2019ve been making over the\u00a0last few days, weeks, months and years \u2013 give them comfort. They feel like they\u00a0know you<\/em>, your accommodation and the local area, so they\u2019ll be much more likely to make a booking.<\/p>\n This works particularly<\/em> well for repeat bookings, where a\u00a0past guest has\u00a0connected with you on social media to get regular updates on what\u2019s new, what\u2019s on, special offers, etc. Those constant reminders will keep your accommodation at the forefront of their minds and encourage\u00a0them to make\u00a0another\u00a0booking in the future.<\/p>\n How important having a social media presence is for bookings is a difficult thing to measure, unless you\u2019re going to ask each and every person who stays \u2013 which you could, and would be the best way to measure its success for you.<\/p>\n But not<\/em> having any social media presence, in this day and age where trust plays a huge factor in determining where consumers are going to spend their money, could<\/em> be damaging your bottom line.<\/p>\n Social media isn\u2019t about direct bookings.<\/p>\n It\u2019s about showing you<\/em> to your future guests. Building trust. Growing relationships.<\/p>\n Social media marketing is more about indirec<\/em>t bookings.<\/strong><\/p>\n Oh and if that\u2019s not enough, as an added bonus, being active on social media channels can help with your SEO.<\/p>\n How?<\/p>\n Because Google and Bing use data from social sites to help determine where to rank your content. These are\u00a0called social signals.<\/p>\n If your content is popular, i.e. getting shared, liked and commented on, the search engines deem it to be valuable and therefore should rank it higher in search results.<\/p>\n Social media – helps build trust\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>improve SEO. So what are you waiting for?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When it comes to online marketing, some channels are better than others at getting direct bookings for your holiday let. A listing site advert, for example, is more likely to generate bookings for your website than Twitter. Or is it? Social media has a very good place in your overall marketing strategy, but perhaps not [Continue reading …]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3795,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.promotemyplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.promotemyplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.promotemyplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.promotemyplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.promotemyplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.promotemyplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.promotemyplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.promotemyplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.promotemyplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.promotemyplace.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}