Short-term rental property investment is an evergreen business model. The industry has been growing exponentially every year despite economic downturns or health crises. Statista reported that the revenue that vacation rentals would generate in 2022 would be $83.76 billion. The figure will rise to $107.70 billion by the end of 2027 due to the 5.16% annual growth rate.
At the same time, the short-term rental business is competitive. Because of its competitive nature, you must market your business to reach more customers and increase bookings and revenue. Digital marketing helps businesses get noticed and discovered. Marketing your business online increases bookings and profits.
Riding on digital marketing trends can help you attract customers and generate more revenues. But these trends are short-lived, so don’t base your STR strategies entirely on them. Jump on the trends that are relevant to the vacation property market.
Here are six digital marketing trends you can invest in this year.
- Create Videos and Virtual Tours
Videos are among the best digital marketing tools in today’s marketing world. According to real estate experts from Techvestor, property owners or managers create video tours to showcase their properties to potential guests. Because of that visual element, guests prefer watching videos to reading a newsletter.
Your followers are more likely to engage with and share your videos than your social media posts. They can share, like, and comment on your videos, making them a viral marketing tool. However, your videos should be created differently than an advertisement. Instead, create high-quality virtual tours and make them part of your guests’ lifestyles.
Many lifestyle brands, like Red Bull and Apple, have mastered this technique. You can analyze them and get ideas on how to create a perception in the minds of your guests ”by association.” In a way, the video will show your target audience having a great time on your property. The aim is to fulfill their desire before they book your property.
- Collaborate With Influencers
Brands are very creative nowadays because of the rise of social media. They want to attract new customers and, at the same time, retain loyal ones. People turn to social media for news, education, and entertainment. Users consider niche experts or influencers as beacons of trust and influence who are also dependable.
Because of that, brands and property managers add influencer marketing to their digital marketing strategy. Influencers have huge social media followings, and you can use them to promote your vacation rental properties. So collaborate with TikTok creators, travel bloggers, journalists, etc. Their followers trust them and have confidence in their suggestions and recommendations.
Some of the popular topics about short-term rental property investments that influencers in this niche can share include:
- How to buy a rental property
- How to make money with rental properties
- How to buy your first rental property
- How to find investment properties
- How to invest in vacation rental property
- How to invest in real estate for passive income
- Buying rental property tips
Influencers’ posts don’t stop there. Their followers are ready to save and share them on social media. This is great news for you because it expands the exposure of your content, website, and properties to a larger audience.
- Leverage SEO to Increase Visibility
Digital marketing results don’t appear overnight. But when they do, they’re worth the effort. Search Engine Optimization helps to drive organic traffic to your website due to high-quality content. Such content enables your listing to appear at the top of the search engine result page (SERP).
Investors who buy a vacation rental property or invest in short-term rental investments in various ways should consider how to market them to increase bookings. You can leverage SEO when using content marketing for your vacation property in the following ways:
- Use relevant keywords and key phrases in your niche
- Publish unique content consistently
- Repurpose your top-performing content into email newsletters
- Analyze your competitors’ strategies, such as keywords, traffic data, backlinks, new content ideas, and new linking opportunities for your site
- Analyze your traffic, find the gaps and fix those issues in order to get better results
- Use in-site traffic to generate share-worthy content
- Include local SEO
- Choose Automatic Pricing Updates
Dynamic pricing helps vacation rental businesses remain competitive. Over the years, property managers have spent significant time tweaking prices. This has been frustrating because, in some instances, they have lost thousands of dollars during the price change.
The use of Airbnb smart pricing has not been good for rental property owners. Because it prioritizes night bookings over price, this model benefits Airbnb. The goal is to get more guests without considering the target audience.
You can avoid this pricing model and instead switch to dynamic pricing software. This allows you to factor in all upcoming holidays and events. Your business will generate decent passive real estate income with a good STR strategy. However, generating an entire year’s worth of pricing strategies needs time and effort.
- Understand Your Niche
Discovering your niche can help you in a big way. Some of these ways include:
- It enables you to make your listing appeal to guests
- It helps you develop a marketing strategy that revolves around your target audience
- It gives you a glimpse of what your competitors are doing but doesn’t copy them
After the market research, use the insight to create a file of where your rivals are listing their properties, including their price, amenities, accessibility, size, and location.
- Consider Branded Apps
The demand for vacation properties and hotel apps has grown. Businesses use these apps to provide a positive user experience and increase conversion. Apps are effective communication tools between businesses and their customers.
A branded app can perform the following roles:
Communication: Talking to your guests increases bookings. These applications contain a lot of information about your properties. Modern digital marketing trends emphasize providing more information. Therefore, use videos, audio, or pictures to attract more guests and increase visibility.
Sales: You started a short-term rental business to make money. Offering your target audience an excellent customer experience, using a personalized approach, and giving guests great sales offers can increase bookings and revenue.
CRM: The app collects a lot of customer information during the interaction. The data is useful when launching targeted marketing campaigns or personalizing services.
Marketing: Marketing research apps help property managers figure out their guests’ expectations, pains, and solutions. Understanding your target audience can help you offer them the best prices and the right product when they need it.
Bottom Line
To profit from vacation properties, you must have an effective marketing strategy. The list of digital marketing trends is infinite because they come and go.The six mentioned digital marketing trends could help increase the visibility of your short-term rental business. The more your target audience is aware of your company, the more bookings, and revenue you will generate.
