Monday, 06 October 2008 04:48 pm

Marketing

You can have the most desirable property in the world - but you won't get the clients if you don't have the right advertising strategy.  Don't ever lose sight of the fact that good marketing is the key to success in any business.  It's vital to get it right.  Most owners use one of the following three ways to market their properties - and some use a combination of these methods to ensure a fully-booked rental season.

Using a rental agency

If you're using a rental agency, they will handle the marketing of your property for you and their advertising costs will be built into their commission.  Some agencies have brochures with colour photos of each property for rent - but in many cases properties are not advertised individually so clients may not be sure what they're getting until they turn up on your doorstep.  This can cause problems as your guests may arrive with false expectations, especially if they haven't seen photos of your property in advance.  Find out the extent to which your property will be individually advertised.  How much information about the property will prospective clients be given? Visitors want to know exactly what they're getting for their money.  If you want all-year-round bookings for your property, check that your agent has a marketing strategy that will bring you clients outside the high season.  Some rental agents only target high season visitors because of the higher commissions they receive in peak periods.  Is the agent's marketing limited to newspaper advertising? How many countries are they advertising in? Are they marketing on the Internet?

Print Media

There are various forms of print media you can use to advertise your property.  Many Canadian property owners place a small ad in a national newspaper but be warned - it's expensive and many owners say they have been disappointed by the response.  The problem here is that you're not reaching a specific target audience - it's unlikely that many readers have bought a particular newspaper specifically with a view to finding a vacation property to rent.  If you decide to try newspaper advertising, choose your newspaper carefully - decide what kind of customer would be attracted to your property (and what kind of customer you want to attract!) then advertise in the newspaper which they are most likely to read.  Before making your decision, phone a few of the big circulation papers and ask the advertising department for ad prices, circulation figures and a readership profile.  The use of colour photos and itemized facilities etc.  are really out of the question in newspaper advertising - the costs being prohibitive for the majority of ordinary mortals! If your vacation property has special appeal for particular groups - g. fishermen, golfers, honeymooners etc.  - you may decide to advertise in a specialist magazine or newspaper.  Again, the costs are high and it's not a particularly well targeted form of advertising.  The sporting enthusiast who buys the magazine you're advertising in isn't necessarily looking for a vacation home.  The drawback here is that you're ignoring a much wider audience of potential clients.  Although your property may have some special appeal for fishing enthusiasts, there are obviously many other kinds of people who would appreciate it.  Effective advertising needs to reach as wide and as targeted an audience as possible. 
 

Internet advertising

The Internet has quite literally opened up a whole new world in terms of marketing, giving advertisers instant access to a vast but highly targeted global audience.  Just look at how Internet use is exploding before our eyes.  Whatever people need in today's world, they're increasingly turning to the Internet to find it.  Internet advertising offers a wealth of opportunities which are simply not possible with traditional marketing methods - and it's considerably cheaper, especially when you consider what you get for your money.  You can display full details of your property with colour photos & comprehensive description and promote it to a global audience, 24 hours a day all year round...all for less than the cost of a small ad in a national newspaper.  One of the great advantages of this form of advertising is that you have a vast market and one that is also highly targeted.  People only tend to visit web sites advertising rental properties if they're seriously looking for a rental - and a good web site will be attracting thousands of these potential clients each week.  You obviously want a company which is highly visible on the Internet.  Good Internet marketing companies actively promote their sites on the major search engines as well as on hundreds of other lesser known search engines around the world.  The best companies will take the time and trouble to ensure that your on-line property web page looks truly professional.  Owners find that the use of a good selection of colour photos makes all the difference in terms of attracting potential clients.  The ability to use photos - in a way that would be prohibitively expensive in print advertising - is one of the major benefits of Internet marketing; so steer clear of any companies that don't use pictures of each property.  You should be able to itemize your property's amenities and you also want space for descriptive text about the property.  If the advertising company is doing its job properly, you won't need any special knowledge about the Internet to advertise - in fact you won't even need a computer.  Everything will be explained simply and clearly and all the technical side will be handled by a team of experts so you don't even have to think about it.  Make sure your property web page includes full contact information so visitors can get in touch with you quickly and easily.  If you're on email, you'll want an email link so visitors can send you a message directly from your property web page.  This is a bonus for your potential clients because they can reach you quickly and cheaply from anywhere in the world.  You'll want to know how many visitors the site receives.  Check if your chosen advertising company can give you easy access to these figures whenever you want.  You need to make sure your Internet advertising company has a web site which is 'user friendly' - both for you as the advertiser but also for those all important site visitors looking for a property.  Is the site attractively presented and easy to navigate so visitors can easily find exactly what they want in the area of their choice? Another thing to bear in mind when using the Internet is that your property "ad" is probably going to be on-line for many months at a time - unlike a newspaper advert.  So what if you need important text changes in that time g. a new contact telephone number? Check whether your Internet advertiser will do this for you and how much it will cost.  You may find you have late availability on your property, possibly through a last-minute cancellation, in which case you'll want to be able to let people know about it.   Most good companies also offer attractive discounts if you advertise more than one property with them...so the more properties you put on the Internet, the cheaper your advertising costs.  Property owners say one of the few drawbacks of Internet advertising is that you can find yourself swamped with rental enquiries.  This is another reason to make sure you pick the right company.  As long as your property is described in sufficient detail, you shouldn't be bothered with time-wasters.  A good on-line property web page should answer nearly all the questions a prospective client might want to ask - so the majority of your enquiries should be from people only interested in checking the availability of your property for certain dates.  It's a good idea, if you're on email, to create a standard response which can be used for email enquirers in cases where your property is fully booked for the period they're interested in.  But don't forget to personalize your message - at least by using the name of the enquirer who could be one of your future clients.

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