Andrea Bayer

Welcome to this episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This episode is brought to you by the kind sponsorship from OwnerRez. Providing a powerful and flexible system for managing vacation rental properties, OwnerRez provides booking and maintenance management, payment scheduling and collection, as well as insightful reporting. OwnerRez will provide you with a long-term booking foundation that is scalable for your vacation rental business while fully managing your channel listings, but still focusing on your brand, your website, and your way of doing things. Listen into the mid-episode break where you will hear more about this internationally recognized leader in vacation rental software. For more information about OwnerRez, click the link in the description of this episode on your smart device. Let's get started. Here is your host, Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer

If you're listening on publication day, today is Book Direct Day, and I'm talking to Jill Highsmith, the Digital Marketing Specialist at Intercoastal Net Design, and we're talking about all things Book Direct, not just for today, but for throughout the year.

Heather Bayer

Welcome to the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, keeping you up to date with news, views, information and resources on this rapidly changing short term rental business. I'm your host, Heather Bayer, and with 25-years of experience in this industry, I'm making sure you know what's hot, what's not, what's new, and what will help make your business a success.

Heather Bayer

Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer, and as ever, I am super delighted to be back with you once again on today, Wednesday the 1 February, if you're listening, on the publication date, and it is Book Direct Day. Book Direct Day has been going on for the last five years and it's been growing in momentum. And those owners and operators who are committed to a Book Direct strategy are beginning to see some real traction in it now. So I got a notification from icnd Intercoastal Net Design last week reminding me that it was Book Direct Day, and that triggered me into connecting with them and asking to speak to one of their experts about how we can make the Book Direct momentum carry on, not just for today, but throughout the year.

Heather Bayer

So I'm super excited to have with me today Jill Highsmith, who is a digital marketing specialist with ICND. She works on multiple national accounts within the vacation rental market and she's been in the vacation rental world for quite some time. So without further ado, let's hear a little bit more about Jill and about Book Direct Day.

Heather Bayer

So, happy Book Direct Day – of course, that's if you're joining me on February the first, I'm happy to have with me Jill Highsmith-McGee from ICND (Intercoastal Net Design), who's going to talk to us about all things book direct, not just for today or for the day you're listening, but throughout the year and way on into the future. Because this is a movement that is growing in momentum and people are getting on this bandwagon and finally believing that this can actually work. Welcome, Jill. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Jill Highsmith

Thank you so much, Heather, for having me. I've listened to a few of your past Book Direct Day podcasts and they are all so influential and have such good information. So I'm excited. I'm really excited to be on it.

Heather Bayer

Well, I was excited way back, I think it was five years ago, and Amy Highnote from VRM Intel launched this whole concept of having a day where owners and managers could concentrate on educating their guests on the opportunities to book direct and the fact that there were other options open to them, so we're going to get into this a bit more.  But I'd like to kick off Jill, by just asking you what your background is in the business, because I know you do have some background beyond working for vacation rental management companies; what got you to this current role?

Jill Highsmith

Yes, of course. I've been in the vacation rental marketing industry, I think since I was a little lass. My parents, they worked in property management, and I kind of grew up in the field of property management, just fully immersed in the language and the challenges that people face as a property manager. They owned a small, independently owned company in Central Florida, and then I would help with check-ins on the weekends and things like that. Then I went away to college and decided my path was more with marketing, and so I studied marketing and public relations at the University of West Florida. From there, I decided to move to the Outer Banks and I ended up working at a vacation rental company here on the Outer Banks, which is where I currently live, and really just learned all the ins and the outs as a marketing coordinator. And from there I found my role at ICND and it really just kind of took off from there. So my past experience, my knowledge of the really unique landscape in the marketing industry, especially for the vacation rental industry, led me to my current role as a digital marketing specialist at Intercoastal Net Designs.

Jill Highsmith

And here I manage multiple client accounts across the nation, really specializing in SEO, pay-per-click email marketing, social media, content creation, all the good things for vacation rental companies. And ICND's primary focus is developing cutting-edge websites for vacation rental companies to help drive direct bookings. So when we saw Book Direct Day, we realized we couldn't let it go by without really throwing our hat in the ring and kind of giving the information that we wanted to for our clients to really drive those direct bookings, because that's such an important thing in the vacation rental industry.

Heather Bayer

It sounds like you have a really fun job, and a really fun job with a really great company because ICND is way out in the forefront of building fabulous websites. And I know so many of my networking colleagues who have got ICND to built websites and they are just brilliant. And of course, as you say, these are the websites that people need to get into the book direct flow, if you like. To start with, let's talk about Book Direct Day; is this the fifth year? I think Amy started it in 2018.

Jill Highsmith

Yes, I think that was the original Book Direct Day. She spearheaded the movement in 2018, I believe. I think it was first talked about in 2017, but there was nothing concrete until 2018, which I can't believe was five years ago. Wow, time flies by.

Heather Bayer

And I know, and it really was the concept was just let's educate guests that they do have these other options. And each year there's been an event on Book Direct Day. People have been posting out to their audience, to their mailing lists, these benefits of booking direct, and it just seems to be picking up and and gaining momentum. I mean, I'm sure you've done research into this because ICND have taken such a great part in Book Direct over the past five years. What do you think has been the biggest impact of Book Direct Day since its inception?

Jill Highsmith

That's a tough one. There's been a lot. If I think back though, like you said, we've done a lot of research with ICND, managing our client accounts and talking about different ways to help push direct bookings for them. The one thing that I've really noticed as one of the bigger impacts, is the vacation rental industry as a whole. Local competitors all kind of coming together with one common goal, which is to promote direct bookings and explain, really, consumer education, explain to that travel audience what the difference is in booking directly through a vacation rental manager as opposed to an online travel agency. And as a consumer, it can get kind of overwhelming because you see the same property listed everywhere online and you don't really know which properties to book and things like that. But I think one of the biggest impacts that we've seen is just the unity in the education and that it's working. Within the last five years or so, the consumer education really is taking effect, which is pretty exciting and significant.

Heather Bayer

Well, I know this from my past career as the CEO of a property management company. And we started probably like your parents must have done with just direct booking, because that's all there was way back, so that's all you did.

Heather Bayer

It was before….

Jill Highsmith

You wrote them down, there wasn't any property management systems then.

Heather Bayer

That's right.

Jill Highsmith

You had a ruler and a piece of paper and did it that way. It was definitely different than what it is today, which is a huge industry.

Heather Bayer

Yeah. So it was before Home Away and definitely before Airbnb. But we went through that sort of roller-coaster. We were direct booking, and then along came Home Away and Airbnb. And this was so exciting, we can actually use all these tools and get the message out wider. And I remember being able to use Home Away and still having that connection with the guests. We could draw them back to our own website and then of course, that was taken away.

Jill Highsmith

That I think was one of the biggest issues, you know, and that's why Book Direct Day I think truly came about in the 2010 -2015 timeframe, that was when OTAs kind of made their big splash. They've always been around, but they really made a big splash. I think Airbnb started in 2007 or 2008. And if you do a quick Google Trend search, just go to Google Trends and look at Airbnb versus “vacation rental” and Vrbo, you can really see the significant jump that Airbnb has started trending as a search term in Google. And I think that has changed the way consumers search and book completely. Just really shifting the landscape and what you once were able to do, getting those leads to come back directly to you because you could have their email address and communicate with them, now that they've kind of taken over that landscape, it does make it very difficult.

Heather Bayer

It's interesting. I'm planning a trip to England, I'm also going to Germany and  then Barcelona for Short Stays Week in May. So I'm into that booking process at the moment and wanting to book everything direct. And in that search process, it's still a struggle to find something where I can book direct. And I always start with Airbnb and look for some breadcrumbs in a listing.

Jill Highsmith

Yes, breadcrumbs. I think that's a great way to put it.

Heather Bayer

And that is certainly – if somebody's out there thinking about doing Book Direct, then your first thing is to drop the breadcrumbs in your listing and you can do it in such a way that it's not blatant, it's not going to…..

Jill Highsmith

…..They flag those now when it is blatant, they remove your listing if you have an image of your property management company's logo, they do flag those. One thing that we've noticed on our websites, and this is the significant difference in the last few years, is about 65% more people are landing on property description pages, as opposed to finding the website, and that being just a URL referral path, which shows us that people are searching using the property names. And I think that's a great breadcrumb, like you said, to leave on your OTA listing is to create a unique name for your property and then you'll show up first in that search result. And I think that's a great way to  get those leads. They might find you on an OTA site, but if you have a unique property name like Mermaid Tails on the Outer Bank or something like that, they're going to search it and then they're going to find the organic listing, which is going to be the direct booking.

Heather Bayer

Yeah, exactly. And somebody else came up with some suggestions recently and one of them was just an image, using images to drive that traffic as well. So an image of a guest book on a table with the property name on it.

Jill Highsmith

Yes, absolutely. I think that that's a great idea. One thing, there's a lot of digital marketing – we like to focus on the digital marketing aspects, obviously, with Digital Marketing Agency – but you can also take it offline and put refrigerator magnets, table tents, anything, inside the rental units. A guest book that's branded with your information, that has past guest reviews, and work diligently to build that brand and build that community online and offline. And I think that is a huge way to convert those OTA leads. They're going to find you through an OTA, but convert them to a Direct Booking in the future and a repeat guest.

Heather Bayer

Yes, exactly. I'm going to come back in a second and talk about quality content because that's dear to my heart, because that's something we did on our own website, which included a lot of quality content which attracted so much traffic. But first of all, I just want to stress to those listening that we may be talking today on Book Direct Day, but it's not just one day, it's the entire year. So how can owners and managers continue to educate the guests into the idea of booking direct as a continuous process rather than just flagging up, this is one day of the year when we're going to send this message out. It should be going on year round.

Jill Highsmith

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I think the first Book Direct Day, it had a ton of buzz and it was really exciting and it was just that first day. The hashtag and the email campaigns that go out on that day I think are wonderful and get the vacation rental manager and the guest audience, it gets everybody kind of excited. But it is a full year/full lifestyle process. And one thing that you can do, and it kind of ties back into developing that rich content for the website, is develop a landing page and keep that year round showcasing what the benefits of booking directly through a property manager are as opposed to the price differences, the local boots on the ground, you have someone to call, 24/7 maintenance, things like that. I think developing a landing page that exists on your website all year long, talking about the perks and benefits of booking directly, is a great way to keep the Book Direct Day message alive throughout the year.

Heather Bayer

So you're talking about benefits, what's a list of benefits that owners and managers can share with their audience?

Jill Highsmith

Absolutely, yes. So first of all, best price guarantee, you definitely want to have that somewhere listed on your website and especially it should be the ‘Best Price Guaranteed'. Most OTAs are going to have about a 10% or some type of increase with additional booking fees and travelers fees and things like that. So advertising that you're the best price is a great way to show the difference. Another example would be a better experience. When you book directly, you're working directly with the property manager, cutting out that middleman completely. Local staff – so you're working directly with a local staff that knows the area, that can give you advice on different things to do in the area. You have, goodness, there's such a long list.  Let me see what I have written down here.

Jill Highsmith

So one of the things that we wrote in the blog that we just posted is the flexibility with check-in and check-out when you book directly.  A lot of OTAs have some pretty strict rules, and you have to remember they don't always work directly with the owner. A lot of them work directly through property management companies, or they might work with the owner, but they have pretty strict regulations and a check-in and check-out time is going to be standard.

Jill Highsmith

So when you book directly through a property manager, you have more flexibility with that check-in time; maybe you can add an extra day. Another addition is the biggest one I think, is trust and loyalty within a company. And I feel like OTAs do a great job, especially Airbnb, working with the guests and developing that trust and loyalty. But you've got to remember, like we mentioned in the beginning of our conversation, property managers have been doing this forever. They're the ones that are there, they are managing the property. They know everything about the property. There's a funny clip that's on TikTok and it's in the blog post that we wrote and it shows a fan that's kind of just completely battered and bruised and not functioning at all. And that's a great example of why booking directly through a property management company is such a better benefit to the guest, and to a homeowner, but especially to the guest, because if something like that happens, if the air conditioning goes out, if the heat goes out, you can call your property management company. I don't know what number you call for Airbnb or for Vrbo, but they're not going to be as quick to act on it. They don't have a local maintenance vendor right there that's ready to come out and fix it or connect with a community vendor that can come out there and help you, or even switch you to another property that's in their rental program, which is another huge benefit. If something does go wrong, you can look at other options.

Heather Bayer

Yes, I've always found it interesting how Airbnb in particular push forward this idea that they are the property manager and they do it in such a way that they're not out and out saying, we manage these properties. But they give that impression, particularly to those people who are fairly new to Airbnb.  That these are all their properties that they manage and they look after everything and really cutting out the owners and the property managers altogether.

Jill Highsmith

I agree. And I think it can be very confusing to a guest traveler because you don't know; why would you know? You're not in the industry. You shouldn't have to know what's behind the curtain. But I think it can be very confusing and they do a great job at promoting that they are. But I think Book Direct Day, the wonderful thing about it, like we said, is all vacation rental managers come together for this one initiative, just to explain it and break down the myths that Airbnb is the manager. They're not. They have to call onto either the homeowner or the property manager. And when you're working directly with a property management company, you're working with a professional. They're licensed, they know exactly what to do when a crisis does happen, because they've been there and they've done it and they have the longevity – that makes a big difference.

Heather Bayer

Well, I think we've explored most of the benefits and the fact that it's really important to do this throughout the year. And I see so many websites now where you go onto the website and the banner on the website is “Book Direct and Save”. And that is such a draw for people. I've just booked an apartment hotel in Central Berlin.  We've been there before and it's on Booking.com and it's on Airbnb, but I've seen that “Book Direct and Save” banner. So of course I'm going directly to them and saved probably about 20%. So I'm a devotee of book direct.

Heather Bayer

Anyway, I'm just going to take a short pause here for a word about our sponsor, OwnerRez.

Jodi Bourne

Hey, I'm Jodi Bourne and I'm a vacation rental consultant and website designer who has been recommending OwnerRez to my clients for seven years now. I believe they are a great company and I love working with them. When I'm designing a website or helping somebody set up this system, they are always very responsive with me. They reply back to an email really quickly and my clients love them too. I am often getting thanked from people who have implemented OwnerRez because I suggested it and they are so thankful that I've helped ease their life with the automation and the communications and the channel manager features. So I highly recommend it to my clients. I highly recommend it to you. If you haven't checked out OwnerRez, you should probably do that right away. Good luck.

Heather Bayer

So thank you, Jodi, for that. And let's go back over to my interview with Jill Highsmith.

Heather Bayer

Okay, I want to talk about content on a website and then go on to really explore your knowledge in how you actually drive traffic to that book direct website, so that people can see the content. But let's talk about content in general. I see a few websites where people have gone into the idea of book direct. I have to have a website, I'll use Wix or Squarespace or GoDaddy or whatever they use to make a website and they…….

Jill Highsmith

……Or us!

Heather Bayer

No, this is before you, they've just thrown up a website, which just has their property and the rooms, and maybe they've got a small booking engine on there. But I still see some that have put up a website and then a link to their Airbnb listing, which is a complete waste, an absolute waste of their time to even do that. But the ones that really work are the ones that are using really good web design companies like ICND. There's a number of others around. There's some really good independent web designers. My friend Jodi Bourne is a particularly good web designer and she creates some fantastic work.  But all these websites have content. So tell me a little bit, Jill, about the types of content that should be included in a website that will draw traffic to them.

Jill Highsmith

That is a great question and it's the longest story ever. We can talk about it all day and need a whole another podcast for it. But I think a quick overview of the best types of content, if I had to pick a few. The important thing about rich content is the Google algorithm. It's always updating. But one thing that kind of continues to be a prominent factor in ranking is rich quality content. And I think that is certainly something OTAs can work on. And the one thing that larger companies like OTAs do, is they do have content on their websites, but they don't have local content. So when you're developing content on your website, you want to make sure that you're going after those local keywords. And to rank for a keyword, you have a landing page. For example, I live on the Outer Banks, so I'll use my area as an example. If I were building a website, one of the first things I would do, is to develop a landing page dedicated to the term Outer Banks Vacation Rentals, and just go over what vacation rentals we have and use that word as – not as much as possible – but strategically.

Jill Highsmith

Another great thing is guest content. So give information to your guests, link out to local companies, become the authority in your area, and that can really help skyrocket you organically to be on page one of Google. And I think that when we're talking about Book Direct Day, some of the smaller companies, it is hard to get to that page one. But if you do create rich content, travel content, develop multiple landing pages to keep that guest on your website, clicking around and really immersed in what you're putting out there, then you do have a chance to become that page one Google ranking, which is something that the OTAs don't really have a chance to do. They show up, they do the pay per click, but they aren't going to always be that number one organic listing for those search terms. So I think creating rich content on your website is a huge win when it comes to doing the Book Direct initiative.

Heather Bayer

I'm currently creating a course at Vacation Rental Formula on content and creating amazing content for a website. And in that research for that course, I've been looking at using long-tail keywords, and one of them I was using was ‘Vacation Rental Packing List',. And it was interesting that certainly when I put Vacation Rental Packing List in Google, the first two results that came up were both in the Outer Banks and they were both property managers.

Jill Highsmith

Oh, that's great.  I wonder if we made them. That's wonderful to hear. I think that is a wonderful use of rich content because even if you want to catch someone while they're in the vacation planning phase and creating content about what to pack, sometimes they might have already booked, but you might catch them for the next time. So that just gets your brand and it helps you build the authority, and that's the main goal. You want to become the vacation rental authority for that specific area, so that's great. I'm so glad that the Outer Banks showed up.

Heather Bayer

Well, it's the other thing that I was explaining. Probably the majority of people that actually look for ‘Vacation Rental Packing List' are not considering the Outer Banks to go to, but they're going to land on that site and then they may well explore it further. And we know that with a lot of people, they don't book their accommodation, they explore different locations first, before they do that accommodation booking.

Jill Highsmith

100%. Yes, I completely agree. I think there's a funny story that I told our marketing director and we used it as an inspiration for our social media. And social media is another great way to really bring in those leads and just developing that evergreen content on your social media and tagging your company, creating branded content and promoting your properties, kind of like the 80/20 rule, but with social [media] I usually do 90% the area.  And people are searching, before they book, they're searching for who's being tagged on social media. And that's how my husband and I found our honeymoon destination and picked the place that we stayed, based completely off  social media research. We scoured Instagram and Facebook and found the companies that were tagged the most in posts that were relevant. So I would search whatever company that we were looking at booking through and I would go to their Instagram and instead of looking at what they posted, I would look at who tagged them in posts and see if they were relevant posts, what they were sharing. And I think that's a great way to engage your audience.

Jill Highsmith

And also for local vacation rental managers, build an online community and encourage your guests to tag your company. Don't tag Airbnb or Vrbo or the OTAs, tag whatever company they're staying with so you can always put that information in the units that you're renting as well. Create a branded hashtag, ”hashtagbookdirectday', ‘hashtagyourcompanyname', and I think  that's a great way to build that community and for potential leads to find you.

Heather Bayer

I love that idea and it's something that we were exploring with CottageLink Rental Management when I owned the company, and we didn't really get to taking it to the level that I wanted to, but we were just at that exploration stage of really making Instagram work for us and use the right hashtags and then asking guests to use those.

Heather Bayer

I think that an interesting place to go now is using photos on your website that are Instagram-able.  That people look at and think, I want to get my photo with that.  Maybe it's a local landmark or even something within the house. The hot tub with the wine glasses sitting on the edge of the hot tub and the bubbles going. How often do you see a hot tub photographed with the lid on it?

Jill Highsmith

Absolutely, yes, I couldn't agree more. I think creating the experience through your images on the website is a great way to really capture those leads. And another important thing that helps with direct bookings is the photographs. So your property description pages, you want them to be fully optimized in the digital aspect for search engines and things like that. But something that you can do internally as a vacation rental company is spend on those really high quality photos. You can use your cell phone, but it is definitely going to make a difference if you have a professional photographer go out there and take photos of the home in the right lighting, with the curtains open so you can see that beautiful panoramic view of the Atlantic Ocean. That's going to make a big difference in selling those vacation rental homes and booking them directly.

Heather Bayer

You mentioned being fully optimized for search engines. As I've got you as a digital marketing specialist right here, I need that explained. What does that actually mean? Because we hear this all the time. “You got've to have it fully optimized.”

Jill Highsmith

Yes, sure.  There's not one catch all SEO – search engine optimization. It's a consistency and process and it involves developing rich content and things like that. But the bare bones of what you need to be fully optimized for a landing page is, you want to make sure that you have your meta tags, which are basically an outline of what the landing page is about. So put your top keywords, your property name, all of that in the meta description. So that way the little blurb on Google that shows up when your website shows up in Google, you want to make sure that blurb is fully optimized to create a conversion. So you want someone to click on it and come to the website. So fully optimized is making sure that meta tags, the H1 tags and everything is  in there and done correctly. And then we can go into making sure the canonical links are correctly…… There's a very long list of technical SEO items to make sure that the page speed is a high quality page speed, that everything loads. Your images have alt text, that they're not too large, because if somebody goes on your landing page for your property description landing page, and it takes a really long time for those images to load they might just pop off, and you don't want that. So making sure everything is optimized in that respect and loads quickly. And the best way to do that, for the technical – not trying to pitch it but – is to hire a professional search engine optimization specialist, so they know what to look for. Because making sure something is fully optimized is definitely a full-time job. You can't just do it once, it's not a set it and forget it. It's a consistency of looking at the landing pages, seeing how Google algorithms have been updated and making those adjustments.

Heather Bayer

Yeah, I agree. In the 20-years I was managing a company and we started out with our own home-built website on Dreamweaver, we made it ourselves.

Jill Highsmith

Oh wow, that's amazing.

Heather Bayer

That's going back to 2002. That was the first website we built. The second one, we still kept with the budget concept, let's go the economy route and it was okay. But we then did it a third time, because we weren't achieving what we wanted to achieve. And the third time we went with a really professional web design company. And I can't stress enough, having gone through those experiences, that web design and then digital marketing is not something to economize on. And that's from my 20-years of experience. That's where you should put your money. I'm sure you agree with that.

Jill Highsmith

Yes, I 100% agree. I think that's a great example. Starting out, maybe you build a WordPress website and it's not ranking and it's not doing what you want it to do and you wonder why.  Financially, putting that money into driving those direct bookings and building a website, that's going to rank in Google, with professionals is a really great investment. And I hope I can speak for our clients when I say they agree, they are all very happy with driving those direct bookings.

Jill Highsmith

Going back to using OTAs, it's a good idea to use OTAs strategically in your marketing plan. But the best thing is, when you have a website that is optimized for direct bookings, like one of ICND websites, it is built-in with your property management system, so it works and integrates with your PMS so you don't have to update those calendars. And when you have a website that's built for direct bookings, you don't have to rely heavily on OTAs.  Like you said earlier, building a website and then linking out to Airbnb to book, that's just the waste. Use your investment and capitalize on it by having something integrate directly with your software.  I think that that's the best thing that you can do.

Heather Bayer

I'd also like to raise something else, or bring something to people's attention. And I don't know whether this happens throughout the US, but I know in Canada there are small business grants and all sorts of money that is available in certain places, if you know where to look, that will give you a percentage of the cost of developing a new website. We did it way back when I actually started in this business, and I was in England way back in the 1990s, and I was running a company called Clearwater Holidays.  We were marketing short-term rentals in Ontario to the British market at that time, and we found a small local organization that gave us 50% of our web design costs. And then back in 2020, when we redid our website again, we were sent in the direction of, again, another very small local organization that offered – well, we put in a bid – and we got 50% of those costs again.

Heather Bayer

I think it's important to remember that there are these things out there, but you probably really have to go looking for them, going and asking in your local Chamber of Commerce, or local tourism offices. These are the people that will probably know where these grants are perhaps available. If you're in the tourism industry, and there's a grant available because the local tourism office wants to promote their area, and by helping you build a website for it, they're going to help themselves. So that's just a little bit of a segue into go out and search for funding. There could be money out there for you if you go look for it. I don't know if you've heard about anybody else who's done that.

Jill Highsmith

I haven't, but I'm not really in that portion of the business. But I think that's a great idea. I absolutely agree with going out and looking for funding and finding other avenues.

Jill Highsmith

Another prong of digital marketing, but this is kind of the opposite of book direct, in a sense, but still long-term.  When you do invest in building a website for your property management company, it's important to also invest in not just getting guest leads to book, but also getting new owners. So owner acquisition is a really great portion to put your money into.  Invest in building those landing pages and creating that audience and bringing them in, and that will help your business grow, help your inventory grow, and eventually it will just help your rank higher in Google. You'll have more properties to showcase, more owners and more guests coming in. So that's a great way to also build your community and your online presence.

Heather Bayer

I'm glad you mentioned that. Owner acquisition was where I focused most of my time in my company. And we spent a lot of time on an owner area on the website. And it was not just one sales page, it was a full blog, which was full of hints and tips and ideas for any owner, not just our registered owners, but any owner that was looking to rent out. They could come find us, and they'd find our landing page with all this free information. And it was amazing how many owners actually then came and registered with us because they'd found this education on the website. You mentioned trust and loyalty earlier, and you build that with potential owners just as much as you do with potential guests.

Jill Highsmith

I absolutely agree. I think having blogs that are dedicated to “Why do a second investment property? What are the benefits?” And having those blogs feed back into your website and go to that sales lead page and maybe have a pop-up on there that captures that email address. And there are definitely ways that you can continue to push owner acquisition, and that is a huge portion of the business that is super important and vital to the other half of the business. So I completely agree. I think creating that trust and loyalty and becoming the authority in the market for something brings those leads in.

Heather Bayer

Yes, I watched a great Ted Talk the other day, and it's a guy called Simon Sinek, S-I-N-E-K – I'll put a link to it on the Show Notes – and what was behind the Ted Talk was really about when you're trying to promote your company, you don't just promote what you do. Instead of that, you promote why you're doing it. It's the “Why” of your business, and I think a lot of people forget that.  They're out there saying, here's this property, or here's all these properties without promoting “We're in this business because we want to bring you the best experiences, because we are 100% committed to hospitality, etc.” So, yes, I'll put a link to that Ted Talk.  It just came to mind as we were talking and I thought, yes, that really resonated with me when I watched that talk.  A very, very simple model talking about the why and not the what of your business.

Jill Highsmith

Definitely, I think explaining the why of what brought you in – and that's another…… We talked about content earlier, creating a landing page that's your About Us [page].  That is a huge, important piece of your content that you should have, is an About Us landing page. Why are you in this business, what is your background? And maybe another landing page for community involvement. That is a great way to create rich content on your website. Talk about the area, but also explain to your guests, like you said, the why.  Why are you here, what makes you stand out? Why is your brand better, why is it different? And that brings us full circle all the way back to the Book Direct Day initiative, it's really explaining the why, why you stand out from OTAs, what makes you different and a better experience than booking with an online travel agency as opposed to directly through a professional manager.

Heather Bayer

I'm glad you brought us full circle back because I just want to revisit Book Direct Day, and for those of you who are listening on the 1st, then if this is the first time you've come across this, you may not be ready to send out something to your email list today to talk about Book Direct Day. Jill, what are three things they could do over the next week to really get their Book Direct Year off and running?

Jill Highsmith

That is a good question. So we have a Book Direct toolkit and I will send you that link that you can include if you'd like, and it has some images and logos and things like that for beach areas, mountain areas, cabins, woods, things like that. So you can definitely use one of those to give yourself the Book Direct stamp of approval. But three things – including the toolkit – I would probably say creating a social media post using the hashtag ‘bookdirect', that's a big thing that will bring you into the community, included with social media, Instagram, Facebook, also on Google My Business, creating a post. I would definitely suggest creating an email to send out to your list, to your full audience. Even if you're not ready to suggest all the reasons to Book Direct.  If you don't have that marketing information ready, you can use the toolkit and what we provide for you in there, but just send something out, promote some of your properties, engage with your audience and get them to engage back with you. I think that's the number two thing. And for the third thing that I would definitely suggest doing, is write a blog.  It's an easy way to get in front of people and use the terms Book Direct, use your local keywords for your area. Like I said, the Outer Banks. Outer Banks Vacation Rentals; push those terms. And when you do write your blog, make sure you link to your property pages and to your rental pages. So if you have a main rental results page, make sure in the blog that you link back to it. Same with your social media, make sure in your comments you force those direct bookings and conversions with your email. Make sure you're linking to the proper pages that are going to help with conversions. Send out all the material, encourage consumer education for these things, but the main focus is booking. So make sure you're linking back to the pages that can help drive those direct bookings, even if it's a phone call. If you don't have the ability on your website to do direct bookings through the website yet and you don't want to drive them to the OTAs, tell them to give you a call and do it that way. So there are many options, but the main focus is drive the conversions and give them the opportunity to book.

Heather Bayer

That is great that's three things that people can do today or this week to get going on their Book Direct strategy. Jill, it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you. Always love to talk to digital marketing people. You always have such great ideas, and I always end up sparked and motivated and ready to get off and do stuff. So I really appreciate you spending the time with me and sharing your expertise today.

Jill Highsmith

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Heather. And really, the bottom line for Book Direct Day that I just want to drive home to your audience is build your brand name and use OTAs strategically as part of your marketing efforts instead of feeling that you need to rely on them solely and take back that power of direct bookings. So I think that's the main thing, build your brand and get out in front of your consumers and express why you are the authority of the vacation rental industry.

Heather Bayer

That is great to finish up with. Thank you so much.

Jill Highsmith

Thanks so much, Heather. It was great chatting with you and I hope you enjoy your stay in Alabama and have a great time.

Heather Bayer

Thank you.

Jill Highsmith

Thanks.

Heather Bayer

Thank you so much, Jill. That was a great discussion and I hope those of you listening have some suggestions to take away and to add to your Book Direct strategy, which should be a yearly thing, not just for the day. February 1st is really just the day that we trigger the idea of it and make sure people remember that there is so much potential in the Book Direct movement and the initiatives that go alongside it.

Heather Bayer

So that's it for this week. We've got a lot of really great content coming up over the next few weeks, so please subscribe.  Please go to whatever platform that you listen to your podcasts on and leave me a review, because that helps people to decide whether this is a good podcast to come and listen to. If anybody's new to podcasts, and we get new subscribers every single day, new listeners, people who suddenly come across the podcast and haven't heard of it before, and they start to listen in. So your reviews make that so much easier for them to decide that it's something worth their time. So thank you to everybody who has left a review and I really appreciate it.

Heather Bayer

The other thing is, if you've got any ideas for the podcast, if you want me to talk to somebody in particular, or if you want me to talk to you and you have a great story to tell, then just let me know at heather@vacationrentalformula.com and we can explore some ideas. So I hope you have a great rest of your day and I'll see you again next week.

Andrea Bayer

This episode was brought to you by OwnerRez. For more information about this internationally recognized leader in vacation rental software, click the link in the description of this episode on your smart device, or head over to vacationrentlformula.com/ownerrez to find out more.

Heather Bayer

It's been a pleasure as ever, being with you. If there's anything you'd like to comment on, then join the conversation on the Show Notes for the episode at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you and I look forward to being with you again next week.