Your property has been listed online for a while. You have noticed a significant difference in bookings compared to other hosts nearby. What am I doing wrong? Why is my listing lacking competitiveness in this market? How to promote Airbnb listing?
We aim to explore solutions to this issue and promote your listing, making your property more competitive. We’ll outline 13 strategies to give your listing better exposure and increase revenue. Each method requires different amounts of time and effort.
So, at the end of each strategy, we’ll categorize the time required into three levels: minimum, moderate, and maximum. You can evaluate whether to implement each strategy based on your situation. After all, executing each strategy demands time, and you should assess whether it suits your circumstances.
Optimize Your Listing
The advantages of enhancing your listing could potentially exceed your expectations. A properly optimized listing can unleash your property’s full potential, often resulting in over a 200% increase in income.
The optimization process has various phases. These phases include analyzing the target market and connecting with popular attractions. Creating a special personal story for your listing and selecting relevant amenities are also important. Furthermore, adapting descriptions for seasonal changes is crucial to the process.
For detailed optimization tips, refer to our article on how to optimize your Airbnb listing.
Time Required: Moderate
Difficulty Level: Maximum
Writing a Unique Story for Your Airbnb Listing
Start by reflecting on your own experiences. What type of housing do you usually consider when planning a holiday? Beyond meeting your accommodation needs, you likely seek a place that can create special memories or offer unique experiences. On your special trip, you want a convenient and memorable place to remember even after it’s over.
Airbnb has a 500-character limit for property descriptions, which makes it hard to fully explain the experience or story. Instead, it becomes essential to emphasize the distinctive features of your listing. So, how can we accomplish this?
One effective strategy is utilizing social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for promotion.
Instagram is the best platform for beginners. You can share beautiful photos on your profile to attract people and promote your property brand. TikTok might be a good choice if you’re good at making videos. You can even use both platforms.
An Instagram page should show more than just your property offers. It should have nearby attractions, lifestyle experiences, convenience, transportation options, and a pleasant atmosphere for guests.
To increase local exposure, combine elements, check in at local attractions, and give detailed descriptions. This will improve your chances.
This approach transforms your social media homepage into a storytelling platform, showing potential guests what they can expect and enhancing their overall stay experience.
Regardless of the chosen social media platform, regular posting is necessary because of the algorithms of major platforms. To keep a good ranking in the algorithm’s exposure, it’s advised to post at least every three days.
Social media presence is great because it can give your page much attention. This attention can spread quickly and have a big impact in just a week or two. While the traffic from a popular post may quickly reduce over time, social media is the best amplifier to accelerate your business page growth.
Time Required: Minimum
Difficulty Level: Maximum
Establish Collaboration Networks with Journalists, Lifestyle Bloggers, and Social Media Influencers
Invite lifestyle bloggers or social media influencers for a free stay by sending letters or messages to start contact. Request them to share their experiences on their blogs or fan pages. Our ultimate goal is to treat it like a business venture, focusing on long-term positive returns.
Lifestyle bloggers have a large and loyal readership. After their endorsement, your property may become a preferred choice for their audience. Journalists’ coverage on trusted sites or travel mags boosts your credibility.
Gaining lasting influence takes time. Their help can make your property more visible, especially if it has good reviews.
Promoting your property this way creates a positive advertising cycle. Guests remember your property and consider it as an option when planning their travels.
Time Required: Moderate
Difficulty Level: Moderate
Built-in Features to Create a Unique URL for Your Airbnb Listing
Use Airbnb’s built-in features to generate a distinctive URL. A simple, memorable URL enhances exposure and makes your listing easy to remember. If your property is near specific attractions, you can use the attraction’s name as your URL.
Since each URL is unique for each listing, repeat and try until you find your favorite.
If you have experience in building showcase websites, consider creating an independent website to increase your property’s exposure. While this requires some time, the long-term results can be rewarding. After creating the website, establish a redirect to make your listing’s webpage appear more professional.
Building a website requires some cost and time investment. If unfamiliar, consider seeking third-party services for assistance.
Time Required: Minimum
Difficulty Level: Minimum
Expanding the Reach on Google Maps
Boosting your Airbnb listing on Google Maps is a straightforward process. To improve your property’s visibility on Google Maps, enter the required information to Google My Business.
Although the verification process may take some time, the steps are simple.
After you finish these steps, a verification letter will come to the address you gave, usually in 7 to 30 days. Once received, input the content from the letter on the designated website to complete the verification process.
Now, potential guests can find your property on Google Maps. Take the opportunity to add essential details and display attractive photos. Encourage future guests to leave reviews, enhancing your chances of appearing in natural search results.
Time Required: Moderate
Difficulty Level: Minimum
Joining Relevant Vacation Travel Forums
Vacation travel forums are a hub for many hosts to connect and share experiences. You can find numerous Airbnb hosts facing similar challenges and opportunities. Maintaining an active presence on these forums and enthusiastically addressing others’ inquiries can significantly boost your exposure.
Also, if other hosts in your area don’t have enough rooms for their guests, they might send them to your listing. Typically, these referrals are more inclined towards long-term rentals.
Participating in discussions on these forums and engaging in conversations can eventually lead to valuable connections and potential resources.
Time Required: Maximum
Difficulty Level: Moderate
Publish Your Listing on Local Travel Websites
Contact local travel websites and ask if they can include your Airbnb listing on their site. This approach holds great potential as these websites typically boast high authority and credibility. Over time, this exposure can significantly enhance the visibility of your listing.
Why is it useful? Local tourist attraction websites often have a high domain age and strong reputation, contributing to substantial page ranking benefits. This, in turn, improves your website’s position in natural search results. For more detailed insights, refer to our Airbnb SEO guide.
Time Required: Moderate
Difficulty Level: Maximum
Offer Discounts and Special Deals
Consider providing a 10% discount for future stays as an incentive for guests to return. This strategy increases the likelihood of repeat bookings and allows guests to recommend your place to friends.
However, keep in mind that many hosts adopt this approach. Instead of solely relying on discounts, enhance the overall guest experience. Collaborate with nearby restaurants to inquire about potential partnerships or explore travel packages with local attractions. Establishing such collaborations often yields positive results.
Additionally, create visually appealing discount vouchers and distribute them at special events or tourist destinations in other areas. Many hosts have successfully kickstarted their booking business through this cost-effective and efficient method.
Ultimately, the goal is to encourage repeat bookings, leading to increased income. Airbnb also offers its own promotion incentives, especially for new listing promotions. You can use similar strategies to get more bookings and build a strong foundation for your listing’s long-term success.
Time Required: Minimum
Difficulty Level: Minimum
Enhance Your Photos
In contrast to the earlier days of the Airbnb platform, masterpiece photos have become a basic necessity. It gives immediate short term results. You need high-quality photos to strengthen your visual presentation because people prefer a bright, luxurious feel. Most people love this style.
What happens if your pictures seem dim and poorly lighted? Wouldn’t that cause individuals to question the appearance of your property?
Consider directing to photography guides if you’re unsure about grasping clear photos. Of course, we suggest finding a photographer nearby to take pictures of your property. Investing in this can help with your current problems.
Before you start taking pictures for your listing, check your map for similar listings nearby. Identify the top 10 most competitive ones and analyze their cover photo and the first three images they present. This info is important for talking to your photographer.
Because that’s exactly what guests want to see.
Describing the feel of photos through mere text is insufficient. Examples for reference can be tremendously helpful in conveying the essence of this matter.
Once you obtain these photos, upload them to your listing to further attract guests and enhance your competitiveness.
Time Required: Moderate
Difficulty Level: Maximum
Invite Guests to Strengthen Your Listing
A great review from a happy guest in digital marketing is very effective. Positive reviews help your ranking and give you an advantage when guests compare listings.
It contains important parts, covering all aspects of the guest’s stay from arrival to departure. Here are some things to consider to improve your vacation rental property experience.
Let Guests Know What to Expect Upon Arrival
Before booking, guests can only ask about your listing through text and messages. Therefore, creating an easily readable and informative list detailing the check-in process, facilities, and unique features is required.
Include information about local attractions, allowing guests to quickly envision the experience they can anticipate, leaving them satisfied throughout the entire process.
Respond Promptly to Guest Messages
Picture this: you’re locked out and without keys. How long would you be willing to wait?
Responding to guest messages as quickly as possible, as is providing immediate assistance and guidance. This makes sure they have a smooth and enjoyable trip.
Enhance Your Customer Service Response
A good response should be warm and professional. Use built-in features to make modules for repetitive responses easier to reply quickly.
Ask guests about their needs and ask for feedback. This helps you improve and provide better solutions in the future.
Offer Special Amenities to Guests
Creating attractive flyers or cards that provide information on nearby restaurants and offer promotional discount vouchers is a good idea when hosting guests. This will help your guests easily find the information they need and enjoy local eateries at a discount.
When you welcome guests, offering them simple treats or basic stationery such as paper and pens is always nice, as well as a USB port for cell phone charging, especially if they travel for business. These amenities can unexpectedly improve their experience and convenience.
Positive and favorable reviews are the direct result of various contributing factors. These factors are combined together to create a positive outcome.
Time Required: Moderate
Difficulty Level: Moderate
Create Business Cards and Flyers
Take action to create flyers. This process has become quite easy with the flourishing development of online platforms. Head over to Canva and utilize their free templates.
Customize the content based on your property’s features. This will enhance the appeal of your listing. While there’s a small cost involved, an outstandingly designed card or flyer can significantly upgrade the overall travel experience for potential guests.
Use the free templates available on Canva. Their platform also offers online printing services, allowing you to apply the template, modify the content, and place an order directly. Provide a space on the card for guests to share feedback through text, gaining insights into their authentic thoughts. Investing a small amount can result in more positive reviews, making your management responsibilities lighter.
Consider designing a tri-fold brochure, blending your property’s story and suggestions for nearby tourist attractions. Engage guests in your property’s narrative, enhancing the visual presentation.
Additionally, explore local tourist information centers near your property and acquire booklets. This method can inspire or assist in creating a unique property experience.
Time Required: Moderate
Difficulty Level: Minimum
Offer Virtual Tours for Holiday Rentals
Virtual tours have become extremely popular in the holiday rental market. Use platforms like YouTube and your smartphone to create virtual tours. While maintaining stability in handheld filming may require some practice, providing virtual tours allows potential customers to evaluate whether your property meets their travel expectations.
Remember the method we discussed for creating URLs? Include relevant links in your YouTube tour, making it easy for viewers to find your listing and maximizing exposure.
If video editing is not your strong suit, save your video clips after filming. Then, use platforms like Fiverr to find skilled video editors specializing in turning your footage into a storytelling video. Check each profile, not just reviews. Confirm the completed video quality aligns with your final requirements – be choosy in this process.
Time Required: Maximum
Difficulty Level: Maximum
Utilizing SEO for Long-Term Promotion
You may be wondering how to promote Airbnb listing on Google? You probably heard SEO. The nature but slow touch to increase your exposure. Each Airbnb listing page is an independent website page. Airbnb’s website has a high Domain Authority (DA) because of its long-term evolution. Targeting SEO-specific keywords for your listing.
Take the time to identify terms potential guests might search for. Your listing should become discoverable on Google’s natural search results within a few months, increasing exposure opportunities.
We suggest using SEMrush to optimize your search engine optimization results. It is a useful tool with a huge database and accurate reflection of search intent.
You can create a free account and use their keyword magic tool to understand what users search. Please note that this tool is limited to 10 requests per day.
If you have a website for your personal property, it can help you to optimize your keywords. Seeking professional assistance in this area is advisable to maximize coverage of potential customer search terms.
Remember that SEO is a strategy that takes time to work, so don’t expect immediate results. It usually takes three to six months to see results because of Google’s search engine mechanisms. Dedicate time daily for simple research and integrate these keywords into your listing.
Time Required: Minimum
Difficulty Level: Moderate
Final Words
To make your holiday rental stand out and compete in the market, it’s best to use methods that work best for your property. That way, you can increase your listing’s exposure and attract more guests.
While these promotion methods may not be universally suitable, executing at least a few will enhance the chance of increased visibility.
Here is a quick TFE(Time For Execution) chart for your reference.
As time passes, you’ll find that these strategies are easier to implement than you might have initially thought and can produce good results. Consistently promote and strengthen your listings to maintain a strong competitive presence in the market. Start enhancing all your listings now.
We also offer optimization services driven to enhance your property’s visibility on the platform. Our personalized solutions save you time and effort in optimizing your accommodations. This allows you to focus on providing your guests with an excellent experience.
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