Why is your Marketing Messaging Missing the Mark?

You're listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

Are you ready to master your marketing so you can ditch your reliance on the online agents and grow your direct bookings?

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Hello and welcome to another episode of the Get Fully Booked podcast.

I'm your host, Sarah.

Sarah Orchard.

It's really great to have you here today and I hope you're enjoying the podcast so far.

Do come and connect with me or send me a DM on Instagram, I'm etfullybooked.

Or hop over to LinkedIn and give me any comments on the show so far.

Any topics you'd like me to cover in future episodes?

Is there anything you are really struggling with with your marketing, do let me know.

So today I'm back with the solo episode and I wanted to chat about something that came up on my Marketing Club weekly help desk last week.

A member was struggling with their messaging on their website and just didn't know where to start.

I immediately asked them three questions, so I thought I would share them with you on the podcast today as it's a very common issue and one of the most frustrating marketing areas for most short term rental and glamping business owners just like you.

So the first one really is talking to everybody and nobody.

So there's an expression when you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.

It means that we're trying to please everyone and it results in us not really saying anything that resonates with anyone.

Now you may have heard that expression before, but it's so true in marketing and it's really a strong reminder for us to focus on our ideal guest and create content that speaks directly to them.

I think I see quite often that people will keep their messaging really broad because we think that that means that we will capture more bookings by having a really broad reach, you know, trying to just throw the net as widely as possible.

We do think that we're going to actually get potentially more guests and more bookings.

And sadly that couldn't be sort of further from the truth because what happens is, is that we actually miss the mark completely.

And as I said, we appeal to no one.

And if you think about it as small businesses, we do have very limited both marketing budgets and our time is a valuable resource as well.

And I don't know about you, but often it's in sort of scarce supply.

So therefore it's really important that we keep our Marketing as focused as possible.

And I think if we actually narrow down who we're communicating to, we actually get much better results in terms of our marketing efforts.

So I'd highly encourage you to think about doing some work on identifying the profile of your ideal guests.

I don't know if you've done that already.

It's a really useful exercise because when you know that individual that you're thinking about that you want to attract to your Airbnb, your holiday cottage, your Glamp site, and you know exactly sort of who they are, the more you will be able to narrow down your marketing messages so that they're actually laser focused and they actually do connect with that individual.

The second question that I asked them was around, are they actually hitting their customer pain points?

Now, you may not think about your guests as having pain points, but people buy for four main motivations.

They relieve a pain.

So something that is annoying them.

They want to solve a problem that they are facing.

They want to meet a need they have in their life.

So maybe that could be couples wanting some time away as just couples with their partner because they have a young, demanding family, or they actually want to satisfy a desire.

So that could be about prestige.

It could be they want to reward themselves or treat themselves.

It could also be to do with, like, ego.

So ultimately, people only buy for one of those four reasons and they are actively seeking something in exchange from your business.

So it's really, really important that we understand what motivates them because ultimately, good messaging is aligned to the actual motivations of the individual that you're talking to that ideal guest.

So in my live bootcamp program, I, I use a technique.

I have a system called the Pain and gain matrix.

And I encourage my boot campers to actually look at their ideal guest pain points and to identify what those are and to look at the gain.

So what are you actually providing as part of that exchange with that ideal guest?

So what are you providing or offering that actually helps solve that need or satisfy that desire, or sort out that pain point in their life?

And this process often gives my course students some massive aha moments because they realize that the reason that their marketing has been feeling like such hard work and not connecting with the people that they want to attract to their short term rental business or their glamping business is because they haven't been able to nail down the that exchange between themselves and their ideal guest.

And by going through that pain and gain matrix, they're able to really solidify that and understand exactly what it is that they're offering.

And that means that when you start doing your marketing messaging, you're not putting out these really cliched messages that everyone else is using, like come and stay at our glamping site to relax and restore or relax and reconnect.

If I've read that once, I've read that about 10 times.

So ultimately it enables you to go out and communicate with these individuals and your ideal guests so that you actually make that connection and obviously you become very appealing to them and that's what makes people buy at the end of the day.

One of the other key tips really, and I wanted to talk a little bit was about brand voice.

So most short term rental and glamping businesses that I work with don't have a very clear definition of their brand.

They may have branding, so they may have a logo.

And if you're not sure about the differences, go and have a listen to episode 10 where I'm chatting to Claire Robinson from Weekend Candy because we explain this in a lot of detail.

So I'm not going to go into that today.

But once you know and have a very clear brand, obviously your brand has a brand voice and that makes it much easier to craft your messages and you can even train ChatGPT to learn what your brand voice is and then help to create those messages for you to make life easier, a whole lot easier.

And the third topic that I asked them about really was the third question was is it all about you?

So again, this is something that I see an awful lot and it's when marketing messaging, it might be missing the target because all of that business is doing is talking about themselves all the time from their perspective.

There's a very clever expression do with copywriting, which is don't we all over you.

Which sounds a little bit rude, but actually the we is we've probably been on a website that just says we do this and we do that and we offer the following.

And it actually doesn't connect and talk about the you so it doesn't talk about the person and what that person is looking for when they actually come and experience your, like I said, your holiday cottage or your or your glamp site is either in your short term rental and we just, you know, they just talk the whole time about we as the business.

And it's very prevalent on websites, it's very prevalent on socials as well.

And it's just talking about the business all the time from your perspective.

And the number of websites I go to and all of the copy is Just describing, almost, just describing the features that you know and not the benefits, the features of the actual property itself.

Very much from the, you know, we provide all these great things which is, which is wonderful and I'm sure some of them do satisfy the needs of your guests, but ultimately that doesn't make the person excited about making that booking.

But when you describe that, say for example, you've got dog friendly accommodation and you provide a, create a guide to all of the best pubs or local walks that are dog friendly, like which beaches are dog friendly.

You provide a bed and poo bags and a wash off area.

They're all quite functional things.

But if you start to talk about how, you know, when a dog owner goes on holiday, what are they thinking about?

They're thinking about things like is the garden secure?

Like will the dog be safe?

Where can I walk them?

That's easy from where I'm staying.

You know, are there some places that we can go and eat?

So talking about it from sort of what the, the experience that they want to get from their holiday and the fact that the dog is part of that experience that you will then connect with those dog owners, you know, so I don't know about you, but I haven't got kids.

But whenever we've gone on holiday with the dog, it's almost like taking a kids on holiday because the amount of stuff and paraphernalia that they actually need to actually go on holiday with, it's nearly as bad as kids, possibly not quite as bad, but almost.

So actually providing some of those things makes the owner feel like they don't need to pack up everything from home because you're actually going to provide all of that for them.

So it's not just describing the fact that you provide them, it's the fact that the food feeling that it gives them good marketing taps into feelings and emotions and as I said, you know, needs that people have in terms of wanting to satisfy something, there's an innate desire that they're trying to fulfill.

And our job with good marketing and good marketing messaging is to actually tap into that.

So you got to remember at the end of the day, it's like, what's in it for them?

Not just telling them all about you.

Okay, so in terms of wrapping up, just to recap on what we've covered today, so the first thing is obviously making sure that we talk to somebody and not trying to talk to everybody.

So that's point one.

Point two is you've got to hit those customer pain points.

Is it a pain, a problem, a need or a desire, and know exactly what you're actually offering.

So what is that exchange that your business is giving to that ideal guest when they stay with you?

And making sure the third point is not talking all about you and actually not focusing just on the very physical, practical sort of things that you offer.

Talk about it from their perspective so it's not talking about we all the time.

So that brings me to the end of this episode and I hope you've enjoyed it.

Thanks for listening.

I will be back next week with a solar episode to celebrate Book Direct Day, which is actually on the first Wednesday in February every year, and I'll be looking at ways to get more direct bookings.

So do come and join me for that episode.

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See you next time.

Thank you for listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard if you want to see if you are ready to ditch the likes of Airbnb and grow your direct bookings, put your business to the test with my free Direct Booking Roadmap quiz.

Head to my website, get fully booked.com quiz and let's get you more direct bookings and more profit in your pocket.