Is using the Airbnb platform to market your Airbnb the best way to get the word out about your listing? Not really. By optimizing your Airbnb listing and showcasing your home’s best features through gorgeous photos, you can count on a constant stream of bookings, but if you want to reach a wider audience, it pays to seek outside of Airbnb’s platform. And, there are numerous ways to advertise your rental properties outside of Airbnb, just like a hotel.
It doesn’t matter how long you’ve worked in business; there’s always room for development in order to optimize Airbnb revenue and achieve the maximum occupancy rates. And it’s true: in order to keep up with the quick pace of Airbnb hosts around the world, one must always strive to outperform the plethora of rivals. Because of this, hosts should always consider the best strategies to advertise their Airbnb properties.
Generally speaking, using the power of advertising is the finest approach to highlight the specifics of your Airbnb listing! But everyone wants to know how, when and where do you start marketing your Airbnb. Luckily, our article will focus on the best marketing strategies and give tips and tricks to promoting your Airbnb.
Table Of Contents
- Find Your Target Market
- Emphasize Your Unique Features
- Use Social Media
- Email Marketing
- Learn SEO
- Design Special Offers for Your Guests
- Creative Airbnb Marketing Strategy Ideas
- Biggest Marketing Secret? REPEAT! REPEAT! REPEAT!
- My Best Airbnb Marketing Strategy Tip? Just Start Already!
- Final Thoughts
- Hey, I'm Melissa.
Find Your Target Market
It’s crucial to understand that your target audience depends on the city or state in which your Airbnb is located. If you live in a bustling city close to colleges and universities or numerous business establishments, you should think about including amenities that are tailored to the type of guests you will be hosting and stick to ads that attract that audience.
For instance, if your potential customers will mostly be students and entrepreneurs, you should mention perks like a dedicated workstation, complimentary coffee bar, or a strong internet connection in your Airbnb description.
It’s always great to know your target market in the Airbnb business so that you can also draw other travelers who are looking for nearby short-term rentals that are comparable to yours.
Emphasize Your Unique Features
What is it that makes your rental property stand out? Is it the local community? Or how about the nearby amusem*nt parks? Maybe your rental has an amazing backyard or a really neat theme. Whatever it is, be sure to make it stand out using the digital platforms that are available. You want to create content that will show potential guests that they will create memorable experiences while staying at your Airbnb and convince them to book with you!
Use Social Media
Social media accounts are some of the best ways to utilize digital marketing to advertise your Airbnb listing. Getting likes, comments, follows and shares on all the different social media platforms can quickly bring attention to your property. Some of the best ways to improve your listing is through sharing reviews and testimonials, videos and pictures through the various social platforms available.
Because Facebook offers such a broad audience potential, savvy hosts will use a distinct Facebook business page (not a profile) to advertise their rental property to friends, family, and the public.
People use Facebook to plan their leisure activities and learn about new travel developments, thus this feature should be utilized to the fullest extent possible for lifestyle content.
Reviews – If your listing is connected to your Facebook page, visitors who might come across your listing will be able to check out your Facebook reviews and testimonials from past visitors and verify your credibility.
Photos – As the saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words.” And there is no exception when it comes to pictures of your listing on your Facebook page. Each photograph tells a narrative to its visitors. When you post engaging images of the interior, such as the living room, bedrooms and kitchen, as well as pictures of the exterior of your Airbnb listings on social media networks it attracts more visitors. Use our guide to taking amazing Airbnb Photos and you are sure to get bookings!
FB Advertising – Using Facebook ads and targeted likes can be a great investment for an Airbnb host looking to gain a broader audience. And since the ads are targeted, you can set them to reach your specific target audience within a specific area. Just make sure you don’t do too many ads as that can get pesky and expensive.
Instagram has 1 billion users and has developed into a potent marketing tool for vacation rental websites. Millions of travelers share their daily images of their Airbnb experiences, but it has also developed into a platform that many Airbnb hosts use to promote their vacation rentals. Facebook and Instagram may work together, but Instagram clearly leads when it comes to marketing vacation properties. Having an active Instagram account is a great way to promote your listing and engage with your customer base.
Photos or Carousels
The influence of interior and lifestyle photography may be astounding, inspiring individuals to plan their next inspiring vacation. The hosts of the most popular Airbnb Instagram properties aren’t hesitant to let the public see every inch of their residence. Once you’ve got your rental looking amazing, take pictures of each room and post it as a carousel with a short, engaging description. And don’t forget to hashtag!
Hashtags
You may encourage visitors to find and fall in love with your Airbnb on Instagram by adding popular and fitting hashtags. When considering their upcoming vacation and looking for ideas, people frequently explore location hashtags. For instance, if your rental is in a specific district of San Francisco or a certain borough of New York City, using hashtags that are relevant to that neighborhood will help your property pop up in hashtag search results. Consider including these in addition to the location hashtag to promote your posts:
- #airbnb (this is the official Airbnb account and has over 2 million followers)
- #instavacation
- #airbnbsuperhost
- #instaairbnb
Reels
Instagram reels have become super popular in recent years and are a phenomenal way to market your Airbnb rental in a fun way. Reels are great for targeting a younger audience and could potentially increase your Instagram followers.
The best way to create reels is to take several pictures or short videos of your space, amenities and the local community, then set them to trending sounds. And even if some of your reels are only created with several still photos set to sound, it still increases your video content and encourages followers to watch and like.
TikTok
TikTok, one of the newest social media platforms, is becoming increasingly popular, making it a wonderful place to publish videos promoting your vacation rental, especially to Gen Z travelers. Similar to Instagram reels, TikTok allows you to showcase all of your Airbnb’s special features by making quick 15–60 second movies.
TikTok chooses the video content it shows based on the preferences of each individual user. This makes it a great place to promote videos to your target audience: individuals who are most inclined to rent a vacation home or appreciate traveling in general.
What’s also great about TikTok is that you can share your content with other social media platforms, which is a good idea for increasing your content marketing and a great way to increase your subscriber base.
Email Marketing
Collect email addresses from every single guest. This seems pretty simple but most Airbnb hosts don’t do this! There are several different ways to collect email addresses for advertising but make sure that when you do this, you have permission from your guests!
One of the easiest ways to collect emails is with StayFi. StayFi is a tool directly used for short term rental marketing. It collects each email address by showing a splash page for guests to connect to your WiFi!
Learn SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a great way to increase a webpage’s rank in search engines, such as Google. Airbnb has their own SEO that that can help your listing rank higher on their search engine. This should be a very important part of your Airbnb marketing strategy since your listing on Airbnb is where most people will book. There are a few things to consider when trying to rank higher on Airbnb’s SEO.
- Format – This is where your artistic photography skills or hiring a professional photographer will pay off! It’s time to highlight those excellent images, include detailed information about your home, and provide the best Airbnb features and amenities to entice more visitors to look at your Airbnb listing.
- Pricing – According to Airbnb, setting a reasonable price can boost your ranking. It is advised to provide the finest value in your listing’s area in order to show up at the top of the search results. With the aid of a data analytics tool, you may reasonably determine your rental’s price by evaluating the price range of your competitors.
- Response Time – Your response time to potential clients and accepting booking requests quickly will increase your ranking on Airbnb. Be sure to answer messages in a timely manner and send welcome messages or booking confirmation messages as quickly as possible. A great way to do this is to have message templates set up on your Airbnb account so that you don’t have to worry about writing an entire message on the spot, especially if you are busy!
- Rental Availability – The availability of your vacation rental can also boost your Airbnb SEO ranking. It is strongly advised to add as many open days to your listings as possible and avoid cancellations.
Design Special Offers for Your Guests
Referral programs are one of the most effective ways of bringing in new business in ANY industry. It is always worth it to appeal to your guests by creating special offers! Give guests 5 or 10% off their next stay if they refer you to a friend or colleague.
You could also use this idea to create a discount for returning guests or offer them extra perks if they plan to stay again.
Creative Airbnb Marketing Strategy Ideas
Get creative with how you market your Airbnb!
Work with Influencers
Influencer marketing is an excellent marketing approach, as evidenced by the benchmark report on the subject’s recent declaration of the industry’s steady growth up to $16.4 billion in 2022. But how can you choose the best influencer collaborate with for your property among the thousands of others available? Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Followers – A crucial aspect you must take into account when choosing an influencer to work with is how many followers or subscribers they have. In order to increase bookings and sales, you should target the right following, such as celebrities, people who work in the travel industry or hospitality industry, and reliable Airbnb experts.
- Engagement – Though we have the number of followers placed at the top of our list, that doesn’t mean it’s the most important thing to look at when choosing an influencer. In fact, engagement rates are the primary indicators to look at. The amount of interaction that an influencer has with their followers has the potential to increase bookings of your Airbnb listing. Engagement rates can be determined manually or via influencer marketing tools such as Heepsy
- Budget – It’s very important to think about your budget when you are discussing payment with your influencers. Some influencers may also accept a non-monetary barter such as a free stay at your rental property in exchange for their advertisem*nt
In April, I am doing a collaboration with 2 social media influences! In exchange for a free 2 night stay, they will create content and photograph all of the unique features of my Airbnb’s.
Leave Branded Marketing Literature at Your Airbnb
Leave branded marketing materials in your rental property, such as a branded house manual. If you offer a welcome basket, this would be a great place to include a branded welcome letter, business cards, and social media information.
Use a Unique and Catchy URL
Do you have a unique angle that you could use to promote your Airbnb listing? You can purchase a domain for your Airbnb website that redirects to your Airbnb listing. This only takes just a few minutes, and if you have an easy-to-remember, catchy URL you can share it with potential guests, and they will be more likely to remember to share it with others.
Utilize Photos of Your Property in Design Blogs
This is a unique and out-of-the-box way to market your Airbnb and a strategy that many may not even think of! But, exposure is exposure! Interior design, real estate, and other blogs that feature different properties are ALWAYS looking for fresh content. The best thing is the location of your property isn’t even important.
How this will work in your market strategy is that the site will link back to your Airbnb listing which will boost your search engine ranking!
The best way to enter this area would be to search for smaller real estate or interior design companies that will likely be more receptive to your offer. If you can find the right angle to pitch to the companies such as if your property has an eco-friendly design or unique architecture you will have even better results.
Biggest Marketing Secret? REPEAT! REPEAT! REPEAT!
Repetition and consistency are key to successfully marketing your Airbnb vacation rental. Only offering one promotion, or advertising one time, or creating one reel is just not enough to be successful. It will take time and hard work but if you repeat, repeat, repeat, you’ll eventually see the bookings roll in!
My Best Airbnb Marketing Strategy Tip? Just Start Already!
If you don’t take action, nothing will happen! You have to start somewhere and a marketing plan is a great place to begin!
Final Thoughts
Whether you’re new to hosting an Airbnb or you’ve been in the business for years, there is always a need for getting the word out about your vacation rental. Having an Airbnb marketing strategy is key to how well your listing will do.
Hey, I’m Melissa.
As an Airbnb Superhost and someone who is passionate about investing in real estate, I created Beach Life Bliss to share my experiences and help short term rental operators. I have been a self-managing landlord since 2011 and started my first short term rental property in 2019.
Creating a space with amenities that guests love, beautifully designed rooms, and providing exceptional hospitality will make your Airbnb business thrive.
I hope that all of myAirbnb Hosting Tipsare helpful as you navigate the challenges and rewards of being a short term rental owner and operator!
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