Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 11 Episode 157. This is a recap of my Facebook live where I helped Prime Tourist Park in Victoria get more direct bookings.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
00:00 Start
00:55 Why marketing review works
02:00 Mini marketing review
04:00 Website
07:10 TripAdvisor
08:20 Instagram and Facebook
10:50 My recommendations
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Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
Welcome back to another episode of The Boostly podcast. And we're going to start something a little bit different. And we'll see how it goes. And if you like it, please let me know in the comments or replying in an email. So for those of you that have stuck around for a while, you'll know that once every couple of months, I do a long version podcast called the marketing review live. And the way that marketing review live works is that we will get a host on that haS filled in this form, which is the review form. And we will do a zoom call, we'll talk together, and we'll go over the form. And we'll go through the answers. And what we'll try and do is we'll try and help that host come over what their biggest pain points are when it comes to marketing. And as you can see the information that we get tells me everything that I need to know. And then we can give some advice. And off we go.
Why marketing review works
Now, the reason why the marketing reviews work is that the problem that host may be having a guarantee that somebody else watching in live will be able to relate and be able to get some from it. Now they work well, but they take a lot of time, 45 minutes to an hour, maybe more. And the whole point of doing these daily podcasts is that I want that to be lots of episodes that are under 10 minutes. So hosts all over the world, doesn't matter how busy you are, you can tune in every single day and pick up something that you can put into practice now.
And this got me onto the idea of doing mini-marketing reviews. And I've got a couple to start off with over the course of the coming days. And if you would like to be part of it, all you need to do is you need to go to boostly.co.uk/review and fill the form. And when you get to the bottom, I'll ask you a very simple question. Would you like to be part of a marketing review, just tick the Yes button. I'll get a little notification. And who knows you may be part of the next round of series that we do for this.
Mini marketing review
Now we've got a couple and I'm going to start off with the first-ever one. We're going to start off over in Australia, Victoria, Australia and Sandy Kate Hutchins. So Sunday, I'll make sure that you see this video, I'll tag you in on the Instagram or wherever else may be. So Hello, thank you so much for filling us in. And we're gonna start off with you.
So first and foremost, thank you for filling in the form. And we're gonna do a super quick mini-marketing review. So less than 10 minutes, we're going to look at a couple of things that Sandy's filled in and told me about the business. And then as best as I can with the information that I have, I will try and give you some help some pointers that will get you to where you want to be. So I'm not going to share the screen start off with but I'm going to go through a couple of the answers when it comes to pricing software so I asked what pricing software was it price labs wheelhouse beyond just put I look at what my local areas pricing and I just match that's well different talk about that. I asked what the biggest pain point, lockdowns, COVID, a lot of people have said that, where would you like to be in the next six months employing staff because they're doing everything themselves, her and a partner. And the business is really cool. So the business is called prime pet-friendly tourist park in Victoria. And we'll go through that in a second. It really nailed down on the knees, which is what I love. And it is reflected in the reviews and a ranking etc.
Interestingly, they get a lot of their bookings come from a Google search, which you know, you've got to combine a lot of things, as you will know, from the stats and the surveys that came out. People came out a lockdown wanting to travel with their pets they would prefer in pet-friendly accommodation. I only spoke about this recently, a couple episodes ago 6% More Bookings increase in bookings if you take pets compared to any other year, which is really interesting.
So they haven't sent emails ever in such a long time. So we'll definitely talk about that. But let's delve in Shall we let's have a look at the website.
Website
Now first and foremost, this is not a Boostly website, I do have to state that but it is a very good website. They tick a lot of the boxes. I like on the top here, they've got the button here, which stands out, which is we'll talk about this a lot. Instead of it being availability and pricing, I would change it because it is a bit overbearing, maybe change it to check prices or it could be check availability or book now you know, something short, sharp and sweet because it will make this reduced a little bit in order to stand out make it look a little bit better.
Now instantly, when you land on here, you know a lot more about the property. My personal opinion would be I would go for this image here. And I would have it as just a standalone image. And like I always talk about you gotta have a tagline. So you got to tell everybody who you are and what you do. So it could be for example, prime Park prime tourist Park number one rated pet-friendly accommodation in Victoria so really give it because they are really good. If you will go look at TripAdvisor in a second, they wanted top rated properties. And again, the boats and the dolphins are great. But I think that one of their key aspects their key selling points is they are very dog friendly. Okay, so as you can see, this is what's called above the fold. So obviously want people to scroll down or click go to obviously find out more their booking engine By the way, his new book, very popular in Australia. Mark berry is always pestering me to find out more about new book. Again, it's one on the list. I haven't had time to do so yet. But yeah, new book really popular in Australia, I have had a look at it. A lot of people do rave about it as well. Absolutely 100% dog friendly, they literally let you know straight away. Absolutely 100% dog friendly. So Sandy, what I would say here would be welcome to prime Park, you could put that here, you could put absolutely 100% dog friendly right here, it feels to me that they get asked us that question a lot. Check their reviews on Google trip, and Facebook, wiki campers and camp mate. So obviously they're listed everywhere we get a lot of good reviews, etc, etc. Pet Friendly accommodation. Again, they're really doubling down on the aspect on their on their avatar that they are very pet friendly. So you can scroll down local attractions about always, which is always a good thing to have on. In my opinion, what I would do is I would get rid of a lot of this. To be honest, this is what's called the junk drawer. If you've ever read storybrand, you know Donald Miller, I would leave all of this to have at the bottom. And what I would do is I would actually fill out that homepage with a little bit more. So talk about, you know, the facilities that you have x, y and Zed. And obviously you don't have to list it out big blocks of text. But when you do it this way, it and you want to have 80% of the information on your homepage for many reasons that I've talked about before. But 80% of your whole website information beyond that homepage, just on the scroll, you just literally taken off all of the mental barriers that are going on in your customers head right now.
Trip Advisor
So let's just have a very quick look at TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor is obviously a very important tourist Park, which if you got hit number four of 42 speciality lodging, which is fantastic, well-done lots of great reviews, very rarely is only one or two bad reviews, which you've got so many people coming through, it's really good to see. And what I love about what Sandy is doing is responds to everybody. And it's different in every way shape, or form. Even the bad ones responds to it in a professional manner. So this is new book right here. As you can see here, they have the little fear of loss, someone in more more level booked, which is kind of cool. Again, you can do your dates, etc, etc. Now, one thing that I do love about TripAdvisor is that not only can you have your pictures, etc. But you can also have the guest pictures as well, which really does give you a good indication of a bit more behind the scenes of the property, what they're providing, what are your guests showing out about and being a pet friendly property, you're going to get lots of amazing pictures of the campsite of the park. And you're going to get pictures of the pets as well, really tapping into that niche.
Instagram and Facebook
Again, I can see we have the images, I can see this is an app that maybe isn't so used to posting I mean, obviously we've got some some great images here behind the scenes, I'd definitely be focusing more on the services that you offer, I believe from having a little scroll down and looking at facilities. Obviously you've got the waterpark swimming pool, boat parking, off leash, dog run, dog cleaning, doggy daycare, Tesla recharge. Again, these are the things that I'd be I'd be talking about blogging about and definitely emailing, you have definitely got that social vibe at the property as a new meet and greet. Like you said, You do a lot of it yourself. I definitely think people would love to keep in touch with you via email, I think of it as a long last pen pal. So definitely be collecting your guest details. And there's a number of ways you can do so contact form, email, pre or post stay, try and get people over to MailChimp and then keep in contact that way. Now regarding hiring and regarding have taken a little bit time back trying to figure out what tasks you should be doing and not be doing. That's something that we can't do in a market interview, you have to figure that out yourself. And I definitely would recommend it.
Hiring coming out of COVID and pandemic is obviously very hard and especially if you're in a bit more of a rural location in Australia is always going to be tricky to do but the more you can do it is definitely recommended because then you'll be able to focus on the things that you like doing within the business. So maybe the social media or whatever it isn't for you, but what I would definitely recommend doing is if you're going to Hi Vera hire elsewhere, please look to do so as soon as possible. So you told me a couple of things number one pricing you just look at what everybody else is doing. I think with the emergence of pricing software tools will house price labs beyond please do go and check them out. It really will help you even if you know you can just get a bump in 10 12% obviously staycation is going to be in Australia the big source of your bookings definitely in 2021 you know coming out of winter which is now in into the spring and the summer and definitely moving into the early part of 2023 until you know we'll start to reopen Australia's to has to reopen. And even out of that I think that the majority of your guests would be from obviously Australia maybe a four or five six hour radius around where you live. Obviously what campervan facilities and whatnot. I definitely think email is a route you need to go down and also as well try and collect that data as soon as possible.
My recommendations
So my two recommendations for yourself Sunday when you do come around to watch this number one look to invest in a pricing software tool wheelhouse price labs beyond free to check out also as well look to use MailChimp is a free software tool start to collect your guest data and start to email to a monthly email even if it's just a picture of a dog. That is literally all you need to do. It will keep people coming back for more because pet owners love to see pictures of other pets it's just it is what it is and you've got fantastic places to start you could just go and grab pictures from your TripAdvisor page which is obviously still here. Or you can go into Instagram click on tagged and that is what people are uploading of your stay at your property onto their social media right now. So well done I love what you're doing. Please do keep going and let me know when you watch this video. And for those of you that have tuned in, what do you think what should Sandy be doing to generate more bookings more revenue? should she be looking at email? What else should Could she be looking for? I pass the floor over to you.
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