Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 11 Episode 133. This is a recap of my Facebook live where I talked about how to promote your hospitality business with Facebook Groups.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
00:00 Start
02:30 Boostly tune-up
05:00 Proactive Marketing
05:20 Promoting on Facebook groups
06:50 What we will do
09:10 Create a Google Sheet
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Visual – YouTube
Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
Okay, welcome back to the Boostly podcast and I'm doing a live case study here for Boostly tuneup if you have been watching, listening and you are interested for me to help you tune up your marketing your systems, your structures in place, then email [email protected], if I get enough people messaged me saying tune-up, then I will turn this into a product in the future. Right now. I'm testing it with Casa4U in Javier for one apartment that they've been struggling to rent out. And I'm just going in and just given everything a tune up, we're going to be delving into two types of marketing practices. proactive and reactive.
So far, the main thing that we've been doing is we've been focusing on the essentials. So because we've got six weeks to get this property booked out, we're going to focus on the platforms that have already got thousands, and millions of people going on every single day looking for accommodation. So we've filtered that down, we've worked out what they are. We've got a Dutch site, we have Airbnb, we have booking those that have free main ones that we're going to focus on again, go back to the very first episode in this series, you'll notice I did a bit of a training calledboostly.co.uk/listingsites. And you can go watch that video now on YouTube. And you can put that into practice.
So we found out what the most important and the most searched for locations were. So when we went to go and update the Airbnb optimize the page, we made it much more appealing. We made it much more visible. And as also as well, we made it look like Casa4U is a property management company for they knew what they were doing. And again, we made sure that the branding was there. And we're encouraging people to run a Google search, I will talk about the importance of that in a future episode. Then we did the same thing on booking.com. We utilized the really good channel manager part of lodgify to mark up the prices so that what we could do is we could add in last-minute discounts. And we also add in 360 pictures, change pictures around and just added a little bit more. Then we sort of discussed the lodgify website, the pros and cons of that. And then we delve into the dynamic pricing software tool which is price labs and how we can use that to manipulate AirBnB and the likes.
Proactive Marketing
So now what we're gonna do now we've got those working and those are being reactive as they know they're going out to the world and we're gonna see what comes back off it, we can go and be proactive. Bearing in mind if you watch the episode on MailChimp, we are now trying to build our email list.
Promoting on Facebook groups
Now what I want to do is I want to utilize the largest social media network to go and find potential guests on Facebook groups. So if I share my screen, again over, I've had a little look. So what I wanted to do is I went into groups, which is here, and I wanted to do a little bit of research. So I typed in Javier. Okay, I went into groups. And as you can see, there are lots of different groups in here. And now what I want to do is I want to find between three to 10 Facebook groups are posting, now you're going to be looking for a few aspects here, you're gonna be looking for niche and you're going to be looking for location and you are going to be looking for accommodation. Now who are the niche now what are the majority of the guests that Casa4U seem to get. Now a lot of them get a lot of Dutch people, because obviously they are Dutch. And they communicate primarily in Dutch but we also can communicate in English and Spanish but the majority of our guests are Dutch coming to the area. Now with lockdowns and things reopening there are a lot of Dutch people now starting to come. But they aren't really arriving until the end of July start of August, the people that a majority who are going to be traveling to the area right now will be Spanish, or it will be people that are already living in Spain looking for a quick summer break. So what we want to be doing here is we want to do a couple of things.
What we will do
Number one, find the groups now I've done a couple of different variations of searches, I've found a couple of really interesting groups. The next thing, what I would do after finding these would go and look at the rules, I want to make sure that I am allowed to post for vacation rentals in these groups, you can only find that in the about section. Those that have got groups that are let's just say better moderated, they will crystal clear state what you can and can't do. So that will help you filter it down. So I've got 10 groups there on my screen, I want to filter that down between three and five. Now what I'm going to do is I am going to create in a Google doc or notes on my phone or a computer, some text, now I'm going to be creating one version in Dutch and I'm gonna be creating one version in English. And I'm also going to collect and grab some images. Now you want the images to be that that's going to appeal to your customer avatar. Now this apartment can sleep up to six adults, it can be used for families, but what we're noticing is that the families are still in school for the majority here in Spain. And the people that are looking to travel here are groups of friends, maybe a couple of couples, again, no parties or any nonsense like that. But those are people that are starting to travel. So what we're going to do is we're going to in the pictures put things that will appeal to them. So the beach, you know, you can maybe have a nice scenic shot of Javier have obviously, I've got a picture of the apartment picture of the living area. And you know, again, really do set the scene.
So what I mean by set the scene, go back and look at the videos that we did with overlooked to overbooked, how they tell you how to stage your pictures and all of that loveliness. So again, once you've done that, we're going to go into the group. And what's really important here you'll have your copy. So you can copy it, you can paste it in, make sure that you amend the text or have the text the same in every single group because Facebook will see that and they will do you on spamming. Okay, and it's happened to me before it's not nice. So make sure that you amend the text makes you amend the pictures, don't just do copy and paste and everyone. And what you can do pick three to five groups go and post in there.
Create a Google Sheet
And what I would do is I would set up a Google Sheet. Okay, and then I would just call it Facebook groups And what you're gonna do here, I would do the URL, I would do the name of the group. amount of people number in the group and date posted. So if for example, let's just use cheap holiday rentals. Spain is the first one. So that is the URL. It's cheap holiday rentals Spain, the amount of people in that group. Okay. And if I posted on the date that I posted it in, put that in there. Okay. Now again, what You would then do is, say in two or three days time, you will go back in and you will post again, post again, with a little message, change up the copy, change the images slightly and make it stand out. But also what I would do when I go back into the group, I would filter it because there may be people asking for recommendations of places to visit, etc. So you can bounce onto a comment, or you can be proactive with the post. And again, that would take five to 10 minutes, once every couple of days, five to 10 minutes, once every couple of days, everybody can fit down into the schedule. And again, if you can pick three to five Facebook groups that you actively show up every few days, over time, you will be known as the person to go-to person. So what you could also do, which is what I like to do look at some questions because not everybody will go into these groups looking for a place to stay. Some will be asking for recommendations on where to visit, again, in a comment jump in.
People will start to recognize and what they will do is and they will be able to engage with you more and it might become to the point where you become the go-to person from simply just helping people out where people will go to you. What do you do, and that's the beauty of Facebook groups in the social aspect of it. Again, you don't have to spend every single waking hour in there because you haven't got the time. But once every few days pop into three to five Facebook groups and doing that and keeping a track of it in our Google Sheet that we've just created there. You'll be able to keep it monitored and systemized.
Focus on where the people are at, in these Facebook groups. It's really beneficial to do it. And again, it's a great place to get started. doesn't take a lot of time. And who knows what can come out or the back of it. Basically direct bookings, future guests coming back and back and back.
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