Welcome to Boostly Podcast Episode 571.
In this video, Mark, Diamond, and Conrad discuss the importance of building a brand on Google that is searchable, focusing on the power of Google My Business and the Google profile.
Diamond, who works for Intercostal Net Designs (ICND), a vacation rental website designer and digital marketing agency, explains that having a searchable business is important for vacation rental managers, particularly in relation to their Google My Business profiles.
She advises that vacation rental managers ensure that their profile is optimized and correctly categorized, with updated operational hours, a physical address, and updated photos.
She stresses the importance of photos in particular, as they can help potential customers locate the business more easily.
Diamond also emphasizes the value of referrals, citing her own experience being recommended for a job at ICND.
Overall, the video highlights the importance of creating a strong, searchable brand on Google, particularly for vacation rental managers looking to increase their visibility and attract more customers.
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamps (audio)
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Transcript from the Episode
Intro
[00:00:00] Mark: In this video, we are gonna talk to you about the power of building a brand on Google that is searchable. This is one that you're gonna need to have a pen and paper on because myself, diamond from I C N D and Conrad from Buildup Bookings. Share with you a tidbit each that we wanted to give to you on number one, the power of Google, uh, the power of Google, my business, power of a Google profile.
[00:00:22] Then we talked about how it is so important to build a searchable business. And then once we've gone through that, I brought into you referrals. Alright? Okay. So thank you very much, uh, for doing this. Uh, diamond, if you could just please spend a couple of minutes just introducing yourself, I C N D, and, uh, how you came to, uh, working there and, and all the things in
[00:00:41] Conrad: between.
Diamond Intro
[00:00:42] Diamond: Okay, sure. Great. Thanks for having me today. Always lovely to see you. And Conrad, happy to do this call, uh, with the three of us. So I'm Diamond Fransen from Intercostal Net Designs, or we shorten it to I C N D. Uh, we are a vacation rental website designer and digital marketing agency based outta Ocean is North Carolina.
[00:01:01] Um, we're independently owned. We've been, uh, independently owned by Brandon SALs for 24 years. Uh, we have close to 50 employees now. Um, and some of them are on our web design side and others are on our marketing, uh, side as well. So where I fit into that puzzle is, uh, being IC and D'S brand manager. I work all of our partners.
[00:01:21] Ships with, you know, partners like here I have on the screen with you two, um, our PMs partners and every kind of, all the partners in between. Also promoting IC D'S brand itself and getting our crew and our staff ready to visit all the conventions. Like I, we have staff out today, um, in Kansas City at the VMA Spring Forum.
[00:01:42] So shout out to all those guys and girls out there. But definitely, um, coming to i c and D was, I moved from New Jersey to South Carolina and I was recommended by a friend. So referrals at its best, um, you know, to not only, uh, find new places, but also find employment as well. So, happy to be here. Today I'm just gonna really focus on, uh, Google Business profile or, or as formerly known Google Business.
[00:02:11] Um, Google my business and for vacation rental managers. This is, you know, focus. This is eligible for property vacation homes that are part of an agency or vacation rental manager unit. These aren't. Singular properties that are just out there, just kind of starting from, you know, singular home. These are services that, you know, are linked to a service, a vacation rental manager service.
[00:02:37] Um, you know, I see these vacation rental managers coming in to I C N D and one of the first things I I look at, um, is their Google My Business, their Google business profile. You know, are they set up? Are they optimized? Are, are they even in the right industry category? Um, and I think those are the one things, those the, you know, the first things I always kind of steer people to go look at, you know, do you have the right industry, you know, set up, you know, you may have a vacation rental manager company, but do you have maybe.
Setting up your correct industry is always important
[00:03:13] Real estate, you know, is that an option that you can either add or take away If that's not what you, you know, you're doing, um, setting up your indu this, uh, correct industry is always important. And then look at your hours. So, I don't know if a lot of vacation rental managers understand this or know this, but you could have operational hours for your physical.
[00:03:32] Building or storefront, but also your service hours. So that's, I find that's something that people miss. If you have 24 hour maintenance service or you have 24 hour call-in reservation service, you can set that up as a subset of your business hours and have those. Um, there so people can see them.
[00:03:51] Physical address, really important, especially for people coming in from out of town that need to pick up, you know, a key or something at the office or go there for, you know, pick up. Maybe they're getting a package delivered there. Having that physical address and beyond. Most, What's some of my most important, um, tips I always give is keep those photos updated.
[00:04:12] You know, I know driving into a new area, not familiar, don't know where to go to maybe get, like I said, a key or a package or something, and having a picture of your building in your Google business profile is paramount. Cause I'm like, you can do the 360 view. You can see. Look for other landmarks to know where you're going.
[00:04:30] Cuz at the end of your trip, if you've traveled a long time, you're tired and you just wanna get to where you need to be to get to your vacation rental. Um, you know, photos, like I just said, are very important. Having those realistic photos of what's going on. And one of the most under, uh, utilized, I think option that I see is the posts.
[00:04:49] So posts, um, are something that you can do very similar to a social media post, but this post you can link out to, um, one of your website pages that talks about specials or events happening in your area if you have them. So you can link your Google, my. Post to a page on your website. They do expire after some time, so you do have to go back in and update them frequently, especially if you're doing a post about specials.
[00:05:19] Um, but utilizing the post option I think is really important. And then checking all your amenities, you know, making sure that, um, especially if you're a, a condo, um, or a hotel, if you're in that business category, having all your amenities checks is also something to just go in, make sure they're up to date, um, cuz they help you optimize your global business profile for sure.
[00:05:45] Conrad: So,
[00:05:45] Mark: uh, Conrad, do, do you have any questions or any, any sort of thing to add to that for, for, for Diamond before I go on with mine?
[00:05:53] Conrad: Yeah, I think I'm always curious too about maybe a step before what Diamond was saying, everything she said made a lot of sense to me and the only thing I would maybe consider adding on is like reviews.
Having a lot of good reviews
[00:06:02] I don't know if you touched on that piece, but like having a lot of reviews obviously is good. Having a lot of good reviews is even better, right. With respect to, yeah. You know, I've done brand searches before. I'm sure you have as well, both of you as well, and you go and look and they have like a 3.7 outta five stars on.
[00:06:15] And that's like red flags, like alarm bells ringing, like what is going on with this company? Right. And actually use it as a vetting tool for myself on my side of things. So I go look at someone as a consumer, you know, considering booking a place. I'll go look at their reviews on Google and consider if I think this is a place I might wanna stay or give my money to.
[00:06:30] And I know that, you know, consumers, guests think the same way. So reviews maybe would both be one piece I'd slide in there. You know, stimulating reviews is not the most easy thing to do in the world, but a lot of it is just like asking, like asking your. A lot of our clients have it in like their post departure outreach, communication, Hey, hey, leave us a review if you had a good experience.
[00:06:46] That sort of thing. So I'd say that, and then the piece that I would say we, you know, if we go one step above that, it would be why is someone's searching for the actual name of the company in the first place? So the piece that I think is actually really important is brand, like having a unique brand that people actually wanna look for and search for and seek out.
[00:07:02] That's actually one of the most valuable things that I think you can do, because whether you have one property or 10, or a hundred or a thousand, The best thing for people to have is at least something to look for that's unique to you. If you call your property at the beach house, then it's the same, the beach house as in thou, 5,000 other places all around the world, nevermind.
[00:07:18] Just even your market, I think you're really gonna struggle to actually generate people finding you specifically based on a platform search on Airbnb or VRBO or something like that. So my logic would be that if you can get people actually look for your company, that's the best thing in the world because then they're, they've narrowed down the options.
[00:07:33] Every host in the market, uh, even to a professional manager, to just you specifically. And that would apply in my mind, whether you're a single property host, what I call a prohost who maybe has multiple listings, or whether you're a property manager and you manage for other people. So that would be my logic is well, how can we tie the brand in so people look and find the Google My Business in the first place, um, you know, to diamonds.
[00:07:51] From diamonds points from a second ago, and then what would make them actually wanna stay with me? What do I offer that other people don't? And that's maybe something that, you know, you'd want to dig into and see how you can grow further. For sure. My experience with that Mark is that you basically need, like if you read the terms of service in the terms of conditions, That's on the allowed list on Google.
[00:08:07] You basically need an office. I mean, that's basically what you need. So in theory, I actually have a client that I work with that has like two properties, but he actually has a legitimate verified Google My Business profile set up because he has a co-working space and then he actually has like a sign even on that co-working space, like name a property manager.
[00:08:20] So there's little. Workarounds that are like following all the rules. And you know, Google shouldn't take you down where you have like signage, uh, et cetera, but it basically has to be in office. That's basically what needs to be verified on that side of things. So I'll Google my business, my business, uh,
Google vacation rentals is starting to pick up
[00:08:33] Mark: yeah, I was gonna say, and obviously Google Vacation Rentals is starting to pick up a bit of heat now.
[00:08:36] There's more property management software tools that are synced into, um, the Google vacation rental program. And obviously that's the easiest bay to get listed on Google vacation rental at the, at the, at the moment. But I love that little hack that he did. He added in. Coworking space on the ,
[00:08:52] Conrad: it was, well,
[00:08:53] Diamond: you have to have a postcard.
[00:08:54] Yeah, you have to have, yeah, exactly. You know, a, a postcard mailed to a physical location. So that is, yeah, that is a workaround for
[00:09:02] Conrad: sure. Yeah. The, the way I see that though, mark, is this to me is an and not an or. So it's not Google My Business or Google Vacation Rentals. I think in a perfect world, it's, and if you have the means and capability of doing, Yeah, Google Vacation Rentals is probably where they're gonna keep pushing.
[00:09:14] Most likely. We'll see, cuz it doesn't seem like they've been quick on the uptake to monetize that product really aggressively. I, I was wrong. Like if you asked me two years ago, I would've said, oh yeah, Google's gonna have Google vacation rentals and then they're gonna do what they've done with hotels where it's gonna be like commission based or you're gonna have to do like hotel price ads.
[00:09:29] And actually bid on, you know, your property or your properties to show up on that block and show higher. That hasn't been the case yet, at least with the clients that we work with. They're listed in there, but it's just a matter of time, right? Google's gonna monetize every surface they can, as long as they don't get antitrust first, right?
[00:09:43] They're gonna figure out ways to do that. So I, I think the good part is for some people that 60%, maybe you mentioned a moment ago, mark, perhaps they're out of luck. They may really not be able to go down this path that Diamond's talking about. They may just not have the ability to do so and follow the terms.
[00:09:56] But for the people that can, obviously everything, everything I think we talked about here is pretty valid. Um, but the Google vacation rental, I think is an, and if you can do both, fantastic. If you're only eligible for one and you can do it the right way, I think you're definitely on the right path there for sure.
[00:10:08] But yeah,
Outro
[00:10:09] Mark: thank you so much. I really enjoyed this. My, I, my idea when I came up with this podcast episode was just to bring together, Two people that I love to follow. I love the podcast. Just come together and just talk market in for an hour, which we have done so and we've been able to tag all nicely together where I feel like we've laid a, a foundation of, of what every single host, property management company, short term rental, whatever you niche you wanna put yourself in this world of hospitality should be.
[00:10:35] So making sure that guests can easily find him and block what we all want them do. So thank you so much. Thank you for tuning in and we'll be back together very soon in a few days with with another episode that's coming out. So thank you very much and we'll see you all very soon, but up having a blast.
[00:10:49] Gonna get
[00:10:50] Diamond: it on the Bruce Lee podcast, Bruce Lee. Let Bruce Lee cuz it's so hard on the teas loose leaf, making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely.
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