Yeah, I know.
Content Marketing is intimidating.
Here’s a truth I have discovered.
When you’re staring down into an abyss of overwhelm and ready to jump at the first idea that pops into your head, STOP.
Take a step back. Look up. Take a deep breath. Okay. Now repeat after me, “I need a plan.”
I get it. You feel like you should be doing something, so you just blindly grasp at anything.
This is not a good strategy. It doesn’t lead you anywhere you want to be.
Here’s a difficult truth that every marketer, and his or her clients, need to learn.
A failure to plan is a plan to fail.
And now that I have shared my inspirational nugget for the day, let me give you a quick analogy.
I had a fitness coach tell me once that everyone should exercise according to a program.
Think of your content marketing plan as your exercise program. If you do nothing but upper body, you’ll have some kick-ass triceps and pectorals, but your legs will be a skinny, scrawny mess. All your parts have to be in alignment for optimum performance.
It’s the same thing. If you spend all your marketing time and budget on Facebook, your Instagram visitors will abandon you.
Or if you post video after video to YouTube, but don’t share them back to your website, your site visitors will think you’ve abandoned them, which is even worse.
You must have a rounded plan, which takes all the relevant social channels into consideration to create a well-rounded strategy that maximizes engagement and subsequent followers.
So, how do you get this plan?! Ah, yes, my pretties, follow me.
#1. What Are Your Goals?
In other words, why are you creating this particular marketing campaign?
Do you want to reach out to your past guests and invite them back to your location?
Are you trying to find new guests to book one of your properties?
Trying to reach property owners in search of a new management company?
Or is it perhaps something different altogether?
You’re trying to get your name out there in the marketplace.
You’re looking for more followers, who will support and magnify your brand.
You’re trying to improve your SEO to rank higher in the search engines.
The answer to this first question is crucial. It will shape how you craft your messages.
#2. Who is Your Ideal Customer?
This is drilling down on #1. If you’re searching for new families to visit your location, you’ll have to think about things like:
How old are the kids?
Do they have pets?
What is the family’s vacation budget?
Why are they changing rental companies?
Marketing to a family with 3 kids, ages 13 and up not bringing a pet is a very different beast than marketing to a young family, with 2 kids under 5, who are bringing a pet.
Your marketing has to address, and solve, the pain points of each demographic. If you can do that, you’ve probably just gained yourself a loyal new guest.
#3. In what form will you present your information?
There are so many ways you can get your message out there, it’s really dizzying:
Blogs
Case Studies/Testimonials
Infographics
Videos
Social Media
There are many more to choose from. In the case of vacation rentals, I believe those I’ve listed above will most help you reach your intended audience. Attention spans are growing shorter and shorter. Both visuals and videos will help you to maximize your potential guest’s attention.
#4 Which Social Channels are Right for Vacation Rentals?
To be competitive in this business, you must expand your marketing to social media channels. There simply isn’t a choice anymore.
You already know the big ones. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest. They each serve a different niche and you need to determine which is best for your marketing intentions.
Facebook seems to always come in at #1. It’s a great place to break down your blog posts in to smaller, digestible chunks.
YouTube is now the #2 social channel. Do you have your channel and videos posted?
Twitter is great for expanding your audience and pushing traffic back towards your website.
Instagram is a bit of a different beast. It is definitely heavily visual and allows for the opportunity to connect with your audience in a more casual manner. You could even consider a few “behind the scenes” posts on this platform.
Pinterest is also very visually oriented and can be an excellent marketing tool. It is very labor-intensive to set up and maintain.
#5. Create a content calendar.
Remember my working out example? This is where you create that “whole-body” plan. There are several excellent free and paid apps in which you can lay out your social media posts well in advance and they deploy them at the day and time you specify. Check out Hootsuite.com (my personal favorite), Buffer.com, SproutSocial.com or CoSchedule.com.
Here is your two new favorite words:
Continuity. Consistency.
Make sure you use the same colors and fonts throughout all of your posts, regardless of platform. Your presence MUST be consistent or you will confuse your audience. Your message can change a bit (from formal to casual) depending on the social channel. Your logo should be on every piece of marketing you put out.
When you plan your content calendar, make sure it reasonable and doable.
Why? Because you HAVE to stick to it. Your growing audience will develop expectations based on the frequency of your posts. The worst thing you can do is disappoint them.
#6. Study Your Metrics
One of the great things about any of the content calendars I mentioned above is that they all come with analytics. These statistics will tell you if you are reaching your intended audience, and producing the results you were hoping for. You analytics are invaluable in guiding you to refine and polish your messaging.
#7. Decide What Success Looks Like
In order to know if your campaign has been successful, you have to define what success looks like for you.
f you’re more interested in gaining new followers, then you’ll be thrilled with an increase in that number, even if your sales numbers don’t necessarily go up significantly.
If you’re looking to increase sales, you won’t care much that you got 1,000 new followers if you’ve only gained 4% in your sales numbers.
This last step is actually the most important determining factor in whether your content marketing campaign was successful.
Like I said earlier in this post, it’s intimidating. There’s actually far more thought, effort, knowledge and huge sprinkling of savvy that goes into a content marketing campaign that most people realize.
With good, solid planning and time management skills, you can do this. You can be a great marketer.
If you need help for whatever reason (too busy, no interest, not techno savvy or any number of other reasons), please reach out. I’d be thrilled to discuss a content marketing strategy for your vacation rental company.
Thanks for reading!