InterCoastal Net Designs Staff, Author at InterCoastal Net Designs Blog

How To Get A Video To Go Viral?

By Vanessa Humes

Did you catch the video of the frozen alligators? I mean, who didn’t? It reached hundreds of thousands of people across the world and grew their Facebook followers to over 12,000 likes. Just minutes down the road from ICND world headquarters in Ocean Isle Beach, NC, our clients and friends over at the Shallotte River Swamp Park took a few videos that they’ve been posting on Facebook, and all of the sudden it’s on the DailyMail and National Geographic! Who knew?

Finding the right content

Getting a video to go viral is no easy task. You have to get it filmed, post it online, and pray to the viral gods that it continues to get picked up. But once it takes off it’s going to drive brand awareness, traffic, and ultimately–Conversions.

So what’s it take to make your video go viral like that? With Social Media integrating more and more viral videos in their organic feed, it seems like something we should all be integrating into our digital marketing strategy. But how do we make our videos go viral?

Its about unique content. Generally, it takes an original idea to make it big. There’s generally some copycat attention you can get from doing a related video, but for the most part, it takes an original video. Think about the momma giraffe that was pregnant and we all watched the Youtube feed for months waiting for her to go into birth. There’s some copycats with other types of animals, but nothing that big.

Ok, now you are in the vacation rental business, you really don’t have pregnant animals you can video… But you have amazing animals in your destinations. A lot of the vacation destination is getting into the nature and seeing animals. If you go to the beach and you see dolphins swimming it’s added value to your vacation. Swimming dolphins aren’t the greatest, but jumping herds of dolphins visible from the beach that you get just the right reel of, are. So it goes back to the originality and capturing just that right moment. Have a contest with your guests, millennials love this, to share the best video of their vacation.

The other aspect of the video should strike a chord in the emotion of the viewer. It’s going to make them laugh, cry, jump out of fear, etc. Most people want to share upbeat content. Like with the alligator, it’s all about the cold-blooded reptile surviving the bitter cold weather. Something we’ve never seen or encountered in our cozy, warm homes and offices.

The content should be short, sweet, and to the point. Again, it’s going to be very spontaneous. There may be some editing needed to get there. You’ll lose more than half of your audience before a minute, so cut to the chase.

Going Viral

Once you have your content posted and you see it’s starting to take off, tag or message your local news sources. They like to share in almost any viral video for the traffic and visibility of their social media posts. Once a few local news outlets pick it up, you know you are on to something and can start reaching out to your feeder markets. Those destinations have a good population interested in your area and will likely pick it up too. And really, from there, you can tag any of the big news outlets, but they’ll probably have picked you up. At this point, not only are you online, but you’ve probably gotten some free TV media time, as well.

So managers, get your social media managers out there looking for the right content to get out there. Buy them some quick video software to spruce it up and cut it into a solid reel, and watch your social media presence soar.

ICND Forms Distribution Partnership with Popular BookingPal

Yes, you read that correctly!! We are happy to announce that BookingPal, the world’s largest and most advanced vacation rental distribution platform, has signed an agreement with ICND to be our preferred partner for the distribution of rental listings!!

This is wonderful news for clients of InterCoastal Net Designs because it provides them total access to BookingPal’s extensive network of the biggest online travel websites that include Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia, HomeAway, Priceline, VRBO, and other major sites.

ICND Forms Distribution Partnership with BookingPal

Seamless and Efficient Software

Clients of ICND will be able to create listings and connect property data seamlessly, eliminating all manual work. Setup is fast and BookingPal’s reservation and payment processing team is always available to ensure accuracy and support for all listings.

BookingPal provides property managers with the best tools available while furthering the vacation rental industry’s progress in technology. This will result in more direct online bookings, increased conversions and strengthened brand awareness giving property managers the ability to grow their business by capturing the additional market share they may not currently have.

What makes BookingPal worth getting excited about?

It’s the largest network of Vacation Rental and OTA Channels
Access to Revenue Optimization and Yield Management tools
Access to BookingPal’s content optimization specialists
Real-time listing quality feedback
Fully Automated Distribution Platform
Payment Management Services
Guest Inquiry Support

“We’re thrilled to have ICND as a preferred marketing partner for property managers,” said Alex Aydin, CEO and Founder of BookingPal. “This relationship will allow ICND to extend its value for their property managers. With BookingPal’s large distribution network and added layers of marketing and revenue management services, ICND clients will have the ability to boost their marketing efforts, get their properties in front of more vacation rental seekers seamlessly, and significantly increase their revenue.”

ICND Forms Distribution Partnership with BookingPal

Benefits of BookingPal

The BookingPal platform offers both managers of vacation rentals and property owners superior revenue benefits by utilizing proprietary products to optimize distribution capabilities including:

The myBookingPal channel manager software toolset provides electronic connectivity between a supplier of rep level and key level properties and 3rd party distribution channels.

myOptimize scores content to calculate listing quality and provide key feedback to achieve optimal channel placement and conversion.

Additional managed distribution services offered through BookingPal include consolidated contracting, consolidated accounting and reporting, additional content syndication services, revenue and yield management tools, consulting, analytics, transaction processing and payment services.

At ICND our commitment to innovation and research has allowed us to assure our clients stay on the cutting edge of their industry. As the preferred distribution partner for InterCoastal Net Designs, BookingPal will connect our clients to the largest vacation rental and online travel agency network worldwide while taking advantage of unique content optimization and their revenue maximization services.

How To Generate Direct Bookings

By Vanessa Humes

Recently HomeAway has let their customers know that they will be changing the way that leads communicate with companies and owners that list their properties on HomeAway.

As one of the last Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) to email leads and allow direct communication with guests before booking, many Vacation Rental Managers are concerned that they are going to lose valuable lead information.

To many owners / vacation rental companies, they view these leads as part of their marketing plan by integrating follow-up and promotion in their marketing mix.

I think back to hotels in the early to mid-2000s. They often used the OTA’s (Online Travel Agencies) like Expedia, Travelocity, and Priceline to move inventory. However, they found that they were training their guests to go to these sites for the best deals. (Sound familiar?).

To add insult to injury, the amount of commissions that were getting paid to OTAs made it a struggle to keep their operations budgets in the positive. And I think, in a lot of ways, it drove down the rental rates as the OTA’s insisted on rate parity and getting the lowest bargains to promote on their websites. Now, these OTAs have a big presence in the vacation rental industry.

To be completely honest with you, there is no perfect solution. But, it’s not all doom and gloom. If you are a new company, you probably rely heavily on Online Travel Agencies (OTA’s) to help you fill your inventory.

But I tell you this, you have to have a strong digital marketing presence, look at the cost per acquisition (CPA) of both guests on your website and on OTA’s, and focus on the lifetime value of that guest — with extensive marketing post-booking to ensure repeat guests.

It’s really all about developing your own digital footprint with your guests.

9 Opportunities & Marketing Strategies to Generate Direct Bookings

Property Brand Optimization

It may seem really obvious, but make sure the Name of the rental and the Address of the rental are Optimized in the Search Results (or SERPs – Search Engine Result Pages) to send traffic to your website.

Also, be sure to optimize any features that are unique to that rental. For example, we stayed in a home in the Outer Banks that had the pool table from the movie The Hustler.

When I couldn’t remember the rental company, I was able to Google the "Vacation Rental OBX with pool table from the Hustler," and it came up in the results.

Same with the name of your property. Say the rental’s name is "Paradise at Penn Cove," make sure you are Dominating the Search Engines for the name and addresses of each property. Having a good URL structure with the name included will help increase those results.
Mine and inform past leads from OTA’s

If you are like many of my clients, you probably have a Large Database of leads from HomeAway, VRBO, Flipkey, etc. Harvest your leads and store them in an outside database. This can be an export in Excel if you don’t have a CRM.

Use these databases to enhance your marketing. Make sure you inform your customers that they will save the booking fees (up to 15%) by booking direct on your website. Let them know, for this particular unit, they will get the best deal on your site – guaranteed. Think about using repeat guest specials. What’s their incentive to book with you again?
Invest in an Email Marketing program that allows you to mine your data

We have a great program that can tap into your historical booking data, help you mine data from previous stays, and help you reach out to people and remarket through PPC and Social Media, your past guests. The message is again, Book Direct and Save, but also Branding.
Make sure you are Generating Leads from your Website

There are many key points of gathering leads. But the most popular we find on our sites are the "Request More Information" from the property detail page, as well as Send to a Friend.

Remember, vacation rental guests generally want more information, ask questions, and engage with the company they are going to rent through.

Vacation rentals have a history of being a little more "high maintenance" than booking a hotel room. People may do a search to find your website to talk with you more, verify rates and best deals, and search out specials.

Make sure you have all of this information readily available on your site.
Use Remarketing

Social media and paid advertising (PPC) allow you to stay in front of people who visit your website. You can put tracking on your website (in the code) that stores the pages that a visitor goes to you. Based on the activity, you can serve up ads on Social Media and Display ads through Google’s Ad Network. Use this to increase brand awareness, stay in front of visitors who haven’t converted, and promote deals and sales that can turn a "looker" into a "booker."
Bid on your Brand in PPC

If you haven’t noticed yet, you will soon find out that not only are OTA’s dominating Organic Search, no longer linking out to your site or promoting your brand on their site, but they are also GOING AFTER YOUR BRANDED SEARCH PHRASES IN PAID SEARCH.

WHAT?! Sorry, I get a little worked up about this.

As if your organic search results aren’t pushed down far enough, now we HAVE to bid on our brand names. And we are competing with mega budgets.

The good news is, if you are that company, you are going to generally pay a lower Cost per click (CPC) than your competitors because you will have a higher Quality Score.

A quality score is generated by Google by taking a look at the Click Thru Rate (CTR), content of the ad, and content of the Landing Page. You should always be monitoring and optimizing your quality score to ensure you are showing the highest for the lowest possible amount. So those who have a lower quality score, will have a higher CPC and have to bid more than you.
There is still Google Local

By Google Local, I mean what is known as the "map pack". For many area searches like "Panama City Beach vacation rentals" the map pack will be included below the paid ads, but above the organic search listings.

There is a science to showing and maintaining rank in the map pack which includes Not hiring a company that does any Black Hat SEO tactics for short term results.

The best way to get up there (and stay up there) is to have your profile completely filled out and utilize Schema markup in the code of your site. Schema markup is code (semantic vocabulary) that you put on your website to help the search engines return more informative results for users.

You should also focus on Getting Reviews. Ask your happy customers for reviews. We also have a great survey program that helps push satisfied guests to Google to write you a positive review. The first three stars link to a guest satisfaction survey. The last two link to Google.
Market Moderation

What does your doctor tell you? "Too much of anything is bad for you" and "Everything in moderation."

The same with a good marketing mix.

Sure, if you are a new company, you are going to rely heavily on getting your inventory rented on OTAs. But, that’s not a long-term marketing strategy. You’ll have a tough time keeping owners if all you are doing is renting through OTA’s. They will think they can do it on their own (even if they are wrong).

Start with the Basics – an optimized website, email marketing, paid advertising, and social media engagement. As your budget allows, start doing more social media advertising, adding remarketing, and hire a professional company to help you out.

Our clients that don’t rely on OTAs have historically had better return on investments from their digital marketing. Their customers are trained to…Book Direct!
Think Brand

Don’t forget the power of a great brand and how you can impact that brand on your guests to come back and stay with you. Think of things like giving swag to stay with them after the trip. Also, think about who your brand is and what your brand messaging is.

Does your guest know this message when they leave and is it something they can relate with?

Airbnb does a great job of branding to the millennials which a few years ago, we were told were the most un-loyal generation, ever. Today, we see them embrace a cult-like following to brands like Apple and Airbnb. Think of what you want your company brand to be and embrace it.

There is no doubt, the vacation rental industry is evolving into something it wasn’t as soon as a few years ago. Our messages and marketing need to be strong, more precise, and engaging more than ever before. Long gone are the days of mass-mailing brochures and filling up peak-seasons.

Today, each vacation rental has more opportunity and threats than ever before. However, ICND is ready to help guide you through with a strong digital presence in both your website and your marketing.

Email Marketing: 5 Tips to Success in the Vacation Rental Industry

One of the tools we see that is underused or not used properly in the vacation rental industry is direct email marketing. Often, people consider this to be an “old” tactic or their email itself looks like it is from 2001. However, with the proper efforts, email marketing can be one of the most powerful tools in your vacation rental marketing arsenal. But what makes a good email marketing campaign, or even a good email for that matter? Here are five tips you can use to improve or launch your next email campaign.

Make sure you are mobile friendly. We live in a world where everything is at our fingertips in this little device called a smartphone. If your marketing plan doesn’t revolve around this device then you should look at revising it. Some statistics say that over 60% of emails opened are on a mobile device so your design and methodology should revolve highly around mobile. At ICND we are always updating our custom email templates and improving them for mobile usage. In many ways this goes beyond just pixel size.

Have the right focus and goals. Don’t try to make bookings with an email. The point of sending an email is to drive traffic to your website, not to make bookings. Although we can attribute bookings to email campaigns through analytics to show the value and return on investment, this should not be the goal when designing and planning. Because of this, you want to make sure your brand is consistent across the board. For example, if your email talks about a specific vacation rental special, when your buyer clicks through to the website they will expect to know more. Whether that is in the form of rental properties, information about the specifics of the vacation special, or how they can receive the discount in the near future, you will need to make sure they know what to do. Focus on driving traffic and let your website do it’s thing.

Create a message. One thing we suggest with our email marketing is to drive a specific message. Instead of focusing on several different topics in one email, focus on one and really drive the message home. This makes sure that your audience knows what you are trying to promote and will allow you to understand what offers your target audience wants and does not want.

Make it a visual experience. Many emails can be bulky with random images and a lot of text. Though you should follow the 80/20 rule with text to images, make your email a visual experience. Take some time to put your best foot forward with your imagery and select things that really capture what you are promoting. One thing to remember is if your email has too many images, it is likely to be marked as spam. You can also add another layer of spice with colors and fonts. This can be slightly tricky when you are designing for 28 different email clients i.e. outlook, gmail, yahoo, iPhones, etc… so if you get stumped, we are always here to answer your questions.

Testing and measurement. When you are done and have everything just the way you want it, don’t forget to test your email before sending. This will tell you if it is going to look right when the recipient receives it through their email client. And if by some chance it doesn’t look right, a view in browser link isn’t a bad thing to have at the top. Also, don’t forget to measure your campaigns. It is all for nothing if you aren’t measuring how your email campaigns are performing.

You can use http://www.litmus.com to test your email campaigns.

All in all, there are many things that go into creating and executing a successful email. These five points, although valuable, are just skimming the surface when it comes to everything you have to do. So if you want to add or improve your email marketing but some of this just seems a little too overwhelming, reach out to us and we would be more than happy to answer questions and start you off on the path to success with your direct email marketing.

Palmetto Vacation Rentals Launches A Newly Redesigned Site

The owners from Palmetto Vacation Rentals recently decided to upgrade their site. Len felt that the site was too busy and distracting for guests. Now it has streamlined specials, easier navigation putting the most important information into the hands of guests. Easier maintenance and administration reduces the amount of time spent supporting the site so the team can focus on helping guests to ‘Find The Best Myrtle Beach Vacation Rentals’

We did a major re haul on their property detail pages as well. As you can see below potential customers have lots of choices.

The top features an option to compare the favorite properties the user may want to compare, and recently viewed properties just in case!

Palmetto Vacation Rentals

They can share this property via social media channels to show anyone the property. If the customer is not quite ready to book and wants to know more information, the option to do so is right there on the page! There is even an option the print the page, and it will come out in a printer friendly format

Implementing these items into a new site, not only makes the site more user friendly, but also drives up the overall conversions. Take a look at the new Palmetto Vacations site and see what your site might need to be adding to help your guests overall experience.

Article written by Tonya Harmati .

The Cart Abandonment Mystery: Solved for Vacation Rentals

We can all agree that one of the most frustrating things to see is when a consumer is one step from buying and then for some reason, they don’t. A good majority of the business model in the vacation rental industry is based around e-commerce so having the proper tools for that space is essential in closing the deal and generating revenue. And no matter who you are, we all have issues with cart abandonment.

Cart abandonment in vacation rental marketing terms is when a user gets to a check-out page and then leaves for various reasons. (There really are not “carts” for the rental industry.)

On average cart abandonment is responsible for over 82% of lost sales every year, that’s a huge number! However, ICND clients have been able to turn that negative statistic into revenue due to some of the tools they have access too. Some clients are recapturing 20% of the abandoned traffic which results to an average of $50,000 per month recaptured that otherwise would be lost; that adds up to $600,000 per year in generated revenue from a simple process.

Automated Emails Bring Potential Guests Back

The magic is in the tools we use and it starts with our booking engine. Our booking engine sends out a “reminder” email, much like Amazon, if the user didn’t complete their purchase. There could be many reason’s someone abandon’s their booking. Maybe they want to compare pricing, maybe they get distracted. Who knows.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1: The consumer reaches the “Booking” page and starts entering information.
Step 2: For some reason, they don’t book but the information is recorded and stored in your database.
Step 3: After a certain amount of time, if they don’t convert, the system automatically sends a follow-up email to remind them to come back and book.

But what’s awesome is we offer a back-end dashboard that tracks ALL of these emails:

When they abandoned their checkout
When the reminder email was sent
When it was opened
Whether they returned and booked or not
Oh, of course, their name and email address

All emails and stats for the cart abandonment are recorded in your back end.

Let’s Make It Easy for the Guests

We all know a user will visit your website multiple times before booking. That’s just how it is. So what if we made it easier on them to return and BOOK? That’s why ICND was proactive to introduce this concept to the VRM industry and the results have been exceptional.

If a potential guest abandons their checkout, we ALSO have a nifty little gadget that shows them the unit they abandoned once they RETURN to the site.

Rentals Cart Abandonment — When a user returns to your site and didn’t book, they get this, sending them down the sales funnel faster.

Seamless Integrations

Our Lead Tracker tool organizes and categorizes leads so they are easy to segment and market too. It will also capture as much information as it can such as name, phone number, and property ID.

This is a simple process to grow revenue and improve your brand’s image by staying in front of your audience. If you’re curious about implementing this strategy into your overall marketing toolkit, give us a call and we’ll show you how you can start growing your revenue and creating more satisfied customers. Don’t forget to check out our award winning website designs for vacation rental companies as well!

Get Less Abandoned Bookings

4 Quick Wins for Getting More Direct Bookings

By Vanessa Humes

As vacation rental marketers, we work so hard to get visitors to the website and into the booking funnel. We watch them spend minutes on the site (using technology like HotJar) finding the perfect rental and even get to the booking page. But then it happens. The mouse stops moving. The session ends. WHAT?! If this is what you have been experiencing, here’s a few easy things to do, and some more complicated that will help you drive conversions and more direct vacation rental bookings.

1) Add Urgency Features to your booking pages. We first saw these on hotel sites in 2015 like Hotels.com and thought, “Hey, what a great idea. Let’s try that on our vacation rental booking engine”. Since then, it’s become almost a staple. Urgency helps communicate to the visitor that there other people searching on the site, this property has been viewed, or that your dates are popular and you should hurry up and book.
2) Make the booking experience super quick and easy – even on mobile.
By “super quick and easy” we mean less clicks and easier forms. No more than a couple steps. Find your rental, here’s a page to book. Sometimes other booking engines break up the check out into steps, but we don’t. One page, easy to navigate forms, and boom – you’re booked.

3) Give them a deal. Are you hiding your specials? Why? Specials drive conversions, especially when you make them easy to book online. Simple promo codes at check-out are convenient ways to allow for discounts. Or you can add a modal pop-up to collect email addresses and give a specific amount off, like $25. Implementing this is sure to drive conversions and add email addresses to customers who are ready to book direct with you!

4) Send them an abandonment email. If Amazon does it, you should probably do it too and here’s the results to prove it. When a guest gets to the check-out page and abandons the form, we like to send them an email a few hours later. Sometimes people don’t want to do it on their phone, or just want to triple check with their traveling party. So make it convenient and send them an email directly back to book their stay. We also have a pretty cool trigger on the bottom of the site to get them back to where they left off with booking.

Don’t make them think!

So there you have it. ICND is the leader in bringing these great ideas to the VRM industry first. These strategies are proven to help drive direct bookings on your website. You worked so hard to get them there, you might as well put as much effort into having the features to help get them to book with you. For more ways to drive bookings, check out our websites in live action in our portfolio or contact us today.

How to take advantage of Google Search Trends

Google trends is one of the best and most versatile tools available for any marketer out there. There are literally billions upon billions of searches performed in Google every single day. So why not gather that information and use it at your will? You can use Google trends to discover basic data about your brand, your market share, your competition and seasonal trends.

“Google Trends gives you a glimpse into the topics the world is searching for.” The trends begin in the year 2004 and go forward. These trends can be sorted by types of searches (web, image, news, products, or YouTube), geographical areas, time span, and categories, and the tool allows you to compare up to five search terms at a time.

There is a variety of ways you can use Google trends to gather the data you want the most.

When performing a search on Google Trends, you have the option to set four variables or parameters. (default shown in bold)

Web Search – Image search – News Search – Product Search – YouTube Search
Worldwide – Option to choose a specific Country
2004-Present – Past 7 Days – 30 Days – 90 Days – 12 Months- Choose a Year
All Categories – Arts & Entertainment – Autos & Vehicles – Beauty & fitness – Books & literature – Business & industrial – Computers & electronics – Finance – Food & drink – Games

For an example take a look at these screenshot. You can see the search term “Charleston vacation rentals” and see the interest over a period of time for that specific search term.

This example shows you the interest over time of the keywords, Outer Banks and OBX. As you can see year over year, there has been less searches performed for Outer Banks. However, you can see people are starting to use the term OBX instead of the full name.

Understand your competitors

They say, keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. The best way to beat your competitors is to understand them. You can learn a lot from your competitors graphs. If they are doing well, you can research the “peaks” and see how it was created. If they are doing poorly, you can research on what to avoid and understand how to adapt your marketing strategy.

Monitor Your Brand

If you are not monitoring your brand, you should be! When you monitor your brand, you should be looking out for active ways that you can improve your market share and positively increase your brand presence. Google trends can provide you with a detailed report on how you are faring. Just enter your company’s name and it will show you the information of “interest over time” via a graph and data on how searchable your brand on a per year scale.

Seasonal Trends

If you need to write content for your blog, or for your website, understanding seasonality is a critical factor. There is no point in publishing content that your audience may not likely to engage with. Google trends can help you find the most relevant topics for the time of year, you need. This will drive your content creation and give you ideas on what your audience is attracted to.

Building your brand online can be a daunting but rewarding task. Explore the benefits of Google trends and see how it can get you ahead of your competition. If you do not want to be bothered with all this research and data, let InterCoastal Net Designs do the work for you. We have a full vacation rental marketing and SEO team at your disposal.

Give us a call today at 866.249.6095!

Article written by Tonya Harmati .

Top 5 Rental Website Conversion Tactics to Boost your Bookings

Do you find your website generating a large volume of traffic but not yielding enough conversions? This is one of the many challenges many vacation rental managers face when it comes to their digital marketing success. Identifying the potential causes of failing to convert those lookers into bookers is the first step into solving this very common problem.

Can you answer these questions that as a marketer or manager should be able to answer?

Think about your online conversion rate. If you get 1,000 visitors to your website a day, but only convert 2% that’s 20 reservations. But what if you could increase that percentage to 10%? That’s 80 more reservations a day you are making online. This is why website conversion optimization is so important. We want you to increase your traffic, but we want you to also focus on converting a higher percentage of that traffic. That’s where the real money is.

It’s important that you have a team that knows what they are doing: where to put things, how to word things, what color to make calls to action. What makes a person go or stop, and how to funnel traffic throughout your website. That’s what we specialize in Conversion Focused websites.

The Top Conversion Tactics

Conversion Tactic #1: Make it Mobile!

It’s really important visitors can navigate your site from any mobile or desktop device. Most people are shopping on mobile devices and make their purchases on a desktop. This is the same with travel purchases. But mobile conversions are on the rise, so you need to be thinking about your mobile architecture and usability for mobile navigation.Incorporate marketing – people open their email, see start shopping

For 30% mobile 80% bookings come from desktop.Mobile traffic is up 200% in the past few years.

Conversion Tactic #2: Up Your Elements

So let’s talk about some of those elements that help funnel your traffic. One of the most important things it to make sure your quick search is above the fold. Use cool verbiage in your calls to action, like “Begin Your Adventure” rather than just “Start your Search”. Use brighter colors to call their focus for book now.

It’s online marketing’s job to get traffic to your site, but it’s usability and functionality that uses some psychology to make them book. This is a screen shot of our booking engine.

The visitor has landed on the website and began to search. They could be shopping around for price and availability. We’ve incorporated urgency into our booking engine. We show that search has only produced X amount of properties, or 82% of our inventory matching your search results is booked, reserve now, or showing that 22 people have viewed this property in the last 3 hours. These elements show the visitor, they need to take action before their selection is gone.

Conversion Tactic #3: Make It Easy!

In order to find a property, you’ve got to have the tools to help them. Having a refine search with popular features is necessary for your visitors to drill down and find the perfect property. If you’re a hotel, this maybe different for you, you only have a couple room types, but making it easy for them to find those room types, pricing, and ability to book them.

Then you want to make sure you are tracking our searches. What are your most popular arrival dates? What is the average length of stay people are searching for? Do you have a lot of people looking for something that is pet friendly, but only a handful of pet friendly properties. This could open up opportunities for you to expand your inventory. Let’s say you get a lot of people searching for 3 BR oceanfront at the <xxx> Resort, but you only have 1. This could be an opportunity to market to owners there telling them you have the demand, but you need more supply. Having tangible results from actual searches performed on your website could be a powerful tool to potential owners – especially with the analytics to back it up.

Conversion Tactic #4: Focus on the Booking Page

Take a look at your conversion rates from your check out pages. This is probably one of the most important pages. You work so hard to get a visitor there. Obsess over this rate. We pay so much attention to the pretty pictures and design, and you may think this is just a standard form. It’s not. We’ve learned from improving our clients check out pages and also from looking at what the big dogs do –

strip out your navigation,
make the form easy to fill out and fit on one page,
and easy to fill out on a mobile device
have your totals adjust as they add on or opt-out of things like travel insurance
make sure they know it’s secure, and make sure it’s simple.

Conversion Tactic #5: Watch the Users and Adapt

Navis is going to tell you a lot about what happens to a lead after they’ve made contact with you or booked, but if they didn’t get there –say they landed on your website and bounced or exited before booking or making contact, you have to take a look at your funnels in Google Analytics. This is going to be going in and looking at your pages, page views, and conversions from those pages.

Say they land on your specials page, but don’t know how to execute the special. Well it can result in an exit rather than a booking. If you see high bounce or exit rates on your pages at any point in your funnel, you are going to want to drill down and figure out why. You can install more tracking through Crazy Egg heat mapping or watch video clips of visitors looking at your site and what they are doing. This going to tell if your visitors are getting lost, if they are backing out at the check out pages, or trying things that will help with conversions. Maybe it’s a call to action, maybe your promo code field is not visible, you have to dig in and see what visitors are doing to help make changes to your funnel.

Final Converting Thoughts

“Beautiful websites don’t generate leads”. There are a ton of fantastic web designers out there that can create a great and beautiful website, but they may not be centered around conversions. We like to call those websites “All flash and no cash”. When you go with ICND, you are choosing a company that has researched and implemented the elements that will help you increase you conversion rates.

VRM Intel Live 2016!

Stay in the loop.

If you’re like ICND, you hate missing out on industry news.

Your company realizes that vacation rental marketing strategies change drastically from year-to-year (heck – sometimes even month-to-month!). That’s why you need to join us in Wilmington, NC on October 26th for the 2016 VRM Intel Live! Conference.

You’ll get the chance to see some of the top names in our industry give never-before-seen presentations you simply can’t afford to miss!

Just to name a few:

– 2017 Marketing Plans with Amy Hinote

– Cutting Costs and Increasing Profitability with Ben Edwards

– Listing Site Optimization and Independence with Amber Mayer

Click here to get the full schedule for VRM Intel Live! 2016.

Don’t let the competition pass you by.

In an industry that changes as rapidly as Vacation Rental Marketing, events like VRM Intel are of utmost importance. But it’s not simply the fact that you’ll learn new strategies at the conference that makes it so important.

The thing is, everyone who attends will learn these new tactics.

That means that if your company has decided not to attend VRM Intel Live! this year, they are essentially handing over the reigns to all their competitors – who will surely be there.

Join ICND in making sure the foothold you’ve worked so hard to achieve isn’t lost completely due to a single poor decision.

Get your name out there.

But VRM Intel Live! isn’t all about the competition.

You know as well as ICND that getting your well-earned good reputation out into the industry while building new business relationships can be equally important. This conference is the perfect opportunity for that.

Some of the biggest names in the vacation rental marketing industry have already signed up to attend, so don’t miss your chance to meet them face-to-face & in one place!

Can’t make it in October?

That’s perfectly okay! Team ICND will also be attending the VRM Intel Live! Conference in Sandestin, FL on November 30th. It features all of the same presentations and events, so we hope to see you there too!

Click here if you still need to purchase tickets for the Wilmington Conference.

Check out Team ICND at VRM Intel Live 2016!

Can’t attend the conference, but want our marketing advice anyway? No problem – reach out to us via Facebook, Twitter, or drop us a line at 866.249.6095 – we’re always here to help!