Barefoot Technologies Blog- Vacation Rental Industry News

Using Your Vacation Rental Owners to Engage New Tenants

Posted by Claiborne Yarbrough on Aug 26, 2014 4:28:00 PM

By understanding your vacation rental owner base, you will derive some important clues
and demographic information about your potential tenant profile. After all, your property owners we

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Tags: Vacation Rental Industry, How to market vacation rentals, Marketing Vacation Rental, Rental Management CRM

5 Creative Ways to Increase Buzz in Vacation Rental Management

Posted by Claiborne Yarbrough on Jun 17, 2014 5:12:00 PM

Buzz is a hot word now that everyone wants, to have buzz about their homes or properties.  But how do you build buzz, as it doesn’t happen randomly or without cause.  “Buzz” can be called many things but largely, it is when people are talking about your product, so how can we help create some buzz for your vacation rental home?
  1. Staycations- A staycations is a shortened vacation that because of the short timeframe, travelling is out of the question so one stays locally but gets away at the same time.  Things like a one night stay away from the family or a spa day at the local resort are ideas for staycations.  The staycation becomes powerful when in the right hands, like local reporters, bloggers, social media guru’s and more.  Give a short stay to someone local, it keeps their costs low and the return can be huge as they begin to tell your story.
  2. Social Media- did you know that there is a social media for almost every form of expression?  Video, thoughts, pictures, websites and more can all be leveraged on these sites to gain some attraction for your vacation rental properties.  Share beautiful pictures, amazing videos of sunsets, and anything you can get your properties to more people.
  3. Contests- Contests are a great way to build buzz and also to generate some loyalty.  Contests are not limited to any one idea but some include “tell us your best rental story” or “share your best picture” and so on.  These contests get people engaged as compared to other mediums that just get them looking. 
  4. Rewards- This one is slightly different than contests but the idea is similar.  Be sure to, when people “check in” via 4Square or any other social medium, to occasionally reward people for the action.  I went out for Yofurt not long ago, took a picture of my fiancée and me enjoying our snacks and was given a $10 coupon to use the next time I came in.  Everyone in the store immediately followed my footstep in attempt to win their own coupon.
  5. Be Creative- There aren’t many rules in trying to generate new ways to get people talking about your product.  You could try a tried and true method or perhaps be innovative and branch out.  As long as you are actively trying and learning from your failures and successes your company will benefit
If you set your company up to embrace the mentality to create buzz, be active, and reward those contribute you will see success. It is important to remember that if one of these methods does not work to your liking, you can rework the campaign however you desire.  “Always Be Testing” is a marketing phrase in today’s offices that pushes people to always try things, even if they fail, you will at least know what does not work!
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Tags: How to market vacation rentals, Marketing Vacation Rental

Leverage Barefoot Coupons and Dynamic Pricing to Build Early Summer Rentals

Posted by Claiborne Yarbrough on Jun 10, 2014 9:00:00 AM


I’ve been hearing from some vacation rental management folks in summer markets that the season is off to a slow start. The reason for the lower occupancy is probably attributed to the fact that so many school systems on the East Coast had to add days to the school year to make up for the MANY MANY MANY snow days (can you tell I am Mom of kids who were out of school 21 snow days this year?).

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Tags: How to market vacation rentals, Marketing Vacation Rental, Barefoot Technologies, Rental management Software

Marketing Your Vacation Rental: Inbound Part 5

Posted by Adam Zippin on May 21, 2014 4:13:00 PM


Congratulations, your web traffic is higher than ever, you are seeing more leads now and you are closing and bringing in more guests than years past.  I guess this means your inbound marketing program is over, right? Not quite, social referrals and social medias are worth their weight in gold and now is the time to turn your guests into advocates!

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Tags: Vacation Rental Industry, How to market vacation rentals, Property Management, Rental management Software, rental marketing, Property manager marketing, Inbound Marketing, Vacation Rentals, Rental Industry Changes, HubSpot Tips

Marketing Your Vacation Rentals: Inbound Part 4

Posted by Adam Zippin on May 16, 2014 3:17:00 PM

So your web traffic is increasing and you have been getting more leads than ever through your site, so what’s next?  Que the sales pitch right? Wrong.  This is arguably the most crucial part of inbound marketing, where we turn those leads you've nurtured, into renters or guests.  If we look at this from a typical sales process, these leads are fresh and you need to flood them with your sales pitch to both inform them and sell them at the same time.  However, this is not your typical sales funnel, this is your inbound funnel, and the leads that you are looking at have found you because of something you offer that interests them.

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Tags: Vacation Rental Industry, How to market vacation rentals, Marketing, Marketing Vacation Rental, Property manager marketing, professional management, Inbound Marketing

Marketing Your Vacation Rentals: Inbound Part 3

Posted by Adam Zippin on Apr 24, 2014 4:06:00 PM

The third segment will focus on how to convert your new visitors into leads.  In segment 1 we discussed the background of inbound marketing, in segment 2 we covered how to get your message through the traffic of the internet, to the right person.  Once you have increased your traffic, the next step is to begin converting that traffic to leads.  After all, what good is a more qualified lead funnel if your conversion rates stay the same?  You have gone through the work to get your message to the people who want to hear from you, now make the most of this targeting and increase your close rates.

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Tags: Vacation Rental Industry, How to market vacation rentals, Marketing, Marketing Vacation Rental, Property manager marketing, professional management, Inbound Marketing

Marketing Your Vacation Rental: Inbound Part 2

Posted by Adam Zippin on Apr 10, 2014 12:34:00 PM

In the constant struggle that is marketing, getting more people to your website is not always the answer, sometimes it’s getting the right people.  This week I will address the Paveya infographic’s first stage which is “attract website visitors”.  This is the starting point for all your inbound marketing tactics for your vacation rentals and can impact your business immensely.  The point of this stage is to move “strangers” to become “website visitors” and improve visibility for your website.

In years past, this one have been done with one word, “SEO” or search engine optimization.  Many people use the term SEO to this day but the old definition of SEO bears a minimalistic resemblance to the current methods of optimizing your website.  The first page on Google or other search engines has led to some interesting tactics in web design.  It also led to the creation of an entire industry that would focus on helping you beat the google algorithm.  However, Google has evolved and its latest stage of algorithm has left the SEO hotshots of old in the dust.  The new way to think about SEO should focus on content creation.

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Tags: Vacation Rental Industry, How to market vacation rentals, Property Management, Rental management Software, rental marketing, Property manager marketing, Inbound Marketing, Vacation Rentals, Rental Industry Changes, HubSpot Tips

How to market Vacation rentals: Guerilla Marketing

Posted by Aj Mudford on Mar 26, 2014 2:16:00 PM

Guerilla marketing is a great advertising strategy where a low-cost unconventional resource is used. It could be in the form of street art, sticker bombing or as a part of a product (e.g. Colgate used the stick in an ice cream). It is used to promote a product or an idea in a competitive market. Here is 122 must see Guerilla marketing examples that are very creative and effective.

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Tags: Vacation Rental Industry, How to market vacation rentals, Marketing, Guerilla Marketing

Cause Marketing and Your Vacation Rental: A how to

Posted by Adam Zippin on Mar 25, 2014 5:16:00 PM

For years we have been preaching the benefits of cause marketing to our prospects but it never appears to take hold as much as we at Barefoot would like.  Today, I was reading a blog posted by Hubspot, can be found here, and thought the translation was perfect for the vacation rental market.

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Tags: Vacation Rental Industry, Barefoot, How to market vacation rentals, Rental Management CRM, Cause-Marketing

Why professional photos of your vacation rental are worth every penny

Posted by Aj Mudford on Feb 26, 2014 3:51:00 PM

It is said a picture is worth a thousand words. Most people are drawn to pictures and will judge their rental prospects predominantly on what they see as opposed to what they read. Flipkey, a vacation rental search platform purchased by TripAdvisor, completed a study revealing HD photography increased bookings by 98%.

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Tags: How to market vacation rentals, Marketing, Rental Management, Vacation Rentals, Professional Photography, Rental ROI, HomeAway listings