I've seen it so many times, and it genuinely breaks my heart.

Someone pours £80,000, £100,000, or even more into a beautiful cottage renovation, cabin, shepherd's hut, or glamping site. Blood, sweat, tears—the lot. Then they open their doors to nothing. Tumbleweed. Silence. And that desperate, sinking feeling that something has gone very wrong.

It's not because their property isn't gorgeous. It's because nobody knew it existed.

This episode is one of my all-time favourite topics because getting your launch right can make an enormous difference to your first year in business, and getting it wrong can cost you thousands.

I'm walking you through the biggest mistakes I see hosts make when they launch - starting with the classic "I've built it, and they will come" trap - and why a zero marketing budget is a false economy, no matter how much you've spent on the hot tub!

More importantly, I'm giving you five practical ways to launch (or relaunch) properly. From building a waitlist and creating founding guest offers, to countdown campaigns, launch day tactics, and how to use local PR and influencers to get people talking.

And if you want to take action straight away, I've got a free guide for you: Your 7-Step Marketing Launch Blueprint, with templates, checklists, and email ideas to help you do this properly. The link is in the show notes.

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Key Takeaways:

1. Your launch should begin long before your doors open. From the moment you break ground or get planning permission, start building an audience and document your journey.
2. Visibility has to be created; it doesn't just happen because you've listed on Airbnb.
3. Marketing is not an afterthought or a leftover budget item - it's what turns your investment into actual income.
4. Professional photography is non-negotiable - it's your shop window, and your first impression, and poor photography makes the rest of your marketing an uphill battle.
5. Building an email list before you launch is one of the most powerful things you can do - when the Hudnalls Hideout went live, 500 email subscribers helped generate 50 bookings in the first 19 days.
6. If you've already launched quietly and it didn't go to plan, you're absolutely allowed to relaunch - create a campaign, build some momentum, and go again with intention.

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Extra resources:

Download my FREE Launch Marketing Blueprint

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Do you have a marketing roadmap for your business?

No more winging it and feeling like you are in constant marketing chaos! Create your easy-to-follow marketing roadmap for the year ahead. My Direct Bookings Bootcamp is now available ON DEMAND! Let’s make this the best year yet for direct bookings! Head to my website for more info.

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What would you do with an extra £20k+ in your holiday business?

I've saved £100k in commission in 5 years by taking 100% direct bookings and now I show Airbnb hosts, holiday cottage and glampsite owners how to do the same.

It is easier than you think to move to 70%+ direct bookings.

If you currently rely on Airbnb or another online agent (OTA), take Sarah's FREE quiz here - it's time to give them the boot!

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Connect with Sarah:

Website

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You're listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

Are you ready to master your marketing so you can ditch your reliance on the online agents and grow your direct bookings?

I'll be sharing with you exactly what it takes to grow your direct bookings and the simple marketing steps to get more profit in your pocket.

Hello, Hello, Sarah Orchard here, back again with another episode of the Get Fully Booked podcast.

Thank you, thank you to everyone who has subscribed and reviewed the podcast so far and thank you for being here.

This week I've got one of my all time favorite marketing topics because honestly, I have seen so many stunning glamping businesses and holiday cottages open their doors to, well, what can be best described as tumbleweed zero bookings, feelings of desperation and possibly even tears.

Because some people launch like Apple launching a new iPhone, and some people launch like they're opening a garden shed and just hoping that someone wanders past.

So if you're building, expanding, renovating, converting, or about to open your doors for the very first time, this episode is for you.

I'll be covering the biggest mistakes which I see, and the biggest mistake which is I've built it and they will come.

And I did another podcast episode on that, so check that out.

Why scrimping on your marketing investment will cost you thousands in the long run and how to actually create a proper, buzzworthy launch.

But before we dive in, I found a very interesting fact, and it's actually not in our industry, it's in the events industry.

And they say that up to 80% of ticket sales for a brand new event come from the pre launch marketing and early access buzz that's created, not from the day that the tickets go live.

So not 20%, not 50%, 80%.

Which means the success of something new is largely decided before it even officially opens.

Now tell me that doesn't apply to our short term rental businesses.

When we open our glamp sites, our boutique accommodation, or our holiday cottages too.

If your first booking only happens once your Airbnb listing goes live, you've already missed a massive opportunity.

Okay, let's talk about mistake number one.

And this is the I've built it and they will come.

Oh, this one.

I see it so many times.

You've invested £80,000 or maybe £150,000 or more.

You've poured your heart into this new cabin, Shepherd's Hut, dreamy cottage renovation, and you think it's gorgeous.

Of course people will book, but there is a really bitter pill to swallow and people don't book what they don't know exists.

And you can be the best kept secret that nobody knows about.

Visibility has to be created before you get bookings.

And here's what I see all the time.

No email list, no audience, no social build up, no wait list, no behind the scenes content, and definitely not a coming soon strategy.

So just a little listing.

Going live on Airbnb or somewhere else and hoping your launch should not begin when your doors open.

It should begin when you secure the land.

You get planning permission and sometimes that can take quite a long time.

You break ground, you start the renovations, you choose your interiors.

You should be documenting the whole journey because when people follow the story, they become emotionally invested in what you're creating.

And emotionally invested people will book faster.

So instead of here's our new glamping cabin available now, you've watched us from this muddy field to a magical glamping cabin retreat and now it's finally ready for you to come and stay.

And that's a totally different energy that that creates.

And if you're already open and thinking, oh my, you know, I've missed the boat, don't panic because you can still relaunch, you can still create that relaunch moment, you can still create a campaign, you can still build an audience and get some momentum.

But please, if you're pre launch right now, start building your audience like yesterday.

They always say the best time to start was yesterday, but if you haven't, start today.

And I think that's so true with anything.

It's like if you haven't been doing it, don't write it off and think, I can't start now because I've left it too late.

Start now and you will, you will get there.

The second thing I wanted to talk about was money.

And I know this is really difficult because this does make me want to sort of gently shake people quite often because people spend so much money on and invest in their short term rentals, whether it's a glamping site or like I said, a holiday cott or renovation.

You might have spent 20k on landscaping, £15,000 on the bathroom, £8,000 on a hot tub or a sauna, or 5k on furniture.

I think our treehouse, our interiors were worth £8,000, our sauna was £5,000.

It all adds up.

But amazingly, I see so many hospitality businesses, short term rental businesses that have no marketing budget, so they invest all this time, energy, tears and money and they have no budget to launch.

And the strategy is, I think we'll just use Instagram or TikTok.

And I'm afraid that does cue a very sharp intake of breath from me because marketing is not a nice to have.

It's not the leftover budget that you might have scrimped, a thousand pounds or something at the end.

It's not the thing that you sort of see how it goes and maybe do a bit of marketing later if you don't get the bookings.

The marketing is what turns your asset into actual income.

And I did an episode, episode one.

If you go and check out episode one of this podcast, it's called the Money is in the Marketing.

And I go in depth as to why marketing is so important.

And here's what I mean by investment.

You know, marketing does cost money.

You know, social media might be free, but ultimately, if you're going to create the marketing around the asset that you've invested so much time, money and energy into, you're going to need things like professional photography if you do one thing for your launch.

And I remember I was talking to my web developer quite recently and she was saying that actually when she talks to clients, if they are looking for a new website, if they haven't got professional photography, she tells them to go back and do that first and then to come back and talk to her about a website.

And I think that's true.

You know, taking photographs on your iPhone or thinking, I've got a mate who's got a good camera, they can just pop around and take some pics.

Photography is your experience, shop window.

It's what brings your guest experience to life and allows you to market it and sell it.

It's your hook, it's the first impression.

So if you have poor photography, it makes it really hard to make the rest of your marketing any good.

You need to know who your ideal guests are.

Whether you're looking for luxury couples or digital detox seekers, maybe the active families, you do need to know who you're actually marketing to.

I often say if you try and speak to everyone, you speak to no one.

And that is so true.

You really need to have that clear view, because when you come to build your website, you're going to need to know who you're talking to.

And also that photography, you're going to need to know what experience those people are seeking and what you need to show.

But you're going to have to create a website.

So if you're serious about having a profitable business and if you really want to get direct bookings, you need to have a professionally designed website, one that can also Capture emails, one that helps tell your story and one that actually converts.

And I've done quite a few episodes about websites, so do go and check those out.

You need also to have email marketing set up.

Ideally you want to do this before you launch, not after, because your email list is your marketing goldmine.

When we launched the Hideout, before we launched the Hideout, as soon as we literally broke ground, I did two things.

I set up a email list with a single landing page where I could capture interested people's email addresses.

And we had about 500 when we launched and I created our social media accounts.

And the other thing was I made sure that we didn't actually give too much away.

Although I said document the story, we gave little teasers as we were going along, but we wanted to try and create quite a bit of anticipation.

So, so we didn't reveal every gory detail of the build, but we did regularly sort of drop teasers as we went along.

But your email list is so valuable.

And actually when we went live we opened the doors on bookings and we had 50 bookings in the first 19 days.

And that was purely, we didn't have a huge social media following at that point.

I mean, our socials are now well over sort of 30,000 across TikTok and Instagram.

However, when we launched we, we only had a couple of thousand on, on Instagram.

So the power was in the email list.

Because Instagram could disappear tomorrow.

The algorithms are constantly changing and it's impossible to get really good organic free reach anymore.

But your email list, that's yours.

You own it.

You can choose how to grow it and to tell people as often as you like using your emails what's coming.

So if your marketing budget is zero, you're going to be making your launch 10 times harder than it needs to be.

So I want you to take a bit of a marketing mindset shift.

You're not spending money.

People always see marketing as an expense.

You actually are investing.

You are building a revenue generating machine for your business.

Okay, the last thing I'd like to talk to you about is maybe a few ideas about how to launch or how to relaunch depending on where you are, whether you're pre launch and you're thinking about how you're going to take your new short term rental to market or whether you're already out there and maybe you've had a bit of a refresh and you want to relaunch it.

So let's get into the launch.

That's the sort of fun part.

But I want you to launch like a pro and there are several tactics that you can use.

And I've also got a free resource for you that I think you'll find really helpful.

So the first approach is the sort of wait list approach.

And that's what we did with the hideout.

With our Hudnall's Hideout Treehouse.

We created a landing page, we created a sign up.

All of our socials were pointing to that.

We didn't have a website because we had nothing to show because we were building it.

And we encouraged people to sign up because they would be the first people to stay.

So what you want to do is create that anticipation.

So be the first to stay.

Get exclusive early access, get a launch offer, get founding guest promos, perks, like I said, offers.

You could get access to the limited first dates.

And that scarcity works, the exclusivity, making people feel like they're in that inside club, that they're going to get something that nobody else is going to get.

And you're also rewarding them for being part of your journey and signing up and showing commitment to what you've got coming.

But people love being first.

You can also have a second idea is to have a founding guest offer so, you know, reward your early supporters.

You don't need to give massively heavy discounts.

We did do a launch offer, but we only offered it up for a very short period, the first couple of months and on our midweek stays because we knew that our weekends would go quite quickly.

But try and do something special.

So add in something complimentary, maybe a luxury breakfast hamper, something that you would normally charge for, like a free sauna session.

Maybe you give them a almost like a first guest rate that's like locked in on future stays so that their loyalty to you at the beginning is rewarded.

Maybe you've got some sort of branded or personalized thank you gift for your first so many stays.

5, 10, 20, 25.

You're actually rewarding those adopters, those people who take action.

You won't be attracting the bargain hunters, you'll be rewarding the people who have supported you and you're building future loyalty.

The third idea is you can do countdown campaigns.

So these are like a two week pre launch teaser campaign and we did a little bit of this.

And in the resource that I'm going to share with you shortly, I've got some templates that will help you with that.

But you can do like teasers of behind the scenes.

You could do room reveals like before and afters.

You could do a countdown in terms of like the number of days.

So only like five days to go.

Two days to go.

One hour, one hour to go, maybe one day to go.

You could do sneak peeks of, of like guest extras or welcome packs and stories of your journey can make it feel more like an event.

You're like trying to build that buzz that I talked about.

You know, remember I talked about the fact that 80% of event tickets are sold in the pre launch and the buzz.

Because the buzz is what gets people to notice you.

Number four, an idea is to have launch day energy.

So when bookings are actually open, always email your list first, give them priority access.

I'm a massive believer that you shouldn't put everything on social media.

People have no reason to sign up to your email list.

If you give everything out on social media, why should they sign up to your list?

There's no point.

It's like everything's out there in the public domain.

So we have the Lux list on our website for the hideout and we.

They get priority access to the calendar and when dates open, they get special offers, they get treated like VIPs.

So maybe give them 24 hours or 48 hours priority access.

You also want that fear of missing out and that scarcity.

So it's like they've got a short period of time to take action, which will also get people booking quicker.

And then you can open it up to the public and then celebrate the fact that you're fully open and it's out there.

So don't just quietly upload a listing to Airbnb at 9pm and go to bed.

You want to create some momentum.

A fifth idea is like leverage local PR partners and influencers.

You know, don't forget that there are people in your community who have other businesses and they have established audiences.

If you reach out to them, they'll probably be happy to promote you in their email list.

Maybe do some sort of joint launch offer.

They may be prepared to like share your reels and collaborate on socials.

Sometimes local press and lifestyle magazines, they love new openings.

They love particularly if you can tell a story about your journey and what you've created.

It's not just like we are open, that's not a story.

But if you share your journey and the trials and tribulations, often that will get picked up.

You could invite an influencer to come and stay.

You could speak to your local tourism association or who promote your area.

I'm going to call them a tourism association.

They're not called that anymore.

But they keep changing their names in the UK so it's very confusing.

But you'll have an organization that will locally promote your area and you might want to collaborate with them, get in touch with them, tell them, tell them what you've been doing and they may be able to get something like an influencer or some of their PR contacts to come and visit.

When you first launch, get a photographer to come along and capture some of that launch energy.

You can, like I said, you can turn it into an event.

I'm not thinking ribbon cutting here, but you could do that.

That's what people do when they're opening things, don't they?

I'm not sure you're going to get any royalty to come and open your particular cabin or cottage or renovation, but you might have a local celebrity you might know somebody that you could invite to come along and do some PR stunts.

I did that with a hotel client that I worked on their rebrand and launch and we got a famous celebrity to come along and be part of the the actual launch party and that just created some media interest and some buzz.

So just to wrap up today's episode, a professional launch is definitely not luck.

It is planned.

And if you need more ideas, I have a checklist and I've got some email teaser campaign ideas and some social post templates and it's in a free guide called From Zero to Fully Booked.

Your seven step marketing launch blueprint.

It's on my website, you can download it in my freebie section, but I'll also pop a link in the show notes for you today so you can go and download that free guide.

And here's what I'd like you to remember.

Your first 90 days in business and you open the doors, sets the tone for your business brand, your reputation, your occupancy and it also has a massive impact on your confidence as a host.

So a strong launch builds reviews quickly, social proof quickly, momentum quickly, and visibility and momentum is everything in our industry.

So if you're in the build phase right now, start documenting your journey.

If you're pre launch, start building that email list now.

If you've already launched quietly and it felt a bit of a flop, you're allowed to relaunch properly.

You're not behind.

Just get intentional about going out there and telling people all about your great guest experience.

So let's open your doors like a pro, not like a hopeful hobby.

Thank you for listening today.

If you enjoyed this episode, you know what I'd like you to do?

I'd love it if you could leave me a review because you know how much us hosts love those five star reviews.

Thank you for listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

If you want to see if you are ready to ditch the likes of Airbnb and grow your direct bookings, put your business to the test with my free Direct Booking Roadmap quiz.

Head to my website get fully booked.com quiz and let's get you more direct bookings and more profit in your pocket.