Are you struggling to grow your direct bookings and feeling completely lost in the marketing maze?
Sarah Orchard emphasises the importance of having a clear marketing strategy as the essential link between your business goals and your marketing activities. Without a defined strategy, many business owners find themselves engaging in random marketing efforts that fail to yield the desired direct booking results.
In this episode, Sarah breaks down the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing action plan, providing insights on how to align your marketing efforts with your overall business objectives.
She also shares valuable statistics highlighting the common lack of planning among small to medium-sized businesses, urging listeners to take proactive steps towards creating a more structured approach to their marketing.
Tune in to discover practical tips and a simplified framework that can help you effectively attract and convert your ideal guests.
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You're listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.
Sarah Orchard:Are you ready to master your marketing so you can ditch your reliance on the online agents and grow your direct bookings?
Sarah Orchard: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.
Sarah Orchard:Hello and welcome back to series two of the Get Fully Booked podcast.
Sarah Orchard:I'm your host, Sarah Orchard.
Sarah Orchard:So, firstly, a huge thank you to everyone who's listened to the first series and reviewed the episodes.
Sarah Orchard:I'm really thrilled that you've been enjoying them.
Sarah Orchard:And as always, do reach out to me on Instagram etfullybooked if you have any suggestions for future episodes.
Sarah Orchard:I'd love to hear from you.
Sarah Orchard:Or tag me with your favorite episodes so far.
Sarah Orchard:I'd love to know which one you've enjoyed the most.
Sarah Orchard:So today I wanted to chat about something that I know many short term rental or glamping business owners really struggle with.
Sarah Orchard:And perhaps you don't even realize that you need it.
Sarah Orchard:And what is that?
Sarah Orchard:That is a marketing strategy.
Sarah Orchard:Now, if you've been in my get Fully Booked world for a while, you'll know that one of my passions is making marketing simple.
Sarah Orchard:No fluff or fancy jargon.
Sarah Orchard:And the word strategy does sound very grown up, professional, businesslike maybe sounds a little bit complicated.
Sarah Orchard:But hey, you are the CEO of your own ship.
Sarah Orchard:You run a small business and therefore you do need to think about things like business plans and marketing strategies.
Sarah Orchard:And it's really important to understand this business concept.
Sarah Orchard:So to me, running a business without a marketing strategy is like getting into your car to drive to a new destination with no map.
Sarah Orchard:Probably I'm old enough to remember proper like printed maps or no sat nav.
Sarah Orchard:But you know, how often do you do that?
Sarah Orchard:You don't get into the car not knowing where you're headed to.
Sarah Orchard:I mean, these days I don't actually, you know, get into my car without my trusty Google Maps.
Sarah Orchard:And by the way, this podcast is not sponsored by Google Maps.
Sarah Orchard:I promise there are other mapping options out there, but you know, you just wouldn't do it.
Sarah Orchard:And actually, your business needs a destination.
Sarah Orchard:You need to have goals.
Sarah Orchard:You need to understand what you're actually trying to achieve.
Sarah Orchard:And you know, so many business owners just dive straight into actually the doing.
Sarah Orchard:And that can be anything, not just marketing, but any of the operational tasks as well, without fully understanding what their actual business plan and their goals are.
Sarah Orchard:And if you're feeling like you lack direction, you're confused as to what you're actually trying to achieve, particularly if you feel like that about your marketing, that's a sign that you don't have a clear marketing strategy.
Sarah Orchard:You don't know what you're actually trying to achieve from the marketing that you're doing.
Sarah Orchard:So I thought I'd start firstly with, I suppose, first things first, what is a marketing strategy?
Sarah Orchard:So put quite simply, your marketing strategy is the missing link between your business goals and how you're going to get there using your marketing activity.
Sarah Orchard:So if you have a goal, so you have set some goals for your business, but you haven't got a plan, I mean, for me there's a.
Sarah Orchard:There's a saying that says a goal without a plan is just a wish.
Sarah Orchard:And that's very true, because actually, without a plan of how you're going to get there, you don't really know.
Sarah Orchard:You can have aspirations of what you want to achieve, you can have goals, but ultimately you're not going to have a plan of how to get there.
Sarah Orchard:You're not going to have that sat nav or that Google Maps telling you exactly which turns to take and which direction to go.
Sarah Orchard:So you're going to be a bit floundering around doing lots of random things that you're probably going to be quite disappointed that they don't get the results that you were hoping for.
Sarah Orchard:So your marketing strategy is your business's plan for reaching your prospective guests or consumers.
Sarah Orchard:So whoever you know your customers and turning them into your guests.
Sarah Orchard:So it is your plan for reaching those prospective customers and actually getting them to book and turning them into guests.
Sarah Orchard:It's as simple as that.
Sarah Orchard:So you can see that it's vital to know which customers you're trying to attract in the first place, and then using your messaging to communicate what you offer to them, to create appeal and to get them to take action and turn into bookings.
Sarah Orchard:So if you need a little bit more help with how do you do that, and if you feel that your marketing messaging has been missing the mark and isn't actually converting, say, like website visitors and your social followers actually into guests, so not into bookings.
Sarah Orchard:Take a listen to episode 13 of the podcast where I talk about that in a bit more detail.
Sarah Orchard:So I think you'll find that episode quite useful.
Sarah Orchard:So what is a marketing plan?
Sarah Orchard:So what's the difference between a marketing strategy and a marketing plan?
Sarah Orchard:Because often the terms get used, I think, interchangeably, and I think that's part of the confusion, because the two terms do get used, literally almost swapped out with each Other and I think there is actually a key difference between your marketing strategy and your actual action plan.
Sarah Orchard:So I like to call it your marketing action plan because your strategy is what you're going to do and the marketing plan or the marketing action plan is how you're going to do it.
Sarah Orchard:So you can see the flow.
Sarah Orchard:It's just three simple levels.
Sarah Orchard:It goes from your business goals and your business plan to your marketing strategy and then your marketing action plan.
Sarah Orchard:And it's all about taking action.
Sarah Orchard:So it's really vital that we align any of the marketing that we do back to our top level business goals.
Sarah Orchard:And as I said, so many short term rental, hospitality and glamping business owners get stuck into doing the marketing.
Sarah Orchard:You know, you know, I see it all the time when people are, you know, if they're launching, they maybe don't even have a business plan and they haven't set some targets for their new business.
Sarah Orchard:Or even if you've been in business for a few years and everyone is just going at it great guns, doing lots of marketing activity, being super busy or ignoring it completely.
Sarah Orchard:And you know, ultimately they don't know who they're actually marketing to and they don't know what they're trying to achieve from that marketing activity.
Sarah Orchard:So we see lots of random acts of marketing, you know, random posting on socials, hopping on all the latest real trends, doing erratic email sending with no end goal in mind, or maybe just not emailing at all.
Sarah Orchard:And all of that is destined to get you really poor results because as you can see, it doesn't align back to what you're actually trying to achieve financially.
Sarah Orchard:And maybe it's not just financial, it can also be your business plan can be about what you want to achieve, financial, a lifestyle.
Sarah Orchard:And you know, maybe you've gone into running your hospitality, short term rental glamping business, you know, because you want a different lifestyle, you've maybe ditched corporate.
Sarah Orchard:So therefore your plan is all encompassing.
Sarah Orchard:It's not just financial, it can be operational and also sort of your own personal lifestyle goals and does reflect your longer term vision of where you want your business to be in say three years time, five years time, 10 years time.
Sarah Orchard:It should have also an exit strategy.
Sarah Orchard:You know, you should have as part of your business plan a clear ish view of what your exit strategy is as well.
Sarah Orchard:You know, what's your plan?
Sarah Orchard:Are you going to be doing this to the day you drop dead or are you planning on selling the business?
Sarah Orchard:Are you going to hand it over to a family member?
Sarah Orchard:Do you want to sell it in X number of years, what are your plans to also exit the business.
Sarah Orchard:And that's often, maybe that's a thought for another podcast episode, but it very rarely gets thought about.
Sarah Orchard:So if you're just doing lots of random marketing activity, I often call it marketing mud throwing because it literally is like throwing mud at the wall and hoping that some of this stuff will, will stick.
Sarah Orchard:It does tend to, you know, result in poor results and is unlikely to move the needle in terms of getting you closer to your direct booking goals.
Sarah Orchard:Particularly and you know, as I've said previously, if you have limited time available and maybe you have, you know, your business is a bit of a side hustle because you've actually got, you know, a main employment, actually using an agent might be the best decision because then, you know, they will have a marketing, you know, business plan, the marketing strategy and they will do the marketing for you.
Sarah Orchard:But I just want to draw back to the fact that, you know, remember that marketing is creating that bridge between what you offer and those that need it.
Sarah Orchard:And again, if you're a little bit unclear about, you know, even what marketing is, sometimes people make it a bit of a dark art.
Sarah Orchard:Have a listen to my episode one of the podcast where I talk about that basically the money is in the marketing and I help to just reframe how you think about marketing in your business.
Sarah Orchard:I wanted to share with you today a really interesting fact.
Sarah Orchard:So if you're sitting here listening today and thinking, oh golly, I don't have a business plan and I don't have a marketing strategy, I've just been like winging it.
Sarah Orchard:You are not alone.
Sarah Orchard: In this year: Sarah Orchard:54% of businesses didn't have a documented business plan and 67% didn't have a marketing action plan.
Sarah Orchard:So, you know, if you don't have a business plan or a marketing strategy, you are not alone.
Sarah Orchard:But maybe question with yourself if you're feeling overwhelmed.
Sarah Orchard:Headless chicken running around, not sure what marketing you should be doing, not sure whether it's actually moving the needle and getting you closer to your goals.
Sarah Orchard:I can guarantee you the thing that is missing is having that alignment between your goals and having a clear marketing strategy so that you know exactly where to focus your limited time and resources to, you know, to achieve those goals.
Sarah Orchard:So my last point I wanted to talk about was a bit of a reflection really.
Sarah Orchard:Why is creating a marketing strategy so hard?
Sarah Orchard:Obviously I've come from a corporate background.
Sarah Orchard:I did 16 years working for some very big travel brands.
Sarah Orchard:I was very classically trained in terms of I've been in marketing for over 30 years.
Sarah Orchard:So you know, I've written many a marketing plan over the years and marketing strategy.
Sarah Orchard:But let's face it, you know, business is not something that is taught that widely generally in schools.
Sarah Orchard:It does tend to be a bit more prevalent these days than it probably was when I was at school, which was a long time ago.
Sarah Orchard:I didn't actually come across marketing until I went to university to college and I did a business studies degree and I spent four years studying away and marketing was actually in my second year and I actually did a marketing sort of placement and then specialized in marketing strategy in my final year.
Sarah Orchard:So marketing has been something that I have been doing for a very long time, but I hadn't really come across it before.
Sarah Orchard:And I do think that one of the things I noticed is that there are quite a few templates and resources that you can just Google but the majority of them are aimed at, I'd say bigger businesses or what we call business to business.
Sarah Orchard:So when a business is selling services to another business, not to end consumers and U.S.
Sarah Orchard:hospitality businesses in whichever shape or form we take, we are generally selling to and marketing to end consumers.
Sarah Orchard:So I often think that there is a lot of free stuff out there and you can go on to, you know, YouTube or Google and maybe TikTok and search for stuff and there'll be lots of free, free information out there but it's often not actually geared to your particular type of business and I think that can be a bit of a red herring and it can lead you off down lots of little alleyways and you know, detours that probably don't get you.
Sarah Orchard:That sat nav analogy again doesn't get you to your end destination very quickly and you'll probably have quite a lot of pain and getting lost and diversions along the way.
Sarah Orchard:So this is one of the reasons why I created my own seven step marketing system which I call the Customer Delight Marketing Blueprint.
Sarah Orchard:Now I created this about 5 years ago mainly because I've been working with clients doing sort of one to one consulting.
Sarah Orchard:Obviously as I said, I was classically trained in terms of, you know, I'm a Chartered Institute of Marketing qualifier, got a diploma from them as well.
Sarah Orchard:And I'm also a chartered marketer and you know, I was classically trained in terms of marketing strategy and planning.
Sarah Orchard:That's what I'd been brought up on.
Sarah Orchard:But what I, what I found was it was very difficult for my clients sometimes to understand the process.
Sarah Orchard:So what I've done is I've simplified this and created my own seven step system.
Sarah Orchard:And it is designed actually for short term rental and glamping businesses.
Sarah Orchard:So it's not designed for business to business.
Sarah Orchard:It is designed based on the clients that I've worked, hundreds of clients that I've worked with over the years.
Sarah Orchard:And what I've also tried to do is not over complicate it.
Sarah Orchard:So there's just a seven simple steps.
Sarah Orchard:And I actually teach this in my live group bootcamp program.
Sarah Orchard:So my bootcamp runs every January.
Sarah Orchard:I run it once a year because marketing strategy I think is quite something that is quite difficult to just learn from, say like something on Google.
Sarah Orchard:So that's why I teach this in a live group program because you need support to go through it.
Sarah Orchard:I don't think it's particularly complicated to come up with your marketing strategy and your action plan.
Sarah Orchard:And it doesn't have to be like a 50 page war and peace document.
Sarah Orchard:You can have just a one pager if that suits you.
Sarah Orchard:But like I said, I've simplified it into seven simple steps that I walk people through.
Sarah Orchard:And that does give them the structure to be able to think about what marketing activity.
Sarah Orchard:So your marketing action plan, what that should look like based on who you're trying to target in terms of your ideal guests.
Sarah Orchard:So I've sort of broken that down, taken my years, 30 odd years of learning and put it into a simple system.
Sarah Orchard:But just to really recap on this episode, if you just to simplify things, if you think about marketing strategy as what you want to do and your marketing plan is how you're going to get there, that is the simplest way to think about it.
Sarah Orchard:But the key thing is that you need to align your marketing strategy and your action plan to your actual goals, your business goals and personal goals and what you're trying to achieve.
Sarah Orchard:So if you're listening in today with a desire to grow your direct bookings this year and fill those pesky calendar gaps, do make sure you check out my free direct booking roadmap quiz because that will show you where you need to focus your marketing efforts soon.
Sarah Orchard:If you've, if you've got all this nailed, you know what your business goals are.
Sarah Orchard:You've got your marketing strategy well and truly nailed.
Sarah Orchard:But maybe your marketing hasn't quite been getting the results that you want.
Sarah Orchard:So do take a look at my free quiz.
Sarah Orchard:I'll put the link in the show notes, it's on my website.
Sarah Orchard:It's get fully book.com quiz and that will give you some pointers in terms of how you can grow your direct bookings and fill those calendar gaps.
Sarah Orchard:And this brings me to the end of this episode.
Sarah Orchard:But I would love to hear from you.
Sarah Orchard:You know, do you have.
Sarah Orchard:You can send me a direct message so that it's nice and private and you're not confessing this to the world, but do let me know whether you've actually got a marketing strategy and plan.
Sarah Orchard:If you're struggling with it, what is holding you back?
Sarah Orchard:What particularly is making it difficult for you?
Sarah Orchard:Because I would love to know and hopefully I would be able to help you.
Sarah Orchard:So thanks for listening today.
Sarah Orchard:I will be back next week with a lovely guest, a fellow host who will be sharing their glamping business marketing journey and how they market to two very different, different types of guests.
Sarah Orchard:Now, on paper, these guests are like oil and water.
Sarah Orchard:So it's a really cracking episode and we really dive down deep into attracting different types of guests to your holiday business.
Sarah Orchard:It'd be packed with loads of actionable marketing tips and the real life experience of a fellow host.
Sarah Orchard:If you've enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you could leave me a review.
Sarah Orchard:You know how much us hosts love those five star reviews.
Sarah Orchard:See you next time.
Sarah Orchard:Thank you for listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.
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.
Sarah Orchard:Head to my website get fully booked.com quiz and let's get you more direct bookings and more profit in your pocket.