The 3 Steps of a Marketing Plan

Planning is the most underrated marketing topic.

We've all heard the saying:

"Fail to plan, plan to fail."

Yeah yeah yeah, I get it.

Everyone talks about WHY to plan, but no one talks about HOW.

Which leaves short term rental entrepreneurs spinning their wheels and worst of all,

spending money and time on things that don't actually matter.

In this article I'm going to teach you how to properly create a marketing plan so you:

• Stop guessing on what to do.

• Have fun doing the right thing.

• Make more money.

Let's dive in.

Step #1: Get a Baseline

In order to improve, we have to find what to improve.

In short,

For example, let's say you want more bookings.

Before someone books, they take certain actions like:

1. Visit your website.

2. View your property.

3. Look at the price.

These are called Micro KPIs.

Find all these data points and put them on a spreadsheet in order of "less likely to book" to "more likely to book."

Pro tip: Take the average of the last 6-12 months since our business is seasonal.

Your desired outcome with this step is to figure out how many Micro KPIs equal one Main KPI. I.e. Bookings.

You should spot growth opportunities right away. A lot of times short term rental Entrepreneurs just need more eyeballs on their site.

Here's what we do with that information.

P.s. If you want a step-by-step guide on how to create a baseline. Read this article.

Step #2: Create The Strategy

Now that we know where our opportunities are, we want to create a strategy to go after them.

I'd imagine your situation is going to be different from the next reader. So i'm going to list out different tactics to choose from.

How to get more people to view your website and property:

• Paid ads.

• SEO.

• Listing optimization.

How to get more people to book after viewing your property:

• Create a lead generator to build an email list.

• Start founder-led marketing on social media.

All these tactics will work. You just have to pick one and focus.

Keyword, focus.

Do your best (and maybe a little research) to pick the tactic that fits the opportunity you found in the baseline.

Then focus on executing the strategy.

Here's what my strategy looks like based on my baseline in step one.

Step #3: Organize Your Time

Not what you were expecting?

You're still busy running a company when you begin marketing.

This newsletter gets two hours of focus every morning (8am-10am). No if's, and's or but's.

My newest project of growing a vacation rental property management company to 100k in 6 months gets one half day per week.

I can't whine about it.

Why?

Because, I:

• Don't want to create the perfect baseline (step#1)

• And the most beautiful strategy (step #2)

• and fall short of my goals due to a lack of time or effort.

Marketing takes time, so plan out the time in your plan.

That's all for today. I'll see you in the next article.