Where To Advertise My Holiday Home For Free

Where to advertise my holiday home for free is a question often asked.  Instead ask yourself, “what can I do to advertise my holiday home for free?”

This involves a move away from “where can I list”, a move away from the ‘list and they will come’ approach.  It’s a move towards you as an owner:

* taking control of your advertising and of your marketing

* starting to build relationships with your guests, speeding up the booking cycle

* not doing hard sell, but a more effective, more subtle drip feed effect

* raising your profile as an expert in your holiday home’s area

You will need to invest some time.  But it’s so worth it when the bookings start coming through. Bookings that you have proactively earned as a result of your efforts. How rewarding!

Three places where you can advertise for free are:

• on social media
• by word-of-mouth advertising
• on blogs

Social media

To get results and for people to notice you,  you need to be active and importantly regularly active on social media.  But don’t get overwhelmed and think you need to be everywhere.  That’s unrealistic.  Aim for 15 minutes a day and start by choosing your favourite 2 platforms.  These may well be where you hangout now on a personal level. If that’s Facebook set up a business page linked to your personal profile. If it’s Twitter set up a separate business account. Just get started!  Post and tweet new content but also share and retweet content from others.  This is a great way to get noticed and takes away the initial fear away of “what do I say”.  Use photographs of your area and promote what to do in your area more than you promote your own property. Every now and again add a promotional post.

Social media is foremost about being social so bear that in mind. Use it as a tool for future guests to find you then provide valuable interesting content to them and continue to build relationships with them from there.  Don’t expect instant results but results will come.

Word of Mouth Advertising

This involves you being an ambassador for your property at all times. From the conversations you have in the school yard to those you have at work, to those you have with friends of friends, make sure they know you have a holiday home and that you take paying guests.  You need to put the word about in your holiday home’s locality to.  Make sure the local pub knows about you, your favourite tea room so they can recommend you to their customers. In return you can do the same for this. This word of mouth advertising of course doesn’t mean being the bore that only talks about your holiday home. But when asked what do you do, be ready to tell them that you run a holiday home and prepare two sentences as to what’s special about it.

Blogging

Blogging is you writing articles, positioning yourself as an expert in your local area, offering your guests interesting and valuable content. It’s about going that extra step and offering more than most holiday home owners do which immediately sets you apart. Which immediately grabs future guest’s attention.  Blogging is a great relationship building tool. And it provides new content for you to promote in your social media too. Blogs should be written from the heart, as you, telling your story and sharing your expertise.  Add a blog page to your website or set up a blog if you haven’t already got a website. Start brainstorming your topics and then get writing!

It’s time to start being proactive in your marketing (and all for free). Time to stop thinking of where you can list for free on listing sites, instead think what you can do for free.

Talking of free, here’s a chance to get your hands on my FREE mini program, to supercharge your holiday home’s marketing and change the way you market it – forever?  Get it here: