Heather Bayer
In this episode, we're talking about one of the most powerful ways to make your marketing work harder for you, and that is niche marketing and developing ideal guest profiles.

Heather Bayer
I'm Heather Bayer, and as a former CEO of a property management company, I've had decades of experience in this industry. With me today is marketing strategist Nihal Salah, who has a knack for making marketing feel less overwhelming and way more effective. Nihal teaches businesses how to create no-nonsense marketing strategies and how to use AI to simplify their marketing execution. So together we're exploring the exciting world of Vacation Rental Marketing and bringing you our collective wisdom to help you grow your business with confidence.

Heather Bayer
So if you've ever struggled to figure out who your most profitable guests are, or how to attract more of them, this episode is for you. Whether you're managing properties in a market with limited repeat business, or trying to target guests who truly value what you offer, this conversation is packed with practical advice you can put to work right away.

Heather Bayer
So I'm joined again by Nihal Salah, and we're going to break down how to identify your most valuable guest segments, create detailed profiles for them, and tailor your marketing to connect with them in a way that makes them want to book with you right now. We're going to cover everything from spotting patterns and guest behavior, to crafting messages that resonate, selecting the right marketing channels, and timing your efforts for the biggest impact. By the end, you'll have a game plan to attract high-value guests who align with your brand and are willing to pay for your unique offerings.

Heather Bayer
So are you ready for this? Let's get started, Nihal.

Nihal Salah
Let's, I'm excited to be here. I know this is a topic that both of us are really, really, really passionate about, Heather, right?

Heather Bayer
Well, I've had this idea in mind for so many years of creating a niche marketing course, because there's so many niches now, whether it's pet-friendly or accessible - that's a big one - or pickleball. You talk to my son, my business partner, Mike, he will not go anywhere on vacation now unless there are pickleball courts. So this is a massive area, and I think people neglect it, because they think they want to throw spaghetti against the wall and they don't want to miss anybody who might be out there who possibly might want to come and stay at their place. And I think in doing that, they're neglecting the power of niche marketing.

Nihal Salah
100%. And I think, you know what? I want to acknowledge something up front, that FOMO is real, that fear of missing out on potential bookings. All of us, I've been in marketing for 17 years, and whenever I pivot my business to focus on a particular audience, or service and I know I need to niche down, I instantly get that. I call it niche anxiety, where I'm like, But I know this would be relevant to all these other groups of people. It's a real anxiety that you get. But just bear with us. Listen to this until the end. I'm convinced that Heather and I will sell this to you and by the end of this episode, you'll realize why you absolutely need to focus on particular niches. But before we do that, should we perhaps define what a niche is?

Heather Bayer
Yes, that would be good. They're all in my head, and that's like a lot of us. We keep all these wonderful ideas in our heads, so I'm quite happy to bring them out. I can give you niches, but to describe what it is is slightly different. So you do this. You talk about what a niche actually is.

Nihal Salah
Okay. So in its simplest definition, because I like simple, a niche is a group of people who have a common set of characteristics, preferences, interests, or behaviors, or potentially demographics. There is something very unique to that particular group of people. The more specific you get with a niche, the more effective you will be at communicating with that group of people. When we're talking about a niche, I'm not talking, for example, about... A niche of people who travel with their pets, that is a niche. I would say go to a sub-niche. Focus on the niche, but then find the sub-niches. And I'll explain why in a moment.

Nihal Salah
A sub-niche could be people like me who travel with a reactive dog, because that's a very different set of needs. And there are a very particular list of things that, as a traveler, I would appreciate immensely from the properties I stay at. For example, if it's a property with a fenced backyard and there are no dogs in the neighbor's garden, if there's places where we can go on long hikes that are quite quiet and secluded and there's no chance of me running into other people with other dogs. Those things are really important for me and other reactive dog owners.

Nihal Salah
One of the interesting things when you start thinking about niches is you could start looking at some macro trends. For example, if you look at the number of people who are adopting rescue dogs across the world, that number is going up. What happens when you adopt a rescue dog is often there are behavioral issues, and one of the biggest behavioral issues is reactivity. You're just looking at a macro level, where are the key trends, and then diving a little bit deeper.

Nihal Salah
But there is a ton of niches. Astronomers; I have a friend who is a very keen astronomer. He's spent thousands on a telescope. He loves capturing images from the sky. Any key events, he will be there, making sure he's in the right location to be capturing some of these images. You have bird watchers, you have train watchers. There are so.... endless, endless niches. It's about what are those common characteristics, common interests, common passions or preferences or demographics that a particular group of people have. That is really a niche.

Heather Bayer
Yeah. Just going back onto a couple of those. I mean, the birdwatching niche is something like a $19 billion worldwide industry. Do you know everybody, just about, unless you're right in the middle of a city, has birds. And if we're out in a country, in a rural area, you probably have birds there that people want to come and see. And I don't see many websites talking about birdwatching opportunities in their area. Another one, if we... I mean, we'll just go back to dogs for a moment. And I've mentioned Sue Allen of East Ruston Cottages before. Her niche is multiple dogs, people traveling with three, four, sometimes five or six dogs. And this, I mean, it's a very narrow niche, but there's a lot of people out there looking for it. And they will travel. They will travel to your location because they're traveling with their... They've got three dogs, they're traveling with their friends who've got three dogs, and they can't find anywhere to go. So they are looking... That's one of the few groups that actually looks for the property before they look for the location.

Nihal Salah
Oh, 100%. And you know what's really interesting, I think, and it's really worth spending a couple of moments talking about, this is understanding the psychology of your target audience that you're focused on. If you understand the psychology of a dog owner, all you need to do is interview a few, speak to some. We'll talk about how to use AI for a lot of this stuff later on in the episode. But if you understand the underlying psychology and the process they go through when they're searching for and booking a holiday to go on with their animals, you will be able to market to them so much more effectively. Because for example, one of the things that I love doing is motorcycling. So I do lots of motorcycle trips. And when I'm on those motorcycle trips, I am very price sensitive with accommodation. So I want to book somewhere where I can just spend the night. Ideally, have secure parking for my motorbike that's close to the property and I just need a kitchenette and a comfy bed and a shower and I'm good. That's all I need. So I will look for the cheapest option that fits those criteria with decent reviews.

Nihal Salah
Now, if I am going on a holiday with Rosa, my dog, I am so price insensitive it is insane. You'll think I'm another person, right? Which is why understanding the psychology beyond just a persona is really important, like really digging into the detail here. If I'm booking a holiday with Rosa, and this happened, I was going to Wales over the summer, and I found a property which was a four-minute walk away from a secure dog field, a seven-acre secure dog field. Now, for someone like me who can't leave her dog off leash, that's like winning the lottery. I got so excited. My budget per night, I ended up spending on this property double what my budget per night was because she also had a fenced-in garden. She had a dog, but it was in a completely separate area, so they wouldn't meet each other. They were fine when they did meet each other, actually. But the fact that she had that garden, beautiful, stunning views, and it's a four-minute walk from a dog field, I was like, Yeah, I didn't think twice. And I paid double the rate that I had budgeted for. And I just save money on other costs in my travel.

Nihal Salah
So understanding the psychology and how people feel about, especially when it comes to animals, is really, really important because I think a lot of people are quite similar in the sense that they might not spend so much when it's just them, but when it comes to their pets and their happiness and well-being of their pets, it's a very different story.

Heather Bayer
Oh, yes, exactly. And I'm nodding along with what you're talking about because I would do exactly the same thing if I was taking Britta away. And as I say, fortunately, we attach our accommodation to the back of our truck and away we go, so we don't have to worry about that. But do some research, and this is research on these niche groups, get into their heads. That's really what's important. You can't just say, oh, I'm going to be pet-friendly. That's just not sufficient. For a start, you're not going to attract the people who are like you and who are willing to spend that extra money if you're not pet welcoming. Just being pet-tolerant doesn't do it. But then I'm going off onto another track here.

Heather Bayer
But let's go on to identifying.... let's broaden it out and to identify the different guest segments there are. And you've mentioned before about, look at who books with you most often and how they behave. And then think about the types of guests that bring in the most profit. And you do. If somebody's out there that has a fenced yard and is four minutes from a field or four minutes from a beach where you can ride your horse, for example..., we're going to be talking a little bit about my friend Diane Denton and her company Sea Horse Diamond Beach, because that's what she markets is filling something on their bucket list, which is riding your horse on a beach, and those guests are the ones that are going to bring in the most profit, focusing on the guests who appreciate what makes your property really special.

Heather Bayer
Okay, so tell me more about identifying the valuable guest segments and how important that is.

Nihal Salah
It's immensely important because a guest is not a guest. You can have different types of guests who will pay your nightly rate. They stay for the first time. Some of those guests can just be an absolute headache, leave you negative reviews, just feel like they didn't get value for their stay. It's not necessarily because you have done anything wrong or there's anything necessarily wrong with your property, but it wasn't the right fit. The analogy that keeps coming to mind for me is it's like choosing the right partner, right? You want to make sure that you partner with the right person, that you are compatible.

Nihal Salah
When you start thinking about how you do that in practice. Again, I love using AI for shortcuts and just to be a lot more productive. But what I would do is I would look at all of my past reviews, all of my past bookings. I would pull up all of that data, including all the information you possibly can, even your communications where you've had incoming messages from guests, where that's complaining about something, saying they're happy about something, whatever. As much information as you can pull together about your guests. Of course, you can review it all manually. It's just a lot easier if you just stick it into ChatGPT or Claude, and you just give it a good prompt asking it to help you analyze that data, so both quantitative, numerical, and qualitative data, asking it to analyze to find what are the key characteristics of the guests that have left positive reviews and have not complained or anything like that, and vice versa as well. Then you can start breaking it down and analyzing further to look at what specifically was it the stay? Was there anything in particular about the property? Was there anything about the experiences? Was there anything about the communication? Get into the specifics of what did they like, what did they not like.

Nihal Salah
One of the other things that I really think is massively underutilized is speak to guests. Just have a conversation. I don't want to call them interviews because it sounds really formal then, because I actually think you get a lot more when you have a chat with someone. Just think of some key questions you could be asking to understand more about if it's, again, we'll go back to the example of people who travel with their dogs or their horses or whatever, and just have a conversation and understand more about what their animal really means to them.

Nihal Salah
You can also go on social media and look at social media groups where those niches come together. So astronomers will be on plenty. There'll be plenty of Facebook communities, for example, for astronomers, birdwatchers, and all sorts. And you can export a lot of that and again, feed it into AI or review it manually if you want to look at what are they talking about? Are there particular events? What really matters most to them? There's so much data that you can be pulling together to get an idea of what potential niches are after and what really matters to them and understanding more about their psychographics, but also the guests who have stayed with you, are there particular profiles that you can start building to figure out, actually, that's a good fit guest, and that's a bad fit guest? Because a bad fit guest is expensive on the long run. So don't be short-sighted and be like, Oh, it's a booking. I need the bookings, because on the long run, they can be quite costly. I'm sure you know this.

Heather Bayer
So before we leave this section, let's just talk about how you identify the niche that you're going to work within. Because just going back once again to pet-friendly, there is no point in being pet-friendly if you don't want to be, if you're just doing it because this is a big market out there. You've got to have not necessarily a passion, but you've got to have a passion for the guests that are coming because you've got to understand them through and through. And if you're just simply tolerating your guests that are coming because they're going to do something that you're not particularly interested in, then you're not going to have that same impact. How do you go about just identifying that niche that you're going to work on?

Nihal Salah
I think once you've got all of that data about who guests are, you'll probably have a number of different groups that you could segment those into. Then you want to start thinking about what is your property best set up for? If you do have a property, for example, that has a fenced yard, or is in a location where there's really low light pollution, it would be great for astronomers, or you're in an area that's in the middle of nature and you can hear all these different birds. So for bird spotting, it's amazing, or you're right next to a train line. So for train watches, it's fantastic.

Nihal Salah
Start mapping out the amenities or the characteristics of your property in the surrounding area that might make you a good match. Then I think the point that you made is really important, which is if you absolutely hate animals, do not try and focus on the pet-friendly niche, because you will fail. So If you absolutely detest animals, do not try and focus on the pet-friendly niche. You don't have to have necessarily a huge passion, like you say, for a particular niche, activity, interest, whatever.

Nihal Salah
But you have to, like you said, at least have a passion for happy guests and maybe just mutual feelings about the particular interests that they have. But I always think if you can find that common interest, if you love animals, or you love birds, or you love nature, or whatever, I think finding a group that shares those interests will make your life a lot easier, because you'll understand their psychology. You will be able to serve them in a way that's a lot more meaningful to them. You will be able to make the changes. Sometimes the changes are not massive changes to your property. You think about the astronomer group. If you understand that niche, whether it's through your own passion or because you've done your research, you will know that really simple things like having chairs or something comfortable for people to sit outside, having a blanket because when it's.... the best images you'll get of the stars and the galaxies and whatnot will be when it's quite cold. Colder weather is better for astronomers than warmer weather. So having a portable kettle, that setup is not costly it's really cheap, it's really easy to do, but it will make a huge difference to their experience.

Nihal Salah
I think that's how I'd go about it, is I would just map out what do the ideal guests like about my property, where are the potential segments, what am I interested in, or passionate about, and is there an overlap between those two?

Heather Bayer
Yeah, you need to get into their heads and what it is they want. If you're attracting birdwatchers, think about the types of birdwatchers that you want to attract. There's different types. There are those who I think are a great market is those who, during the pandemic, and it was mostly millennials, discovered birdwatching as a great thing to do. And they went out and started collecting all birds that they could see. So they were not the typical Twitcher. We used to call them in UK, the Twitcher, that had the little rucksack, the little backpack, and carried the big camera. These guys do not spend a lot on accommodation. But the more casual bird watchers, they may not have as much knowledge as those Twitchers, so just to have a couple of books in your house, which is... We have them in our properties here. We had Local Birds of Ontario. We also had Animal Tracks of Ontario, because we attracted people who wanted to see the wildlife, and that's the case in a lot of areas, the different types of wildlife. It's not just moose, and it's not just deer. We've got a ton of different wildlife.

Heather Bayer
We had books on what they should look for. Look for the animal tracks, look for bird tracks in the snow. There's lots of snowbirds, snowbirds birds. Yeah, I'm a snowbird. That's what they call the Canadians that go down south in the winter. But birds that are around in the winter, and you can follow their tracks to see what types of birds came to the bird table. But it's just simply having the books that allows them to follow their hobby if they're not expert at it. So you need, just like we were talking about, niching down on your pet friend Secondly, amenities and ideas is niche down in any niche, if you like. So with your birdwatchers, there's several different types of birdwatchers. Some are more passionate about it, but may not spend as much on accommodation. Others are just using birdwatching as part of an outdoorsy type of vacation.

Heather Bayer
So, yeah, there's lots of niches out there. Accessibility is another one. I mean, I've talked to....

Nihal Salah
Oh, yes, that's huge.

Heather Bayer
....I've talked to Lorraine Woodward from Becoming RentABLE, and I'll put a link to that in the Show Notes because she has a lot of information on her website. And we think of accessible accommodation as having a ramp or having slightly wider doors. But I've just been speaking to an expert on accessibility for those on the spectrum, on the autism spectrum, which is entirely different. You could niche down on that one and check out Suzanne's [Suzanne Hacker] website, which I will put on the Show Notes. And you can create a room in your house that is ideal for a child on the autism spectrum. So that's just something else. There's so many different niches. Okay, moving on....

Nihal Salah
And I think just one quick thing on that. I think where it gets really interesting is if you can identify, because ideally, you don't want to focus on any more than three. But ideally, you have niches that have an overlap. I had a conversation with someone who was at Scale Barcelona earlier this year where I was talking to her about reactive dog-friendly properties and what my dream property would look like in terms of it would be several acres of fenced land. I don't need this huge house, but it would have somewhere where I could clean my dog's paws before going in, the idea that there'll be cameras outside so I can sit inside and relax and just keep an eye on her while she's wondering around in this massive field. She said, Do you know what, Nihal? I said, What? She's like, You know everything, almost everything that you've described will be highly relevant to families with autistic children. They want somewhere that's often secluded, especially if they have a child who's very noise sensitive, somewhere close to nature. Obviously, it would need to be accessible depending on the needs and so forth, and there will be other requirements.

Nihal Salah
But there is an overlap because they also want that security to enable your child to just play and enjoy themselves knowing that they are safe. She was saying that it's interesting that there is overlap there. Look for the overlap between the different niches that you could potentially be targeting so that you're not creating completely separate propositions for completely different audiences.

Heather Bayer
That's perfect. I mean, you could find the bird watchers who are also dark sky enthusiasts. Yeah. Yeah, great point. Let's move on to how, once you found the niche, how do you build that profile to find that ideal guest that is going to be seeking you out and seeking your niche out?

Nihal Salah
This is what lots of people refer to as avatars or personas. I think it's really important to be aware of... I take avatars with a bit of a pinch of salt, and I'll explain why in a moment. But building your avatar, or your persona simply means that you're putting together that ideal guest and create a really simple document, and you're using all of the data that you've pulled together in the previous steps that we've talked about to describe exactly who they are, so what their interests are, what their demographic might be, where are they hanging out online? They're birdwatchers, are they part of particular birdwatching communities? Whether those are Facebook communities or other associations that these people are members of, because you'd be surprised at how many random associations there are for things, right? So how are they going about booking holidays? How often do they go away? Where are the places they stay? What really makes or break their stay? You want to document everything you know about or could pull together about this particular audience. The thing to bear in mind with personas is you have to go super specific with them, otherwise they're useless.

Nihal Salah
So saying that I'm targeting, I don't know, single working professionals' it's not very helpful. It's not going to help you come up with really concise messaging. It's not going to help you to decide what marketing channels to focus on, what platforms, what content to create. It's not going to help you with any of that. You want to be super, super specific when you're building out who those avatars are, and they are not static documents. I cannot emphasize this enough. These are documents that evolve every time. Again, this is a great use case for AI. Build a Custom GPT or a project on Claude. If anyone doesn't understand what that means, drop us a comment if you're watching this on any of the social media platforms, and we'll put together something special to explain all that to you. But use AI to put together, to make sure that you have a way of constantly updating, you're feeding more data. Every guest that comes to stay, every booking request that you get, that is data. You want to be feeding into your tool and getting it to update those profiles for you, so you're constantly up-to-date.

Nihal Salah
You I don't want them just to be these documents that sit in a folder somewhere. You're using that to inform what you're doing with your property. You're using that to inform all of your communication. You're using that to inform your messaging on your website, on social media, how you describe your property? And one of the things that we haven't talked about, and I know I'm going off on a bit of a tangent, but I'll be quick and then I will come back to the point, is a lot of people talk about the guests balking at high prices. I think that tends to happen when you haven't the audience that will appreciate your property the most. If you've really personalized everything in that experience for a particular niche, they will become very price insensitive. So the price sensitivity comes when there isn't that match, really. That profile is feeding into all of your marketing class or all of your marketing activity. It's like the guide, the compass to tell you where to be marketing, where to spend your money, what to be saying.

Heather Bayer
I think it's important to figure out how your targeted guests plan their trips and what they prefer, how far in advance do they book. And I think, as you said, you can find this out from the groups where they hang out. And you mentioned this earlier on when we were talking about niches, that this is the information that's in there is so valuable. So a couple of years ago, you couldn't really do much with that information. But now, as you mentioned, you can pull that information out. Somebody writes a long post about, they went on this great trip, they did this, they did that, they enjoyed this, they enjoyed that. Pull that out and then put that into, and I'm going to say your Custom GPT or your Claude project. And I know people out there saying, she said that again, and I don't know what this is. But we will expand on that at some point. I think we're going to have to do... We're going to have to do a complete episode at the end of this, which is just on AI, which is just....

Nihal Salah
Oh, I agree. Yeah, I agree.

Heather Bayer
But now, everything that somebody writes can be used, and you can just feed it into some AI program and ask it questions. And you can say, okay, so if I was targeting a particular guest in this niche, how should I speak to them? And the AI will pull out from the information you've given them and from other information that the AI will go out and get, it will deliver to you the way that you can address them. And it will tell you how they like to communicate. It will tell you how far in advance they like to book. So this process of research has been made so much easier.

Nihal Salah
Oh, absolutely, and these are tools that are at everyone's fingertips. I do think the challenge for many STR business owners, and business owners just full stop, wearing multiple hats and so forth, is that they don't know where to start. It can feel really overwhelming. But I think we should do an episode and break all of this down and simplify it, because honestly, it's like suddenly you have an additional two, three team members and an additional five hours a day. It's incredible how transformative it can be for sure.

Heather Bayer
Yeah, exactly. I have an AI team. I have the AI person that creates outlines for courses. And that person is expert in instructional design. I've told it, you are an expert in instructional design, and I need an outline for a course on this, and it creates the entire outline. You can have that expert. But yes, since we're talking about this, yes, we will definitely add that as another episode in this series. Where do you want to go now with this? So we've talked about the niches, the guest profiles. Do you want to talk about actually marketing to the best guests, or do you want to go into some of the survey responses we got?

Nihal Salah
I want to go into some of the survey responses, and I want us to talk about Sea Horse Diamond Beach because I think that this is a phenomenal business. I mean, you are very familiar with them. So maybe tell our listeners a little bit more about who they are, what they do, and the story behind how....  is it Diane?

Heather Bayer
Diane Denton is the...

Nihal Salah
Yeah, and the story, because I think there's something that we haven't talked about, which would be really important, which would be great to weave into this, which is the power of narrative and storytelling in the background, because you do not go set up a business like Sea Horse Diamond Beach if you do not have a passion for horses. Apart from dog, I had a horse. I absolutely love horses. One day I'm going to have a rescue horse and a rescue donkey. So this is somewhere where I would absolutely love to go stay when I have my horses one day. So tell us more about them and Diane's story.

Heather Bayer
Well, I first met Diane at the Vacation Rental Success Summit in 2016, and I was so excited. This was somebody who's come from Australia to my first conference. She may have come to the second one. I think she came to... She definitely came to two of them, if not three. And I was just blown away with her passion for the business and what she was bringing to it. And Diane is a horse lover. She has her own horses. She has a line in clothing for riders, wet weather clothing. And I don't ride, I'm not a horse lover, but I love this clothing that she does, these fabulous coats. She has created this brand, the Sea Horse Diamond Beach brand, where she welcomes horses with the primary goal of filling a bucket list where somebody has said, One day I want to ride my horse along a beach. This is a big thing for horse lovers, the thought of wind in your hair and galloping down a beach, and they can do that if they come and stay at Diane's place. She's also a dog lover, and she also makes her two properties, she has two properties, accessible as well.

Heather Bayer
So we're into several niches now. We're into horse lovers, dog lovers, and accessible accommodation. I would love to go and stay there, I really would. That is on my bucket list, and I don't ride horses, and I wouldn't be able to take my dog across to Australia, but one day I will. But Diane, so she responded to the survey. She was very helpful to us when we asked the question, So over to you to go through that.

Nihal Salah
Yeah, so one of the pieces of feedback that she shared was that people wanting everything we offer, but then balk at the nightly rate. And I suspect what's going on here is that there is still work to do to really hone in on this specific segment, where to really find and nail that best fit guest profile. Because you might have a horse and you might have that on your bucket list to ride your horse on a beach, which I've done, and it's just the most amazing thing. You might fit that criteria, but there might be other key characteristics of her best fit customers that are not necessarily been thought through. Again, if I were her, I would be looking at all my previous bookings, stays, reviews, everything, and I would be looking at where is the correlation? What variables are there that can correlate with the guests who never can complain about the nightly rate and who leave really good reviews? What are the variables that we can look at that correlate with the guests who are more likely to leave either a negative or not so great review or neutral review and tend to have issues about the rate and just expect the world for very, very little.

Nihal Salah
I suspect that there will be nuances that have potentially been overlooked or not necessarily thought about that would enable her to get a lot more targeted and a lot more specific. I think there's nothing... When you have that, it's really important to be able to weave those messages throughout the website. One of the things I came across, this is a very relevant tangent that I'm going on. Like I said before, I love motorcycling. One of the things I would love to do is go on a group motorcycle trip. But there are a lot of problems with group motorcycle trips, such as you end up with a group of people who just want to go fast, which I don't. You end up with a group of people whose personalities clash, you don't have similar interests. Being on the road for 10 days with a group of people sharing accommodation with the wrong group of people could just be your worst nightmare. I came across this company, and I came across them on social media. They popped up on my feed because I'm obviously interested in motorcycles. Then when I went on to their website, they started off with their value proposition statement that they do motorcycle trips around the world and all these interesting places, and it's women only.

Nihal Salah
I'm like, Okay, cool, because most motorbikers are men, so you don't want to be the only woman in a group full of men. But then what they did, which was really clever, is they said, Are you? And they asked a series of questions that were very specific about, Do you love the outdoors? Do you really not care about fancy accommodation, but it's more important that you discover these destinations. Are you a super down to earth person who would love to find a riding buddy with the same interest? Are you? And I was like, Yes, yes, yes, yes, that's me. And when I looked at their pricing, even though they were really expensive, and I'm still seriously considering booking with them. So what they did was very quickly, if I was someone who didn't meet that criteria, I'd be like, Yeah, no, I'm not that. I'm not that. No, this isn't for me. So I think putting messaging up front like that enables you to filter out the people who will not enjoy that stay, who will not necessarily appreciate what it is that you have to offer. If you're really explicit about who are the people who are your best fit guests, and make that really clear on your website, your social media, everywhere where you have touch points with the potential guests.

Heather Bayer
I know that Diane does such a great job with her website, and there will be a link to the website in the Show Notes. But right at the top of her website, it says, The ultimate pet-friendly, accessible, Diamond Beach Resort quality accommodation. How can she go beyond that? I love the idea of the questions, of getting people to answer those questions and to the point where your ideal guest is going to say, Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Nihal Salah
So one of the immediate things that I would be putting on there is... When you think about the ultimate pet-friendly, accessible accommodation, right? This is very factual. Everything, so I'm just scrolling through the homepage. It's very factual. It's a lot of good information. But actually, if you're someone who loves horses, I'm going to focus on horses for a minute because we talked about dogs too much now. But if you're someone who loves horses and that's been on your bucket list, price becomes irrelevant. So I would have something a lot more... It's an emotional thing, right? These sorts of things aren't things that are rational decisions. And I think we always need to remember this when it comes to marketing, great marketing doesn't just address a need in a rational way. Great marketing acknowledges that as human beings, we make highly emotional decisions. It makes no sense to my friends that I will go spend several hundred pounds a night on accommodation just because it has a big fence garden, when I could get the exact same experience from my point of view for my stay, the amenities I care about, just for me, for a fraction of that price.

Nihal Salah
It is an emotionally driven decision because I love my dog to bits. It's the same with this, is that if you are a horse lover, and that is on your bucket list, that is a dream come true, and I would be using words to that effect. Have you always dreamt of riding your horse on the beach? We make that dream come true. That's the thing that I would want to see there. And then you can start asking the specific questions. Have you always loved horses or dogs? Have you always wanted to travel with your horse? Have you always wanted X? Have you always wanted Y? Have you asked those specific questions? Anyone who doesn't fit that profile will be like, I don't know, not feel it, but people who are feeling it will be like, Yes, yes, yes, that's me. And then once they get to check availability, the price honestly doesn't become as much of an issue because they truly fit your target profile and they appreciate that one thing that you are offering them, but you have to tap into that emotional need because that's really what drives most of our decision making.

Heather Bayer
That's brilliant. And I'd love to spend more time on that, but we've got one more before we finish. And I was going to say case Maggi, I think it's Case Maggi because it's an Italian site. So could you address that one?

Nihal Salah
Right. So we are not a return market, so we need continuous new guests. I mean, again, this comes back to really narrowing down your focus on your ideal guest profile. Because the more focused you are, like we said, the easier it will be for you to figure out where are they hanging out online, what type of content will resonate most with them, what messaging will resonate most with them? How do they like to be communicated to? Should I be spending my time in terms of social media channels, for example, because no one has time to be doing everything well on every single channel? Where are their typical booking windows, so you make sure that you are communicating to them at the right time with the right messages?

Nihal Salah
Then, of course, all of the other things that we talked about in the previous episode in terms of the guest journey is making sure that anyone who has shown any interest in your property that you're capturing those email addresses and you're nurturing them. Anyone who has stayed, if you're not a repeat market, you can ask for referrals. Don't forget that. Make sure you're getting those video testimonials, you're getting those referrals, ask your guests for them. There's no shame in doing that. They've been happy with the stay, then and you maybe offer them something as a thank you, then I'm sure they would be happy to refer you on to others who also are in that, have those similar interests.

Heather Bayer
The one thing I note from the, and I wish I knew I was pronouncing this correctly, Case Maggi. Do you think that's it? Case Maggi? It's C-A-S-E-M-A-G-G-I, and I'll put the link on the Show Notes for you. Go and take a second, there's some great content on there. There's some good blog posts about visiting Florence, visiting Porto Venere, getting around. But what I've seen missing on those is, as I'm scrolling through, there is no a call to action at the end of those posts. No links specifically to properties. And this was something that Jill McGee was talking about, about making sure that on every So that's Jill McGee, joined me in the podcast a week or so ago talking about SEO. But she was saying making sure that you have a call to action in every piece of content. And the call to action is not just, say, send an inquiry to us, it's actually linking internal links within your website. And that just came to mind because I was scrolling through the website and it just sparked off. I thought, there's no calls to action here.

Nihal Salah
I think the other comment I would make, and these properties look absolutely stunning, and it's clear that one of their key selling points is, looking at some of these reviews, are the amazing views that they offer? Most of these seem to have lovely terraces with stunning views overlooking water, which is always wonderful. There's more to do in terms of really honing in on what is that niche, because there's lots of people interested in holidaying in Italy. What's so special? Why should they choose Case Maggi? Assuming that's how we pronounce it - I'm sorry if we are mispronouncing it - we probably are. But that prime real estate, which is your website hero banner, we call it. It needs to be your hero. It's called a hero banner for a reason and that needs to have that statement. It's the equivalent of with Diane's property is like, Have you always dreamt of riding your horse on the beach? That's the question I would have there. The answer for people who fit her target profile would be, yes, I do. Then you have, well, book now. Like you say, having that call to action really clearly.

Nihal Salah
Also, the other thing that I would suggest here is those reviews are really hidden at the bottom. I would not put them so far down on the page. I would have reviews much higher up. Again, it goes back to what we talked about in that last episode, trust signals, and that's subconscious due diligence that potential guests are going through as they're looking at your website. So yes, I think there's definitely room to make the value proposition, which is something we'll talk about in the next episode, a lot more specific and make it really clear who are these properties best suited for and why people book and then show them how they can book, make it really easy. And have those call to actions repeated multiple times. There's no problem with that.

Heather Bayer
I think the content that we've talked about today has been really valuable. In the next episode, we're going to be talking about crafting your unique value proposition. So it's taking this journey to the next stage, and I hope everybody's going to join us for that. Do you have any closing remarks?

Nihal Salah
I would say if you want us to answer any of your marketing questions, we'll put a link to the survey that we've referenced in the Show Notes of this episode. You can still respond to that. It's really, really simple. Take you a couple of minutes. You just share your biggest marketing challenge, and then you can choose to have us mention you specifically, but I would recommend you do, because then we can give you some really specific, personalized, constructive feedback that hopefully you can go away and implement and see some more bookings coming through.

Heather Bayer
Well, that's a wrap for this episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. And thank you so much, Nihal, for joining me to talk about all those things. I love getting into this discussion on niche marketing. It's so interesting, and it's an area where you can actually see things happening. If you create the content, if you target the right people, you will find those guests coming to you and then referring you to others who are similarly like-minded.

Heather Bayer
So I hope you're walking away with some fresh ideas to make niche marketing your secret weapon in 2025. Remember, great marketing isn't about casting a wide net, it's about finding the right guests who value what you offer and then creating an experience they just can't resist.

Heather Bayer
So as we head into the New Year, let's make better marketing a priority. Take the time to really understand your audience, to refine your messaging, and to use those AI tools to work smarter and not harder. Whether you're focused on filling more nights or attracting higher value guests, the effort you put in now will set the stage for your success in 2025 and way beyond.

Heather Bayer
If you found value in today's episode, be sure to subscribe, leave a review, and please share it with others in the industry. Together, let's make 2025 the year of better marketing and bigger wins for all of us. Until next time, keep striving, keep thriving, and let's make this the best year yet. See you soon.

Heather Bayer
It's been a pleasure as ever being with you. If there's anything you'd like to comment on, then join the conversation on on the show notes for the episode at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you, and I look forward to being with you again next week.
‍