This is not an article to convince you of the benefits of a video. You can find that anywhere. This is also not an article on creating a video for individual units.
This IS an article on best practices for creating a video for your vacation rental website. Perhaps on your home page or rentals page. In short, I’m going to share some tactics we have used to get the most out of your video, and even some marketing strategies on using it.
The Goal
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million. The homepage of your website is where you send people that don't have a place in your booking funnel -- yet. For example, do they know the area? Your properties? Your brand?
Before a booking is made, there are lots of questions people have that could prevent them from converting. We call them inhibitors. Use your website video to bring down those inhibitors. How?
Zap those inhibitors!
Your location:
Get shots of points of interest that show why your location is a great place to visit.
Your properties:
Take some of your best rental properties and get those amazing shots of balconies, close-ups on linens, towels, etc. Use flyovers to show the proximity of your rentals to points of interest.
Your brand:
Show people checking in, or shots that highlight your team, beds being made, cleaning products being used, etc. Prove your professionalism and whatever it is that makes you stand out.
Emotion = Bookings
A huge motivation for booking is the idea of enjoying an experience tailored to the guest. In other words, it's more than just the quality of the property itself -- it's about the personal connection and feeling.
Overall, we’ve found that creating realistic scenarios helps to put potential guests "there" mentally and emotionally. A good example is having kids run out of the rental house to meet their grandma who just arrived. Or, perhaps showing kids actually catching a fish (not just sitting there). So include people doing things in your video.
Anything that can evoke an emotional response can provide a motivation to book. Determine who your target audience is and create those scenarios in your video.
Examples
Your target guests are younger families with children. Try a scene with parents enjoying a glass of wine on a deck while the kids play in the pool.
Your target guests are grandparents or family reunions. Try a scene with younger parents cooking while the grandparents and kids are playing a board game.
(More ideas at the end of this article)
More than pretty shots
After you do all of that, you may have a 2 minute video. That’s too long right? Nope. The video should be used as a “background” on your website, perhaps with a search bar over it. Ultimately, you want to have one video of everything to use on the website, and then break that video up into 30-second snippets that target each guest type.
Now you have social media ad gold. Here’s what I mean: combine all of the older couple shots into one video that you can use for a targeted Facebook ad campaign. Then do the same with interests, combining all of your “active lifestyle” shots towards an ad targeting that demographic.
There are many segmenting options on Facebook and it can be overwhelming. So I would suggest working backwards. Work with a marketing agency to figure out the ad segments that are best for your brand, and then create those scenes that target them. And don't worry if some of your shots overlap -- the goal is to create ads that target individual interests and segments.
Bonus tip
Since most people associate having a drink with relaxing, booze it up. We’ve found drink-related posts and videos has an impressive impact on click-thru rates! That and puppies -- go figure.
Good example videos
Target ideas
- Active lifestyle
- Highlighting active lifestyle activities in the area.
- General
- Beach flyover
- Wave close-up, toes in sand
- Bonfire on beach
- Pans of best kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms
- couple checking in
- Town center flyover
- Health
- Couple cooking in house
- Spa experience
- Exercising on beach
- Older Family
- Older couple playing board games in house
- Relaxing on beach
- Kids running out to meet grandma outside of house
- Romantic
- Dinner on balcony
- Couple holding hands at sunset
- Drinking coffee on balcony
- Dressed up couple at fancy dinner
- Wedding
- Wedding ceremony, bride on beach
- Young family
- Family with young kids playing on beach
- Family getting beach portrait done.
- Jumping in pool
- Kids build sand castle
- Cocktail at restaurant at sunset.