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Wendy: [00:00:00] Hey guys, this is Wendy, and I am here with fellow short-term rental hosts and host of the Thanks for Visiting podcast, Sarah Karakaian. Have you ever heard of her? Yes, I think so. Welcome, Sarah.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:11] Thank you for having me, Wendy. I’m excited about this conversation.

Wendy: [00:00:13] Yes. Today we are going to maybe debate, but also just share some ideas of what people can do with their Airbnb listings to help boost it up, the algorithm maybe. Some of these things are going to be tests, experiments. So I thought we could talk them out. And I want to know what you’re doing with your listings that maybe is different than mine. And we can share with our listeners to help make some changes that guests will hopefully like.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:00:41] Yeah. And I think I can offer this too, Wendy, is that these are– we’ll talk in Airbnb terms in terms of what the areas are called. But honestly, wouldn’t you agree if you take these same practices and put them in any of the other booking channels, including your own listing site, these best practices translate?

Wendy: [00:00:58] Yes. And actually, in our HBMM group, we have talked about this. And a member made these changes in her PMS. And obviously it gets sent out to whatever hosting channels she has connected. And she started to get more verbal bookings, even though they were in her mind or in our minds, geared towards Airbnb. So yeah, I think it’s going to serve the guests to just know more what they’re getting and be more excited about booking your space.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:01:31] I agree.

Wendy: [00:01:32] So two of the categories we’re going to talk about are– I think we can have probably 100 different levers to pull in this for a listing in general, but we’re going to do photos and copy. And so let’s just start with photos. The most obvious one is going to be the hero image. Tell me what you’re looking for in a hero image.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:01:51] So in the hero image, depending on what season it’s in, that is like the first image they see. And if they’re looking on a mobile view, sometimes it’s the only image they see, especially if they’re scrolling past it. Right. And so you want that image to be whatever is going to make them stop and investigate your property further. 

And so I see a lot of people sometimes disregard the importance of this image, or they don’t understand that the image needs to be clear and tell some sort of story. And that story could be either an amenity that drives people to book that property, which that amenity could be season dependent.  

So if you’ve got a 60-day booking window or a 30-day booking window, you need to be thinking about people who are looking for dates that are 30, 60 days out. And that might be the turn of your season, where maybe– fire pits are always fun, but you might want a fire pit. It’ll especially be something featured during the fall time.  

Or a swimming pool here in Ohio where I’m at, you can’t really pitch it in January because it’s not going to be something that you want to use. Heaters wouldn’t do anything for us here. So just thinking about stopping someone who’s searching, that’s how important this first photo is. What do you see that people do either that sometimes doesn’t work, and they think it’s like this trend that does work?

Wendy: [00:03:13] Well, one thing I would say is, for instance, we’re in Scottsdale. Having the pool as the hero image. Everyone has a pool. It is a very important amenity, and that’s what people are coming for. But everybody has a pool, and so you’re going to want to look at what everyone else is doing, some of your competition. I can scroll through all of Scottsdale and see 1,000 swan floaties in a pool, one in each listing. 

So think about whether it’s going to be a different angle of the photo that you’re going to take. Maybe you do want to show that pool, but show it in a different angle in a different way. Maybe it’s from above, a drone shot, but separate yourself from the rest of the listings. And you can always do that because people are changing stuff all the time. But you can do a pretty quick search and see how to stand out.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:04:10] But let’s talk about that too. So for us, my team and I have to be really cognizant of when’s the last time we looked at the hero image, and we’re going to get into it later of the copy. Because it can feel like in an instant, six months goes by, and you haven’t seen if those photos are translating in terms of conversion rates. Are people clicking past just the initial impression of your property? And so we actually have it in our Breezeway to make sure–  people are like, do you know this still says it? I’m like, oh my gosh. We never– you know what I mean?

Wendy: [00:04:44] We have done that too. And we’ve definitely had information in there for like the winter when it’s the summer, or something like that. So it is definitely important to keep up on your listing and just revisit every aspect of the 100 different levers that we’re going to talk about. And we’re not going to talk about 100, but there’s probably a 100. Let’s talk about the image order.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:05:08] Yes.

Wendy: [00:05:10] People do this in different ways. They might do it as a tour through the house. What I do is the top five, or our hottest amenities, or maybe the best-looking photos. Almost every one is going to show some amenity that somebody is going to like. But we might show the pool. We might show the fire pit. All the things that people are liking and wanting to do when they come to our area, or if it is a business listing, or something like that. We might show the desk if we’re going to have a business traveler, let’s say. What is your tactic for the order?

Sarah Karakaian: [00:05:49] Yeah, I love both those options. I love tour of the home, and I also love listing the hottest amenities first. So people are like, oh yeah, I want to do that. I want to do that. I want to do that. Here’s what I would not recommend is those– so we say the first five images because you have on Airbnb. And I think a lot of the channels that you can list on have that one main image that you can see, and then there’s four next to it, because it just fits really nice in a website and a web page. So it makes sense.  

But when people have a hero image and then the next four are all the bathroom or all of the living room, they uploaded their photos, and they didn’t think it mattered in terms of– and it sounds cliché, but you really are telling a story to your potential guest of what it would be like to stay there. And if you were hitting them with one room, it’s boring. And if you think that they’re going to scroll through all your photos, maybe the first three or four if you’re lucky. 

So deciding those first five, whatever that story is that you think you should tell, and then we’ll talk about this too, Wendy. But for us, we will track obviously ADR, and occupancy, and then overall rev par. And if we see a property sitting stagnant, that’s the first thing we go to, is the photos. Because unlike other real estate “purchases”. They’re just purchasing a night, but you get to go and feel, and see, and touch, and walk it, if you want. You don’t get to with our spaces. 

This is all they have to go off of to make sure to see if this is a right fit for them. So that importance of whatever you decide those first photos are, do not overlook it, and then try something out, see how it converts. And if it’s not converting, that might be the first thing that I change should a property be falling flat and we’re like, why? This is a great place to stay.

Wendy: [00:07:37] And I just noticed this today because I was making changes to a listing. The order is very important. And I thought, oh, first five photos, that’s great. But when you were on your phone, you see one, and then you click through, and you then can see them all, and you can scroll, oh my gosh, that first one is so important. We all talk about it, but I’m not looking at them on my phone. When I’m working on the listings, I’m working on my computer. So it’s important to have that phone view so you can see what they’re seeing.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:08:08] And you have a really good hack for that. You could see a phone view on your desktop.

Wendy: [00:08:14] Yes.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:08:15] It’s possible.

Wendy: [00:08:16] Yeah. You guys can Google it. If you’re in Chrome, you can go up into view and then drop down to developer tools, and then you can see what your screen looks like on any phone. You can choose an iPhone SE or whatever the phone is. And you can you can see exactly what they see, which is going to come up to be more important when we get to description. But let’s keep going down the photo section. What about adding photos or new photos? How often do people get new photos?

Sarah Karakaian: [00:08:47] Probably not often enough because here’s what happens. When you’ve been hosting for a while, maybe you’ll have an unfortunate situation with the sofa, and you get a new sofa, or there’s a new rug, or you upgrade the TV, or whatever happens. Your listings will slowly morph into the same great listings that you had before, but they look different.  

And if you don’t think people remember that, they do. And so they walk in, and if they’re not feeling like this is the exact listing that they booked, if it’s just as pleasant, just as great, they may not question it. But I like to have exactly what you see online is what you’re going to walk into so that they’re not focusing on, hey, what’s different about this? Is this the place that we booked? They’re just focusing on what they came to do, which is have a great time.

Wendy: [00:09:34] I have a funny story about this because we have a listing that we’ve had going on three years. The inside really hasn’t changed, but it had one of those cow pictures from the beginning, like when they were really popular three years ago. Now everyone has the cow photo or the canvas. So we took it down because we’re like, enough. 

Well, the photo was still up, so when people would show up, they would be like, where’s the cow? And I was like, seriously? I thought, we’ve moved on from cows. And I know that it’s my fault for leaving the photo, but they want the cow. So show them what they’re going to get. And then speaking of that, we’ve been taking new photos. I saw another host doing this, and then I got my photographer to come out and do this. And it turns out he was the photographer for that listing. And I was like, yes. 

So what we’ve been doing is showing everything in the property, and we pull everything out. And I’m telling you, it’s taking me a good four hours, and I need to teach somebody to do this now because it took a lot of work or at least get some help. I’m pulling everything out. I’m putting blender on the counter with margarita in it. I’m salting the rim. I’m putting a cutting board with limes. 

I want to show people exactly how much fun they’re going to have at our houses. I’m putting the yoga mats out. We’re opening the cabinets and showing how many plates we have. I’m even stacking the toilet paper. We get fancy– who gives a crap toilet paper? Which we love for multiple reasons, but I’m piling it up on the counter or the vanity with the poo-pourri spray. I want people to see we’re taking care of all parts of you. You’re going to get all these games. You’re going to get all these glassware, everything. They need to know.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:11:27] And the important thing is I think people think to do that. But sometimes I see these listing photos, I think, trying to do that same thing. But then, you show up there, and then those things aren’t there. So if you’re going to have to list out photos, I love that. But my advice is to like make sure they can actually use those items when they show up.

Wendy: [00:11:47] Yeah. And you know what? With the yoga mats, we just added them because people like to do yoga. It’s something that we can show that you can do. It’s a check mark on an amenity under the fitness section. But you best believe that if one of those yoga mats goes missing, or ruined, or whatever, we’re replacing it. So you just have to keep that in mind. Once you check those boxes and show them in a photo, it’s over. You’ve got to have that.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:12:12] Yeah. I also think, too, from the point of not only what’s in your property, which, by the way, I love the open cabinet thing. I think that’s brilliant. The open closet, or you provide hangers? Do you have steamer or ironing board? Show all those things because they are also renting those amenities. But when I was talking to Wendy about this earlier, in Columbus, if someone’s booking a– we do mostly small spaces, condos, whatnot. 

And when you’re booking a property and the photos from when you had the photographer come, it might be beautiful still, but there’s no leaves on the trees. You know what I mean? Or the window is gray outside. And you can edit these things obviously with your photographer. If that’s what we have to take our photos in the winter or an unattractive time of the year, we definitely take photos again when things are in bloom because you’re just selling a better product, I think, when there’s nice weather out.

Wendy: [00:13:03] A lot of times the photographer will come back out just to do that space that’s missing, so they don’t have to reshoot the entire thing, and you don’t have to pay the entire– and you probably do want to get new photos just because things have changed or you realize that you want to show something, but you can just have them come back out to do the outdoor photos. So don’t shy away from new photos just because you think you’re going to have to pay for the whole thing again.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:13:26] Yeah. Wendy, what are your thoughts on horizontal versus vertical too?  We haven’t talked about that, but I’ve learned, especially when you mentioned when you’re on mobile view, after you hit the hero image, you can scroll the photos. But if you have horizontal and vertical going back and forth, that layout, when you scroll to see those photos, feels chaotic unless you have  all the same direction. And when you have horizontal, you can see more of the space.

Wendy: [00:13:54] That’s something I’m going to have to look at on the phone because I don’t think I’ve looked at that lately. But what I have noticed on the desktop is–  and we’re going to move on to this too, so let’s move it in. When you categorize the photos, it lays them out one vertical and with the two horizontal next to it. 

So it lays it out nicely if you mix them in. But I’ll have to look at on the phone to see if that’s too jarring, because we know people are looking on their phone, so we want to make it– it’s tricky to have both look good. So yeah, you have to give in some places, I think, sometimes.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:14:33] Yeah.

Wendy: [00:14:34] Just a note about categorizing your photos. If you’re using a property management software, it doesn’t allow it.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:14:42] Yeah. Or sometimes it gets really weird too. So we use Hostfully. And I know I can mark it as a place where you’ll sleep, and that translates.

Wendy: [00:14:51]  Oh, okay.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:14:52] But it won’t necessarily translate, at least as of right now. I know they’re always making improvements, but it won’t always translate to like, this is the bathroom. These are the bathroom photos. These are all the laundry photos. But yeah, that can get tricky.

Wendy: [00:15:05] So I imagine putting the photos in some order is even more important in that case. Whereas mine, I use Hospitable. It doesn’t change anything with the categories. So we do take advantage of the categories area. But when I’m doing the order of photos in the beginning, I’m just doing the first five hard hitters and then a lot of really good ones after that, but I’m not worried about doing a tour because I know ultimately they’re going to be looking at it in a category, which when you’re in the category section and you’re looking at the bedroom ones, the living room ones, look at each section to see how all those photos work together. You do not need 30 of the living room, right?

Sarah Karakaian: [00:15:49] Yeah.

Wendy: [00:15:49] Yes, we want to see lots of angles, and it’s important to see all the amenities in a room that there is actually a TV opposite the bed or whatever, but we don’t need 50 of them.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:16:01] Yeah. Because if you want to keep them, I think the whole thought about having a lot or a little photos is if you have a lot of good, clear, engaging photos, they’re going to stay on your listing longer. That’s my opinion. I don’t have any data to back that up, but that’s my thought, is like, it’s like the same thing on Instagram when you have a carousel and you just keep scrolling. 

You want to have that same mentality for your listing. How can you keep a potential guest continued to be engaged? And we’ll move into captions, and copy, and all that kind of stuff. But I think that’s why it’s like if you have the same picture of a living room and you just move five steps to take different photos, someone’s going to get bored.

Wendy: [00:16:37] Yeah, I’ve seen that. You know what I mean? Like, okay, we get it. We want to keep them entertained, so to speak.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:16:45] Engaged.

Wendy: [00:16:46] Yeah. Engage is a better word, for sure. Okay, so you mentioned captions. I’m going to take that into the copy section because really that’s what it is. We’re going to talk about copy and making sure things are not TDLR.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:17:00] Which means.

Wendy: [00:17:01] No. TLDR. I said it wrong.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:17:03] What’d you say?

Wendy: [00:17:03] I wrote it down wrong here. Too long. Didn’t read. TLDR. One of the biggest mistakes I see with listings is a novel, too much or too little? But usually, it’s a paragraph in the description that it’s a snooze fest. People don’t want to spend time reading it.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:17:28] And a lot of its fluff.

Wendy: [00:17:29] So much fluff. If you’re looking at it through the eyes of a guest, you’re looking at a lot of listings. You’re poking around, and you don’t have time to mess with reading paragraphs of whatever these people have said. Yeah,  whatever ChatGPT put together.  So you recommend, and I believe we both agree that bullet points of some sort or clear defined verbiage in the description is best.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:18:00] Yes, I will sometimes try to have like maybe say three or four sentences showing off my personality because I think too, people want to stay with a certain vibe. And you’ll get it in your photos and in your title, And that’s that’s a whole other episode that you should do soon. But having a little bit of personality in your listing. So if you’ve done that, how have you done that? Both ways that worked, I’ve done. Do you want to talk about your–

Wendy: [00:18:28] I love experiments like this because in the title, we’ve tried dad jokes. I use ChatGPT to help me with dad jokes. They were super corny, and I don’t think it worked. I gave it a week or two, and after a while, I’m like, man, the bookings are slowing down. So we stopped doing that. But I will say maybe the jokes were bad. And I think depending on the property, I would recommend doing a little– it depends on the theme. It depends on– I don’t know. A certain property could maybe command copy that is funny if you can pull it off.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:19:06] Yes.

Wendy: [00:19:07] That’s a way to get people engaged. But for the most of us, we’re just going to–

Sarah Karakaian: [00:19:11] I would say, yeah, for the most part, bullet points. But I’m just thinking we have one of our HBMM members, Tanya, she’s got a new property, and she gave it a refresh, and she’s, I think, like ’90s movies.

Wendy: [00:19:25] Like chick flick.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:19:26] Chick flick movies. And she was like, how do I communicate how fun this is other than the pictures? And we gave her some ideas of like, I forget what the top of my head right now.

Wendy: [00:19:35] She has Dirty Dancing as one of the rooms. So the caption of one photo of a chair in a room could be, don’t put baby in the corner.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:19:43] Right. You could put your luggage here instead. Or like just something cute like that that would show your potential guests not only does this place personality your host does. You’re already starting their good time, but you’re right. It’s not appropriate for like, every single listing.

Wendy: [00:19:56]  Right. If it’s on theme, great. And so let’s talk about captions. What should people put in captions?

Sarah Karakaian: [00:20:02] Yeah. I am of the belief that you need to put something in captions. They are giving you an opportunity to say something to someone who has not purchased from you yet, but they’re considering. You need to say something to them, but it needs to be with purpose, and it needs to be not too long. Didn’t read. If it’s like three or four sentences– because sometimes, that text will go over  the image, and it’s hard to– so just make it simple, concise, clear, and say something that has purpose behind it. Right.

Wendy: [00:20:32] And something that I’ve learned recently, we’ve both been trialing on– you’ve been on for a little while, Intellihost. I’m early on in the trial, so you’ve been using for four months. One of the recommendations is basically to treat it like a title. So very to the point like king bed en suite, however you say that. And then, I don’t know, blackout curtains, whatever we’re looking at.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:21:03] Show them. I want you to focus on these things, potential buyer.

Wendy: [00:21:06] And what I like to put in the captions, is any explanation, very short, about what you can’t see in the photo. They are blackout curtains, or it’s this mattress. We have a Tuft & Needle mattress and bamboo sheets, or whatever it is. Let people know what they’re getting. Mattresses are important.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:21:27] Yeah, they’re paying for that good night sleep. Also, what I’ve done, and this is not my area of expertise, but we once managed a large, large Victorian with, I think, eight bedrooms. And so after a while, people were trying to say, which bedroom is this? The bed with this, what floor is that on? So we started to say, bedroom number one of seven. Bedroom number two of seven. First floor. Bedroom in the middle of the two bedrooms. Trying to explain to– 

And also, if you can upload a picture, this is another good tip of the floor plan, especially if it’s a large property, that is super helpful. Because a lot of people want to figure out how their family is going to fit in. And honestly, if it’s not a good fit, it’s okay if they don’t end up booking with you because then it’s not going to be a good fit when they’re here, and it’s not fun for anybody.

Wendy: [00:22:15] Speaking of that, let’s talk about the spaces section because that’s something I like to do in that area. I know a lot of people will just say, we have a king, queen, queen, whatever. And then, again, a novel, or very, very little information. I like to break it up into rooms. Particularly, we have larger homes. They’re not large, but they’re not one bedrooms either. So are three or four bedrooms, and I want to show people what they’re getting in each room. 

Because when I’m traveling with a group of people, family, friends, I want to know, how is this going to lay out for my group? So primary bedroom has a king bed and everything to do with that room. So the curtain situation, the ceiling fan, whatever it is, en suite bathroom, and then second bedroom, again, bullet pointed because nobody wants to read the novel.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:23:12] Yeah, definitely no novels. Definitely. I now want to go back and see if I’m being as detailed as you just were in terms of like, this is the ceiling fan, or is it a chandelier? Are the lights on dimmers? Aren’t they? Is the bedroom between two other bedrooms? Because you might care if, okay, this is a great bedroom for the kids, but I don’t want to be between the two sets of teenagers. So I think that’s smart. And if you can get really, again, dialed in and purposeful, what you use there, then that would make perfect sense.

Wendy: [00:23:43] I think that a lot of times with maybe it’s newer hosts, or maybe just people who haven’t looked at their listing in a long time, it’s almost like you’re too close to the property and you don’t even know what you have. You don’t know to explain it. So I have a friend who’s like, I don’t know what to do with this. It’s not getting any bookings. I look at his listing. He’s got three fireplaces, and he hasn’t mentioned one in any of it. 

 And he’s got two balconies and a rooftop deck. He hasn’t mentioned it at all. And maybe you think, well, they can see it in the photos. Well, I had to be an investigator to go through and look at those photos to find that. I ended up looking through like, how many fireplaces are there? Wow. He hasn’t mentioned it at all. So list it all, list where it is in the property, if that’s important. If it has a balcony attached or whatever, share that information so the guest knows what they’re going to get.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:24:40] And I think that’s a great tip, Wendy, especially if your ADR is high. And so if your bookings dip because you’re not communicating with potential booker, that’s a lot of revenue potentially lost to take the opportunity to have someone go and stay, put those dollars that you’re fronting to have them stay undermarketing, have them stay and say, hey, this didn’t translate from your listing, or hey, you oversold this or this, whatever that is, and have someone, like you said, not so close to it, point out you need to bring up this more, or this is my favorite part about it. Because you’re right. You can get too close to it and just forget those things.

Wendy: [00:25:18] I’m helping people with these listings, and I look at mine, and I’m like, oh my gosh, we’ve had that fireplace in the condo for three years, and I’ve never mentioned it. I made the same mistake. So it happens to all of us because there’s a lot going on in these listings. And let’s talk about something else that’s going on. 

There are a lot of different sections that you can fill out now. There is guest access, other details to note, how you’re going to interact with the guest, the neighborhood description, how to get around, home guide. There’s directions. You can even put in checkout instructions now. So we get one set up, and we’re like, we’ll just do that later. And then how important is it? I’m not sure.  

But we do know that Airbnb in particular likes to have all that stuff filled out. And with the checkout instructions, it’s been a hot topic with, well, probably on TikTok, but people complaining about checkout instructions. So that’s a great place to show how little they have to do when they leave or that it’s not a big deal. Lock up. That’s not really chores you’re leaving. So that’s another opportunity and another suggestion in Intellihost, what to do. So do you fill out all those?

Sarah Karakaian: [00:26:39] Yes. And we do make it a habit. Myself, I try to be better, but our reservationist who we’re in all the apps every day to like look for something new because they don’t tell you.

Wendy: [00:26:52] No, they don’t.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:26:52] When the summer and the winter roll out happens, they might tell you the different features, but they might add something on those lists of amenities that they didn’t have before or a way to get even more granular with– this is old now, but what kind of coffee maker? Because people care. If people use those filters, you’ll just show up more, the more you fill out on these OTAs.

Wendy: [00:27:17] And you want to take the opportunity to show exactly what you have because you spent money on this stuff. But one of the apps, the other apps that we use is Rankbreeze, and they will alert you to any new amenities that you maybe need to take advantage of. Yes.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:27:36] They’re calling Airbnb, and if something changes, they’ll let you know, hey, there’s this opportunity. That’s brilliant.

Wendy: [00:27:41] Like sun loungers pops up and, well, of course, we have pool chairs. Check. We already have it.  So we didn’t have to do anything different. Check the box. Yeah.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:27:53] That’s smart. I have a little tip. Here’s the thing, though, Wendy. We’ve made a lot of suggestions today, and someone might go in and make all of them, which actually, I think, is probably fine, especially if you’re not showcasing something you can showcase. But once you feel like you have your listing up, and it’s solid, two tips.  

Make another date with yourself or with a team member to go back in there and make sure there’s no new features, and have it pop up in your operational software or in your Google calendar, whatever you use to keep track of your stuff. But also if you make big changes, like the hero image, make that note of it somewhere, and then see if it does make a difference.  

Because if you make all these changes and then you’re listing takes off and your conversion rates jump up, you don’t know what actually moved the needle. And it’s really important for you to know. So if your image actually is great, but what’s happening is you have too much fluff at the top of your listing and all that great real estate is getting wasted on how many beds and baths you have and whatever, that’s the problem. 

But you’re over here changing the hero image. You know what I’m saying? So you just have to take note. If you make a change of something, take note. Go back to it. Did it move the needle at all? No. Okay. Let’s try something different. It did. Okay. Keep that there. Or just make a note of this hero image performs well during this time.

Wendy: [00:29:19] And there are a lot of anecdotal suggestions out there of what to do. I’m going to tell you a few experiments we’ve done, and the only way we know is by watching the data. So we try it, like the dad jokes. We make note of it. There’s a place to make note of it in each of these apps that we’ve talked about, and you can see is it working or not.  

And then you can scrap it when it hasn’t worked. Or tell everybody about it when you think it has. So dad jokes didn’t work for me, but something that did work for us, again, it’s been a very short amount of time, so no hard data, but we did get some more traction, is putting the open important dates in the title.  

So for instance, 4th of July. We just did this a couple of weeks ago, putting 4th of July available, or July 4th available. All of a sudden, we get all these inquiries for 4th of July, even though they’re searching for those dates. To me, it made no sense. But somebody had told me someone else tried this. And so I’m like, sure, I love experiments.  

So we gave that a try, and it worked. And as soon as somebody booked it, took it out and put something else in, I don’t know, Labor Day or whatever. So there’s important football weekends, or something that you want to get filled. Next weekend is available. Whatever it is, give it a try, see what happens. Give it a week or two, and then try something else.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:30:47] Yeah. So you use Rankbreeze to help you track your listings health. How often do you log in there?

Wendy: [00:30:57] I try to look a couple times a week. Usually, when I’m making changes to listings, that’s when I go back and refer to what I did before and see, was there any change? But I’m making changes to listings a lot, probably more often than is recommended, but I’m like a listing change junkie.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:31:19]  I was just going to say people often talk about looking at your pricing per night and how you probably should be in there once a week. Even if you’ve got dynamic pricing software, you should still see what it’s doing. Is it translating? Whatever. I don’t think we talk enough about checking on the pulse of your listing and how it’s translating with the consumer at that time with what you’ve got going on in your listing, whatever that photo is or the copy is, time of year it is, what availability you have.  

All those factors change all the time. So to log in to Rankbreeze just as often as you would your pricing software, I think, especially for serious hosts who depend on their property performing well is super important, and I don’t think gets talked about enough.

Wendy: [00:32:05] Well, especially now when two years ago, you throw a house up there and it’s booking. And now you have to be more savvy. You have to be, I say, more aggressive because that’s my personality. But I’m going at those listings all the time trying to show how great they are. I’m not trying to change anything about them that would be misleading or fool anybody into booking, but this is our advertisement. This is what we’re showing to the world, and we need to put the best foot forward, almost like a magazine cover.  

Let’s talk about more experiments. Another one that we are doing because it’s our low season in Phoenix, a summer promo. You can do a promotion with the pricing in the calendar, like an Airbnb promo, but if you want to offer your own separate promotion, you can do this in any channel. We put summer promo in the title, and then at the top of the description, the details about the summer promo. So we’re offering book two weekdays, get one half off, or book three, get a free day, or something like that, and that catches people’s eye when they’re scrolling.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:33:25] Do you see yourself getting messages from potential guests about, I saw your summer promo?

Wendy: [00:33:31] Yeah. And as soon as we put it up, we started getting questions, and I quickly realized that I need to be more specific. So like I had already said, Sunday through Thursday, I had to quickly say, one discount, because we have a weekly discount in place as well. So we say one discount at a time. There was something else. I don’t remember what the other one was, but the disclaimer. I don’t remember what it was. 

But yeah, you find how to word it because people will catch you, like, but you said– oh, I got to fix that. So just make sure you’re really detailed when you’re doing that. Oh, I know what it was. Mention it at booking because they’re not going to see it as a line item once they’ve put the dates in.  So I wanted to be very clear with them that even though they put their dates in and there’s the price over there, that’s not the price. That’s not the promo.  

So that also seemed to tip the scale in my favor. Yeah. Sometimes you can just, without even looking at the data, which we love to do, we’re data nerds, feel when it’s on an upswing. You can feel that wave of, okay, people are starting to reach out.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:34:48] Yeah. Especially when they’re talking about that exact thing that you change, that’s how you can really tell that it’s making a difference.

Wendy: [00:34:55] Yeah. Oh, another experiment, and I want to ask you if you’ve done this, is collage photos.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:35:01] Yeah. I’m not a fan of collage photos. I’m going to be honest. But I am here for people who want to challenge me. I think when done well, I’ve seen people do an angle from one corner to top right corner to the bottom left corner of a photo. And on the top is maybe a pool, and the bottom is like a view. Because maybe you can’t get in the same photo.  

But when people have four or five, six images, I’m just like, I don’t even know what I’m looking at, or their logo. Unless you’re a big name, I don’t know that a logo is going to drive someone who has no idea, they’re not in your market because they’re traveling there or whatever, is going to drive a conversion. So I would be really careful with those. Try it out. I think give it two or three weeks. But if you’re not getting people who are booking after they’re landing on your listing, I don’t know. What are your thoughts?

Wendy: [00:35:50] I have experimented two times. And again, you can tell when it’s working. I did it with a house that doesn’t have a commanding hero image. It’s a house that has all white walls. It’s brand new. Ceilings are 10 feet high, but because everything’s white, there’s just nothing to draw your eye to tell you how grand this house is. But it has great furniture.  

And so what we did was we did, I don’t remember if it’s three photos, but the three different photos, a fire pit in the chair, some rocking chairs we have, and something else. And so because it’s taking up less space, it’s not one photo, you can see the good amenities of this house all in one photo. And it worked. I tried again with a different one, thinking, okay, let’s add words to it and see how that goes. It’s one mile from Old Town. That didn’t work.  

Maybe it’s the words. Maybe people are turned off by words. I don’t know. Turned it back to the first collage photo and booking again. So I think when you don’t have a hero image, that’s really a hero, that can draw your eye because there are good things in the house. It’s just there’s not a one photo that’s going to draw the people in. So that experiment worked. But again, not going to be for every property. And sometimes you just got to try stuff.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:37:19] Not always.

Wendy: [00:37:20] Always, always.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:37:21] I think that’s the takeaway from this whole episode, is how much trial and error it will always be, even if Wendy has dedicated  her current life to listing optimization, she’s having so much fun with it. We talk about it all the time. You love getting in the weeds of it all. I would call you an expert in listing optimization, and you’re still going to try new things out. That’s what makes you the expert, to know that changing it out, trying things out. 

Obviously, letting them sit for a minute/ if they’re going well, let it go well for a little while. But that’s what marketing is. It’s always coming out with new content. People always use Coca Cola as an example. Coke tastes the same and about the same logo and can for years and years and years, but they always have new content out there. They’re presenting their product to you in a different way, always. And I think we can take a page out of their book for our properties. You can’t just let it sit. It gets stagnant. It gets stale, even for you and your own team.

Wendy: [00:38:23] Oh my gosh, I change things sometimes just because I want to, and it’s not great. But I will say, I know a photo is doing well, but is there another one that can do better?  I’m that kind of person. So I will switch it out. And then, a week, two weeks go by and the bookings have slowed down. I’m like, turn it back. But you can turn it back. You can turn it back. And that’s the nice thing.  

And I will say things will evolve over the next few years. Two years ago, we didn’t have all these levers to pull. Or we hadn’t heard anecdotally or from Airbnb what will help, the algorithm, or any of the booking channels. So there’s always something new to try. And the house two years ago is not going to look like it is now, so we have to always keep up with it. Are there any other levers when it comes to photos or copy that you think we’re missing?

Sarah Karakaian: [00:39:25] I think we’ve given everyone plenty of homework.

Wendy: [00:39:28] Yeah, it is a lot. I feel like when you have multiple listings, you can almost kind of see more. You have more to test. If you have one listing, how often should you go in and take a look?

Sarah Karakaian: [00:39:48] I think you have to learn about your listing too. There’s something to say about that. So again, I can’t stress enough taking notes whenever you try something new and dating it. I don’t think you need to be in there every day or anything like that. But I think it’s a good practice, to get into your product. 

You’ve invested a lot of money, and so people who just do it and set it and that’s it, you’re leaving it to chance. If you’re not continuously measuring how your listing is performing in different seasons, in different availability, different focuses, then I think you’re missing out on some money.

Wendy: [00:40:23] Yeah. And I will say that we have 13 properties, 20 listings with our listings, which I call light listing, but they’re child listings. So there’s plenty for me to tinker with. So maybe you don’t need to go in as often or want to go in as often as I do. Anyway, there’s lots of homework there.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:40:43] This won’t be the last time you talk about because there’s other things that we didn’t even touch that you could do to tweak your listing. But I think focusing too on photos and copy are the biggest and will just help you make sure that you are putting your property in the best light possible.

Wendy: [00:41:02] And go look at other people’s listings. You know what I love to do? Guilty pleasure. I go and look in the different categories that they have, or even just the home page when you pull it up and look at the listings that catch my eye, and see what tricks they’re doing. Maybe they’re not working, but it could be an experiment that you could do, an angle of a photo that they’ve taken, how they’ve crafted their listing, what things you can try.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:41:29] Getting inspired by their host is always a good practice. That’s fine. I think it’s fine. Cool.

Wendy: [00:41:34] Well, thanks for coming on.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:41:35] My pleasure.

Wendy: [00:41:35] Love talking listings. We’ll probably have to do another episode on the other levers to pull, but for now, I think that’s a good amount. Thanks, Sarah. Thanks for coming on.

Sarah Karakaian: [00:41:43] Thank you.

Wendy: [00:41:44] Thanks, guys.