[Matt Landau]

From last week's discussion about marketing the word "boutique" (which has evolved like a beautiful living document 🌱) I was inspired to share a lesson I learned from a $795/hour copywriter.

Tell ‘Em What You’re Going To Tell ‘Em
Next, Tell ‘Em
Next, Tell ‘Em What You Told ‘Em

OK so this isn't the exact lesson (it's famous advice for public speaking presenters) BUT it communicates the lesson from the copywriter, which was: for maximum engagement with your copywriting, use your key word(s) or phrase(s) repeatedly in your copywriting.

This advice may not seem outrageous, but suggesting you use the word/phrase several times in one paragraph is borderline ridiculous.

But I believe it works!

I have since fully adopted this technique and have encouraged countless VRMB Community members to do the same.

"Isn't this like brainwashing?" I asked the expensive copywriter.

"Sort of!" he exclaimed.

IDEA
Repetition of keywords is a supremely under-utilized tactic for savvy vacation rental pros who assume all potential guests pour over their every word but actually tend to skim because most vacation rental descriptions aren't good and so they've been conditioned to expect yours to suck.

ACTION
1. Identify your several keywords for each property

• Examples: property/company name
• Important descriptors you know resonate with guests (chalet, pet-friendly, eco-friendly, retreat)
• Your Limited Edition virtues (local, family, specialized)

2. Pinpoint everywhere that property description is used (website, listing sites ...etc)
3. Embed them multiple times at the top of each listing page (Examples: title/header, subject, first paragraph, second paragraph...etc)
4. Add them to your signature or correspondence
5. Mention them on the phone with potential guests
6. Track how often you hear those exact words used in correspondence with guests

I am willing to bet $795 that this technique works.

Why?

Because it's an exercise in congruity: identifying what makes you special so that guests can then proudly agree (which everyone in here is already doing just not fully leveraging).

 

[Matt Landau]

P.S. Don't use it TOO much

 

[BrookeP]

The repetition principle is tried and true Matt!

On a slightly related note, I heard a story about how a manager at a national chain restaurant was pushing the servers to use their "sizzle" words. Basically, restaurants push servers to use certain descriptive words to sell certain things on the menu.

I mean, would you rather have potatoes or Idaho potatoes?

Apparently these big restaurant chains have the data on it and it increases sales. So, I can see how certain "sizzle" words can be used to sell vacation rental homes. What are your “sizzle” words to describe your management company to a guest…and to an owner… and how do they differ?

PS Guy on my team just told me that Elmer Wheeler was the guy who popularized the "don't sell the steak — sell the sizzle" concept back in the 1930s. Enjoy!

 

[DMartinez]

The concept falls within the good ol' Rule of 3s. It has always been the mantra for political and business meetings (gotta save those delicate goldfish brains).

Select your 3 most important points or three core ideas that you want people to go home with -- or more to OUR situation, go to our home with.

You want those concepts to be power-words and used successively. In my case oceanfront, dog-friendly, private courtyard.

Then, keeping those delicate goldfish in mind, repeat small sentences, phrases, or words which convey your central message. This will make your message more impactful and strong. It also helps you present your home to potential guests with precision.

One other point-as you communicate with your potential guests don't forget to add a dose of empathy and logic as you solve their dilemma of needing a vacation home...ostensibly yours.

 

[Debi]

I wonder if it's part of this concept that relates to the ubiquitous emails I get wanting to redo, refresh and re-polish my website or engage in google analytics at a great cost. They first criticize, then tell me how great they are and then demand that I set aside time for a phone call. What irks me is the follow-up email demanding to know why I haven't replied and ordering me to set up that call. It certainly feels like a technique used a lot and does the opposite of what they want. I feel played. Obviously there is some happy medium between the 3 steps above and those I've been exposed to. And my website needs work.

 

[Karla]

Okay, given the fact that guests tend not to read the copy you’ve written for your website or OTA’s I fully agree with the idea of Tell ‘em, tell ‘em, tell ‘em again. What exactly do I want to tell ‘em? Quite often I want to tell ‘em a story and the notion of story and storytelling remains of paramount importance to me. This story is about YOU and YOUR experience, I go backstage but always remain willing to help you as much or as little as you want. My own long St. John story serves as a backdrop for your story and engenders a sense of trust and reliability and tends to render me as a St. John expert.

Repetition makes a lot of sense and I do it to some degree and definitely need to increase how much I do it.

In the meantime if I’m not doing it “enough” repetition then why are so many people booking? My business is doing better than ever so despite the fact that I know I’ve composed some cringeworthy copy in certain places I’m clearly doing something right. I’m sure my increased bookings supersede the widespread trend of post pandemic escapes even though the population will never fully escape Covid.

I decided to take a deep breath and find my balance and explore my own way without any pressure to turn in my homework assignment in on time. I’m already late with that but there’s no need for me to panic. Repetitions are indeed calling my name and copy revisions will be a Google plus. Although don’t want to delay necessary copy cleanup for long I believe giving myself a reasonable amount of time to process copy changes is a good idea. I’m fully onboard with repetition but I see certain subtleties involved. Things are not always as obvious as they appear, at least to not to me. I’m definitely going to pursue repetitions as in: Tell, em, tell ‘em again but since I’m an outright rebel I might well diverge away from a well marked trail and search for a different path.

I want my public copy to be relatively short and succinct but ironically my sometimes lengthy responses to inquiries work very well or additional input to those who already have reservations also tend to work very well. If people hear my voice and realize that I am speaking directly to them in a personal and empathetic way they tend to listen.
‘
If someone expresses an interest in Tropical Blessings but also tells me they’ll be visiting St. John for the first time but the dates they want are not available I’ll ask them if their travel plans might be flexible, knowing full well that their answer might go either way. Even with that rental uncertainty in place I just don’t feel right leaving that first timer facing possible perils. Of course I’ll never have time to do everything but I have an overall concern about how visitors experience our St. John community. Some specific information might save the vacation of those newcomers, I really do care. The timing wasn’t right at Tropical Blessings for those first timers but I heard back from them, “Thank you for your lovely reply, we’ll see you next time!”

Another who has been to St. John many times before but whose timing also didn’t work at Tropical Blessings this time said, “You are the nicest and most helpful person I have ever written to about St. John.” Sure enough, she later came back to me and regrettably, once again there was “no room at the inn” for her new dates either but I think I proved my point: I am pre-selling a stay at Tropical Blessings through dialogue with a strong voice that I’m glad to own but now it’s time to use that strong voice and pre-sell Tropical Blessings with better copy before those conversations even begin.

I have one headline that I like in terms of alliteration: “Sunshine, Solace, Spectacular Views.” I won’t call that headline perfect but it suggests to me an element of what is “personal” which matters and at least I got “view” in there. The alliteration appeals to me too and hopefully to others which is much more important.

As far as St. John key words go, front runners seem to include “view,” “pool,” and “beach.” Pool deserves to be mentioned, not merely be included in a list of amenities. I definitely dropped the ball with “beach” a more important word that, oops, I don’t even mention at all. A guest can walk to a beach that is only 2 minutes away on foot. A 10 minute stroll into Cruz Bay permits one to hop into a Safari bus that regularly takes visitors to well known popular beaches.

The total length of St. John’s landmass totals only 9 miles so if someone chooses to drive to a beach in their rental car Google can help me pinpoint the distance. Often that beach is only 1 or 2 miles away from Tropical Blessings.

Back to: “Tell ‘em, tell ‘em, tell ‘em again.” I do understand and like the idea and the way to tell ‘em is with words. Words are the primary way we communicate and we all need to learn words to find our voices and speak to each other. The discovery of words results in acquiring a vocabulary and you need a vocabulary if you want to have a voice. Without voices conversations and dialogues cannot exist.

With words we develop a vocabulary which increases and expands. No matter which country one resides in, be it Germany, France or numerous other countries around the world, the the first words any individual learns are probably limited to “yes” and “no,” followed by “maybe.” To broaden our vocabulary we need to learn the alphabet which gives us our voices.

I discovered the magic of words and writing at an early age and thankfully I got considerable encouragement from teachers about writing.

Years later after receiving my baccalaureate and masters degrees I’m sure no one is surprised that I chose teaching as my first professional career. Writing remained my primary interest and passion (still true) and after several years of teaching I applied for a fellowship with The National Writing Project.

All participants were teachers and were equally pleased to have been accepted into the fellowship. None of us knew what to expect from the fellowship, all or most of us anticipated a series of reasonably traditional classes but we were in for a very big surprise. We gathered each day with the same single instructor and were introduced to the practice of free writing, an activity most of us had never even heard of and those who knew about it had already classified it as a waste of time. The majority of us began with a high degree of skepticism, saying to ourselves, “What?!?” but we’d been awarded fellowships so we were “in” and decided to stay.

It didn’t take long for us to see that what we were doing was actually making sense and we wrote, wrote, wrote every day. When each day ended all of us departed the UVA campus and returned to the temporary residences we had found. Then we continued to write well into the evening. Writing was “it,” we ate it, breathed it and lived it.

Our first major wake-up call was for us to suddenly realize that most our students didn’t have voices, they had either never discovered their voices or had lost them along the way. Wait a minute, as teachers all of had studied writing and received training about how to teach composition so what could be wrong with us? A major wake up call followed. Even though we were teachers we discovered that we were not fully connected to the power of our own voices or, similar to our students, had lost our voices along the way.

My biggest take way from that fellowship was to understand how to support a writer’s intentions. I implemented my fellowship learnings during the first semester of school as soon as students returned to campus. Free writing exercises commenced. The first assignment was probably as simple as something as simple as: “List words that that praise yourself as a writer.”

Attention to long established approaches to teaching literature and composition were hardly abandoned but for the first time ever students were given considerable leeway to simply have freedom and fun with writing in my classroom. Small subdivisions of writers support groups were created. Whatever an individual writer quickly produced, members of their support group we instructed to encourage the writer. What words did they especially like? What idea did they want to hear more about? Etc.

I can repeat key words but I really want to repeat trends and and create captivating copy. The rewards and challenges of our industry range from A-Z so I recommend having fun playing with the alphabet. Choose any letter at all and describe yourself as an owner, the place(s) you own, your guests and your hopes and business goals with positive words. You might or might later not choose to later use any given word in copy but as your basket of words words fills up it’s hard not to feel good about yourself and what you’re doing.

A free writing exercise is exactly that: free. You enter a Judgment Free Zone where only one rules exists: Self criticism is not permitted. Silence the voice that says anything like, “That word is an incredibly stupid choice.” Shut down the censor, totally wing it, and have a good time! If you’re mining for gold you might find a few valuable nuggets and if you don’t all you lost is a little time and since you probably enjoyed how you spent that time in the final analysis you lost nothing at

I decided to play with words (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) and my word collections associated with any given alphabetical letter are limited due to the time I allotted to myself. However, if I return to any given letter my basket of words will fill up. My word lists could become so long that I can already envision a private eye roll from Matt Landau and an unspoken admonition, “Cut what you wrote in half!” In the meantime I’ll just start gathering my bounty of words and nobody says I need to use all of it. I can pick and choose what I want to use later which so happens to include the possibility of using none of it at all.

In the meantime let’s start playing, fearlessly winging it and having FUN which, in case anyone forgot, is what most people want to to while on vacation! Let’s take a first run with A, B, C.

** Awesome, adventurous, aware, alive, authentic, amazing, attractive, alluring, appealing, adorable, appetizing.

** Believe, bold, balanced, brave, beautiful, beneficial, breathtaking, blissful, bright,

** Captivating, comfortable, champion, caring, casual, curious, confident, creative.

In the name of repetition Happy Twosday to all as in: 2/2/22!

 

[Karla]

I wonder if it's part of this concept that relates to the ubiquitous emails I get wanting to redo, refresh and re-polish my website or engage in google analytics at a great cost. They first criticize, then tell me how great they are and then demand that I set aside time for a phone call. What irks me is the follow-up email demanding to know why I haven't replied and ordering me to set up that call. It certainly feels like a technique used a lot and does the opposite of what they want. I feel played. Obviously there is some happy medium between the 3 steps above and those I've been exposed to. And my website needs work.

Debi How about, “I’d love to schedule a phone call with you but before we do that I’d like you to send me a quick e-mail about the questions you might have or anything else you’d like to discuss with me about the vacation experience you’re looking forward to.”

 

[Karla]

I wonder if it's part of this concept that relates to the ubiquitous emails I get wanting to redo, refresh and re-polish my website or engage in google analytics at a great cost. They first criticize, then tell me how great they are and then demand that I set aside time for a phone call. What irks me is the follow-up email demanding to know why I haven't replied and ordering me to set up that call. It certainly feels like a technique used a lot and does the opposite of what they want. I feel played. Obviously there is some happy medium between the 3 steps above and those I've been exposed to. And my website needs work.

 

[Karla]

I wonder if it's part of this concept that relates to the ubiquitous emails I get wanting to redo, refresh and re-polish my website or engage in google analytics at a great cost. They first criticize, then tell me how great they are and then demand that I set aside time for a phone call. What irks me is the follow-up email demanding to know why I haven't replied and ordering me to set up that call. It certainly feels like a technique used a lot and does the opposite of what they want. I feel played. Obviously there is some happy medium between the 3 steps above and those I've been exposed to. And my website needs work.

The repetition principle is tried and true Matt!

On a slightly related note, I heard a story about how a manager at a national chain restaurant was pushing the servers to use their "sizzle" words. Basically, restaurants push servers to use certain descriptive words to sell certain things on the menu.

I mean, would you rather have potatoes or Idaho potatoes?

Apparently these big restaurant chains have the data on it and it increases sales. So, I can see how certain "sizzle" words can be used to sell vacation rental homes. What are your “sizzle” words to describe your management company to a guest…and to an owner… and how do they differ?

PS Guy on my team just told me that Elmer Wheeler was the guy who popularized the "don't sell the steak — sell the sizzle" concept back in the 1930s. Enjoy!

BrookeP I love the video!!