Niche Marketing Strategies for Short-Term Rental Hosts with Nihal Salah

Key Takeaways

In a recent podcast episode, we spoke with Nihal Salah, a seasoned marketer with experience across various industries including short-term vacation rentals. The discussion focused on the power of niche marketing for STR hosts.

Key Takeaways:

• Niche marketing involves targeting a specific, well-defined segment of the market with similar interests, needs, or demographics. This allows you to tailor your property, amenities, and marketing much more effectively.
• To identify your niche, analyze guest reviews, booking data, and have direct conversations with guests. Understand their pain points and customize your offerings.
• Popular niche ideas include dog-friendly travelers, astronomy enthusiasts, digital nomads, families with children who have special needs, and more. Find a sizable niche with specific enough requirements.
• Market to the online communities, forums, and influencers your niche engages with for highly targeted outreach.
• Benefits of niche marketing include higher pricing, more referrals/repeat bookings, and a more personalized guest experience.

The top advice from Nihal was to consistently talk to your guests – through reviews, data, and direct conversations – to deeply understand their needs and adapt your property and marketing accordingly. Embracing discomfort and a “get to” vs “have to” mindset were also highlighted as key mindset shifts.

Overall, the episode provided a compelling case for short-term rental hosts to identify and cater to a specific niche, rather than trying to be everything to everyone. Careful segmentation and personalization can lead to outsized results.

Connect with Nihal here:

• Spotify
• LinkedIn
• LinkedIn
• Mail
• Facebook

Transcript

Nihal: I think good marketing is simple. The principles are the same. The principles are almost timeless. So I know everyone’s talking a lot about AI and stuff with marketing content. And, but when you start looking at the principles of solid marketing, They are the same across industries. It’s about understanding who your best audience is to serve, how you articulate what you offer your value proposition, how we articulate what you do in the most clear and succinct way to that audience and what channels you use to reach them.

You do all, you do those three things and you know your audience really well and you build a strong brand around all of that. That’s marketing. It’s not complicated.

Gil: Hey folks, welcome back to direct booking simplified on today’s show. I have Nihal. Nihal, welcome to the show.

Nihal: Thank you for having me.

Gil: Yeah. Do you mind giving folks a quick introduction on yourself first, before we get started?

Nihal: Sure. Um, well, let’s start at the very beginning. Um, I’m half Egyptian, half English. Um, I live between Spain and, uh, Wales in the UK. Um, and I am a marketer by trade. I have been doing marketing for, um, For about 17 years now, across a number of different sectors, and I’ve worked with organizations all the way from Fortune 500 to tiny early stage startups, so, and everything in between and across the A number of sectors, um, from education technology, learning technology, blockchain, um, cybersecurity, did auction tech once, which was incredibly boring.

And I recently fell into the wonderful world of short term vacation rentals, which I absolutely love. And at the moment I work with a payment processing company called Yapstone, um, who specialize in payment processing for short term vacation rent.

Gil: And yep. So it has different variations depending on kind of where you live. Right. So we might not be familiar with the app stone parent company. What’s the two subsidiaries.

Nihal: We’ve got vacation rent payment in the U S. And we have holiday rent payment in the UK and Europe so that yeah different products because finance is so regulated lots of compliance and stuff so you need to make sure that you’re adhering to all of the rules and regulations in each of the markets.

Gil: Yeah. What was your, um, your first experience in, in short term rentals? Like how did you

Nihal: Um, like everyone I speak to in this industry by accident, I’ve not spoken to anyone who intended to come into short term rentals. And so when I, I was speaking to said something to me that made me laugh, he’s like, no one grows up thing saying, Oh, when I grew up, I want to be a property manager. I’m like, that’s a good point.

But, um, I have a friend who I’ve worked with before who started working with, Um, And he reached out to me and said, I need some help with product and content marketing, would you be interested in, in joining me? And I said, you know what? I know nothing about short term rentals from, um, from the business side.

I know a lot from the guest side, because I probably stay at about 15. Short term rentals a year because I travel a lot. Um, so yes, let’s do it. And here we are.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. And from what I hear, and this is probably across many different industries and like verticals, but the marketing that you put into. Short term rentals is not all that different than possibly other industries. There’s a lot of the same foundational pieces. Would you agree with that?

Nihal: I completely agree with that. I think good marketing is simple. The principles are the same. The principles are almost timeless. Um, so I know everyone’s talking a lot about AI and stuff with, with marketing content and, but when you start looking at the principles of solid marketing, They are the same across industries.

It’s about understanding, you know, who, who your best audience is to serve, you know, how, how you articulate what you offer your value proposition, how we articulate what you do in the most. Clear and succinct way to that audience and what channels you use to reach them. You do all, you do those three things and you know your audience really well and you, and you build a strong brand around all of that.

That’s marketing. It’s not, it’s not complicated. It’s simple. It’s difficult. Um, So yeah,

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. And you have, um, you have a specific passion or a passion topic that you’d like to talk about specifically within short term rentals around niche marketing. Can you tell folks a little bit more about what is niche marketing to begin with? Silence.

Nihal: you will, you, I guarantee you, and if you implement the principles of niche marketing, you will make more money and you will, you will generate higher profits as well. So niche marketing basically is focusing on a very particular segment.

In the market that you’re serving and that segment might have very, uh, they’ll have a similar either interests, preferences, demographics, um, problems, uh, ambitions, um, hobbies. So for example, a niche could be, um, so I’m part of this niche is dog owners with reactive dogs. That is a very specific niche with very specific needs.

Um, astronomy fans. So, um, my friend aid, who’s a CMO at Yapstone is a huge astronomy fan. He has invested a ton of money and a wonderful telescope and he travels a lot. And he goes to specific locations because he wants to capture the best images of stars and nebulas and all sorts of other things. Um, you have all sorts of different niches.

I can talk about the different types of niches and I’ve got a whole list of them that I can share, but niche marketing is essentially choosing a very specific group of people and focusing Your marketing, but also your product development. And obviously within STR, we’re talking about the property, the amenities, the partnerships that you focus on are all hyper focused on that niche.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, I’ve heard this many times and we’ve even had like a lot of our guests on this show talk about like, if you’re marketing to everyone, then you’re really effectively marketing to no one. That’s kind of like the, the kind of the premise behind niche marketing is like, if you are putting your word out there and you’re not really making it resonate with certain folks, it’s not really going to hit home or have the effectiveness that you intend to have.

Is that right?

Nihal: a hundred percent, a hundred percent. And I think this ties in really, um, strongly with direct booking, because if you want to be generating more of your revenue through direct bookings, and to do that, you need to be building a brand and you need to, you need to be choosing an audience to focus on because that is the.

The quickest and most cost efficient way of generating awareness, getting people interested in what you do, and hopefully, you know, leaving you their email address or whatever, or following your content on social media and then eventually booking with you. So focusing is always going to be. A better strategy because it’s not a spray and pray approach, right?

You’re you, if you know your audience really, really well, you know, precisely what messaging works with them, you know, precisely what type of content and social media that they’re, they’ll engage with, you know, precisely which marketing channels to focus on. And that means you’re not wasting money on other channels and activities that will never generate.

A return for you. So it’s just that, like anything in life, if you focus on something, you will make an impact. Um, and you’ll stand out. I mean, especially like when you think about the, the short term rental industry at the moment, it’s becoming incredibly crowded and, and competitive. So how do you stand out in a sea of listings?

Um, I think niche marketing is the absolute answer to that.

Gil: How do you, how do you help folks? understand how to even find their niche to begin with. Like a lot of folks, I think a lot of folks, even myself included, when we get first getting to our short first short term rental. It’s really about the cash on cash returns. How has the investment look like? How do I, like, what are the aesthetics?

And then you get to a certain point where you’re thinking about, Oh, I’m growing my portfolio. Now I’ve learned this from my first short term rental. These are the types of guests are staying with us. And you start to be a little bit more mindful of who actually staying at your place, but how do you advise our listeners to really understand what their niches and how to actually identify that.

Nihal: So, so there’s a number of things that, that, that you can do. I always say if you, if you’re an established or if you’ve been in business for a while, so you’ve had previous guests and you’ve got some reviews, um, go back and look at those reviews, look at the guest feedback and try and spot any patterns between the type of, of guests and the, any correlation between the type of guest and the, the, how high they rated your property and read the reviews because in the qualitative data, there’s so, you know, Much insight, really valuable insight there.

So for example, if you had someone who stayed, you know, family with really young children. Um, and you find that, that, that those types of travelers tend to leave better reviews for you. And they specifically state things like, I don’t know, the fact that you had a big fence garden, so the kids could play outside and you didn’t have to worry about them, or, you know, the fact that it was, um, child proof.

So there are no sharp edges and like that kind of thing. That’s a really simple example, but you start to spot trends in your data to tell you that actually. This isn’t, this is, this is an audience that’s really happy with the property. So maybe I need to double down on focusing on, on this group. You might have, uh, you might observe that you have people coming at a certain type of time of the year for concerts, for example, so.

Like festival goers, that’s a really specific niche. So you just need to look at your existing, your previous bookings and look at which guests were happy, which guests weren’t unhappy. And that’s really, really important. And see if you spot any trends. The other thing, um, you, you can do, and I recommend everyone does, does this is.

Put, ask a question in your booking form. What is the, what is the reason for your, for travel and always make it an open text field. Don’t make it like a dropdown menu. So then you’re capturing new data. Um, and then the other key thing is like on the property side is have a think about your property and what amenities and features it has and what amenities and features and, you know, possible activities that are in the surrounding areas.

So if I go back to the example of, um, My friend aid and the fact that he is a massive astronomy fan. If, if he finds, so what he’s looking for, and many astronomers will be looking for this is a property in an area where there’s low light pollution. So you’re talking more rural, um, uh, ideally they want cooler weather.

So the nice thing about focusing on a niche like that is they want to be booking in winter, which is often low season for many short term, uh, Rental businesses. So this is a niche that you focus on and you can, you know, you can be leveling out your bookings across the year because they’ll happily book when it’s cooler, cooler weather.

Um, and they want, um, really basic amenities, like maybe a, you know, a table and a portable kettle because they’re sitting outside for hours with their telescope to capture these images. So sometimes it’s just really simple adaptations, but think about what your property has. And then you could always go on to AI tools like chat GPT and have a conversation, right?

Say, this is my property. This is where it’s located. You can even upload pictures of your property. And you can say, these are the key amenities that I have. This is how I’m currently marketing it. What niches could I potentially focus on? You get some really good responses if you do that. So those are just a couple of ways of, of, of, of like exploring possible niches.

Gil: Yeah, that we do something similar on our hosting business, which is set about specifically looking to reviews. That’s something that I do. Um, I’m a little bit lazy in the sense where I would actually do a data dump and I’ll pull it All the reviews and and I’ll actually put it into like one of those word bubbles where the words would be different sizes based on how many times it’s being referenced and that will tell me kind of like a high level sense.

It doesn’t help me segment them. So I definitely think if you have the time, um, to go through the different reviews and actually analyze them, you’ll much get much better quality information. But like the easiest way for me is just like to plot it out there. And we found like Families is like the one thing that we gravitate towards.

And when we look at our state data, how many children’s are in it, and almost every single one of our states always has at least two children in our, in our states. We don’t ask them how old they are, so we don’t know how young they are. But, um, Just like what people are asking for, how many infants are there?

We actually get that information. It has, it gives us a good idea of the type of families. So now like our stays are mostly young families where there’s still infants that’s, that’s being stayed with. So we make sure now when we do our photography, we always supply a pack and play, and we always supply a high chair.

But what I’ve advised my photographer to do is actually take the packing plate out of that square, like the fold up packing plate and actually put it out there right next to the bed with a blanket draped next to it. And that has made a world of a difference in terms of having someone stop when they’re scrolling through the pictures.

and realize like we actually catered this property specifically for them. And we don’t have to like put a whole lot of content in their description, but just that one imagery alone makes that guest much more comfortable to know that we’ve tailored it. Um, we do things like we have children, plates, children, bowls, utensils, all that stuff.

Not only does it save us from not having break bowls with the kids, um, but it just like for me when I’m traveling, especially in the early days, having to travel with our diaper bag with all those things that you need when you have a young child is very, very stressful. And now that we have a stock in our places, when we’re staying there, we have that stuff.

But we also know that when our young families are staying with us, they have those same amenities.

Nihal: I love that. I love, and those are such simple changes that you’ve made. And also because you’re a parent, you know, so I think that’s another key point with the, with a niche is that if, if it’s a niche that you can relate to, that’s amazing because. You, you will know your target audience. So it will be really easy for you to figure out how do I then, how do I personalize and customize this, uh, or personalize rather this, my propercy and, and all the experiences around it to this particular niche.

Um, and, and just, I was just thinking, as you were saying that, like, if you’re, if you’re focusing on, you know, You know, my niche, the niche I’m part of, travellers is, like, travellers, I travel alone, I travel with my dog, she’s quite reactive, um, her recall is horrible, so for me the perfect place is somewhere where it’s quiet ish, you know, I don’t want to be somewhere super urban, ideally a big garden that’s properly fenced, um, and, you know, Where my dog is allowed on the furniture like there’s a difference between dog tolerant and dog welcoming But if they went the extra mile and there was a dog bed and a throw on the sofa for my dog Some dog toys like a Kong and a dog bowl You know, for food and water, then I wouldn’t have to cart this massive bag around me.

Like I have one suitcase just for my dog. It’s just ridiculous. Um, so it’s just sometimes it’s really small things that you can do that can make a world of a difference to the audience you’re serving, but you really have to get into their heads. And I get one of the things back to like, how do you figure out your niche?

Talk to your guests. Just talk to them, like you could, you could ask them if they’d be happy to jump on a quick call and just talk you through their experience. Like so many people will be willing to do that, but I find, and not just in industry, in this industry, across industries, business, business owners and managers are always really reluctant to have those conversations with people.

I think they might be worried about negative feedback. But I think those conversations are invaluable because the better you get to know your guests, the better you will be able to serve them. And then those conversations then translate into all of your marketing messaging. So instead of sitting there thinking like, Oh, what do I post on social media?

What should my website say? If you keep having those conversations, you will know, you will know. Why these people travel, you will know what their pain points are. You will know the things that are a pain in the butt for them when they’re traveling. Like, do I have to pack all these, you know, dog supplies or stuff for my kids or whatever it is.

Um, or, you know, the astronomer thinking about, do I have to pack a portable castle with me and take warm blankets? Because I don’t know if that will be supplied by the prophecy. You get to know that detail. So just speak to people.

Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s a good point. I recently had someone book with us. They haven’t stayed with us yet. Um, but they found us on VRBO and they were looking through the reviews and I didn’t notice this in the beginning. They had a, a son that was. Uh, celebrating their birthday and their son has ADHD, um, and they read the reviews and they somehow found that another family was also celebrating their birthday and that had stayed with us and left us a really good review.

And they also mentioned that their daughter was celebrating their birthday, um, and that had ADHD. And I was like, I never marketed my property as. Um, but it started to like, open up my eyes, like, should I, should I be doing more to really like help these families out and making sure that the stay is like very welcoming for them?

So I actually, I asked him, we haven’t had a chat yet, but I asked him like, what is it that you want out of HD, HD, HD family stay? Like, what does that look like? Because I, I, I’m not exposed to that, so I don’t know what parents are looking for when they’re thinking about their kids and their needs there.

Nihal: That’s, you know what, it’s funny you bring that up because one of the conversations I was having recently with someone was about families who travel with children who are severely autistic. Uh, and I was, I was talking, this is where you get a crossover with niches, right? And it would have never occurred to me.

I was talking about the fact that I plan on setting up dog friendly properties in Wales and Spain, because that is just a big gap in, in the market, in my opinion, like there’s a lot more room for, for more, for more, um, sort of rentals that cater specifically to, to that market. And I was speaking to someone at a conference and when I was describing the fact that I want to rule like remote, uh, nice, like lots of land properly fenced, and she said, have you ever considered.

adapting them as well to families who travel, who have children with autism. And I was like, no, and then I went down a rabbit hole and I was doing some research and then I was like, okay, I can see why she said this. So you, you want like a quiet, um, low stimulation environment, right? For a lot of kids who have, I mean, again, everyone’s unique, but generally speaking, you want to make sure that it’s secure and you’ve got childproof locks.

You want to make sure that it’s accessible. You want sensory friendly design, right? Because you don’t want to be triggering them. You want to have a very simple kind of predictable layout of the property. Um, it may be certain type of equipment like headphones, for example, if they get, you know, a lot of, a lot of, I have a family member who has autism and they need to have the headphones with them.

So just going and doing a little bit of research to understand a little bit more about, you know, just being curious like you did. Like, Oh, why are there so many families with children with ADHD? What do I need to do? Just go down that rabbit hole, do a bit of research and you will be amazed at what you might find out.

And it doesn’t mean. That is the only niche you focus on. I think this is one of the mistakes people make. They either try to focus on too many niches or they’re like, I’ll just do that one. You don’t need to just do one, maybe start with one, make sure it’s a good size, so there’s enough money in it. Um, and then think of where you have overlap.

So, so that you’re able to still continually improve your property and make it even more suitable for that niche without making it less suitable for other niches you’re serving. That makes sense.

Gil: Yeah, it does. You mentioned something just very interesting just now is like, is there enough money in that niche there? How do you figure out if the niche is like big enough to serve that market because you’re also having the constraint of locale as well, the location of it within, so you can only serve that many families are in that area.

How do you know whether or not, um, the specific niche you’re looking at? Yeah. Yeah. Is going to drive enough bookings to, to fill the place.

Nihal: I like just a really like quick and dirty way. I would. Do it is I would just like, so let’s go back to the dog niche. I know I keep bringing up dogs. I’m just obsessed. And I love my dog to bits. So I’m always hyper focused on that niche. But if you just start with looking at the overall number of. Dog owners.

And then you look at the, the, the total number of people who travel with their dogs, which I think it’s Elisa Rhodes, who shared a stat recent news of somewhere around like 50%, which is a huge number. And then you look at the percentage of people who are traveling. in your area. Most of the guests who tend to come stay with you are coming from, you know, whether it’s within whatever kilometer distance of your property.

But I, I think that my observation has been that people in that niche will go out. This is again, the importance of niche marketing is they will go out of their way if they find the right place, because The wrong place can make the holiday miserable. So they pay a premium and they’ll go out of their way.

But if you’re targeting a really, really tiny niche, I’m trying to think of a, of an example, um, I don’t know. Let’s say I can’t think of anything off the top of my head because I’m always thinking about ones that, that are big enough, but if you’re focusing on, on a, on a market, that’s just way too. Okay.

Let’s say for example, um, I don’t know, 20 year olds who, uh, Interested in music festivals, let’s say 20 year old females interested in music festivals and your property happens to be on the higher end of things, like just without even looking at the data, that’s a really tiny, that’s, that’s going to be a pretty small market with, with, with a low propensity to pay higher rates for your property.

So sometimes it’s just a comp, like a combination of Just thinking through it, common sense and looking at the actual numbers, right? What are these, how many of these people are there and what are they spending on on their holidays? And what are the potential upsells around that as well? Because I think that’s a key point that lots of people tend to miss out on.

Gil: Yeah. And it sounds like also kind of going back to our other point there is looking at your past guests that gives you a good idea of whether or not there’s enough traffic coming through there. Because if you’ve seen it multiple times, if you had like a hundred stays and a good chunk of that are family friendly stays or dog friendly, like you start to understand like, Oh, that’s actually a pretty sizable portion of the market that I’m not doing anything special to market towards them.

And if I were to, I can actually. Drive up the adoption or the conversion quite a bit,

Nihal: yeah, yeah,

Gil: kind of going, going on the conversion side of things, like how do you get in front of that niche then how do you think about, okay, I now know it’s astronomy, astronomers or dog friendly travels, like, how do you figure out how to get in front of folks to market your, your property?

Nihal: The beauty of focusing on a niche is that when you think about what a niche is, a niche is a group of people who have similar interests, problems, hobbies, those sorts of people tend to spend a lot of time in online communities and that’s astronomers, there are a gazillion Facebook groups for astronomers.

In every part of the world, right? There are countless groups on Facebook with people. I mean, I’m just one group I’m in in Barcelona is called dogs. Barcelona. There’s about 12, 000 people on that group. It’s very active. Everyone’s always, I’m always asking other people are always asking for recommendations for properties that are dog friendly, um, and have fence land or a fence garden and a somewhere not You know, not too urban, all the time.

Um, you start spending time in these forums and these online communities and just be a fly on the wall in the beginning to learn about what people are looking for and what people are asking about. Um, and, and, and, and that’s really the starting point. When you, when you focus on it, you get, if you decide to go down the route of influencer marketing, you’ll very quickly figure out who the key players are in the market.

So you’re not going paying, because I know there’s lots of mixed views around influencer marketing and it has been used successfully and very unsuccessfully as well. So it can be, it can be an epic waste of money, but if you’re focusing on a really specific niche and you manage to find people who are quite known in that niche, And you, you know, you offer them a stay, you offer them a discount, you offer them something and they give their followers, you know, some information about your property.

That’s that, that, that content will get very high engagement because it’s come from someone credible that that niche tends to trust. Um, I’ll give you an example. I follow an account on Instagram called, um, this is the spot and all, all they do is they post properties that are dog friendly all over the world, that meets reactive dog friendly, not just any dog.

So that’s like a niche in a niche. Um, and they provide You know, they just share listings of properties that really meet certain criteria, and it’s quite easy to find those once you’ve decided on the market that you’re focusing on all of the content that you create on social media, when you’re highlighting why your property is amazing, instead of just focusing on talk about everything, you know, exactly what you’re going to be talking about.

So if you’re focusing on the astronomy niche, then you know, you’re going to be talking about the fact that. You get really clear skies. It’s really low pollution. The temperatures are quite cool. These are the best months to be booking. You know, we make sure you’ve got this lovely little setup with camping chairs and a portable kettle and blankets outside.

So when you’re sitting, you know, with your telescope for hours in the evening, taking those shots, you’re nice and cozy and crispy, you know, you’ve got a little, I don’t know, whatever set up that you can, that you can do so you can just visualize the marketing so much easier when you’re. Focus on a particular group of people.

Um, then when you are just targeting everyone, because if you’re just targeting everyone, your marketing is going to be gone. There’s only so much that you can say, and maybe some of it will resonate with some people.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. You make a good point on like the, the, the niche within a niche within specifically like reactive dogs. Like I think of like dog friendly as like bring Fido that the site there, but you’re actually going one level deeper and you’re saying like for my specific say, like these, these are the types of people that, and communities that I trust and want to get behind.

And those are the places that I would go to rather than kind of the more generic sites out there.

Nihal: Yeah. And I think this goes back to the point we were talking about earlier, which is talk to your guests. This is it. You are leaving money on the table. If you’re not talking to your guests, get to know them, understand what they need. Yeah. To have an amazing vacation, what would give them peace of mind?

Um, understand, like if you, if you’re talking, you know, if you’re, if you’re targeting digital nomads, right, that’s, that’s, again, that’s a pretty big niche these days, so I’m sure there’s lots of sub niches within that. But understand, understand what makes, what makes a good stay for them. I’ll give you a really simple example.

I’m, I’ve been in a, I’ve been in a couple of different short term rentals now for the past few months because I’m staying in Wales, um, for the summer. And you know what one of my biggest pain points is? Because I podcast a lot, my setup is like, I’ve got a pile of books set up on it. And this is a property that is actually really soon.

And he gets a lot of people who come here who are like me and they work remotely, but there is nothing in the property that caters to that. So we have to like hack a setup together. So just simply by understanding, not just. Okay. You need wifi as a digital nomad and a desk to work from. It’s like, no, what type of work do people who are digital nomads do?

What do they need apart from a fast internet connection? Like it’s going deeper. And then suddenly you’ll uncover the niches within the niche. And then suddenly you’re like, Ooh, okay. So I can be making these simple changes to my property. And then you’ve got a ton of marketing ideas. And then all of those conversations are informing how you are marketing.

So the words you are using, the copy on your website, the copy in your social media posts, the captions that you are using, if you’re doing any paid advertising. That’s what is informing all of your marketing, those conversations. So instead of just assuming and just trying different ideas or trying to sit and think of stuff, go speak to your guests, that’s, that is like the, the, the, the best thing to do, especially if you’re tight on, on, on time and budget for marketing your properties.

Gil: Yeah, and it thinks like specifically to your example, like the podcasting one might be at like a, a small, a really tight niche that I don’t know for specifically in that region and whether or not there’s gonna be enough traffic. But I presume that you’ll find that people are podcasters. There may be professionals that need a closed room.

Um, so like there’s adjacent industries or niches that, you know, Kind of the property kind of tailors towards so it could be just podcasters, but it also could be working professionals that need a separate room outside of the family. Because the digital nomad, like in the early days, if you’re young and you’re in your 20s, digital nomads, that means that you can be pretty much anywhere and you can work.

But there are a lot of professionals that could do a lot of traveling. They may travel with their kids. They may travel with their loved ones. And digital nomad means something different to like, when I bring my laptop and I have my zoom calls, I need that room to be quiet. I need that room to be able to have my space.

So like, I may not be podcasting when I’m on the road, but I will take countless zoom calls on every single road, like trip I take. And if my family comes with me, then I need to make sure that they’re out of the place and have somewhere to go. Um, so that I can take my calls in silence.

Nihal: Yeah. And, and by the way, like the setup that you would have, well, I mean, you’ve got a very elaborate podcasting set up, but I’ve managed to hack away something that does the job, I think. Um, but even for zoom calls, like if I’m meeting with a team I’m working with, then fine, I Rock up on, you know, I’m at the kitchen table, whatever.

But if I’m meeting, you know, depending on who I’m meeting, I might want to show up in a more professional capacity, in which case having something simple, like a, a nice laptop stand and. You know, a set up in a roof. Like I, I, your point around having a quiet room, especially if you’re traveling with kids.

It didn’t occur to me cause I don’t have kids. So again, cause like, you know that niche because you are part of it. Um, but having just a professional set up, just really simple things, like just thinking audio, video, like everyone has zoom calls all the time. Right. So I think it’s just really simple things that you could be changing.

And that, like you say, I love what you did with, with the images and actually showing. Um, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the detail that you’re thinking about that’s making your proxies more suitable for families and including it in the descriptions as well, because, you know, that’s how people will find out.

Right. And I think just seeing that would make it. For me, I would, I would definitely prioritize and I would pay a premium to book with a property like that, which is another great thing about niche marketing is that you can charge more because if you really cater your property to that audience and you found like a nice gap in the market, they will pay a premium.

I mean, I pay a premium all the time for dog friendly properties because. If I, like I said earlier, if I don’t, then my holiday is ruined, right? It’s a nightmare for me. If I walk out the door and then there’s a neighbor coming out with their dog, that my dog’s going to react and go crazy. She’s triggered for the whole day.

She’ll be pulling on the leash. She’ll be barking at everyone and everything. It will really make my day a nightmare. And when you think about, you know, the example that you gave children who have ADHD or autism or whatever, if they don’t have the right environment and they are triggered in some kind of way, that’s not going to be much fun for the parents or for them.

So I think there’s just so many benefits of, of, of. Of niching down, including that you can be charging more.

Gil: Yeah, I, I completely agree. Like I’m, my kids aren’t young anymore. We’re not that young anymore, but I do remember those are very early days where my son was one or two and he would be in a pack and play still, and he’s still, still very small. We had to rock him to sleep. Like it would be a dream to be able to like not log and have our car full of everything, especially if we’re flying.

Because if you’re flying. You have very limited capacity. If you’re driving, that’s fine. Like you can, you can cram the car to the brim, have the cargo box all full with all the things you need. But if you’re flying to some of that new destination that you bring your kids to, and you have the security of knowing that everything’s going to be there when you get there, that means a world of a difference to a young family.

Yeah, I, I totally hear you. I totally hear you. And I also empathize with the reactive dog, my, my little pups over there. Yeah. So she, she’s a little bit reactive as, as well, too. I don’t know. I haven’t, I don’t, I, today’s conversation is actually the first time I heard about a reactive dog, but I, I bet she kind of falls in that, that category.

Nihal: Yeah. And like you would, so you feel my pain.

Gil: So when, when we, when we take her out, like, even like around the, we, we let her kind of walk, walk and do her business outside the place. But we will walk out the house first and make sure there’s no other dogs in the block. And we’re in San Francisco. So like we’re glued to every other house that’s next to us.

And so we’ll scan the whole entire block and check and see, and then we’ll let her loft leash. And we learned that through multiple times of this, like letting her out there. And there’s like a dog across the street and she’s like, she wants to go out there and have fun, but that’s not the safest for her to do. Um, yeah, so completely understand. Yeah. Was there anything else that you wanted to share around niche marketing? I think you shared a lot of good information about just how to, how to identify it, how to market it. Um, really just all the different pieces to the foundations of niche marketing. Was there anything else you wanted to share?

Nihal: You know what? Yes. I think one of the things I was thinking about, and I’ve written a list down of examples of niches that you could be thinking about just to inspire listeners to go off and, and, and, and have a thing. So we talked about travelers with reactive dogs, um, talked about astronomy enthusiasts.

Eco conscious travelers, travelers who want to stay at places who, you know, have, you know, prioritize sustainability. So whether that’s, you’re only using, you know, um, organic toiletries and, and focusing on eco friendly practices and you’re using solar energy, whatever it might be. We talked about digital nomads, um, free, um, holidays now are a thing, right?

A lot of people want to go somewhere and completely disconnect. So I’m not quite sure how you cater to that specific niche, but I’m sure there’s. I’m sure listeners will come up with something, but just people who are interested in, in, who have really like high, high stress jobs who just really need a couple of days, time out or a week, complete time out.

They just want to disconnect. Um, what could you be due to catering to cater to that niche? Adventure enthusiasts. Um, so people who are into extreme sports, um, cyclists, I mean, cyclists, that that’s an interesting niche because a lot of hardcore cyclists have very expensive bicycles that they want to have stored safely.

Um, so they want to be somewhere that’s close to really good cycling routes. Um, really simple things you could be doing in the property is like, you know, extra. Tubed, uh, tubes for tires, repair kits, just like really, like, you know, snacks for whatever cyclists have when they’re, I’m not an avid cyclist, you can tell, but you know, like energy, energy bars or whatever type of thing that they could have as a snack while they’re on the go.

Um, if you’re near a golf course and obviously golf enthusiasts, one I’ve never had anyone talk about, LGBTQ friendly, Stays right. I I’m like, why, why are properties not marketing this? So if you’re close to festivals, if you’re in a community that’s super inclusive, that’s one to think about. We talked about accessibility, uh, motorcycle touring.

I’m a motorcyclist. I travel with my bike a lot and I wish that there were, there were places that cater to motorcyclists. So again, that can be. That is, you know, secure, somewhere secure for me to park my bike, so I don’t have to worry about taking all of the luggage off of it and putting it back on, because that’s a pain.

Um, you know, things like, just really simple things like in the property, I want to walk in and be able to put my helmet somewhere. That’s not on the dining table, but you can’t really hang it because there’s no one, there’s nothing for the helmet. And then you’ve got, you know, your, your riding gear and everything that’s quite bulky.

So just, just, just, there’s so many, there’s so many potential niches that you could cater to. But those are just a few examples that I thought of that hopefully listeners might feel a little bit inspired by.

Gil: Yeah, I think kind of going back to what we’re saying, I think it’s really important to figure out like where your type of property, where your property is, what type it is, and really make sure that you’re not stretching yourself too far to make it too friendly to a niche that you might have to pull really hard to draw attention to.

These are some pretty natural niches that Well, pretty, be pretty accessible to, to where you are and what you do. Um, so I think like going back to the reviews and looking at those, that’s a very effective way to figure out like, where does it organically feel that your niche really fits within the example that I think of is like, we have one of our cabins is near a big sports arena.

One of the largest one in Gatlinburg, um, it’s where all the big competitions are. So we have, we’re listed on the, the travel agencies that help people find spaces to stay when they’re traveling for competitions. Um, and then we’re now putting amenities in there that makes it like we have this big lawn in there.

That they can possibly go practicing in, uh, we have lots of car space there. So like there’s things that we naturally fit into another one’s like in Gatlinburg, we have the jeep invasion, we call it, or they call it where it’s, I don’t know how many days it is, but it’s a couple of days where a bunch of jeeps from all around the nation will come together.

To just go drive around the smoky mountains, show off their Jeeps. They have something similar called the rod run, which is on hot rods. So there’s a lot of car shows and it’s actually making me think like, should I pave my driveway to be a lot more, like a lot more friendly for off roading vehicles or even low vehicles even.

Um, but there’s just like kind of going back to it. It’s just like really knowing where your property is, where it can outshine the competition. Um, and how do you leverage that for more effective marketing? Silence.

Nihal: in my local area. That will have services and products that would be of interest to this niche.

Right. So, you know, if you’re talking about kid friendly, right, then, you know, are there toy shops and play areas and I don’t know, whatever are the services that will be relevant for. Young children, the same with, with the dog niche, you know, or their potential dog sisters in the area that you could be linking up with or dog walkers, for example, or pet supply stores, um, or nice long hikes, um, or dog friendly activities, dog friendly restaurants, dog friendly coffee shops, um, all those sorts of things.

So, so thinking about the broader experience of the guests beyond just the stay in the property becomes a lot. More straightforward when you’re focusing on a niche because the activities and the recommendations and the places become a, it’s just, it’s just much easier to think of because you’re really clear on what their interests are basically.

So I think that that’s another key point worth mentioning.

Gil: Yeah. And there’s, when you get that down to that level, you have a lot more synergies with the partnerships that you are. So they’re sending you a lot more quality leads. They’re able to promote you much more effectively because they know exactly what type of stays and whether or not it resonates specifically with the organization.

Nihal: And I can’t believe that I forgot to mention this, but the other two really important benefits of niching down is that you’re much more likely to get referrals so that you had a snowball effect because. Me as a reactive dog owner, guess what I’m going to do if I have a great stay at someone’s property?

I’m going to go tell my other friends who have reactive dogs because we’re all part of the same circle and when someone on the Facebook group with 12, 000 members asks me, do you have recommendations for like, I will respond and say, yeah, this place was amazing. And I will go back again. So you get that repeat, so you get the referrals and you get the repeat bookings as well.

So I think those are two really important reasons that, that, um, I think people should consider if they’re on the fence about whether they should niche down or not.

Gil: I love it. I love it. Awesome. Yeah. We usually end with two questions. Uh, one question is an overall mindset question and one’s a takeaway. I have a good idea of what you’re going to say for the takeaway one, but, um, for the mindset one, I usually ask what’s one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new.

Nihal: One of the things I have been practicing recently when I am trying anything new that’s challenging or even not new that’s challenging, hard or scary is. Instead of telling myself, I have to do this, I tell myself, I get to do this. And that applies to anything from doing a really hard workout to launching a new business, um, starting a job, staying in a job that, you know, might not be your dream job, anything that you find challenging, just stop and do it.

And don’t let yourself, don’t let yourself tell yourself the story of, oh, I have to do this. This is so hard. You get to do this. And there are so many other scenarios in which you wouldn’t be able to do this. So have gratitude for the fact that you get to do it. And, and that’s just such. A simple mindset shift that can completely transform how you perceive your situation and um, and your willingness to, to move forward with it and not talk yourself out of it.

Cause I think we’re really good at that. And I think the other, can I give one more?

Gil: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Nihal: doesn’t come easy. And as soon as you start to feel that discomfort, that is where change actually happens. So stick through it.

Um, most people give up as soon as it starts to feel uncomfortable. Expect the discomfort, learn to embrace the discomfort. All right. Um, and eventually you will become uncomfortable with that level of discomfort. And then your comfort zone just widens and widens. But I think it’s quite important to try and force ourselves to live outside of that comfort zone as often as we can, because that’s where the real growth and excitement happens.

Gil: yeah, I agree with you. Um, and it’s also where things are probably the most rewarding as well, too. I see this a lot in my kids is when I challenge them to do something that they are not comfortable doing and they push themselves through it and they’re motivated to do it. It becomes the outcomes are much more rewarding than if they had just passed it up, um, or they took the easy way out.

So I completely agree with you for both adults and for kids. Um, awesome. Uh, last question, um, what is one takeaway that you want our listeners to walk away with and put into practice today?

Nihal: Talk to your guests. Talk to your guests on like, and when I say talk to a guest, I mean, go and, you know, talk to them, listen to them passively through the reviews and any data that you have, if they’re filling out booking form, whatever data you have, go look at that data and unpick it, use tools like chat GPT to make that easier, um, for yourself.

And have conversations with them, you know, and, and I think often companies, as they get bigger, they get further away from their guests. And I think it’s really important to maintain that practice of speaking regularly to guests, because that is, that is the way you will understand what they want, what they like, what they dislike.

And then all of that informs how you, you know, improve your property, how you market your properties. So speak to your guests. It’s the one piece of advice I give to every company that I’ve worked with and spoken with across every single sector I’ve ever worked in. It is the most under no one, no one does it enough.

And you, you are, you are leaving money on the table just by not speaking to, to your customers, to your guests. It’s such a simple thing to do. Um, do more of it, make it a weekly practice that you set time aside to, to, to do that. Um, whether that’s picking up the phone, whether, if you can go and meet them at check in or checkout, but just, just think about the different ways that you could be speaking to your customers,

Gil: Absolutely, I’ve given this example in the show before, but, um, I still do all of our customer onboardings for crafted stays. I’m still, I have a team now. I’ve, we’ve grown quite a bit. But I come from a product background and I’ve seen over and over again that the folks, the good product leaders out there are ones that are glued to the customer, understands their pain points and does not develop, produce in a silo or in a vacuum or in the lab.

Yes, we can be looking at data to understand what are, what are they clicking on and what are they using and what are they not using? But that does not replace getting in front of a customer. So like for me, I get a lot of enjoyment. Out of seeing every one of our customers go through onboarding and helping them through understanding what their problems are, why they came to me, how they find find me, what are they looking to solve?

What are the other challenges that they have? And that’s kind of where our podcast started was. I found out that one of the biggest challenges that a lot of direct booking folks have is they don’t know how to market. I think that’s not their forte. That’s not where they came from. So that’s why we started the podcast to help educate folks and, and Had I not done the onboarding, had I not listened to our customers.

The product would have been where it is today. The things that we do to help us or help our customers like really Excel, those wouldn’t exist today. So I completely agree with you. Like talk to your customers, talk to your guests. And I 100 percent agree that this is applicable no matter what business type you are in.

Nihal: And I think that, that the fact that you talk to your customers is the reason that your websites are so beautiful, they’re beautifully simple. They just have, I said this to you when we first met, there’s, there’s none of the bells and whistles that you don’t need in the sector. And, and I think it’s, it takes. It takes a lot to build something that is so simple and beautiful and effective. So really well done. I think, I think your website’s absolutely stunning. And now I know how you’ve managed to build this business. I found, I now know your secrets and it’s very simple.

Gil: Yeah, I don’t know if it’s a secret or not, but yeah, I mean, like we don’t have that many resources and this applies to other business owners as well. We don’t have infinite amount of resources. And if I don’t talk to folks, I can be developing a whole bunch of stuff that doesn’t resonate. Um, and that’s not going to help anyone.

So I completely agree with you back to God and what we were saying, like, if you talk to your guests, you’re able to apply your resources in the right areas. I’m and be really effective of what you’re doing.

Nihal: Absolutely.

Gil: Awesome. You know, where can folks find out more about you? Follow, follow along your journey? How can they get in touch with you?

Nihal: LinkedIn is the best place. So it’s Nihal Salah, um, on LinkedIn. That’s where I’m most active. Um, and yeah, connect with me there. I’m always happy to chat marketing.

Gil: Awesome. You know, it was really good to have you on the show. I can’t wait to have you back one day. But thanks for sharing everything you know about niche marketing and kind of opening up the the eyes for a lot of our listeners today.

Nihal: Thank you for having me.

Gil: Thank you. Bye.

Nihal: Bye. 

Yeah.