One of the essential things you can do as a vacation rental company owner is to invest time in branding.
Without a brand, it will be impossible for your vacation rental website to stand out from the crowd.
In addition to being prominent on your website, your company brand will serve as the foundation for any other marketing materials or activities you develop.
Remember that your brand will appear on:
- Pages of search engine results (SERPs)
- Social networking sites
- Company cards
- Commercial merchandise (such as stationary, uniforms, and any promotional items such as mugs and bags)
- Headers for emails and letters
- Signatures on emails
- Brochures/flyers
- Your holiday rental’s internal and exterior signage
- Banner advertisements
- Sites with external listings
All of these locations provide you with the chance to enhance your brand. As a result, consistency across all of your channels is critical, which can be maintained through a channel manager. Using our website branding checklist, you can achieve consistency for your vacation rental brand!
1. The tagline
Not every brand has a slogan, but many of those that do are memorable.
A tagline (a strapline or a corporate slogan) sums up what your brand stands for in a few words. It may also act as a memory hook, ensuring that your brand is remembered for years to come.
Some companies may employ more detailed straplines, such as Audi’s long-standing slogan “Vorsprung Durch Technologie” (advancement through technology). Others will choose a more catchy phrase to make their point (think Nike’s “Just do it” or Apple’s “Think different”).
If you want to create a slogan for your vacation rental company, Marketing Nerd recommends that it “mean something” and be “true to reality” – or you shouldn’t have one.
2. Colors
Many firms make the error of choosing too many colors for their brand. Your color scheme should ideally comprise one to three main colors and two to three secondary colors (black and white included).
In addition to choosing the colors themselves, you will need to establish some ground rules or best practices for using them throughout everything from your website to social media and even printed materials.
3. Reliability
After you’ve developed your logo, created a slogan, and chosen your brand colors and fonts, the next step is to apply these elements consistently across everything you do.
Many organizations create a brand style guide, which includes design, composition, and the overall appearance and feel of your brand.
This will guarantee that anybody else in charge of developing anything for your vacation rental (whether it’s merchandising, digital advertising, or a website makeover) has criteria to follow to create consistency.
4. Logos
Your professional logo is an important part of your business identification. Your logo will appear on all of the objects mentioned above, albeit it may appear in various forms or color combinations. When developing your logo, think about how it will appear in multiple sizes, colors, black & white, and digital and print media.
Bonus: Here’s a list of free logo creator tools to get you started on your design!
Companies often have main and secondary logos. Your major logo will be the one you use the most and should feature on your website, social media, and email contact. The main logo is often created in a 2:1 ratio. When you require an alternative to your major logo, you may utilize secondary logos (for example, a horizontal/vertical variant or a black and white version).
To prevent vacation rental fraud, some owners prefer to watermark information on their websites (such as property images). A watermark is a weak replica of your brand that may be put over photos to prevent unauthorized usage.
You will also need a tiny version of your logo to function as your website’s favicon. A favicon (short for “favorite icon”) is a file that contains an icon related to a website. When you have many tabs open in a browser, this symbol helps you recognize which tab is whose.
5. typography
The fonts you choose for your vacation rental brand should express the message you wish to convey to visitors. There are several font styles, such as serif and sans serif, and mixing and matching is OK.
If feasible, limit the number of distinct fonts you utilize for your brand to two or three. Use one style for your logo and headers and another for the body content.
6. Use of social media
Social media is an excellent place to begin spreading the word about your vacation rental business. According to marketing expert Neil Patel, social media has surpassed other more conventional channels as the primary venue for customers to voice their thoughts on businesses and interact with them.
As a result, social media integrations should not be considered an additional or a “nice-to-have.” Instead, think of them as an extension of the brand you’re currently building.
Facebook and Instagram are already proven to be very effective marketing tools for vacation rental owners, assisting them in attracting more direct reservations and creating a lot of buzz about their homes. Furthermore, experts in the vacation rental market may engage with one another via LinkedIn groups, Twitter conversations, and specialized forums.
It’s critical to remember that no matter which social media platforms you utilize, you should constantly strive to keep the same brand voice across. Of course, your logos and style requirements will be used to maintain uniformity across all published content.
Building (and keeping to) a vacation rental brand is one of the most successful methods to earn awareness, exposure, and visitor trust. Your brand will be present in everything you do, online and offline, so make your selections early and stick to your brand rules. Use our website branding checklist to assist you!