What is Marketing?

Well it's quite a big question and the answers vary depending on how deep you want to get. As far as we are concerned and for what we are trying to achieve it can be defined as:

Understand who your customers are, reach them, then meeting their needs by creating the right experience for them.

So, very basically find out who your customers are, find out what they want from a holiday property, then sell it to them in places where they may look. That is obviously a very simplistic view but marketing, as a discipline, is all about one thing - common sense.

Brands and Branding

You may have heard some marketing terms before and either been put off or intimidated. Remember it's common sense, but branding is important because:

People change - their expections and experiences are constantly being redefined.
Places change - external events may change the way your holiday property is seen, ie. new developments nearby, a new golf course.

That's why you have to constantly reassess your situation, who your audience is, and change it accordingly.

Is Putting Effort into Marketing Your Villa Worth It?

Now, you might be asking is it worth it? Well here's a scenario:

You have a villa with annual costs of £10,000 per year.
You rent your holiday property out at an average of £500 per week giving you a maximum of £26,000 per year income.
You are currently filling the summer months at the villa, totalling 25 weeks per year, giving you a cleared profit of £2,500 per year.
That leaves a possible extra profit (barring running costs) of £13,500 annually.
Multiply that by your ten-year investment and you could make an extra £135,000.

Now, we aren't so naive to think that you would fill all 52 weeks at your holiday property, or that the other months would average out to be as lucrative of the ones you are selling, but you get the point.

That said, any marketing your do, needs to give you some sort of return on investment.