Here are some questions that you may want to ask during a discover call with a vacation rental manager looking to improve their digital marketing efforts.

Questions To Consider #

• How long in business? 
• Number of units managed? (sidebar: divide number to get a rough sense of growth rate. Example: 100 units in 4 years: 25 properties added per year on average). 
• What is your annual gross booking revenue? (sidebar: you can also ask average daily rates X around 65% occupancy and then sum up all of those properties)
• What are your current efforts around digital marketing? DIY, a team member, an entire team, an agency, none of above?
• How many email marketing newsletters have you sent in the last 6 months? 
• How would you grade your current SEO efforts and results? Why that grade?
• How would you grade your current PPC efforts and results? Why that grade?
• How would you grade your current organic social media efforts and results? Why that grade?
• How many new properties have you added in the last 6 months? 
• How many have you lost/churned? Why have they churned? 
• How many people are on your team? Full time vs contractor? (sidebar: do they run payroll)
• Do you have Google Analytics installed? Can we have access to it?

Research Items To Perform Ahead Of Time #

• Do they have their own website? What platform is it on? 
• Do they have established brand standards? Logo/color/brand kit? 
• Do they have Google Analytics installed on their website? If so, how many sessions in the last 30 days? 
• Do they have a Google My Business listing verified? 
• What PMS platform do they use? 
• What is the TAM of their market? 
• How restrictive/severe are the STR regulations? How much smaller is the TAM of legal properties? 

Who is the largest PM in the market and how many units do they have? (sidebar: this is the “ceiling” perhaps in short-term in terms of company size. Markets like OBX may support 1,500+ unit managers, while smaller markets may only have a 100-200 unit manager)