EP 231: Your Name Is Your First Marketing Asset (And Most STR Owners Get It Wrong)

We want to make sure that the name that we're selecting is something that can be easily remembered because it's great for word of mouth marketing as well, right? We also want to make sure that we're not choosing something that's so long that it's going to be difficult to design from a logo perspective or difficult from a URL perspective. We don't want to make it overly complicated, but we certainly do want to make sure that it's in alignment with the target audience and the overall experience. Welcome to Branded In Booked, the podcast that helps short-term rental hosts and boutique hotel owners create destination properties with a rape or the guest experience. I'm Steph Weber and after spending a decade supporting hundreds of six and seven figure small businesses with their branding and marketing strategies, I've turned short-term rentals. I built a six-figure co-esteem business, invested in cabins on the cummerland, a riverfront micro-resort in Kentucky, and manage our own short-term rental in Indianapolis. If you want to have more control over your marketing and build a brand that inspires guest loyalty, so you can keep your calendar booked during the right place, let's dive in. Point of have a quick conversation today on names. Oh my goodness, this is one of the biggest thing that honestly, one of the biggest things that we're supporting clients with, also one of the biggest areas where I see hesitation, where I see challenge, where we have to go back to the drawing board in order to make sure that the name that we're creating for your boutique hotel, your micro-resort, your co-hosting company, your short-term rental, etc, is in alignment with your vision and with what you are creating. This is one of the most personal decisions. Also, it's one of the most important decisions because your name is literally like your first marketing asset, right? It matters, I think, so much more than you think. I mean, you guys, there are companies that spend months or years working on identifying their name because of how important this is and because of how name is also associated with perception. Obviously, it's crucial in that your name has to stop the scroll, has to be able to resonate, has to be able to convey immediately, like you hear it and you can automatically or instantly feel what that experience is going to be like. I want to share some stories with you guys from this past year of clients that we've had the very special honor and privilege to work with and that we've been able to name and where I see mistakes are being made. I'm going to be really honest with you. That is largely, that is largely using ChatGPT to just pick a name and let that be the end of it. But your name has to be designed to attract your dream guest as well as position you effectively in your specific market. Oftentimes we're seeing names be too generic, we're seeing names be too trendy or being way too difficult to pronounce or sound like everyone else or they sound nothing like the experience at all. Again, I'm going to share with you guys some examples of that. But you have to understand, and my goal for you by the end of this episode today is that you are going to understand how to name a property that supports bookings, you are branding and you're long-term vision and growth of what you're creating. Let's take a step back for a second here, really help you guys understand importance and then I'm going to share some personal stories with you here as well as some of the biggest mistakes I see and then what you can do, definitely. So of course your name is your first impression, it's how you are positioning yourself in the market and it's kind of acts as a filter from a marketing perspective. Like does that name, I'm looking for an elevated wellness escape or elevated wellness retreat, I'm just throwing out an idea here, does your name resonate with that, with that experience, right? Does what you're showing me and visuals resonate with the name that you have actually created and name impacts who you are ultimately attracting and who you're ultimately working to drive bookings for within your property as a whole, right? Biggest naming mistakes that I see is that so many things and I can talk about this from a logo perspective as well. But your name feels too generic or too literal, right? Like too generic or too literal or just isn't backed by strategy at all or you're chasing trends like maybe you're using words that feel really lux but they're actually they'd actually don't say anything at all. You're trying to sound too expensive instead of really intentional, you're naming it for yourself and not for your guest and keeping your guest in mind. I was just telling somebody the other day, before we ever even get to the name of a property, we go through the intentionality of the guest avatar first. We have to go through all of that first and that whole strategy process before we're ever getting to the naming process, right? And also you have to keep in mind your name at some point is going to be sold with the property, right? You're willing to say and maybe you're going to change the name. I've certainly worked with clients who have done that but you could be building a brand that is so strong and so significant that you're also going to be selling that name at some point. So you want to make sure that you're thinking about it for future growth as well, you know, depending upon what your goals and what your vision is. So let's go through some examples here so that you guys can kind of hear hear story. We have a client who is now called Silvara Blue Ridge but when they came to us they were known as free stone lodge and as I started digging in with them before we came up with Silvara, I was understanding that they were creating, they were building cabins in Blue Ridge, Georgia. Like that's what I understood and they had two cabins when they came to us and one was very newly launched but their vision was so much bigger. They were building these lux stays, these beautiful like inviting warm, reconnective stays. They were going to be focused on groups as well and the free stone lodge name. When I hear a lodge, again, like this this comes back to to like what words they're they're very different words. I have certain connotations. When I think lodge, I automatically think mountain ski town or I think somewhere in Europe and I think brown like nice lodge or I think like wilderness lodge at Disney and maybe that's my own Disney perception. I don't know. Maybe maybe that clouds it a little bit but it certainly didn't convey what they were doing and so we created the name Silvara for them and the reason for that name and the reason that that came up is because it matched the sound of the name, matched the experience that they were trying to cultivate for guests. That was one example. Another example that I have from this past year, we have a client who is building Zom, yes you heard that right, Zom structures in Red River Gorge and they're building a micro resort. I think it's I don't know 53 acres or something like that and so they're starting of course with their first one and going okay we're building this for Zom we know what this can be. Our vision is huge. What do we name this place and they actually were working with a design company who also was offering branding and the brand branding. Oh it may be cringe. The branding that they were given you guys was chat GPT names, no target audience information, no core messaging information. There was actually no brand strategy. It was just like, here's some names and maybe like some logo ideas or some visuals and I was like this is not branding. This is not it but what I struggled with within that is that you guys listen, I use chat GPT too. I think it's so great to help with inspiration or to help you understand what certain words mean or what the connotation might be but what I don't think it's helpful for is when you're building something that's so personal and you want to have that personal hospitality experience, you can't just slap a name on it without any meaning. And so as I was going through the process, the branding process with this client, we did all of her target audience first and outlined that who that was what their pain points were, what the goal was for them, what they desired, really got an understanding of who this person was. Then we went into the core messaging and we did all of that. We outlined her core messaging, the feeling that we're working to cultivate the one line of statements, the tag lines, the what the overall vibe, right? Like what is the experience here? What is the guest experience that we're trying to provide? It was a story that we're trying to tell and then we created name ideas. And one of the questions that I asked her was, have you thought I said, have you thought about the name? Because this was something that we were kind of back and forth on. She was sort of brainstorming and I knew that we would be helping in in some capacity too. But I said, have you thought about the name? And is there anything meaningful that we should take into consideration here as we're trying to piece names together? And she was like, you know, she started telling me about her grandmother and how her grandmother was such a prominent figure in her life. And she was like, it'd be really cool if we could incorporate her somehow. And I was like, literally say less. I'm on it. And so that's what we did. And we came up with Josephine's Ridge for her in honor of her grandmother. And then she tells me later, I found all of these old photographs of my grandmother and we can use them as decor in the property. And I was like, this literally could not be more perfect. And it gives us such a personal story to tie to with this property. So again, like guest feel connected to it. But so does the owner. And so like that was so prominent and important. And important for cabins on the cumberlin. We made a very strategic move here in prioritizing SEO within our name as a whole. So Lake cumberlin is very prominent. We attract over four million visitors a year that come to the lake. Now the lake is huge. You guys it's huge. So when I say four million visitors a year, think four million visitors, but multiple counties, multiple cities that you can come and access the lake. But James Towne is one of those big cities. And that's where the cabins are. We are also on the cumberlin river. So we wanted to be, we didn't want to say like cabins on the cumberlin river. That's really specific. But cabins on the cumberlin was like, okay, Cumberland River, also Lake Cumberland. So from an SEO perspective, when someone is searching for, and that's what they're doing, they're searching in that area. This is another thing to take into consideration when you're thinking about your name. What might people use to search to find you where you can appear organically in Google search result? Now, part of that's your SEO, but your name, of course, can be a big part of this. And cabins on the Cumberland is so memorable. So while, yes, it's very literal, and sometimes I try to avoid this, we do have to take SEO in a consideration. And so for us, cabins on the Cumberland made sense because that's exactly what we were building. We knew from an SEO perspective that was going to significantly help us. And so that's what we decided to go with. This has to be so much about your guest. It has to be so much about the marketing strategy you're going to implement. What kind of brand you're going to build, the feeling? Like the name should signal a feeling, right? Your name acts like a magnet for the right guests. So you have to make sure that you're being really specific in that. In terms of-- so hopefully those three examples were really helpful for you guys. But in terms of kind of like what are some of the lanes or things that you need to consider? What's sort of the framework for thinking through the name? Number one, you could focus on experienced driven names. So the emotion, the lifestyle that you're working to sell, sometimes these can be abstract names, but they're incredibly intentional. So that could be one option that you kind of go to. The second could be story rooted names. So Josephine's Ridge, exactly what I gave you guys there. That is a story rooted name. That is so fantastic for the personalization of it for building this micro-resort as a whole. And then underneath Josephine's Ridge, she can have these different names for each of the different zones, just like what we do for cabins on the Cumberland. So we have cabins on the Cumberland, but every cabin on our property has a different name so that we can easily identify that for guests and the name also helped us design the theme of each cabin. Each cabin is themed. So like you have the woodlands, you have the riverview, you have the mariners, you have the angler, and inside the design, and overall, the cornacetic of the cabin matches whatever that name is while maintaining brand consistency too. Wow, there's so many things that go into this, right? But something that is important to keep in mind is how easy is your brand to recall and how often are you going to get your brand in front of people? This is so important. We want to make sure that the name that we're selecting is something that can be easily remembered because it's great for word of mouth marketing as well. We don't want to make it overly complicated, but we certainly do want to make sure that it's in alignment with the target audience and the overall experience, right? So you have to do a quick gut check. Like you're going to know when you have found the name because you are going to feel it. Does it feel connected? Does it feel like yes, this is it? Does it feel like it can grow with you? Does it attract that dream guest? And keep in mind, you guys too, I think sometimes when I'm talking about this, again, we have to keep in mind this is about your guest and the avatar you're working to attract, not necessarily you. And so yes, you can infuse yourself into it and that's great, but it has to resonate with your guests and it has to make sense for the overall story. What I love about Josephine's Ridge is that we're literally going to tie her grandmother into the zones, like into the property, into the aesthetic or storytelling and that is really beautiful. So if you're trying to think through, what do I name my property? What does this need to be? Don't start with the name, please, please, please, please, don't start with the name. Get incredibly wildly clear on who your guest is. Detail, in detail, right? Create an entire story around them, understand their, how they're feeling, understand how you want them to feel after an experience with you, understand all of your brand core messaging, understand the guest experience and what that looks like from the first touch point to the time that they are re-booking a stay with you. And then think about your name. These all of that together and then go based on all of this, what makes sense from a naming perspective and are there names that I can't use or should avoid because it's gonna be really difficult for me to compete from an SEO perspective or it's going to be difficult to pronounce or it's going to be difficult to remember, right? You have to keep those things in mind as well. So I hope that this was helpful for you guys and just thinking through, I feel like this is one of the biggest hurdles which is why I wanted to do a podcast episode on it. Naming is so, like it does feel deeply personal but it also is very much about your guest, very much about what actually works from a marketing perspective and what is going to last, right, and create that loyalty that we're all working so hard to create. So thank you guys so much for your time today. I will see you on the next episode. Cheers. Thanks for turning into branded in-bud. If you love today's episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. It helps more host like you find the show and you know how important those reviews are. For more resources, head to thewebricot.com or follow me on Instagram @thewebricot and let's keep the conversation going. Until next time, remember your property. Isn't just a place to stay. It's a story waiting to be told. Let's make it worth remembering. (upbeat music)