So you own a gorgeous luxury villa, you’ve prepared an exquisite staff and you are all ready to reap in some of the benefits of being a villa owner. Unfortunately when it comes to luxury villas and vacation homes rental, the adage “if you build it, they will come” isn’t quite true. Without the proper marketing and promotion, a luxury villa is just another gorgeous private property hidden from where it’s perched. Selecting the right agency to work with to promote your villa and market it to the right people is a key asset to the success of the endeavor.

With this in mind, just what should the selection process for a qualified marketing agency look like? Lets take a look at a simple six-point check list for what to investigate.

#1 Success Record

The first step when assessing a new agency is taking a look at their past work. Examples of their successful clients/villas might be a good indicator of the kind of successes you could hope to gain, and the marketing methods agency employ are often based on their most successful ventures. Try to get a clear picture on the efficacy of the agency: how many success stories do they have, and just how successful were they?

#2 References

Word of mouth is a powerful factor in any decision and often one of the best ways to get in-depth information. Talk to anyone who may have been involved with the agency in anyway: their clients present and past, employees, your friends or peers who may have used the services in the past. Try to find an agency with good references you received during one on one personal interactions with people who had experienced working with the agency.

#3 Visions and Goals

When working with any business partner, you always need to make sure there is an alignment of your visions and goals for your own individual businesses as well as your joint endeavors. Seek out an agency that can work for you and with you to achieve your unique goals and realize your personal vision for your villa.

#4 Number of Villas on Website

As a preliminary step, take a look at the agencies website and take note of how many villas they feature. You want to select an agency which favors quality over quantity – if their website is jam packed full of different villas, your new addition is likely to get lost in the noise. Each villa featured by the agency should be displayed prominently and proudly, with the stately elegance becoming of a high class luxury villa.

#5 Marketing Strategies

It is important to learn as much as possible about the marketing strategies your agency will employ for your villa. Vital to the success of the advertising campaign, the methods used and the audience targeted will ultimately determine if your advertising dollar was a sound investment or a colossal flop. For the luxury villa market, you want a marketing agency geared towards targeting the traveling elite, high-dollar clients who spare no expense for extra opulence in their accommodations. A marketing agency which attempts to make as much noise as possible, or caters towards publications for budget accommodations, or a wide range of other examples, will prove incompatible and ineffective at properly booking a luxury villa.

#6 Transparency and Communication

Your agent should be your constant advocate, at your service for every need of your business. To that end, they require excellent transparency and communication. These two traits go hand in hand: transparency is them revealing to their clients every detail of the process of marketing and advertising, and quality communication is the basic medium which allows for transparent operations. Test the customer service and communication capabilities of your agent. Especially if they will have any contact with guests at the villa, they must be exhaustively attentive, impeccably personable and expertly knowledgeable in their communications to allow for efficient, effective service which leaves everyone happy with the results.

Hopefully this brief guide has given you some idea of what to look for when selecting a marketing agency for your luxury villa. It is certainly a process which requires some experience to navigate properly, so always be on the look out for tips and advice as you learn the ropes.

Related Topic: Five Qualities of What We Consider a Luxury Villa