The MLS is built to reach people shopping for homes. Your highest-paying buyer might be an investor two states away who has never browsed your market's listings in their life — or a family who would be scared off by a listing that reads like a stock prospectus. Every operating STR has two buyer pools, and most listings silently forfeit one of them.
Lead the MLS with the story matched to the higher-value pool from Lesson 2. Push the other story through its own channels: STR marketplaces, investor groups and meetups, other agents' buyer lists, and 1031 exchange buyers on 45-day identification clocks — funded, motivated, deadline-driven, and reachable only through agents and intermediaries, never Zillow. Two photo sets, two copy blocks, one price strategy.
Go deeper: STR Client Archetypes — know which buyer you're writing to — and STR Agent vs Regular Realtor for why the network is the marketing.
ACTION: For your current or next STR listing, write both opening paragraphs — investor version and lifestyle version. If one is dramatically easier to write, you've just learned which pool that property is really for, and where your marketing budget goes.
Next lesson: showings when the house is full of paying guests — protecting the revenue you're selling while you sell it.