Heads In Beds Show - Breaking Down The Ideal Marketing Audit For Vacation Rental Businesses

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

In this episode of The Heads In Beds Show, Paul and Conrad cover the concept of a marketing audit for vacation rental businesses, discussing what a good audit entails from both the consultant's and the client's perspectives. They explore quantitative (data-driven) and qualitative (opinion and goal-based) aspects of audits for attracting both guests and homeowners. They also touch upon the challenges of conducting free audits, the potential for bias when sales are involved, and the importance of an audit leading to actionable improvements for the business.⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's LinkedIn PostConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagram🚀 About BuildUp BookingsBuildUp Bookings is a team of creative, problem solvers made to drive you more traffic, direct bookings and results for your accommodations brand. Reach out to us for help on search, social and email marketing for your vacation rental brand.

Welcome to the Head to Med Show presented by Buildup Bookings. We teach you how to get more vacation properties, earn more revenue per property, master marketing, and increase your occupancy. Take your vacation rental marketing game to the next level by listening in. I'm your co-host, Conrad. And I'm your co-host, Paul. All right, Paul, good morning. Serious face on. What's happening? level by listening in. I'm your co host Conrad. I'm your co host Paul. All right, Paul, good morning. Serious face on what's happening? What's cooking?

Serious face. Um, well, we got that we have dark shirts. I thought we both had black shirts on I was feeling really worried. You know what we had the jerseys to match the team that you're playing in the playoffs right now the Orlando Magic. So it is we're having we've been having a lot of sports conversations as happens when you get the sports culmination of playoffs and playoffs and playoffs. But outside of that, it's it's good times, man. I'm just enjoying the spring trying to get to summer and then

kids are out of school and who knows what happens. But how are you doing, sir? Pretty good. It actually is spring break this week for my boys. My oldest is actually fishing right now as we record this with his grandfather. So that's pretty exciting to see what will come of that. Maybe something good, maybe not. And then my other one, I don't know, he needed a haircut or something. He's out and about.

So funny how you can kind of these little personal things get, oh, I'll do it during spring break. And then my wife's like, oh, crap, now I have to go do all the things I said I was going to do during spring break for the kids and various things. Oh, they need summer clothes and all this kind of stuff. So yeah, good, good vibes here. All good energy. I think it's, um, yeah, I think for the most part,

it's, it's been an up and down year as far as demand goes, but I question people's psychology or perception of performance versus the actual performance. And sometimes these things don't always line up very well, like all the clients that are down, you know, 4% year over year in growth and revenue. And they're like, the sky is falling. Like it's just such an interesting thing that other people don't react when they should be reacting. So such an interesting thing.

And you know, we're always talking to new people and that's kind of actually what spawned this conversation. We'll just talk to a new potential customer, potential client. We'll see if they sign as the, of our time of this recording, it's up in the air. We'll see where that one ends up landing. But he actually sent me over an audit from someone else in our space, a respected, you know, I think, marketing consultant, I don't want to reveal

all their secrets or numbers or anything like that. But always good just to kind of see, you know, I think when we're in our own little bubble, I don't know how you feel, obviously, you and I chat regularly. But sometimes I do get my own way of doing things. And I like to sometimes look at what other people are doing, not that I just want to copy them, that's never my intent, but rather just like, okay, like what are they doing? Maybe they see a few things that I don't see or vice versa. And it kind of brought this idea up because I sent the audit over to you

and you were taking a peek at it of like, what is the right marketing audit? Like, what does the marketing audit even do? We've done some podcast episodes in the past, there's back in the feed on building like a marketing plan. I think an audit is a little bit different though. I think the way that we're thinking about this is a little bit different. And maybe it's just time for a bit of an open-ended

discussion, if anything, and we've got some ideas here to break down of what does a good audit look like? Like what is, what's ideal for the client on the other side, the vocational manager? What's ideal for us? What can we look at? What's the right expectations of an audit as far as like timeline and cost? Should there be one? Should it be free? All those kinds of things. That's kind of, we're hoping to break apart today, but usually when I hear the word audit, I don't feel warm and fuzzy is I don't know how you feel about it. You hear that word. But what's your perspective on that? I is it takes me to tax season, which we just got. Let's not get away from there. Um, it is it does feel just by the nature of the word. It feels intrusive. It feels like it feels like something that you maybe aren't prepared for. It feels like something you're kind of maybe caught off guard for, which should never be the position. I don't

think that should be the case because if things are running relatively smoothly, everything don't have any big waves, nothing should really catch us off guard. And I should use the heaviest of air quotes there. But it is. I think that the audit is at a high level, at a very basic level. It's just that deep dive. Now I think some people, again, based on their confidence, based on how they feel they're doing, you're doing anything like that, that it may be defensive time or it may be something like that.

But I do. I think that generally speaking, audits tend to be someone picking things apart as opposed to taking the 10,000 foot overview of the business. I think a true audit is just an overview. It's not necessarily pulling out the negatives. And I think because the situation that people most often find those audits coming is in sales, it's a very high pressure situation of sale, you know, you're trying to switch or you're trying to bring someone new on. And it does. I think that in an audit, it should not all be negative. Because if you're a business that's running fairly efficiently

doing things, like there should be some good things that you can that you can highlight that's one thing that I think very early on before I was doing it independently I was really good at taking all the negatives and just ding ding ding ding ding oh there's a red mark oh there's a red mark there's no green there's a little green over here and it is I fed the fire that we're gonna talk about today and looking back at it now yeah I feel like that's not the point of an audit. The point of an audit is truly to give you a general overview of the business. I mean, it is. I think some people look at it, you know, there's the SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. I think a true audit is more similar to that,

a SWOT analysis and really understanding where are you in good shape and where do you have opportunities for improvement? But again, we get into the audit side of things it feels a little more negative and if we do try to get you know Well, these are this is what we think we can do better Maybe we should talk about that. But That's you know, I think that's how I see it is so often it does get negative and it feels negative But it's not that it should be an assessment of the business and and again, I hope we're gonna kind of put that together because honestly, you know, it is we've we've both we both do audits very differently. There's other people who do audits very differently. And I don't think there's ever going to be a universal audit that we can run, but we're going to try try our best to put something together there. So yeah, maybe we should rename it. Here's my thesis. We should rename this to a person's opinion. That's really all it is. Right. If I do an audit, that's just my opinion of what I see.

To your point, if you do an audit of something, marketing in particular, that's just an opinion of what you see. And marketing is always combination of both creativity and data and analysis. Right. And depending on who you ask and depending on what type of marketing you were doing, you're gonna get such a different ratio of what those things are, right? Like I believe paid search advertising is very much an exercise in data analysis and campaign structures.

And it is more similar to a tax type audit, right? Where it's like, we're doing these things well, these are obviously working, these things don't seem to be working well. And any good PPC manager that I've come across in the last 10 years or so, even if I disagree with their campaigns, they have a, the good ones have a good reason of why they built it that way. Well, I built it this way because this is what we're trying to achieve. Okay, cool. I don't often see success with that, but you may, you may not. Let's go look at

the numbers and we can see. And usually we can come to some kind of, okay, this isn't working. This is working based on that opinion. But something like social is, I think, a very creative endeavor, you know, doing social well, we could look at the numbers of how much reach something is getting. But as far as the content you're putting out there, that is very much a creative endeavor. And you can see people who are very creative on social media, and they seem to get a lot more success

or have a lot better results than people who are not as creative. Now they may create some kind of formula, if you will, the ability to recreate that success on other channels or on other mediums or on other accounts. That's one thing I think I've seen, you know, recently, a lot for sure. But it's certainly the guarantee of success. And that's where you know, marketing audit can can be

that way. But I think you bring up a good point, right, which is like, each person is going to have their own process. I think what I'm part of the my selfish motivation for today's episode is can I improve my process? I think you and I've shared that we tend to be a little bit of more free flow, we start, we start to look for things, we have a notepad open or something equivalent, Google Docs file, whatever the case, maybe email, and we're just sort of like looking for those things. But maybe there's the

idea we kind of came up with in prep for today is like, there is a qualitative side of it. And there's a quantitative side of it. So there is more of that emotions and feeling and hey, I don't like this content. And here's why. And then there's the data side of it, which is like, and I can kind of show you why I think this is not working because go look at the click through right here, go look at the reach here, go look at this. And I think the given these other factors,

you should be doing better based on this criteria. But I agree with you a hundred percent. This is just our opinion. If you're getting the audit done by a marketing person, that's just their opinion. They may be more well suited to work with you or not work with you, depending on kind of your approach to things.

But it's not like there is this perfectly objective truth when it comes to what a marketing audit looks like. Even though we all play in the same almost playground, if you will, in this vacational space, and that's the person that this audit that I looked at, she obviously has different, I think a very different understanding of how people are evaluating and judging the success of a website than I do. Again, she may be right, I may be wrong, vice versa, right? Like those are all somewhat subjective, but it's like, there's not like one answer. That's what I guess we're trying to get out here,

is there's not like, this is the only way it can go. So, all right, so here's kind of what we did. Broke it apart into quantitative and qualitative on guest and homeowner. Obviously, you know, you and I both have a little bit more overlapping knowledge there, but I tend to focus a bit more on the guest. You have both kind of now as part of your repertoire as it will.

These are just like questions. These are questions to ask. They don't always sometimes they have an interesting answer. Sometimes they have like a boring answer. And I want to read every single question to audio, but just more like high level discussion of what I would focus on. So I think my let's start with guest marketing quantitative. So this is more like the data side of guest marketing. This is kind of what I tend to look at first, because when I'm looking at something for the first time, I just need to know what I'm looking at. What is the size of the business I'm looking at? How many properties do you have? What's the booking revenue of those properties? Like those two factors. People always ask me, I get asked this question nonstop. Well, how many units do I have to have

before it makes sense to use your services? Or how many units do I have to have to make sense to really invest a lot in direct marketing for my business? And I'm like, it's the wrong question because you could have 20 very small condos and make way less and have worse margins than someone that has five really high end premium properties. So I've said a lot recently, and this has been instruction that I've had on my team side as well. We're typically looking for someone who's doing roughly a million

dollars a year gross booking revenue. Now, the only ulterior I would say to that or like opposite I would say that is it's obviously the your financials are massively different if you own the properties versus you're managing them from somewhere else. I would say if you manage them from somewhere else, you might actually need a little bit more revenue to really have a solid marketing budget in place for your brand. If you own them, you could actually have

a significantly less revenue and have it make sense to do marketing. We've had people we've worked with that do a few hundred thousand dollars a year off their property, but they own the property free and clear. So that is, they're very highly incentivized to get more bookings of the property because they get to keep 100% of it, right?

And then of course, put their expenses out of that, not the other way around where a property manager is sending 80% sometimes out the door on that side. So that's one thing though, I just like to get a lay of the land is like, what are we even looking at here? What's the size? What's the ownership structure? What are some commissions? Like, give me some sense of financials the business, because I think it's, it's hard to suggest really any marketing strategy. Again, one of my opinions, I've said this show show over and over again is that any marketing strategy can work. The only question is how much of it do we have to do to get the desired outcome or the desired result? So if I say, hey, John Doe, I recommend PPC for a business and we're going to go ahead and spend $10,000 a month

on PPC ads on Google, he may say, I make $10,000 a month after all my expenses are paid. How does that make any sense? How is that going to help me grow my business if I can't even pay myself to feed my own family? Probably not a great suggestion, right? There's all the relative percentages, if you will, to how much revenue is coming in,

what your growth goals are and stuff like that. So that's kind of my starting point. And then from there, I kind of run through, I talk about a lot too, we've gone through this Brigham rule before on search social email. Within search and social, there's a paid and organic components.

That's what I'm trying to look at it first. What spend is going on on search? What spend is going on on paid social? How many visitors are coming? How are they performing relative on the site in terms of quantity of traffic and quality of traffic? Number of bookings coming from those different sources, that sort of thing. And then on the email side, I'm looking at just basic stuff. How big is the list? How often is list getting sent to? What are the open rates on those emails? How are those things working? And I think if I go down and do that, if I can get a good sense of what's happening on paid search,

paid social, what's happening organic or SEO wise and on social media, and then I look at the email list and some of the metrics, and then I understand the business a little bit, that's like 20, 30 minutes of like focused effort and researching that. I have a pretty good understanding of it at that point. At least that's my take on the guest marketing side. Do I know everything? Do I know every look and cranny and every little thing underneath the floorboards? Of course not. But like that to me is a good starting point for like, if you're trying to actually get an audit from someone, make sure they have some of that data in front of them.

Or if you're not willing to give that data up to them, their opinion is gonna be very, it's gonna be very guessy. And I've given guessy opinions before because I don't get all that data. But what's your perspective? I hit in kind of the highlights there on the guest marketing side, anything to add there and then what do you see

on the homeowner side in that respect? No, I mean, I think you hit it on the guest side. And it is, I think anything that you're doing, you mean, focusing on the social email and search side of things, maybe holistically, I take a look at the website, but that's all contributing to, you know, all those things as well. So I think that's just that's an added layer to maybe that's the next level down. You're looking at that top level. I'm maybe going down to that next layer

when I start to dive into those little things in the website. But these are, as far as the needle movers, you've got it all there. And I think that that's, those are the things that I think most people should be looking into. The most people should be seeing, and most people should be understanding. And I think part of the point you made about

not being willing to give people the access to be able to do that audit, I think that's a huge part of having a high quality or the highest quality audit. If you're just going to have someone take a look at your website and you're not going to give them analytics access or ads account access, there's only so much you can get. And I don't think you're going to get a, they're not going to get a true understanding of what is currently going on with your business. And I think the qualitative side goes there as well. But on the homeowner side, I think

it is, it's very similar to what you said. I think that on the quantitative side, it's more about how many leads have you had? What are some of your growth goals? Getting into just those numbers there. And then it gets into kind of, you kind of have to span the chasm a little bit into the sales side. Talk about their close rate. You know, how right now, the one thing that when we were consulting and having some initial strategy sessions with some of these new property managers

is, was, OK, well, we've got 100% close rate. Okay, how are those leads coming in for you over the past 12 months? Well, referrals and realtor referrals and this and that and really warm leads, hot leads, let's say. The concept of cold leads has just not been something that they've done before. So that's initially, you know, oh, you close at 100%. I'm going to tell you right now, that's not going to keep happening. Just the reality of what we're doing here. So, but that is, I think that's, that's definitely really important as well. And then we get into the same type of, you know, ad side of things of search, social and email. Are you doing any, you know, are you doing

B2B or owner specific posting on your socials? Are you running any ads? Are you running paid search? Are you running social? Are you doing anything like that? Are you retargeting? Are we going offline? Are you doing the postcards and the mailers? All those little things. Because I think we have varying, just like varying degrees of business on the traveler side, varying degrees of business on the owner side where they have, there are just so many different ways to peel that orange on the homeowner side. It doesn't necessarily need to be. You might be, every time something comes up on the MLS, you might be dropping something

off, dropping something handwritten or shaking someone's hand right on site. Little different on the guest side of things, but I think getting that feel for what the process is right now and if there isn't a process, which is the case for a lot of small businesses on the homeowner side of things, starting to develop that process. And I think that's where we get a little more leeway

on the audit side and the homeowner side because not many have done it. And if they have, it's probably been a piecemeal. If you, if you haven't worked with Ventoria or Wonderpoint or anything like that, then you probably are doing it. Um, maybe not the most professional scalable way, I think would be the best way to say it there. So yeah, I mean, those are some of the main items, I would say as far as getting in front of those homeowners. But what you know, if you're assessing anybody on the homeowner side, how are you taking a look there as well?

I would say it's rare that I talked to someone who's actually has a lot of proof of activity on the homeowner marketing side. So I think on the guest marketing side, it's relatively common that someone will come to us and say like, we're already doing email, we already have social pages, you know, we're already doing ABC activity. And sometimes they're happy with the outcome and they want more or better and then maybe they run into some stagnation. And then maybe in some cases, they're not doing a lot of those things, but they're at least, you know, they have that OTA backing them up, they're getting the bookings on the OTA. So they feel like, well, I'm getting a small portion direct, but I'm getting something direct. I think you're exactly right, though, on the homeowner side, you could kind of be doing nothing and still getting some homeowners because of things like referrals and because of things like some

level of inbound or to your point, like if you just don't turn clients, we've talked about this before, this is like an Alex Ramosy thing he talks about. He had said this one recently and I'm like, yep, that's true. If you just don't turn clients, you will grow by default because you're going to get some referrals, you're going to get somewhere to mouth. You're going to get a client here and there, you know, it's the same way in our business, right. And if you don't turn them out the backside, if you keep those clients, over time, you're like

a snowball rolling down a hill, and now you may be running very, very slowly, right, you may be getting clients very slowly. But if you're getting those homeowners, if you're getting those contracts over time, you know, it's inevitable, you'll get to at least a decent sized business, just by keeping them happy, if you can keep them happy. I've seen people like that. I've encountered people like that before, who have grown quite slowly, maybe they've been in business for like,

I have someone I work with right now, been in business for almost 20 years, has like 80 units, but it's like, doesn't lose a lot. You know, if he loses one, it's usually like somebody moving into the unit or they sold it. It's just no longer vacation rental. Like his actual core clients he has are super happy. And so he hasn't grown significantly over that timeframe. You know, maybe he got to 50 in a few years and then it's just been slow, slow grind up to 70 or 80 properties. But I also, to your point of his goals, he doesn't seem interested in getting to two properties either. That's not his motivation. That's not what he's after. Of course he takes the opportunities as they come, but he's not like, we were talking about this before he record, he's not locked in, nose to the grindstone. If there's a breath in my body,

I will do anything possible to get more inventory, to get more bookings. That's not really his mindset, which is fine too, by the way. You know, I think that that's one thing too. It's like when you have that relationship for the first time in an audit, it's sometimes as hard to like talk to someone for the first time and just like tell them everything. You're like, there's so much nuance and some things we don't even know because we don't say them to other people because we don't even know say them to ourselves sometimes. Right? Some people don't want to say out loud, maybe that they don't want their business to get that big or grow that huge or have that many customers or clients or homeowners.

Some people are perfectly happy with a small growth curve. I feel like I've been a Nazi before myself. So I don't know if I can keep this up. I don't know if I can keep the same standard. If I had 200 customers dropped in my lap, I think it would really actually destroy my business for something like that to happen, which is something that you and I've talked about before. So that's a tricky thing that you're not going to see filled out in a form or, you know, you almost have to read between the lines if you're a good audit, it's almost like you're more of a maybe a psychologist than you are just a marketing expert when you're kind of reading through some of these things and understanding people's motivations.

because I think that's just on the homeowner side, because one of the things I remember putting, you know, talking about, you know, as we talk about the homeowners, I, you know, Howard describing, what's your unique pitch, what's your USP. And one of the USPs for one of the property managers that we worked with was, you've never turned a partner 100%, 100% retention rate. And that's, that's definitely something you want to, you know, you want to talk about, or that was a whole, excuse me, a homeowner, we've never turned to homeowner. As soon as he put it on that landing page, 100% owner retention, sure enough, you lost one. So that's just the reality of what we've got. I'm not sure that's a good thing. I'm not sure that's a

good thing. I always tell my clients to that this is not marriage. Marriage is something different. I'm married and I hope to be married till they put me in the ground. And that's my, I guess, like ambition or goal. I treat that relationship very different than I treat, like, let's say my client relationships, you know, to me, like I'm a, I'm a bigger believer in win-win. It's got to make sense for you. It's got to make sense for me. And, you know, Brooklyn, I talked about some length on the podcast

I do with him about some of these owners treat you horribly. Right. So if you're saying you have 100% owner retention and this owner is treating you horribly again, it's not marriage. We can just leave. We can just depart. And hopefully we do it in a way where we can shake hands and it's not a disaster, you know, on both sides. You know, and if I had, let's say, a handful of clients in 10 years, not super common for me, but I've had a few clients that have, like,

strategically left or they left and paused and we didn't welcome them back, you know, with open arms. And so I don't know if that's a good thing, you know, saying that you never lost a customer. I think a customer leaves for a lot of good reasons. I think sometimes you're not the right fit for them for a lot of good reasons, too. And that's OK. You know, I think if we could shake hands or, you know, wave hello to conference, and it's not like a disaster, maybe they're not going to say the

nicest things about you, you know, at the end of the day. But if you're oil and their water, and you're not going to mix together, then why force it would kind of be my take on that. I mean, it is just kind of kind of continuing to dig back into that. I think the other question that you know, just stopped people, well, describe your homeowner acquisition strategy or how is it working right now?

Now, granted, when we're at Venturi, that's people who are looking for a specific service, a specific goal in mind. So in most cases, they didn't have that strategy. But I do think, I mean, that's very important to understand where they have been, where they're coming from, what success they've had, and trying to understand what those, and then turning those into realistic

goals. Are you going to add 200 properties in the course of a year? Well, maybe. I think what was, and we've got the actual question on the thing here, where do you feel you're falling short on the homeowner marketing? And I the thing here, where do you feel you're falling short on the homeowner marketing? And I think that's, where do you feel you're falling short? Getting someone to answer that question qualitatively is, you know, we work with a lot of different people who have different varying levels of knowledge when it comes to marketing,

when it comes to all the things we talk about. So to get their impression of where things aren't working, which again, if it's something that is working, huge red flag that we're not communicating properly. Or if it really isn't working, you know, what can we do? Or did we have eyes on it and things like that? So I think the qualitative questions, if you can get people to answer them more than,

I don't know, or this is this, or quick little two line answers that were more of a quantitative answer, I do, I think that's where we, where you and I maybe can drive more value than the, just maybe a specialist or a coordinator or something like that who is going to do the work. But again, it's that sometimes it's take the ends, take, take the order and deliver what we're what what's being ordered or served up there.

So, um, yeah, kind of toss it over to you on the qualitative side. What do you think about the homeowner side and then and then on the guest side as well there? Yeah, I mean, I think this is this is where actually the gold nuggets are extracted, right? Like the numbers, the numbers. And I will say sometimes it's not uncommon for me to talk to someone and they really don't know numbers that well. It's always surprising to me a little bit to be candid with you.

Not that they're off by one or two points. Say I'm 24% direct booking, then I go look and it's 25. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about like, oh yeah, we get about 10% direct bookings. I go look and it's like, yeah, it's like six or 60, you know, or like something very, very far off. That's not talking about that. I'm talking about like, oh yeah, we get about 10% direct bookings. I go look and it's like, yeah, it's like a six or 60, you know, or like something very, very far off. That's not uncommon for me.

So I think it is a good way to like the audit side of it, of like going in there with a microscope and looking at the numbers, I think is a good starting point. But I think the gold nuggets to your question there are extracted on the qualitative side, which is like, what do you actually, who are you actually trying to market to? Who's your actual ideal customer?

Who are you, again, back to those achievement questions, what are you actually trying to achieve? What does like actual ideal customer? Who are you? Again, back to those achievement questions, what are you actually trying to achieve? What is like success look like? What does it win look like? And Tyana talked at length about this, which is like the root cause of all unhappiness in any professional relationship is the idea of unmet expectations that someone had an expectation you didn't meet it, which what's what's really toxic is when you think you met it, or you think, hey, I'm doing it exactly what I

said I was going to do. And then they're unhappy. And they thought, well, I thought it was gonna be this way. And then it's like, no, I never told you it was going to be that way. That's always, I think, where, you know, a problem can come from is stemming from those unhappy, you know, situations. So I think when you're doing qualitative side of it, you're trying to figure out, yeah, what are those more open-ended questions? And actually, the idea that we came up with, that it is TBD, this just an idea is that we think, at least I think this is kind of the idea I pitched to you when you were coming up with the outline for this

episode. I think a lot of people answered these questions a lot better through audio, through spoken form than they do through written form. And we're considering revamping or changing our intake process to maybe be a little bit more interview-like and a little bit less, fill out this form and put in a bunch of questions. Hey, that's easy for me. You know, I'll admit it, right? It's easy for me if you go fill out a form that's nice and structured, you know, text and I can go look at it, I can send it to my team and so on and so forth. But I don't know if you get the best insights there. So is it actually the best for me? Or am I doing the thing that's easy, because I don't want to do the extra work, or I feel like it's hard to do the extra work that would actually

get me better insights or better information about the company. I think that's a tough thing to admit out loud, right? But that's, that's always, I think, where improvement can come from. Yeah. Yeah, I was gonna say it does. It feels like you're going back to high school or college to do actual homework. And I don't think anybody does this. I'm not not anybody. I don't think a whole lot of people necessarily look back on that experience as a positive or anything like that. So it is we talked about I love the idea of putting making someone just, you know, think about it in real time. Now, I think the one thing about that with a written answer is you can come back to it and you can kind of add to it, but how many people are doing that? So, um, no, I, I love that. Maybe the optimal is somewhere in the middle. You know, maybe the

optimal is I give you the questions ahead of time so you can read on them. And if you want to go and put some bullet points in there to kick us off, you put them in there. But then when we actually do it, we're doing audio, you know, and I'm asking you because in two or three minutes, I can articulate a lot better than if I'm sitting and typing it word by word. And we do it, we're doing audio, and I'm asking you. Because in two or three minutes, I can articulate a lot better than if I'm sitting and typing it word by word. And we do live in this fast-paced world of people like me are busy, people like you are busy, all of our clients are busy.

And they look at it as like, all right, I know I have to transmit this knowledge I have of what I want to you. And let me just type a few words. Let me just do this fast, and then I'll kind of, I have other fires I need to go put out, right? And I think in the sense of an audit, like that's where mistakes can be made or again that's where expectations or assumptions can be made that maybe are usually in the right zip code but they can be

you know from time to time quite a far ways off from what you actually are trying to achieve especially if you go pitch something to someone or you're telling someone to do something that they don't actually want to do. You know that's always a problematic piece. Actually one thing to go back to like the origin of this idea that came up in this audit, I have a LinkedIn post on this week coming out to this effect is the client was asking me, potential client was asking me, well, what is the right ideal percent? What is the actual ideal percentage of direct bookings? And I think maybe he thought I was going to walk into this trap and say, oh, it's a hundred percent and you know, down with the OTAs, but I don't feel that way. And what I kind of said was like, I think the answer

is probably 55 to 60% somewhere in that range, and then give me plus or minus 10%. So depending on the location, the strategy, maybe a little bit of the economics of the business, some assertion man there is, I think it's hard for me to ever think that you'd want to go much beyond 75% direct bookings, unless you're just like, so anti OTA that you see no value whatsoever and having an OTA relationship. I also don't think that it's 20% in most situations. Like that seems very unlikely to me that, you know, that is actually optimal, you know, when it's all said and done, because I think there's always a combination of the fees, the commission, you know, where bookings are efficient, how you're getting repeat bookings, all these factors that are going to play a role in that. But I'm like, that's probably about right to me. And this

particular person I'm talking to shared that he's kind of in that 40% range. So he's like, I was like, I don't think you're that far off. I really don't, you know, from being in a more healthy position. You know, I think you're actually in a healthy position today to be clear to you. And that's another thing in an audit, like you want someone who's gonna be honest with you. I think that's such a hard thing for most people to do because, you know, I talked about it before

we had the record. If you have someone on your team who's motivated by commission, who's a salesperson, a salesperson job is to sell. They're gonna say what needs to get done. And most of them are very honest, hardworking people. I'm not saying they're gonna, you know, straight up lie to you, although there's a few that are space that I'm sure, you know, I've sold a few contracts, they shouldn't have, you know, as it were, but their job is to get the deal done, right? So

they're going to gloss over the small details. They don't want you down the weeds right during the sales process. They want you up here in happy land where like, you know, the hormones, anything I think is like sell the vacation, not like the TSA check in line or the fact that there's a you have to wait at the cab after you get to the airport for 25 minutes, like you sell the resort and the amazing amenities and the pool and the beach. That's what you're selling. You're not selling the actual, you know, journey of getting there, which is often very miserable, especially if a bunch of small kids like I do. Right. So it's like, that's, that's where I think you want to find that. Right. I think you want to find that right. The question should feel more like that. I think if you're actually trying to get to root a bit, or if you're just trying to get a service level, like, hey, like quick, you know, high level thing,

here's what we think and go from there. At least that's my take on it. So I want to pivot in something else, but you have anything else you want to add on that before I pivot it into something else. I'm not saying you want to know who does the audit, but I don't want a salesperson to do an audit. That's just not like,

if there's a sales, a choice between a salesperson and a marketing person, I want the marketing person to do them at the audit and that's that's that is a just for that reason right there It's the details. It's it's understanding what like you can put the numbers up there You can put the quantitative numbers up there and they can look good or they can look scary they can do that But it's that interpretation thereafter and I we don't a salesperson can read the numbers. I think everybody's different. I'm not going to, that's too generalized probably, but yeah, I, I want someone who actually knows what they're talking about, not who's just trying to get the deal done. And it's, but I think that sales

mentality also leads us to poke holes as opposed to just giving a true honest audit of the business and where you have those strengths and where you have those opportunities. Yeah. So that brings me to my next point that I was going to go down anyways, which is, I do wonder about this, and it's something

that I have thought about before. Is the ideal marketing audit more of a paid arrangement and less of a, I expect you to look at all this stuff for free? Because let's be, again, win-win situation has to be make sense for you and make sense for me. One thing that's not going to make sense for me is spending 20 hours doing an audit and then you don't sign.

That's a really tough pill for me to swallow. I realize it's great for you, the property manager, the vacational manager, but it's not great for me. So how do we figure out a way where it is a win-win? And you can't expect you to go, I'm going to go talk to five different agencies. I'm going to get an audit from Paul, independent audit from Conrad. I'm going to go ask the five different agencies. I'm going to get an audit from, you know, Paul independent audit from Conrad. I'm going to go ask, you know, the folks over here, these other agencies to give me, you know, an audit, and then I'm gonna take all their insights and I'm going to pick the best based on that. But if you're, if

you're expecting that all for free, the troubling part is like, what's a reasonable amount of time for us to spend on that before we do begin a paid and paid engagement, paid arrangement. And I haven't done many paid audits in my career. I really can only think of a few. They were more project based projects that I have done a few of over my time. And I haven't done many paid audits in my career. I really can only think of a few. They were more project-based projects that I have done a few of over my time. And I think they can go very well if you, again, have the right expectations going in. But I think it's very challenging to say,

yeah, do a bunch of free work for me, essentially. Give me all these insights, give me all these ideas, go from here. And then maybe at the end of the gold, I may or may not sign with you. That's a troubling experience. I know it's very common in the big agency world, but the big agency world is very different

because they have customers that are worth significantly more revenue, right? Where they're getting 100, 200, $300,000 a month contracts, maybe if you're Oblivion, you sign Coca-Cola, that's like back to Mad Men days. That changes the whole trajectory of the business as opposed to, we're making a few thousand dollars a month per client somewhere in that range, right?

Like we've talked about before. So you have to realize too, like, are you actually a prize? Like, and again, it's a tough, tough thing for maybe some vacation managers to swallow, but it's like, if you're actually a prize that's worth fighting for, I think you're gonna see a lot more effort

and a lot more time investment from a marketing agency or some consultant. If you're just kind of like a one on their roster, I think they're gonna run you through a more automated or at least a little bit more structured, maybe I should say process, not automated, where it's like, here's what I'm looking at. Here's what I've seen the most success on and go from there. But it's up to you if you're the property manager to explain what you're after.

If you want a good outcome, like I think there's lots of companies that can provide you a good outcome after doing a templatized audit and you can absolutely improve your results significantly. But I think you have to be fair to them too. You know, you have to look at this and like people use the word partner. Paul, you and I have said a lot off camera. I don't, I don't use that word because I think that word is a very, very tough standard to me. Same way my comment earlier about marriage, but I do believe in win-win. And I do think that if you want to use the word partner, love would win. I'm perfectly fine with that. Then you have to be fair to that person on the other side and say, here's what I want you to look at. A, B, C, D, E. I want you to give me opinions on all these things. I'll give

you all the information. And then on the backside of that, I'm willing to be honest about what I'm hoping to achieve, my outcome, my goals, all these things. But in exchange, you have to be honest with me, right? You have to tell me kind of what you see. And maybe that is the right structure is like you are saying like, good, good, good. I guess the analogy I've done recently is, I don't know if you have an oil change place near you and it's like 112 point comprehensive inspection. You see a lot of people right where it's like, okay, like they're really looking at 112 things in my car or what seems to happen is like, Oh, man, all of a sudden, my air air conditioning that needs replacing like, Oh, man, that's a bummer.

Oh, it's $500. Oh, that's, that's an even more bummer, right? Is it a sales opportunity? Or is it actually like the check marks you see where it's like, Yeah, like your wheels are in good shape, your tires are in good shape, and so on and so forth. Just need the oil change, you know, good sir, you're on your way. I think that's the that's a really challenging thing for a vacation manager to parse through. And I think you can break trust for early on if you're if you're're on your way. I think that's the that's the really challenging thing for a vacation manager to parse through. I think you can break trust for early on if you're if you're going in there. And I think that's kind of what this audit did to bring it, you know, it to a bit of a crescendo and nothing that opened this episode. I think the audit because the way it was sent to this person and the conversation

they have with this marketing consultant, they framed it as all the bad things like Paul was saying earlier, and this company is not doing that this company is doing five to $7 million a year, I think somewhere in that range of total gross booking revenue. Like I said, they're already 40% direct bookings. They wanna get a little bit better. They wanna grow, they wanna perform better,

but they're probably the top company in their market. If they're not the top, they're maybe the top two or three in this market, a competitive market. And here the audit is ripping them apart, saying they're doing a bad job. That just doesn't build trust. That's not a trust building exercise.

That is a, oh, you're trying to sell me an air conditioning vent when I don't actually need one. So I think that's the hardest thing about this whole piece of at the end of the day, which is that is it actually an audit or is it a sales opportunity? And I think you covered that well earlier, we've made the pornography reference before the explicit if it feels salesy, it's salesy, it sells. There should be unless you are, especially if you're a top performing company, there should be some positive, you should be, unless you are, especially if you're a top performing company, there should be some positive. You should be pointing out some things that are going well.

If you're running a business, you got to be doing something, right? Or maybe, I don't know. But that's the thing. I think most of us in this space have a pretty good BS meter. And that's something that, and again, if it looks like it, if it smells like it, it's that's kind of what it is. So that's all we're saying.

I mean, keep your eyes open. Don't put your blinders on and just say, oh, well, this is it. When someone else might tell you something that's 180 degrees of difference and, oh, no, now this is it. And then moving over, no, no, no, you have to, I mean,

you gotta have an understanding of your business. But that's what an audit is going to do, it's gonna give you a better understanding of your business, what's good, what's not good, call it a swap, call it an audit, call it whatever you want, get a better picture of your business. I don't think it's a bad thing to do it.

I think it's a really good thing to do it. And I think if you are at that certain spot in your business development, yes, you want to make sure you're having annual audits and making sure you know, whatever that looks like, because you don't want someone to come in with an audit that seems intrusive, and all of a sudden, they're uncovering things that that you didn't know about, or didn't have a finger on or something like that. So I think that's where you don't ever want an audit to produce a surprise, like a bad, really bad surprising. It's stuff that stuff happens there. But yeah, I think these are tools that should be used to improve. The overall business as opposed to sell someone's services over someone else's services or vice versa. Use the audit to improve your business.

That's what I'm saying. If you're going to do one, use it to improve your business, whether that person who does it improves your business, whether the current agency improves your business, whatever happens, use it. Don't just take that. And then I think that's the one thing we didn't really talk about is people who put the audits out there and don't have that that answer or the action plan for how they're going to correct or resolve or make it better. And that's something that, you know, that's

that's part two of this conversation, because you can pick it apart. But if you're not going to improve it, then why did I just pay you for the audit in the first place? Yeah, I think that's a reasonable spot to kind of close on. And I think building the perfect marketing audit is ultimately you don't want the audit. The audit is just a list of things

or a list of findings or whatever. What you actually want is the outcome, right? So like, again, the audit is the comprehensive review of all the facts and figures, and again, qualitative and quantitative data. But the thing you actually care about in any business is yeah, you want this ideal outcome. You want an outcome that works in your favor that works in favor of your business. And I think that is, you know, in as we kind of put together this episode, I realized that we need to go back and

improve our own process on how we're doing this and make it a little bit more of a yeah, like maybe a traffic light situation is something that I've thought about a green light, like you were saying, this is all good. Hey, I checked your website. Your speed's amazing. Whoever did your website did a great job on website speed. Good us to them. Well done there. Your conversion rate on your checkout page over 15 percent, let's say. Like those are pretty good numbers from what I've seen, you know, looking at some of those more advanced metrics recently.

Is there maybe a little area for improvement here and there? Maybe, maybe not. But like you're probably in the top, you know, 10 percent. If you convert people to go to your checkout at 15, 25 percent, someone that's on. Right. If it's two percent, then it's like, you're probably in the top, you know, 10%, if you convert people to go to your checkout of 1525%, somewhere in that zone, right? If it's 2%, then it's like, Oh, right, that's that's cause for the red light. That's cause for red light. Let's see what's going on. Right. So I think I think, you know, this gives me a chance to kind of sit down with

myself and my time and sit here and think like, how can I help someone the best way so that ultimately, I'm building trust when they get that audit, they do feel like, hey, I want to improve it, I want to make it better at the backside of that. And they think, yeah, you took what I said and you combined it with what you saw and you measured and you got to this answer of like, here's some, here's a list of 10, 12, 15, 18 things that could be done. And then it is a question at that point of prioritizing and scope and budget

and what can be done in house, what needs to be outsourced and so on and so forth. So I think that is the ideal outcome from there. So yeah, maybe we'll come back after I have a chance to kind of put some more meridate on these thoughts that we've put together today and improve it a little bit. So yeah, if you have questions, feedback, we're all ears on that. So send us a note, we'd love to hear if you've done an audit with someone in our space, you can redact certain information

if you want to, but if you're willing to share it, I think we can all get better by figuring out better ways to building best practices in our space. And that's really what Paul and I talk a lot about on the show and some other things we have running, he and I, So all good. If you have any other questions, feedback, reviews, notes, comments, we're open to all of it.

But one thing that really helps us the most is the review thing I mentioned a minute ago. So it doesn't take very long, just a minute or two. Go to your podcast, have a choice. iTunes listeners, you are number one. So we appreciate a review there the most, but also Spotify is number two. So that's our second most appreciated.

Go there, leave five stars, leave us feedback. We definitely read all the reviews and they come in. We don't get a ton of them. So we appreciate anyone making it all the way to the end most appreciated. Go there, leave five stars, leave us feedback. We definitely read all the reviews and they come in. We don't get a ton of them. So we appreciate anyone making it all the way to the end and leaving us a review because it puts a smile on our face and it gives us hope for a better future and a brighter future.

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