Heads In Beds Show - Breaking Down The Way The "Guest Booking Journey" Actually Works In 2025... (Part 1)

Episode Date: March 26, 2025

In this episode of The Heads In Beds Show, Paul and Conrad dive into the early stages of the vacation rental guest journey — where interest is sparked and decisions begin to form. They explore how true inspiration often comes from unexpected, memorable experiences and how smart property managers can tap into that moment before a guest is even planning a trip. From the role of local tourism boards to leveraging blog content and “pattern interrupts,” they unpack why this top-of-funnel phase is often overlooked—and how to make your brand unforgettable.As guests shift into research mode, the pressure’s on. The hosts break down what travelers are really looking for when comparing destinations and rentals—and why your website needs to stand toe-to-toe with the likes of Airbnb. If your site leaks trust, design, or information, you’ll lose them fast. Tune in to learn how to optimize your marketing for these make-or-break early stages and build demand that puts your properties in high demand (waitlist, anyone?).⭐️ 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, how's it going today? What's happening? level by listening in. I'm your co host Conrad. I'm your co host Paul. All right, Paul, how's it going today? What's happening?

Well, it's, it's a happy time of year for me. We will get to a LinkedIn post reference here that that's gonna be the basis of this episode. But I can remember writing, I think it's a Facebook post maybe 12 or 13 years ago during like championship week. I happened to be down on vacation in Florida that week I said this is the life like this is this is what you need to be able to block off a little time and my schedule worked just perfectly so that today the first day of March Madness the NCAA basketball tournament I have a nice little gap to be able to watch a little bit of basketball today. So I am pretty excited about how today has fallen and what the, it's going to be just a great day of watching basketball here after we're done.

So how are you? How are things going in your neck of the woods? What is happening? Yeah, I'll go to my side. I think I've told stories before about my lack of context as a kid around college football. Basketball, I have a little more context around. It was something that would be on maybe when I was a kid, but it didn't feel right rooting for UConn,

I guess I could have, you know what I mean? Like geographically, that was closer to where I grew up in a way, but I was like, okay, I'd rather see them win than some team I've never heard of or a place I'd never been to. But I know some people love March Madness. It's just, a few things just never seem to click for me. March Madness, one of those things where once I start watching it, I kind of get into it,

but I don't have like a specific team where I'm like, oh, it has to be this team or whatever. Coastal Carolina has a better football team than a basketball team. There's not really much going on there. So I, you know, even the college I went to, I don't really think has any sort of positive momentum towards being great there. So I'll just try to watch some of the stuff and I'll just try to be entertained by it. But I couldn't really tell you, you know, which team's going to win or anything like that. Well, here's your chance. We're recording this on March 20th, so you can say it now. Who do you think is going to win? And so let's see how right you are. Yeah. Yeah. Check the receipts later. On the bracket that I, I feel like, you know,

we can fill out a couple of fun ones with the kids and everything like that, but the bracket, the money bracket we'll say, I think I've got St. John's versus Duke in the in the finals. So it's not my alma mater St. John's that were just little D three Minnesota school but it's it's fun to see the the New York version of St. John's doing pretty well right now and Rick Pitino is kind of a legendary name. So yeah, I mean, you can relate to Rick. You had some some Celtics years of Rick.

Yeah, I can tell you about that to Rick Petino. You had some Celtics years with Rick Petino. Yeah, I can tell you about that. All the good and all the bad there. Yeah, well, you know, Rick Petino's been on a journey traveling around and coaching a bunch of different basketball teams. So too is the modern guest, you know, on a journey to actually find their way to book a vacation rental.

So that's the best bridge I can build on that one. And thank you, thank you. Sometimes, you know, when it happens, it just hits me and I just go with it. If you see it, you got to say it and you got to go for that idea. So you're right though, Paul, you mentioned a few minutes ago this idea that this was from a LinkedIn post a little while ago. And many of my chat, TBD brainstorms are kind of trying to define better what I think some of the problems that I face are of describing the different pieces or frameworks that are marketing

or I guess just business operations related. And I think it's one thing that I encounter a lot where people will give me an idea or they'll kind of say, like, hey, why don't we do this? And I often give them that resources thing we've talked about before. It's not that we can't do that. It's just like, is that a better thing for us to be doing than these other marketing activities or channels? That's kind of how I feel a little bit about today's topic,

which is kind of break down or doing a little bit more of a deeper dive into this guest journey. Because ultimately, again, with limited resources, time, effort, energy, you can only do so much marketing. But what are you trying to accomplish, right? And I think we'll go through today talking about some of these different stages. There's a lot of stages that I've kind of mapped out.

But we're going to talk today, I think, focusing a little bit more on the stages that I think matter most for most vacation rental managers. So maybe I'll read them off first, and then we can kind of talk about what we anticipate going through today, because I see it as kind of like there's probably seven stages in total.

So number one is inspiration and awareness. So that's like getting it, we'll talk about this more in detail, but like, let's just say getting inspired or thinking about taking a trip. So that's kind of stage one. It's kind of high level, 30,000 foot view of some level of interest. Number two, research and exploration.

That's when I'm like actually thinking of like where I might want to go. Maybe I'm on Google at that point, certainly other platforms we're going to talk about too today, like Instagram and stuff like that. Maybe I'll watch a video about a destination and get kind of like, oh, I didn't know about this place. Now I know about this place. I think that kind of fits in that second category. Stage number three here, consideration and validation. I think that kind of fits in that second category. Stage number three here, consideration and validation. I think that's when you're actually considering, okay, I'm gonna go over somewhere for spring break. You know, am I gonna go to Florida,

you know, where I have the opportunity to go, or am I gonna go to North Carolina? And you can make two of those choices. So that's when it's like, all right, we're narrowing it down, we're looking at specific listings and so on and so forth. Stage four, I see is like the actual booking flow. So that's like, I've got my credit card out and I'm going to book something.

It's just a matter of what I'm actually going to book. Booking confirmation workflow. Then five, six, and seven, I'll run through those quickly because this is, I would say for the most part, this is where I feel like my work often ends. You know, it's after that fourth stage. Once they make the booking, I'm kind of like, all right, Mr. and Mrs. Property Manager that I'm working with, it's up to you now to take them from here. So I'll run through these quickly. But number five, pre-trip engagement and personalization. What happens from the moment they book until the moment they arrive? How much have you thought about that process? Maybe we'll do some more content on that

down the road, but it's not something we're going to talk about today. On-site, or I would say like in-stay experience, I think is kind of its own category. So not only the property itself, but how do you communicate to them? How do you do any sort of like marketing or brand touch points while they're actually in the property from the moment they check in to the moment they walk out the front door. And then finally, number seven, what do you do after they stay? You know, what do you do post-trip? What's the communication flow there? Which we did kind of touch on last week on the reviews episodes.

So maybe you could pop back one in the feed and you could talk a little bit about number seven. So those are kind of seven that I see. You've kind of beat this up before. What are your thoughts on those seven and the ones we're going to talk about today? I had to look at the full funnel. You know, we talk about full funnel marketing. This, this, this is the funnel. This talk about full funnel marketing. This is the funnel.

This is how you need to kind of perceive the funnel. I think how this buyer's journey takes place has changed and it's always going to change and iterate. I'm sure AI will play a big role in that moving forward as well, but it is. I think that this is, when we think about these in the seven stages, the first four are kind of that marketing side of things. And I think five through seven is marketing, but it's marketing via your PMS. So making sure that you're right.

Operationally everything is in place and that you've got the right messaging and the right cadence and the right communication pattern that's going to allow people to get to that endpoint of seven, post trip loyalty and get right that review for you and hopefully come back and book with you again. So I think this is a really, really good way. It's a succinct way of looking at the funnel because it is, we're going to high level it right here, but we're going to dive in, I think as deep as we have looked at the different

phases of the funnel. We've had this conversation in relation to specific channels, how they contribute to different phases of the funnel. We've had this conversation in relation to specific channels, how they contribute to different areas of the funnel. But I think just looking at the funnel and kind of taking some of the marketing parts of it out of it and again, maybe our traditional day in, day out task marketing and looking at it from a strategic side,

I think this is gonna be just a different way to kind of look at how you're engaging people at those different stages of the funnel and finding maybe some more effective ways to do it as well. Yeah. And so today we're going to end this will probably be a multi-part. I know we talked about that in our outline, the listener, I didn't hear that yet. So we're probably going to go ahead and talk about more of these down the road. But in today's episode, I think we're going to be focused a little bit more just on stages one and two. So as a reminder, stage one, inspiration and awareness stage two, research exploration.

So I'll start, you know, inspiration, whereas I actually think a lot of occasional managers think they want to market here. And I think few actually should. That's that's my statement, or that's kind of my feeling when I think about this stage, because the example I've given a little bit more recently, because we actually have a client that's kind of like adjacent to this area. And I've kind of seen the effect of this almost a little bit is this idea that at a very high level, someone doesn't know where they want to go, or they're almost like on the, it's almost like people are always looking out for like, where should I go

next? Like, I think travel is just this inherent human behavior thing that we all like to engage in as time and budget allows, right? So it's kind of like, there's always someone in the market, you know, who might want to be, you know, reaching out to your destination. And I think a lot of people seem to think that there's different schools of thought, I think, on this. One is that maybe some people feel like, well, that's my chamber's job. It's my chamber of commerce's or local visitors bureau's job to get the word out about why visiting this destination is awesome. I pay my fees, I pay my taxes, whatever, that's their job. Hey, if they need me to help here and there, maybe I'll chip in, but it's not really my job. And I think broadly speaking, I can kind of

understand that logic and I can kind of agree with it. It's hard for me to completely disagree with it because that is kind of the job or the responsibility almost in a way of someone who's in that seat in that particular role in some of these organizations to be like, I want to get people excited to come to a destination. I don't think a lot of that marketing is done pretty poorly, to be honest with you, where it's just very offline advertising based or it's just like a billboard and it's like Florida is amazing. You know, like there's you see these large organizations, some of them state level, you know, like visit Florida and stuff like that, where there's kind of out there buying ad spots, buying media spots, and they're just kind of being like come visit the destination.

So it's like, that's kind of if a vacation manager were to do it, that's the kind of ad that you might want to run is like, here's why this place is awesome. But the story I was going to tell a second ago, we have a client in the Bahamas, and they've benefited tremendously from this swimming pigs island. They're not on that island, but they're on a nearby island. So people will actually want to book with them and then say, oh, one of our days, we want to take the boat and go over to this other swimming pig island. So that's something that created in a funny way, inspiration and awareness, where people are like, that's such a novel, weird thing that was happening where there's, you know, swimming pigs in this island of the Bahamas. I'm now aware of that. I saw a video on

it, mostly on Instagram. We'll probably talk about that more here in a second. I want to go experience that, you know, so they see something that's kind of cool, novel, interesting, you know, fun, and they just want to experience it. So they book a vacation rental to experience that. And sure, yes, the beach is unbelievably beautiful as well. It's this peaceful, serene place. And that's just kind of a fun thing they might do alongside of it. So I think actually, if I was charged with a CVB budget or if I was doing, you know, visitor bureau marketing stuff, I'd be like, what can we do that kind of gets people to stop scrolling and watch something like if I was doing it for the beach here or something, I'd be like, let's build like the biggest, I don't know the biggest sandcastle competition of all time, and we're going to give away money and let's film that like that's the kind of things where I think it's just like, you just it's almost like more stunt marketing or just more like interesting thing marketing, and less of just like I think boring offline advertising where advertising, where it's like, come visit the beach, or like come visit, you know, this mountain or come visit this thing. It's like, I just don't know if that really actually inspires people, I think it makes them aware. But back to this whole idea of like this being inspiration awareness, I don't know if

that really does the trick. So what's going to read on the stage of the marketing funnel? And what have I got right? What have I got wrong from your point of view? I think you're hitting on all the right points there. And I think to take that that step further is it's, it is this interruption to how you make it effective is you have to do that pattern. Often you talk about that all the time.

And I think that's really important here because it's not just the same old sell it like this. Sell it to someone who's interested in traveling and book their stay and give them all the benefits of what a stay would look like. Cause they haven't gotten to that point yet. So I think it is to kind of get them thinking about that. You better rewire their brains a little bit there.

You do. You have to make them think outside the box there a little bit, or you have to be thinking outside the box in order to get them thinking inside the box or however we're going to lay that out there. But yeah, I think that we can point to all the different ways that this happens. One of the things that I thought, how people, where people kind of get into this phase

of the inspiration side is one of the bullet points we saw was at family gatherings and stuff like that. That word of mouth that, I think that we kind of take for that for granted sometimes that a lot of that conversation, as people still meet in person, we're not in COVID anymore, so that hasn't decreased. But a lot of that word of mouth conversation

that was just at a coffee shop, at the water cooler, things like that, those conversations take place online now. They're on Reddit, they're on Quora, they're in some of those areas where, I think that's where people gain some more than inspiration, certainly on the image side of things on the Instagram on TikTok on some of those very visually driven platforms, because that does that makes you start thinking

about it. But there's quite a few people who do who kind of jump into the third party validations I will that we've turned to instead of the Trip Advisors, the Yelp, we've turned to core and read it to kind of find spots where, where are the hidden gems, you know, where spots where are the hidden gems? What are the things I should be looking out for if I'm thinking about traveling to a vacation rental for the first time? Because I think there's still some education points there that as Verbo has long pushed

the concept of your host maybe not being the safest person to have in your home with you, in your vacation rental with you, I think there are. There's some misconceptions that we've created in an attempt to bury the competition there a little bit. And I don't think that's positive for the entire industry there. So I think that's kind of as we're driving into specifically how we ignite that travel spark. What are some ways that you're doing that with the individual partners on trying to attract specific audiences or going after specific locations as you're trying to attract specific audiences or going after specific locations as you're trying to ignite that travel spark.

What does that look like for you? Well, I think I can voice some different examples. Like, one thing that I think matters quite a bit, and we've talked with this a little bit on some of the other podcast stuff that I've done lately, is just like, is the property actually itself a destination? Like I have a few different clients that I could point at. One, Element Vacation Homes in Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, the home is itself a destination? Like I have a few different clients that I could point at. One, Element Vacation Homes in central Florida,

Orlando, Florida, the home is almost the destination. You know, it's the theme rooms, it's the unbelievably unique design, it's the games, it's all this stuff that when you see it, it's almost visually interesting in and of itself. The home is actually almost content, worthy of being content, worthy of being something that you would travel for.

But if we're being honest, that's pretty rare, right? Even like a beautiful beachfront home in a very desirable beach location is often, it can be appealing and high demand, but not necessarily in a way where that home itself is some destination or it's really pops off the screen or pops off the page. It's just the place that you choose when you're already deciding to go to a specific spot or do a specific thing, right? So I think it's actually very rare that you find a property manager or a vacation rental manager in general, who's actually focused on finding these properties that drive that actual, like I would separate awareness and inspiration into very different

behaviors, even though we're kind of grouping them together for the purposes of the segment. Awareness is just like knowing that it exists. That's one thing. Inspiration is like actually wanting to do it. Like I think there's very different things. Like I think the example I gave to you when we were talking about this and our outline was like, I'm aware of lots of places exist. I'm not inspired to actually go to them. You know, there's certain things that just don't, you know, trigger for me.

It doesn't mean they're not a good fit for somebody else. I guess that's where the marketing, the brand part is really hard, right? Cause a lot of our clients will say things that like sound great in the surface, but then it's like, when you dig a little bit deeper, you don't always find that there's a lot there to actually build a marketing campaign off of. So they'll say

things like, for example, oh, well, of course, we have family friendly properties. So we're looking for, you know, families that are traveling to XYZ destination. And I'm like, okay, like, that's probably a standard part of our marketing is going to capture that, you know, it's kind of like this idea that I have about retargeting people wanting to like slice and dice and like have all these individual segments and audiences. Usually they don't have enough traffic to support that. But I'm like, oh, if they're in a retargeting list, they're going to see our ads. The only question is just what is our messaging and how do we make sure that messaging hopefully applies to a relatively broad set of people? I would say it's relatively

uncommon we work with a client, especially larger clients that have hundreds of listings, where it's like, oh, no, we only do this. We only deal with this one type of person. Again, that sounds good in theory from a marketing standpoint. I wish it was that simple. But I just don't find it actually works that way in practice for most people. I think there's always exceptions and the smaller the business, the more focused or the more I would say narrow that maybe that can be. But as a company grows, I think it does tend to get a little bit more general from a travel perspective. And it does tend to attract a little bit more of a wider, a wider set of different people coming in. Like we have a client, for example, who we worked with for a long time in a beach market. And I would say they have a mix of people. They're very

hyper-focused destination-wise. They have this exact island they're on in Georgia. And then they kind of have almost this street where it's like everything under this street is kind of like our, where we know there's great demand, great homes, and so on and so forth. But then within that segment, there's people that are coming that are families. There are people that come that are retirees just looking for a beach vacation. There's certainly multi-generational travel that occurs, there's just leisure travel for a birthday for an anniversary. So these are all kind of like broader things that don't exactly tie into like one idea. And I think that's where this whole idea of, you know, I'm going to create this very broad marketing that's going to appeal to a mass of people

and then the best people are going to find me. It's just really hard. Like how do you actually accomplish that given whatever constraints you have as far as budget? I think it's I think it's challenging to be honest with you. The people who are more willing to take on some of that less, it is, I think that's where blog content plays a huge role. I mean, it is, that's how we do the inspiration. That's how we make people aware of certain things. I think that there's a, there's a correlation that as you get more blog content type of traffic, you will probably see your overall booking conversion rate go down a little bit because you're going to get people who are coming in

that are higher up in that funnel that are in this segment one, the awareness inspiration phase. And that's all you're trying to do. You're trying to get them to a point where you can retarget them. And that's a very difficult conversation to have with some people because they do, they see the traffic increase, but then they don't see that it is that that conversion rate maybe was at That's a very difficult conversation to have with some people because they do, they see the traffic increase, but then they don't see that it is that that conversion rate maybe was at 1.9%. Now it's down to 1.7% or is that 2.5%? It's down to 2%, something like that.

And that's that education point of people are just coming at different phases of the journey. Now we have to nurture them down that funnel and make sure that they're actually, we're giving them an experience that they were inspired to look at it initially there, however they got there. So I think that that's one of those things where it's one of the best sells we have for SEO is that you may not get the traffic that you're necessarily looking for for the direct booking traffic. Those blog posts are not going to draw in more people necessarily for your market plus vacation rentals,

accommodation, lodging, anything like that. But they are going to bring you in for the activities or seasonal items or things to do while you're there. And I think that is where you really capture people at that awareness or inspiration phase and really start to give them the concept of, this is what travel looks like in this market. In my specific area, when you're coming to my specific properties, this is the type of experience that you can expect or you can begin to expect. And then again, we can remarket you and take you further down the funnel. Hopefully you do this and that and you make it to that conversion. But I don't think that for someone who is overly concerned that I'm getting all this

traffic but it's not converting, then how are we doing more to get it down the funnel? Because it is. I was about to say, that's what top funnel looks like. That's it. I think that that's one of those things where I've been on enough of those conversations where they're so excited to see that organic traffic increase, but all of a sudden the concern is that, oh no, that's not converting. We'll get there. It's kind of something that I felt for a while, which is that actually all the attribution models or all the attribution tracking in general

is both really a double-edged sword in a way that I didn't expect early on in my career. Early on in my career, I was like, oh, this is great. We need to set up the tracking this way so we can see exactly who clicks on the ad and then converts, which is like, I still feel that way today to be clear. It's not that I don't feel that way. It's not that we don't want the tracking in place. Like obviously if the data is there, we should keep an eye on it and look at it.

But it can really paint our brains a certain direction towards we're only looking at what happens in the last click, which for a lot of our clients, and I say this a lot, a lot of our clients get a lot of conversions from branded search on Google, they get a lot of conversions that are marked as direct when I say direct to me just mean a visit directly to the website without any referring information attached to it, often not a direct visit, but that's a different maybe discussion for a different day.

And that's where you know, let's say 50 60 70% of bookings are credited that way through some of those channels like that. And then it's like, when I was telling clients is like no one woke up today and decided I'm going to put in, you know, your domain.com hit enter and give you two, three, four or $5,000 for vacation, right? There's always stuff that proceeds it. In some cases we're helping with it.

In some cases we're not, you know, it just depends on the clients, stuff like that. But I'm like, let's not lose sight of the bigger picture here. When we look at some of these reports, let's think about kind of, we need to be looking at like what's coming in, obviously what the marketing advertising needs to be profitable, of course. But I think that, yeah, it's so funny because it's almost like what's coming in, obviously, what the marketing advertising needs to be profitable, of course. But I think that, yeah, that it's so funny, because it's almost like there's these like camps people fall into. And I've encountered over the years, this kind of like

brand camp where they're like, oh, we're gonna make a brand that people are going to be drawn to it. And they're going to be very into this stage, like, how do we get more people to be aware of it? And then there's these people that are like, and I kind of tend to follow this camp more myself, or like, let's look at the numbers, let's see exactly what's converting. Well, let's stop doing what's not working. But do we really know what's not working to your point from a second ago? Is it that the blog content is not working or it's just not working in that moment? Because a lot of things don't work in that moment from a marketing

standpoint that absolutely work later on. It's like, Oh, I heard about you through this. Then I saw a property that I remembered three days later, three beasts later, three months later, three years later that I wanted to go stay there. And then bam, now I am booking today from something that happened so long ago. So I wish we had like a very simple, you know, I think I get jealous of the ecom people sometimes, you know, the commerce people, where it's like, you know, they see a Facebook ad, they decide

to they click on it, and they buy or they don't buy, like, it's just such a, you know, very straight path to like low consideration, low friction, low cost, you know, type of type marketing. And it's like, I either want that thing, or I don't want that thing. I'm either taking my credit card and buying or I'm not. And they can make things so binary. I think with travel, it's especially with larger group. And it's like, I either want that thing, or I don't want that thing. I'm either taking my credit card and buying or I'm not. And they can make things so binary. I think with travel, it's especially with larger group travel, it's always this journey. I mean, hence the episode, you know, the episode topic here a little bit, but it's always just

like a multi-step process that people go through. And we lose tracking along the way, you know, from a marketing analytics standpoint, we lose tracking in Google or whatever system you're using. And so we just end up, you know, focusing on the spot and funnel stuff. But I think that at times, you know, it probably hurts us, you know, candidly, I think because we look at this bottom funnel stuff, and we don't realize this other, you know, these other pieces of puzzle that are actually contributing. So that's kind of a, you know, how I see it lately. And I've changed, I

would say, yeah, like, I've changed my opinion a little bit, I would say over the past year or two, then for more, I started, you know, my career where I was just like, well, you know, the numbers don't say that that's working. So why would we keep doing it? And it's because, you know, we don where I was just like, Well, you know, the numbers don't say that that's working. So why would we keep doing it? And it's because you know, we don't know exactly what's working because of the limitations of tracking. On that note, the last thing you want to do is turn something

off. And then all of a sudden realize that it was going to do that doesn't look like that the numbers are telling us isn't contributing. And then inevitably, everything else suffers as a result. And you realize that was the corner song that was the bedrock on which everything was built there. So yeah, it takes it takes some level of confidence and it takes some level of taste, I would argue right to like understand if

something is actually truly not working or if you like I think there's a big gap between like, I can't see in this one dashboard, this one report that's not working. And I know it's not working because I would see other signs of it not working along the way. Right. So those are like very obvious things. And it's just it's just challenging. Yeah, to that point. So I have a few things we hit on here that maybe to get through. So here are things that I think do help this stage of awareness that we probably didn't touch on yet, or maybe didn't nail unique design. I talk about like really uniquely designed properties, Instagram worthy, which is a phrase

that I find myself using maybe more than I should, to be honest with you at times Instagram worthy. But I think what I mean by that is like, if it was a picture, if I looked at this, you know, content or I saw a video or something about it, what would my reaction be to that? You know, would I have this like positive association with it, what I want to watch, what I want to consume, what I want to click like maybe on that, you know, home. And I think, again, a lot of our clients don't meet that criteria. So you have to get, you know, into other areas. So it's not just unique design, it's also special locations or settings. So the threes of real estate always still map up, right? Location, location, location. I think if you have a premier located,

vacation rental property that kind of fights 20, 30% of the battle for you, then of course, you have to finish the job, but it gets you started on the right foot. Distinctive architecture, I think this matters more and more. We had Ben Wolf on the Art of House Potality maybe a month ago, and he talked about this project that he's been working on where every actual property is unique. So he went into a given, you know, lot or community and he's building all these, you know, new new pieces of puzzle there. But they're all actually uniquely designed from an architecture standpoint. I thought that was really cool, because it just proves that like each one is kind of its own thing. And I touched on this earlier, but novel and memorable local experiences,

right? It's like the swimming pigs, you know, here people come and they come for the golf courses, they come for the beach, they come for a lot of reasons. Those are experiences that people have that they want. And if you're building your rental around that, I think there's a lot of, you know, upside in that. You and I have a mutual contact who's has this idea that it's hard to go wrong building, you know, vacation rentals or working on vacation rental inventory around national parks. National parks have this huge draw. You know, of course, the Smokies being the most visited national park in the entire country. And if you build a lot of vacation inventory around an entrance to a national

park, it's pretty hard to lose, right? Because that's like this built in novel, memorable experience that you have. Most people go to these parks, and they plan a whole trip around it. And that's a great way to kind of build the inventory out to make, you know, make things set up well. So those are all things I think that kind of tie into this idea of how do I build more awareness on that side. But anything else to add in before we go to section two? Or what are your thoughts there? I think you hit it on the head. I mean, I think some of those things, you know, you can't necessarily, the only way you're controlling those items is again, if you're kind of taking control of which properties you're bringing into your portfolio. If you're in a location where you can't be selective and everything is kind of the same there, then

you're going to have to kind of inspire people in different ways. And I think that you want to control as much as you can control here. And hopefully you can encourage for unique design and distinctive architecture if you're working with a cool owner that is interested in earning more, I think that certainly helps as well. So a lot of this, it comes down to some of those owner relationships and as all of these things do on the property management side of how can you get more, I mean, how can you bring more to the top of the funnel? You do, you kind of need to nurture those homeowners or nurture the right properties or or be in the right location. If you're starting out fresh, I wouldn't necessarily go to a big market with

a lot of rentals just because it's a big market with a lot of rentals. That's that's not what we should be going there. But another topic for another day and probably one we've covered enough as it is. So yeah, we can we can hop. Well, well, it goes back to this idea. We've done this a few times before. Just do inversion thinking on those four bullet points. And then you can tell you can tell if you're on the right track. Is your design not unique? Because your design very, you know, plain, boring, bland, you know, like is that the white bread of design? Okay, that's probably we're probably off on the wrong foot there is the location not particularly unique or even worse. It's just a bad location. You know, like here at the beach area, I've always drawn this line. There's this highway, highway 17, that kind of divides more of the beach side versus more the residential side. I live more the residential side. There's more of a beach side if you're on the other side of the highway. Could you have a vacation rental on the residential side of highway 17 here in North Myrtle Beach and get some level of demand? I think so. But I think it's significantly less desirable for someone coming here for a few days. And their main activity is

enjoying the beach. they look at that rental and they go, you know, how do I actually get over there? It's this big six lane highway, you know, that kind of cuts it in half almost in a way. And it's it would be significantly less interesting, in my opinion, and desirable for anyone to come and stay here and not be on the beach side where they could then walk to the beach and not have to worry about you know, the traffic that type of situation. So like, simple example there,

but I think that does tie in. Now, architecture is kind of out of your control, right? The home is the home, whatever you're managing. It's like, again, is the, does the home look boring from the outside? Is it not interesting to see a thumbnail photo of the structure on an OTA platform? Let's just say it, if it looks boring on Airbnb, a lot of people click on it, if it's a great value,

but that's not gonna necessarily be someone that's inspired to travel there, that are just gonna pick it because, you know, maybe it's the best choice they have when they're going for those dates anyways, maybe you can always make the rates low enough, right? We can get 100% occupancy for every client. Let's charge a buck a night and we'll get 100% occupancy, right? Very easy. But is that what's actually going to drive ADR? And then yeah, like is

it in a place where there is not that that thing to do? What's the activity? What's the draw outside of that rental? It's going to get someone to come there. And I would say most clients we work with, like the destination itself is desirable. Like that's why they're building, you know, inventory around it. So I would say that's not usually one that we clients we work with, the destination itself is desirable. That's why they're building inventory around it. So I would say that's not usually one that we struggle with. But I do think experiences can be repetitive at times. I think that's a struggle that we might have here in the Myrtle Beach area. People have been there, done that. We've seen that before. It's not necessarily like a lot of new novel stuff happening all the time. So I think that can impact demand a little bit. I think

the same thing can happen in a lot of places. It's very, I think, rare that you find a situation like Orlando where people will often say negative things about Orlando. But the one thing they never say that I've learned about that market over the last few years is that there's so, so, so much demand. So yes, there's a lot of supply, but there's so much demand. The reason that that all kind of works and it doesn't collapse in and on itself like a dying star is that the parks are such a draw. And the demand that exists for the parks is so unbelievable on top of everything else that's happening, that it just creates this, you know, this like cascading effect of like, I want my share of the pie. And that's why we have so we see so many rentals in a market like that. So that's kind of my thoughts on it. All right,

number two here, research and exploration. So guiding travelers, having towards your rental. So it's kind of that one step down, it's that one layer down of, I want to go to XYZ destination, how do I actually know if we're ready almost for that destination? And I think that's where, you know, this is where I think though the content and some of the things we talked about earlier actually come to fruition of being very valuable, right? So when you're in this stage, when you're in the research and exploration stage, that's where I think you're, you're pinning down. I'm going to go to this specific neighborhood. I'm going to go to this exact type of rental I'm looking for, the size, the bedrooms, the location, those sorts of

things. And that's where I think this stage is really where your marketing can kind of shine. Because that's where you can stand out from the crowd. You know, that's where your properties, your marketing, your emails, your social content can actually separate you and go, not only do I think I want to go here, I know I want to go here. I think that's like that level of conviction that you want in there. So what's kind of your read on this second stage? You have research exploration, how can people do a better job of getting more awareness and getting more bookings from there? It's content, I think, comes to content so much. If you people

have no content to do research with or to explore, you are you're you're missing out. And that's, you know, written content, that's video content, that's beautiful imagery, that's everything it is we've got a laundry list of items here, but truly, this is all the things that are going to make your marketing effective. All the content that you're going to need to aggregate and create and use

to ultimately convince people. This is where we make our money as marketers, I think. This is like sales on the phone or they sell in person, they do like this. This is how we make our money because this is how we put the messaging, this is how we craft the messaging, this is how we craft a content strategy,

this is our part of kind of capturing what was coming in at the top of the funnel and really making sure that we're nurturing things down. Whatever channels you're using to engage people in this stage, I think everybody's got different needs here. A lot of that is dictated by those four things we talked about a little before here on the inspiration side of things. I can't think of a more critical part for us as marketers. And again, if we if we're not doing this part effectively, stage four doesn't happen for us. So that's kind of

the I think the clean cut way of saying it. But yeah, I mean, dive in a little further, you know, how are you really trying to attract people when you're looking at this part of the funnel? What are you focusing on specifically? Well, I think one thing we maybe haven't said exactly, you mentioned content, which I agree with, so I don't need to belabor that point is the website itself. I think, you know, we talk at length, or we go down lots of rabbit holes in previous episodes about this idea that like, you need to have a professionally designed website, you need to have a good looking website, this is where it reveals itself, right? It's like, because the people are in this research stage, and they go to your website, and they go, ah, you know, like, that's that, I don't understand how it works, you know, it doesn't have a good design, it doesn't, you know, they're just gonna bounce out of it, they're just gonna be like, we'll forget this, I can go somewhere else. And let's be

honest, right? The guest is going to go to an OTA, even the guest, the books direct, they're going to go to, you're not going to, you know, pull the wool over their eyes and say, Oh, no, Airbnb doesn't exist. Oh, no, Verbo doesn't exist. Oh, no, booking.com doesn't exist, Right. Those are the big ones, these here in the states that drive the majority of the reservations outside of direct according to all

the data that we've gathered. Right. So they're going to those other places. The question is, when they get on a booking dot com and Airbnb or Verbo, that sort of thing, and they go to a direct booking site, do they feel like they're in the same ballpark?

You know, they feel like they're in the same zone when it comes to, OK, I'm researching the options available here on the direct booking website. And I'm also going and looking on Airbnb, Verbo and like, and of course, your competitors websites, right? If your website doesn't hold a candle to your local competition, and certainly if it doesn't have the same look and feel or like usability UI, you know, type

benefits of using, you know, some large OTA platforms, which sure, they have more budget, and they can invest more in tech. But if they feel like they're not in the same ballpark, then you're gonna lose them. And that's always, I've never articulated this very well. Again, like looking back on like where I think I've improved or gotten more knowledge or awareness over the last few years, it's like, that's what happens at these websites that don't work well is that they have a hard enough time getting traffic. Once they get the traffic, they don't actually keep it. You know, it just peels off quicker. The time on site is lower, the engagement is lower, the number of property detail page views are lower. And it just creates this like, you know, shrink or like the funnel analogy is one that we've done a few times now. And my belief is that

it's not really a funnel because how funnel works is whatever you pour the top goes through the bottom, right? It's a funnel. If it is a funnel is a funnel with a bunch of holes in it. And a bad website is like a big old hole is a two inch hole in the side of that plastic funnel. And it's like, you know, you put a big old hole in it. And that's the thing that's actually causing people to be like, we'll forget this, I'm just going to exit this funnel. I'm gonna go into somebody else's funnel. I'm gonna go look on the OTA platform or something like that. So yeah, maybe that wasn't said yet. So I just wanted to hammer that point, which is that the website when they're doing research and exploration, they're judging you on the website. And if it doesn't look and work in a way that makes a lot

of sense, I think you're going to struggle to get that demand to actually go to the next stages, right? Like you said, the consideration, the booking, those aren't going to happen unless you get that second, you know, piece, I would say, well executed upon. Yeah, I remember that we said that a lot. Leaky funnels, we're trying to alleviate the leaky funnels there. And I think there's, I mean, that's one of those, you look in the path exploration of Google Analytics, you're going to see a lot of leakage in your user experience there.

That's one of my least favorite reports to look at, but it's an important one. I mean, where are those jump off points? Where are those abandonment points? in your user experience there. That's one of my least favorite reports to look at, but it's an important one. I mean, where are those jump off points? Where are those abandonment points? Because the last thing you want to have happen is getting a lot of people to those property pages, property detail pages,

getting them down to that listing level. That's a lot of distance down the funnel and to have them leak at that point for whatever reason, it's a little bit painful there. And again, I think that's something that, same thing with when I look at the clarity sessions, those are also, it may be more painful to watch them do it in real time and just kind of look around,

click on the dates, click on the rates, and all of a sudden, what happened? Did you have a change of heart? Why'd you leave? If it was a retail store, you could like stand in the way of the doorway and be like, hey, what's going on, man? Like, how can I, can I help you today?

It's like that overly pushy salesperson. Wanna do that immediate accident tent and say, ah, what happened here? Can we do that? I mean, you can't do cart of bandwidth if they didn't quite have it in there. But yeah, it's, that is one of those things that I think that that is something that generally speaking,

we do a pretty good job once people get to the booking process in the space of it's pretty tight. Now it's not that here's the thing, as tight as it is on all of these direct booking websites, it's still even tighter on Airbnb because they truly have a very, they figured out a way to shorten that buyer's journey. You know, it's in and the inspiration happens long before at a high level with all of the everything they've done over the last five, seven, eight years. Way to go, Chesky. He knew what he was doing.

Absolutely. But I think that is, that's something that I think Google has every ability to compete with Airbnb directly and as far as you know the experience of booking travel But they don't really want to improve that experience again. They've got advertising money They've got other items that they they're focused on as well there. So all of the items here that that Is checking reviews ratings pricing availability? there's just so much that goes into this part of the buyer's journey. I think every buyer is different.

I think at one point we have, we've referenced, it was 50 touch points. Maybe it's down to 30 touch points. Maybe it's down to 20 touch points. Even as you're mapping out this journey down the funnel and trying to avoid those points of leakage, that is it's trying to put together what that actually looks like. Is it a couple of visits from Instagram? I think Google does a decent job of being able to, when the cookie holds, of being able to show that user experience. But how do some of these interactions happen? Is it a couple of visits from Facebook? Do you have people coming from

LinkedIn? Is it Pinterest? Is it TikTok? How are people getting there? Because that is, it's something that, when we have a better visualization of the funnel, we can look at that journey and see those touch points. We can, we can create better, more effective campaigns that are going to address all of those pain points that pop up during this experience. Yeah. Actually, I'll go back a little bit because you mentioned

the Airbnb thing. And I was trying to refresh my memory about exactly their homepage looks if you're signed out. So I just signed out and I did an incognito window. And it went on Airbnb, I would actually argue Airbnb has to become their own awareness funnel. Because like when I go on the homepage right now, what I see is listings anywhere from, let's say 50 to 250 miles away from where I'm currently searching from. And it's kind of like, hey, I don't know where you want to go yet. You just came to the homepage without any dates, without any context, without any, you know, specific information. Do you want

to go to these mountain destinations? Like where I'm at, I kind of can get to a mountains, I get to the North Carolina mountains. Do you want to go to the beach? Hey, there's a bunch of South Carolina beaches you can go to. You go down Charleston, you can go over here. And it's just kind of pitching me a bunch of ideas, you know, and it's like, I don't know what you want. So here's a bunch of ideas. What are you looking for? Right? It's a it's an interesting, I would say concept, or an interesting way to think about, you know, their marketing, because most vacation managers don't do that most time you go to the homepage. And what is it? It's SEOified. I'm guilty of that. I'm the one doing that, right? Where it's like, a return ring for a specific keyword, Airbnb has passed that need almost on their homepage for like

people coming to the Airbnb homepage are just looking, they know what Airbnb is at this point, they don't need to be educated more. If you go pop Airbnb.com into archive.org and click on the original version, it'll explain what Airbnb is, they don't need to explain what Airbnb is anymore. So don't make the mistake of thinking that you can necessarily do that whole thing, but can you do a version of it? Could you show listings a little bit quicker? Could you say, hey, newly added to the website, those are some little things that maybe could come into play there. Because yeah, the truth is, I think, on the OTA platforms is that it's nice just to search one place, right? I think, you know, we

take that for granted. One more thing you touched on there, I wanted to mention this was in the most recent Airbnb quarterly report, my number may be offered here a little bit, but if it's off, it's not off by much. But something like 55% of Airbnb bookings now happen in the app somewhere in that zone. Maybe it's 50 maybe it's 55 or it's somewhere in that zone. So it's like people who are doing that probably aren't even going to search elsewhere, right? They're just going to Airbnb. And there's one if I were to steel man my own sort of thesis and my own marketing, you know, like strategy and agency that I built, it's that well, if that

number keeps going up, eventually, there won't be more things to optimize for on the search side or the awareness side, right? It's like, well, I just go to Airbnb, it's just easier. It's just more straightforward, you know, I don't need to worry about it. Certainly things like defaults are very powerful. My credit card saved in the Airbnb. You know, if I go to your direct booking website, I'm going to have to go enter my credit card, right? So I think that's why some people are always going to struggle to they feel like they're fighting the Airbnb machine and the way they are. But in a way, it's just like, you need to think about what are the steps that you could do to make your thing a good

experience and just hope that, you know, the Airbnb machine isn't always going to feed you in a way that's optimal to you as course is my theory. But if I had to steal manna, that would be the reason why is I'm like, yeah, eventually, they'll just become the platform. It's like Amazon, that Amazon has become a platform for me for e commerce. I don't go searching when I need to buy something, I just go on Amazon, Amazon is like become the search engine for me for many physical products and goods. So I just buy it on

Amazon. So that's that's my that's my case for that. It's the it's the difference between and I think it's where we're at advantage. We don't have to do app advertising. I remember going through like app advertising training for Google Ads way back in the certifications. I'm like, Oh, this just seems like it would be really, really excessively difficult here. But that's the long term value of having an app. You know, it's not a solution for everybody. But Airbnb doesn't

have to worry about getting people to the site. They've already done the work of getting them to download the app, now they got to make sure they don't delete the app. But that's a pretty sticky app at that point. Once you've planned a trip there, it's pretty likely you're not going to get rid of it anytime soon. The Twitter comments would disagree, you know, because every time I see a viral Airbnb thread, it's it's filled to people in the comments who said, you know, I had one

negative Airbnb experience, and I'll never do an Airbnb again. And yet quarter after quarter, they grow. So it's, you know, maybe they're telling the truth. And that's just the minority, the vocal loud minority. But it is interesting how, I guess, like, I'm not even talking like the whole regulation debate or the quality, you know, I'm just purely talking about people who tried an Airbnb, quote unquote, Airbnb one time, and they said, I'll never do that again. It's just an interesting, doesn't match up with the data. But And I think the one I don't think they're looking at, it's it's the they're they're Airbnb, Airbnb is trying to do the same thing we are, they're trying to retain customers, retain

travelers, make sure they're coming back. And again, that's why they have to be semi-selective with what they're taking on. They can't take on everything, because at some point, and then another discussion again, but like Google, Airbnb wants these travelers to have a good time. That is going to, just like we all want it, everybody wants to increase that happiness,

that satisfaction, because ultimately it's going to make what we're gonna talk about in some of these next stages a lot easier. And it's, I think that Airbnb is, that's the elephant in the room. Literally we went from VRBOs being what everything was called to all of a sudden Airbnbs or whatever everything is called.

So clearly they did something right on the inspiration side and getting down to the research and exploration side, they've been effective in what they've done here. So I think we can all learn a little bit from Airbnb to a certain extent and how can we make our tactics that much more effective and efficient for us? Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, bring it to a close here. I don't think there's anything else that we didn't touch on that maybe we should have. So yeah, I guess to put a bow on, it's kind of like that this is where I think a lot of the brand marketing people, you know, need to make their hey and kind of prove their value is like, what proof what you're doing is getting us reach prove that that reaches turning

into, you know, this down funnel activity that people claim it does. And if you find someone or you find an activity that's doing that, keep doing it right. Because like that is the hard thing to do in many situations is not have an ocean out there that you're competing against. But like people actually I've honed in on the right person. I honed in the right property that appeals to maybe a few different groups, those subgroups of people, and people are drawn to it because that's where that's where I think you actually build a company off of.

Right. It's so hard to build a company off of like last click advertising. Hey, I hope with this last moment, someone does a search and they find me. I have clients that have done it actually, but it's super hard. Like that is a much harder path to navigate than some of these other paths of like, people are coming to me and they want it anyways. Like, I think of these properties that have like wait lists, like that's, I think my like goal in life is to have a service so in demand that I can't handle the customer load, you know, coming in and I go, Oh, yeah, I got to put you on a wait list, right? Like, that's my goal of my agency, you know,

is that so many customer requests coming in that I need to slowly, you know, onboard them so that we give them, you know, the right experience, right? Like that's what the goal should be for you as a host is that I'm charging as much as I think is possible. And there's still people waiting, you know, to kind of give me money around the door. That's when you know, you're doing this kind of research, exploration marketing well,

you're doing that inspiration awareness marketing well, and you're not just looking for that last, you know, step in the funnel and trying to get someone at the last second. Cause that's, we'll talk about that here in a second of like, that's where we spend a lot of our time, but that's a much harder path to navigate, to get the right results there. So there we go. Part one, part two, or I guess kind of stage one, stage two, excuse me, on this multi-part podcast journey

that we're going to take you on here about this kind of buyer guest traveler journey here. One thing that would be, I think a good journey for the listener to do, Paul, is to go to their podcast app and leave us a review. So that's a one step process. You go open up Apple iTunes, you open up Spotify, wherever you happen to listen between those two. That's what the data tells us. Most of you all listen on click five stars, click follow, click subscribe. That way you get future episodes and leave us a little comment.

Leave us a little love. We always are looking for new podcast reviews. Make sure that more people check out the show and a review helps us out a lot. Makes us smile, but makes us in a good mood. And then we can continue on our podcasting journey, just like we can continue on this journey. So thank you so much for your time and attention been an awesome one. I will catch you in the next part of this one. Thank you so much. Have a great day.