Heads In Beds Show - Compelling Vacation Rental Marketing Messages Have Common Traits

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

In this episode of The Heads In Beds Show, we break down a recent VRM Intel article from Conrad O'Connell talking all about messaging and what homeowners act on vs ignore. ⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101Jamie Lane Airdna LinkedIn Post On ChurnMarketing Messaging That Actually Converts Vacation Rental Homeowners - VRM Intel🔗 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 Heads of Med Show presented by Build Up Bookings. We teach you how to get more vacation rental 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. We're live. What's cooking? What's happening in your world? What's going on? You know, I think this is the first time I can. remember that we have not had any sports talk before in the pre-show it's yeah it's good point actually

i know why it's happening but uh it's why is it happening well i i think just because my team is flowing into its let's say familiar uh role in the mediocrity department so that's i i i think as a minnesota sports fan we're just you know pushing forward enjoying this whatever this is and 500 as of this recording, four and four. Yeah, four and four and four. And then you've got, you know, I think you're just being generous and not maybe, I'm maybe not even generous and superstitious, generous and not maybe wanting to rub in the fact that the Patriots are in quite good form right now. And it feels a little house of cardsish. That's my only concern. So like, there's some potential ahead here. So I am, I'm about your steams, but how are you doing, sir? How are things going in your neck of the woods?

Yeah, it's a good point. I think that. I think it's an interesting thing with respect to the Patriots. I mean, we can clip this or pull this later out if we need to. It does feel House of Cardish because we've been playing very mediocre teams and the protection has not been good and we're never like, when do you see a team where it's like, oh yeah, they made it a Super Bowl

but that offensive line was terrible, right? So it's like that's where I'm just couching my expectations a little bit. But I mean, the good news is the Patriots have like $60 million in cap space. So like these are all sort of fixable problems to some degree. So I mean, you can get the right players and free agency and that sort of thing. So I'm optimistic. I said this before or I've said this previously. I think you need to be good

before you're great. And I think the Patriots are good this year. I don't not think they're great, despite the record indicating that they might have a chance to be really great this year. I don't think that's the case. And I'm okay with that. Winning one playoff game, to me, would actually be a success in Drake Mays, basically first actual year starting and looking good and throwing all these passes, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm happy,

but I'm also like, hey, I don't feel that not in my stomach of like really high expectations, which is actually I think where a lot of these things come from. And actually, that builds a decent bridge of expectations because homeowner marketing and the expectation that a homeowner has when they sign in your property management program, is very challenging, isn't it, Paul?

The expectation the homeowner has really sets the stage, sets the table for how successful maybe you'll be or how successful you feel like you're going to be with that homeowner. And I think we have a pretty good deep dive today, referencing a VRM Intel article that I wrote here probably about a week and a half ago at this point, maybe two weeks ago at this point, talking all about marketing messaging

and what homeowners actually believe, what they don't believe, and that sort of thing. So you've got some good experience here. What's kind of your reader, your message on homeowner expectations versus marketing and how those things kind of blend together? One of my favorite stories about this goes back to the last, the 2022, Verma out in Las Vegas and talking to a property manager who at that point we were working with with Vendori. And he said, yeah, we're getting all these leads in and it's great.

But none of them like fit my profile. Like they're all like all about the ROI. I said, your messaging is all are about the ROI here. So the expectation that you're setting up front is that that's going to be a leading part of the conversation. He just, it was a blank stare of, oh, that is just miss messaging, miss whatever. We fixed it and everything was good because we'd already had the discussion initially and we'd approved all the everything. And yeah, it was just somehow there had been a disconnect between what he was thinking, what the expectation was. and but then he can't it it just kind of paints that picture of we are really eager to use

flashy messages flashy promises sometimes let's say squishy statistics um and i do i think that that's something that ultimately the numbers the promises the that shouldn't be what does it your your your bedrock your baseline your your foundation of your business is really what should be selling these owners. So I do. I think that when you're basing a lot of your marketing messaging on that, and I think that that's a lot of what we're talking about here today, that is that this is like foundational pieces that you can. You don't just say we make the most. It's we make X amount, being very specific or finding ways to really connect with these homeowners because it is. It's not just the transactional relationship that kind of develops with

the guests it is anything that they're they're looking for a specific thing this is much more of a think of it as a b-to-be process a b-to-be sales process b-to-be relationship um of we got to wind and dine these people a little bit and by doing that you're giving them the messaging that is really going to push them forward and make make a long-term lasting impression on them so that they will join your program yeah it's got it's kind of i heard this a while ago where it's like, you know, your marketing or this person said your vibe attracts your tribe. I forget exactly where I heard that from recently, but I heard it. And I'm like, I think there's an element of truth to that.

I don't know if I love that terminology necessarily, but I think that that idea is pretty solid, which is that, yeah, if all your messaging and your marketing is revenue, revenue, then you're going to attract people that want the most revenue. I've not really had anyone challenge me on this yet. Maybe you could steal man this if you want me to just for fun. Anyone choosing a property manager, I feel like by default is not focused on revenue. Like, you would not make that decision if revenue was actually a objective, you would self-manage because you know you're going to be giving up 20, 30% of your

revenue. And as a result, it's like, that's a pretty significant chunk of change to say, okay, and focus on revenue, but I'm using a property manager. I feel like those ideas are in contrast to one another. I don't know if it's like, it's like, I think we talked about this triangle before with cars and it's like fast, cheap, reliable. So like if your goal is revenue, then the other angle of that coin cannot be passive or like more passive than not doing that way. Like if you're trying to drive more revenue, it would be like, let me take this on myself, let me do this myself, I'm going to drive a lot more, you know, understanding and revenue of it over time. So I don't know, like you maybe steal the end that for me, maybe a mess representing

that. But I feel like by choosing a manager, you are agreeing that revenue is not your priority, your number one priority. I think it's a logical way to look at it. I think there's a specific partner of yours who thinks very differently that there is a very specific subset of people in his market that, and I think that it's a specific market, that there are some people who are ROI, ROI, ROI. But you're right. The concept of hiring a property manager you can't for a single homeowner maybe i'll say it that way yeah not like a group of inventory like maybe that's different right and in the and i know very little about this world so if i'm misstating this or this is wrong then you know people can correct me or whatever

but in the long-term rental world your individual commissions on the actual rent on a monthly basis is extremely low it's like you get three or four or five percent of the gross rent and the rents by the way are like one two three thousand dollars a month right in most department style buildings because it's basically just seen as like a hey we've decided the asset you're doing some base level of ongoing management. It's seen as kind of like very simple blocking and tackling. There's not a lot of creativity, I don't think, in like long-term property management. It's more so just like drains are busted and fridges are breaking and those are people that you have to dive into. So that's kind of a separate sort of thing. But as a result, what's happened over

time is that the amount of revenue that you drive from property management services, the commission just goes down and down and down to the point where it's almost like, you know, again, I'm sure there's a long-term manager out there who managed a lot of apartment buildings that's like, no, our service is superior, et cetera, et cetera. But for the most part, it's kind of become somewhat commoditized. It's like it is what it is as far as the pricing goes. In the short-term rental world, like it is a lot more variable. You go from company to company, you see massively different performance numbers as far as how much direct bookings they get, how many OTA bookings they get, how good they are managing revenue, all these sorts of things.

But the homeowner doesn't really, they can't really ascertain who's good and who's not good with all the marketing they get. That's kind of my whole point with this article that I wrote for Amy and the problem that I see, which is that if you hit on the revenue messaging and you nailed it earlier over and over again, it just doesn't land with people because everyone says the same thing. So it just comes across at some point of just like, yeah, dude, like, I'm sure you are. And I was at a client who, I've talked about this client recently on the podcast, who owns all his own property. So he does not manage for anybody else. But as a result of buying vacational properties himself, he gets the mail from all these people that are using direct

mail to market. And what he kind of says, like, I don't know, like, I just get hundreds of these things now. Like they just kind of wash through on me. Like, if I was a homeowner, I actually wouldn't know how to choose who to manage with because they all, you know, I get a lot of these things and I don't really know what to, you know, what to nail as far as the messaging goes. And I think, to be fair, he's in a tier one destination, you know, here in the South Carolina coast. Yeah. He's going to be a little bit more marketed to than your tier two, tier three type markets.

So I'm not saying that those, I'm not saying postcards are bad idea. I'm not. I think postcards are a good idea in general, but just realize that like that is, but only a one step and a many step, you know, journey that you're trying to take to get that homeowner. And I do. And I think the channel is fine. Postcards is a channel. They're fine.

But it's the messaging. And that's where, again, getting back. to the basics of it you choose all the channels you want but choose the right messaging for each of those channels and and it can't really be the same messaging for for every channel because while you want that unified voice and you want to be able to kind of paint that picture across everything the reality is is that when you're going through these different channels whether that's a social channel whether that's you know wherever it is you're going to have different place you're going to need to be reaching people at a different point the different conversation point

again it's it's what makes this process so frustrating for people because again it's there are so many breaking points on the owner marketing side of where you can go wrong having the right people that you're marketing to having the right list that's a huge breaking point for some people then you got to get to the right messaging to hit the pain points of those people that you are now trying to maybe cold market too, hopefully warm market too, but it is. I think we can pop into some of these messages actually and talk about where people, you know, do fail. And I think that that's, you know. Yeah, well, I think so to be clear, I think your number one objective is basically to capture the attention of your homeowner prospects. That's the number one goal. And I think the more

diverse information you share, the better off you are. Right. So sending one specific type of, I'm going to help you get more revenue and sending that in postcard form over and over again. I don't think that gets you as far as you think. I think. it's one touch point and you need a variety of touch points because essentially what you have to get to is they think of property management in XYZ destination and you are the first person that comes to mind because people unfortunately do not switch very often. They're in market for a short period of time but their time thinking about the market is very long. Actually, this was funny. I looked this up this morning. So funny little story here of the payoff date for my wife's car. When am I

going to pay off my wife's car? Because I think I might buy myself a car after that. And I looked it up and it's not next year. It's the year after by the way, the beginning of the year after that. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to be a car buyer in the beginning of 2007, I believe. That's like how it'll line up. So that's sort of my brain of like, I'm thinking of a car today. I will execute a purchase, let's say March of 2027. So what car company is going to get credit for an ad that I see or the fact that I was on the VW website configuring a Gulf R for example

and looking at it and going, oh, they don't offer it a manual anymore. Well, that's kind of a bummer. Or then I was on the Accura website the other day, configuring a, I think it's a TLX is the right one that I was looking at. I'm not even sure. But again, I'm on this, I'm on so update today. I'm going to convert in potentially in March of 2027, what marketing channel is going to get credit for that if I'm seeing accurate ads over the next, you know, literally year, if not longer, or if I see an ad for Subaru or, you know, VW, or whatever the case may be, whatever I end up with, or maybe I just

buy something used, we'll see. But it's so impossible. It's same thing with choosing a property manager, right? It could be a multi-month, multi-year journey for someone to actually end up choosing you as a property management company. And so as a result, you just have to share information in diverse ways. And you have to put that message out there in as many places as possible. So that's where I just think, again, you know, traffic is an equal success, just a high volume of traffic. It's really traffic that has consideration behind it that you want.

And the only way to do that, I think, is just to basically overshare. And that's what you and I joke about this all the time, that very few people actually do that, right? Like very few people actually share information that's useful and actionable. That's not just pure essentially sign up with me now information, right? Yeah. I think some people sometimes forget that, you know, to get to a certain level, you have to have developed some expertise in your market. And I think there's some, I don't even think it's

unwillingness to share because I think a lot of these people are willing to share how they've gotten there because their differentiator at that point is themselves. You know, like the system, you can give the system to someone else. It's execution at that point. And you know your team, your internal team really has that execution factor. So I do. I think that that's something that more often than not, if you can go into the depth of what makes you so great, you know, I've seen some people that actually try to put the equivalent of a training for the onboarding, as a part of onboarding for the homeowner, and just really understanding everything that goes into, that's what he almost onboards his team members with as well. And I think that that's something that there's something

to be said of really understanding the business and taking it to that level of these are some areas where we just really focus our efforts which delivers a better experience for our guests which delivers a better here and there so your willingness to give those homeowners that information or just give the general public that information some of the best content that i think we wrote for vintory microsites landing pages whatever they were or the STR regulations for specific areas. And I think that that was at a time when there was a big upsurge uptick in in everything that was going on. I mean, regulation is still obviously quite high or the discussions of regulation are very much ongoing in the space. But I think that's when they were really peeking up. And that was

really important content for people to understand of, hey, if you're at this point in the sales process of, you know, maybe you're not, you don't have a home yet. Maybe you're looking at investing in a home in this market. Here's a bit of content that's going to really help you understand. This is where you can. This is where you can. These are the five government-related sites that we want to want you to know so you can go to the real source of the information. And those were pages that ranked well. Got more traffic really than the overall landing pages did in a lot of cases because you have more people looking for STR regulations, STR laws than you had looking for vacation rental management, short-term rental management, et cetera, et cetera, and there was less

competition at that point as well. So I do. I think willingness to give that expertise, like don't just say how much I'm going to make you, say all the steps that get there and then talk about all the things that are relating to the management process. And I think, well, actually speak on this really quickly too. I think you should add into that. Most people are going to choose a property manager if they don't do a lot of research with who's the biggest, because their perception would be that if they're the biggest, they are probably one of the best. So maybe speak on that for a second, because you've seen the small company struggle with big companies do well with the same or similar messaging and marketing.

I mean, truly, and I think a lot of those smaller companies that we worked with had like better branding and better messaging in some cases because... Better reviews? You know, that's the thing. They probably had fewer reviews, certainly, but high quality reviews. But that kind of factored into they had a dozen or two dozen or 50, 60. And the biggest in the space had 500 or 1,000 or 1,500. And that's a David versus Goliath battle.

I mean, we did have some people who said that they had a pipeline area that was, call us when we get to X, call us when we get to. And so they were, they were putting down, like, when we get to 10, we call these people. When we get to 20, we call these people. And you don't ever want to be the first one to do it. And that's where a lot of these people, I mean, it is. They own it or someone else, the friend owns it, something like. that and then they realized they could make more but i don't i don't think that there were too many in the

three to seven we'll say five to fifteen even that were in a either a primary market or a secondary market that just took off based on something that was not like you know having an amazing property in the profile in the portfolio already or something they had something that really really stood out. Those were the only ones who went from like five to 30, 40, 50, something like that, even five to 20. Because it is. It's just very tough to overcome, hey, here's X, Y, Z with 500 rentals. Here's XYZ with 300 rentals and 200 rentals. And if that many people are working with them, you think that they're doing a pretty good job. And then there's, you know, the C also, maybe they're not doing a good job. Maybe it's just, you know,

you're another number on the paper or what else but again that's where you differentiate yourself that's where you make that messaging that even when you're trying to be david versus goliath it's tough to like even differentiate yourself among the david's so that might be the best quote so far yeah like it's it is david versus goliath in a way but yeah there's like 87 david so it's like which one of these do i back you know even if i believe what you're saying to some degree it's like all right i've gotten pitches from 25 people and let's be honest right Like, it's so rare that I work with someone who's really small who's doing an amazing job. And I think, like, oh, they have no chance of success, right?

Like, I know they will succeed. It may just be not on their timeline, right? It might just be that it's going to take them longer than they anticipated or longer than they want to get the inventory they desire, whatever the case may be. But I remember working with this guy, I think he had 19 when he signed with us. This was right before COVID-19. I think now they're up to, like, 115 or 120. But it's in a very small area.

So I'm talking, like, they have everything they want almost at this point with, like, very few exceptions. Like, there's very few exceptions that you could say. hey this particular property I want it I've talked to them you know maybe they're just happy with the current property manager and I just can't seem to break through but it's like almost like they've reached 100% saturation in their little zone that they've defined is where they want rentals at and this point it's just like blocking and tackling just like operating the business if anything I'm actually surprised they haven't done what I think they haven't done what I think they haven't done what I think they haven't done that what I think we bit off enough that we can chew this and like swallow it. So it's like next island over. They're on an island over. Let's try that. Let's go that. And they haven't done that. So I think that's also almost a sign of maturity to some degree or a sign of like we bit off enough that we can chew this and like swallow it. and get our, you know, processes dialed in. Let's keep improving on that. And, like, that's a good business. Like, it's running very efficiently.

They have great reviews. Their guests like them, their homeowners like them. Like, that's a pretty good spot to be. And maybe there's also, like, an element, this is more of, like, a philosophical question. Like, what is the desired end state for your company as well? If you have 50 homes and you want 500 homes, then, like, there's a lot of, a lot of stuff that needs to happen between point A and point Z that you're describing. But if you have 25 homes and you want 50 the best homes, like, that's just more of like a

slowly chip away at it, a handful at a time every few months, you know, or whatever the case may be, and then you get to what you want. So I feel, and I'll admit, like, we don't do a great job of asking our clients that necessarily, you know, early on. I think it's something we need to keep improving upon on our side of things, which is like, what a success even look like for you? Because it's probably not just signing everything. It's probably not just signing, you know, even the best homes. Like, I believe that with the property management, um, to homeowner fit, it's both a location thing. It's a property thing. It's a mindset thing as well. So the property you check all the boxes, and then, like, you know, the podcast of Brooke and I've done,

we've done a thousand, you know, stories about this where it's like, we love the property. Gosh, we wanted an air program and the homeowner was impossible, and we just had to let him or her go. It was just impossible to deal with them. And so if you're in that situation, but that homeowner, like, if there's not more, again, this is not a marriage, like you can date multiple homeowners at the same time. You know, you can be very polyamorous, if you will, with your homeowner relationships. That's going to get clipped out of context. But if one's not working, like, but there's, you don't feel like another one's coming around the corner. That's when you make bad decisions. If you have 10 homeowners,

owner leads you're talking to. And one of your homeowners is being a jerk, we'll say it that way. Then you're like, okay, I'm just going to get rid of you because I've 10 more and I'm going to sign two of the best ones there and like it'll all kind of work itself out. So that's another thing too is like, don't put yourself in the position where you're like desperately trying to make a relationship of work that shouldn't be because the property is right, but the homeowner is wrong. I feel like that's, you have to align both things pretty neatly for it to work well. Expectations, expectations. But it is, I think that that's even in setting your own expectations. That was something that when you promise unrealistic expectations for the

homeowner, obviously that's not good. But I think that some of that starts with some of maybe the unrealistic expectations that you're setting for yourself and getting more homeowners on. And I think that that's where there were so many people who said, well, we've signed X number, you know, six in the last two months. So we're going to get 36 over the next 12 months. And well, those things are so rarely the case it is i think the best of the best in this space maybe grow at like five or ten a month maybe it consists if you're doing it consistently over the course of 12 months and you're not losing you're not churning a lot of homeowners well go on that churn go on that churn thread for a second though paul because jamey lane did you

see james lane air dna's post from like a week and a half ago he was talking about the cutoff with ratings. Did you see that? Oh, I did not. Okay. Okay. So, yeah, I'll put a link in the show notes. So if you go on Jamie Lane on LinkedIn, on LinkedIn, he talked about the fact that a 4.7 is kind of like the little tipping point for Airbnb ratings. And if you have a 4.7 or lower, you turn typically closer to 20% a year, if not worse. And if you have a 4.7 or higher, you might turn less than 10% a year on average. And those were averages. Of course, there's individual companies that are far better, far worse. But that was like a little cutoff point for like how good of a job they're doing. So if you're turning 20% every year, your company disappears in three or four.

four years, essentially, I mean, because the churn gets worse as you get smaller, right? If you're turning less than 10% every year, you're giving yourself a rope of like 10 years or more to, like, keep your current inventory stock in place. So those like, I think people don't realize that a 10% churn versus 20% churn. One is you dying in a few years. The other one is you dying over a decade, like in theory, assuming you're not net adding more properties. Well, and I mean, it's funny. I was just having a conversation with the guy about that yesterday and, and, you know, trying to tie value back to his email marketing efforts. on the homeowner side.

And I said, okay, so like, if you're going to add something like that, okay, we have to have the baseline of what is your churn? And I, that's a question. I hope people are listening. I hope people are like actively tracking something, like are actively tracking the number of homes in your portfolio. And then, you know, simple spreadsheet there, number of homes in the portfolio at the beginning of the month, number of additions, number of subtractions.

And having that as a rolling total and really figuring out your churn rate, Based on that, I think that that's one of those metrics that, especially on the homeowner side, you should be tracking. You should know, like, how happy your homeowners are. But that's kind of your equivalent there, or to a certain extent, you're going to measure it. But I think that when growth is great, growth is important, you need to, you want more, more people, you know, maybe you have too much demand on the traveler's side. Hopefully that is the case. is that Conrad is doing an amazing job where you have too much demand and you need to get more homers on. That was the case in 21, 22, 23. Not so much the case now. I think that's the other thing

is maybe you see people that aren't growing for growth's sake anymore. Now they do. They have to grow to cut out the bottom 10 or to, you know, whatever that looks like because I, it was not a prophecy by any means, but I would always tell people to a certain extent, you're hiring a company to do this to help you grow the inventory, to fire them. It's like a sports coach. Like at some point, you're going to reach that threshold where I don't want to grow anymore. And then it's, then it is. Then it's, you want to keep those people on and you want to make sure that you're doing that. But like, I would jokingly tell people that, yeah, at some point, you were going to be so big that you aren't going to need my assistance anymore.

That was a joke, and nobody dropped because of it. That's the way it is. But I do think that there's something to that is that have that end goal in mind. Because if you're just growing for growth's sake, well, when is that point? Because at a certain point, it's not just about growth on the front end. It's how are you keeping everything in line on the back end? How are the operations still staying in shape? And again, that's why you want to talk about that messaging to those homeowners on how you are keeping things.

Because as you're trying to grow your business, that becomes more important is that those people who have been with you have a certain level of experience with your brand, with your business. And if you are not continuing to live on that, first of all, you're not going to be able to send those homeowners as referrals to say, oh, hey, this is why we should do this. And these are people who have been with me for 15 years. Well, not anymore because now you went to 300 and now you're not doing anything right for me. And I will remind the listener that the old version of Acassa, again, not the current version with Asago, but the old version of Picasso as a public company was typically signing anywhere from like 500 to 1,000 gross homeowner ads every month. Now they were losing more at the back door, but their gross ads every month were typically similar in that range. And I know this because I tracked it for almost three years. And think about that.

They were only in 30-ish markets. So they were adding, I'm doing some math there, depending on the property or depending on the market anywhere from 20 to 30, list. per month on average, if you average it over 33 markets. I'm sure it was happening. Some of those markets were pretty small. Some were pretty large. Maybe some markets they were signing 50, some they were signing 10. But Vicas, the old Vakasa's ability to sign inventory was unbelievable.

I mean, it was incredibly effective. They had built a machine that signed inventory very well on the front end. And if they had it figured out on the back end and they were not churning, believe it, they would be dominating right now, absolutely. And what happened and what transpired as far as the collapse in the public delisting and the Casago acquisition would have never happened because they, The acquisition skills were so strong. It was their retention that was very poor, you know, to your point there.

So I put a link in the chat. We'll put it in the show notes for that commentary there. One other thing, or kind of go to the presentation. So every touch point in my mind is kind of like, we've talked about this concept before is this idea of like a chain. And the chain has to be ideally linked from link to link to link to link to getting, you know, essentially the next steps or the next pieces of the process in place for you to be successful. And the moment that there's one, you know, weak link there, you can kind of sustain one

link, but the moment there's a really bad link there is the moment where your conversion rate falls off a cliff. So it's like the initial ad that caught their attention. When they get to that landing page, the design, the content, how quickly you're responding to inquiries. Jade, who I think is now more independent, but she did a study when she's up in Tori about basically half the people don't pick up the phone. So you give them a call and you fell out a forum and you say, I want to list my home with your program. And most people don't even respond, you know, how you respond. The frequency is of not only the speed, but also the professionalism. Like, are responding quickly like, yeah, sorry, dealing with the guest issue right now. Let me call you

back later, click. Like, okay, maybe if you picked up right away in theory, that's a good thing, but then we're back to it being a bad thing if you respond quickly, but you respond in a very unprofessional way where they're like, oh, that didn't seem like what I wanted to. The way you actually structure the pitch is it in person. Is it done over Zoom? Every single slide in that prediction presentation. Are you listening? What are you doing? Like each of those things has to be perfect. And that's why, frankly, I'm making that when I was outlining this article, I'm just like, gosh, this seems hard. And I feel the same way about my own business, not to get too bad about my own business, where it's like, I feel like any

little step in our process, or it's our conversion rate. And I'm not sitting here saying that I figured everything out and I'm a genius and all this kind of stuff. I fail at this stuff all the time too. So I'm saying this from a moment of, you know, I know how hard this is because I feel the same way with our own sales process for when we're trying to sign new business is like, man, every little piece of this process could be probably optimized or improved or a little bit smoother. And whenever we go, do find a little rough spot me smooth over it. And it's done consistently, I see better responses. I see better results. I see more clients coming in. So I feel like those are things that I can speak on because, again, I feel like I've made all the

mistakes here. You know, the onboarding process. How is that? The contract terms. I think we talked about this on a somewhat recent episode, but a client that I'm working with that refused to use like a docu-signed online signature type thing. So he's having homeowners that were saying like, yes, I want to go ahead and proceed. Thank you. Your pitch sounds good. Let's go ahead. And he's like, cool, print that out, sign it out and, you know, basically scan it and send it back to me. And they're just like, okay, like, I guess I could do that. I don't know, my printer's hooked up. You know, like, let me go hook that up. Okay, got to sign it. And whatever, he's trying to save 20 bucks a month on docu-sign or something like that.

I couldn't shake him through the screen, but I wanted to of like, dude, let's get docu-sign. It's like 10 bucks a month, 20 bucks a month, whatever. And then they can just sign it instantly and then we're off the races to sign that management contract, right? Like just such a simple solution. So, yeah, I think I talk a lot on the marketing messaging episodes that we had recently about concurrency, this idea that everything has to be consistent end-to-end.

I think of the homeowner process, you have to look at every single step of that flow and every single step of that process of how a homeowner goes through it, especially when you're no longer the one doing the sales. Like you mentioned someone earlier, a client that you put in the chat mutually. He's one of the most dialed in people I've seen with his sales process, this particular property manager, because he doesn't outsource it anybody,

and he's an incredibly sharp dude, and he doesn't miss a thing, right? So, like, for him, the close rate that he has, the follow-up that he has, the CRM that he maintains, it has to be the top 1%, top of the 1% in the industry. I also think that the moment he hired someone else, it would probably drive him a little bit baddie,

how almost nobody is to his level of detail and his level of execution. So it's a compliment to him, but it's also a bit of like a, hey, the bigger you get. I was talking about this where he'll record, the less efficient you get. That's also the battle that you fight in a growing business. Like, how is the fourth, you know, homeowner rep that I'm going to sign to close new business going to be as effective as the first or second? Or in some cases, like the owner, the founder doing that sales, it's going to be, you're not going to be as good. The more you grow by default, the more, you know, loose that those rules get, the more loose that attribution is.

So that's where pushing back against it, like one of my, my bio in Twitter, my bio in Basecamp is fighting entropy. this idea that all your systems are actually aiming towards disorder. They're actually going towards disorder. And it's basically your job to force things into order. And I don't mean that in a mean way or an evil way. I just mean like it's your job to force everything to go the way it needs to go. Otherwise, like nothing will happen. Like if you don't schedule a clean for your next turn or your properties,

guess what? No one's going to come clean unless you schedule it and force that to happen. Right. So that's a good example, I think, of what that homeowner process can be like at times too. Yeah, it is. The initial presentation of the owner's side of things has been a byproduct of the direct booking website and that's a good thing like it's it needs to be like it's not it's not the primary point but to not give the homeowner the potential homeowner at least the spot to learn more

to to give i mean i think that that was such a it's a it's a glaring omission on so many people's presentation of their business you got a beautiful website and your property management page says contact us and has a button that clicks to call or does like there's no opportunity to learn more to really get a true sense of what you're doing so i again that's it's where start with those small details and and and then expand from there because i think if you're you can you can make the prettiest campaign the prettiest ads the prettiest postcard the prettiest anything and if you're sending it to a spot that clearly does not match that prettiness or does not match your business and does not match your value, you're done.

And I think it's very important to remember, like, travelers, they may come back. Homeowners, it's one hit, wonder. You really get that one opportunity. I just, you don't hear many people that said, I came through the marketing, got there, went away. There's a reason why I think when you get to sports free agency, you don't let them get on the airplane. You don't let these people get that second chance. Get to a second property management page. We are full of good analogies today.

But I do. I think that once they leave your property management page, your website, they are not coming back. I mean, that is something that I do recall from Venturi landing pages. And we had, you know, three, four hundred analytics accounts. There were not a lot of return visitors from the standpoint of once they hit that ROI or conversion page, that was your chance. So once they hit that, we'd remark it to them and try to get them back.

And that was a different audience. But from that initial, not just coming back, not from remarketing, it didn't happen. So you realize you get that one chance and make sure that presentation is on point and phenomenal. Yeah. And I think that, again, it's more work than you think. It takes more time than you think. But it's also like when you think of the advantages that the bigger companies have in your space, I think people often misinterpret it just to be money.

I think it's almost like knowledge is just as valuable as the whatever. Oh, they're spending more on ads than me. It's like, yeah, they are. are spending more on ads than you. That's actually not the reason that they're winning as much as you might think. Because I look at some of those ads and they don't necessarily get that much more effective as they get bigger. And they can do a higher volume of leads because of it.

But again, you're also like your expectations are different. If you're a small manager, you have 10 homes and you're just trying to get to 15 homes, well, you need like 20 leads like a year to get that probably, you know, depending on your close rate. So it's like that's one every other week basically, one lead every other week. That's not obscene. Like you can do that with advertising. You can do that if you get the right people in place and you're in the biggest market.

But yeah, to your point, it's like getting those things to be, you know, linked end to end is the hard part. You know, the other thing I'll say is just this idea of like the call to action has to be clear. Like I think you nailed it earlier. But, you know, having different options as far as information, having content that you actually talk about, having trust building things. Like video is a big trust builder. That's something we worked on recently for a client doing homeowner testimonial videos. So we interviewed these clients over Zoom. The property manager did. Then we cut these into like little clips. And some of the biggest lead generation people in our space, like I used to look at evolves Facebook ads library a lot. I feel like they're not running

as many Facebook ads as they used to, but during like their mean growth period, after they raised that big round, they were running all sorts of ads. A lot of their ads were case study ads. They were just basically like a homeowner came to us and they didn't know what they were doing. Then they signed on with Evolve and then Evolve helped make $100,000 in gross rental income. Now, I know what Evolve does is different than what a property manager does. But if anything, that should make your pitch even more convincing because you're basically saying like, yes, we're charging you more, but we're doing a lot more. You know, Evolves pitch is a lot different where they're more of like a listing management,

kind of lightweight OTA marketing, you know, service. They're not really actually doing a lot of the boots on the ground stuff. one might say the hard part of this business. So that's an interesting thing to kind of sell against. But that's also on you to educate the homeowner into what the difference is. Well, Evolve is saying that they're charging me 10%. You want to charge me 25% or 30%. That seems like a bad deal to me.

Well, yeah, Mr. Homeowner, that might seem like a bad deal to you if you don't actually understand what you're buying here. So if you can look at, you know, you should have a page in your website maybe or maybe it's more hidden. You don't need to have this right out in the open. But you should have a page in your presentation deck that's like us versus evolve, us versus a listing management service. And again, maybe they want a listing management service.

that's okay. Like Evolve has grown to a lot of customers. They've obviously have a product people seem to like and otherwise they wouldn't have that many homeowners in their program, but it's fundamentally different than like almost every property manager what they're offering. Those are just, I mean, they couldn't, I would say they couldn't be further apart, but it's like a, again, a pickup truck versus a sports car. These are, depending what you're trying to do, you need one versus the other. These are not the same thing, though. I think any, even evolve would agree with that, right, what they're doing. It's very different. So, yeah, that's kind of my thought, my ending thought process there.

Well, I know we're kind of close to it timewise. I think that I'm going to link the article that I wrote for Amy in the show notes. So it's a title of it. on the VRMintel website is marketing messaging that actually converts vacation rental homeowners. I think it's been seen by 700 people or so at the time of this recording. You'll hear this little, maybe a few weeks later. So we'll see, you know, additional people get some value out of that. That'd be cool. But any of their odds and ends, Paul, that I should clean up before we put about on this one.

I think the key with any of the marketing messaging is, again, don't give it up. Don't stop doing it. Make sure you're continuing to put more of it out there. I think the consistency of putting that content out there. and then making sure you're using the USBs, the offers, everything we're talking about here. It's just make sure you're keeping an eye on it and putting some investment into it because it does pay itself off if you do invest that time and that effort. Yeah, it's a lot of work, no doubt about it.

But when you see that, the incline, when you see that growth, it's often because they're doing a lot of these things right. So one thing more of the person listening on the other end, Paul has to do right, is leave us a review. So go to your podcast, That's iTunes, Spotify. listeners, we're aiming to get more reviews there because the data tells us that's where we get the most downloads from. So we appreciate a review there the most. If not email us. We're open to feedback. Conrad at buildup bookings.com. It's at Paul at Manzi Digital.com would be the right email now for Paul. And then we put links to the show notes to the LinkedIn article that we referenced from Mr. Jamie Lane, the legend of himself. And we've also got links

in there to LinkedIn. If you want to check out and follow all the content that I post, I pretty much post every day, Monday through Friday. So I made have some interesting stuff that you like there. Thank you, dear listener. Hope you have an awesome day. You're a beautiful person. And we'll catch you in the next episode.