Heads In Beds Show - Direct Response vs Brand-Only Marketing: What's The BEST For Building Your Vacation Rental Company?

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

In this episode Paul and Conrad have a friendly debate/discussion on two-sides of the coin: focusing mostly on direct-response advertising and marketing compared to focusing mostly on brand-building advertising. There are pros and cons to both - and the guys break it all down in this episode.Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagramTwitter🚀 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 and Meds 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 Conrad. And I'm your co-host Paul. All right, Paul, how's it going today? What's going on? Well, you know, we've, we've gone over the, uh, where are we at? We tend in the NFL season. We've definitely gone through our, our sports. We're going to call it mumbo jumbo. We talk a lot about a lot of different stuff before we get on these. Uh, sometimes occasionally we talk about

the vacation rental side of things. But I kind of appreciate just that we can go in depth on all of our favorite teams and the teams we don't like and the players that we're not huge fans of. So that was fun this morning. How are you doing, sir? Yeah, doing pretty good. It's been a busy morning for me so far. But it's always good to, you know, shoot the breeze, so to speak for a few minutes and talk about some of these things. And we did, we did a good job here,

because we built our outline in a previous conversation. So talk about this idea of, well, you know, what we're into is, you know, we have different topics that we cover. I don't think this is one we've done exactly before. But I think it's something that we've touched on. So we've mentioned like, little snippets or little pieces and previous conversations about kind of this idea of, there's a direct response marketing approach. There's a brand building marketing approach. And the truth is that they can both work, they can both drive results for your business. And Paul

and I will admit fully, you know, fully that we might skew a little bit more towards the direct response, you know, side of things we I come from a world where, you know, small business marketing where you got to spend $1, you got to prove that you're bringing back $1.50 $1.75 $2 in order to make that worth it. And I think sometimes what can happen in our space and what has happened in our space is people can sometimes be a little bit too myopic or a little bit too one, you know, one way of approaching this, where they think the brand will carry me through. If I make a cool brand, people are going to follow me, they're going to be interested in what I have to say, they're going to be interested in my properties,

and they're going to book them. And then they don't do any marketing to tie that in or advertising to tie in. They just show a picture and they just hope that's going to drive people to them. Many of the people that I would argue are so direct response focused, they don't realize that they have no brand, that no one actually can recall or remember anything about them, and they end up getting subpar results. So I think, take it to an extreme, both of these ideas can be potentially negative. Being overly brand focused and not being at all focused on direct response advertising or marketing can be bad. Being overly focused on direct response marketing

and advertising, which again is our sort of bias, and not thinking at all about the brand awareness piece of it can also be bad. So today we're gonna kind of beat up, I think some of these concepts and try to figure out how we can find the middle ground perhaps. So where we're getting a brand that people are recalling, remembering, they have affinity for, they like using,

and they enjoy, and they wanna stay and book again. That's what we were hoping for. But then also we layer that in with marketing, advertising, awareness, media, that will bring people, new people in the fold to check out what we have to offer and get them to stay for the first time. So we're gonna kind of go through some of these pieces. Feel free if you wanna take the first one here

about being too brand focused, then we'll kind of go from layer to layer here and pick apart and see what we find out. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I think it is. The downsides of being too brand focused are I think the obvious one and the one that probably where the disconnect comes for us a little bit, you focus a lot on the design. And again, we are not designers as well, but I think that's a big one. You focus on the design, you focus on your messaging, the copy, making sure that content is clear, and then it's representing that brand. The example that we all know and the one that we have in the outline here is escape to our

amazing properties instead of Myrtle Beach vacation rentals. That is something on the SEO side of things, it is kind of painful to be in that fight against too much of a brand focus versus too much of a direct response, just because we know how important the use of keywords are. And certainly I can understand when people want to paint a picture and give people that experience when they're on the site, but there are some things that, I mean, that's an obstacle that we have to try to overcome and figuring out, okay, if we can't optimize these spots we know will be good for the right keywords,

how can we let Google know? And how can we, you know, we should never be creating something for a search engine first to admit that. But at the same time, we have to use some of those best practices to make sure that they're in place there. So I think the other, going a little further, casting a wide net, not always landing with the right people. You're trying to get in front of 150,000 people,

not the 50,000 or the 5,000 people or the 500 people that are really going to be a fit for your business there. Some brand heavy VRMs are confusing to a guest. Where am I booking? I think we've done the, there are quite a few seaside vacation rentals, vacation homes across, kind of across the United States here in different markets. Where are they? You know, when you're really focused on there, sometimes they're not, we're not really focusing

on those individual areas that you're supporting and the communities, you know, kind of being a member of those communities. I think that's another important part Sometimes we're not really focusing on those individual areas that you're supporting and the communities. You know, kind of being a member of those communities, I think that's another important part of the business side of things here. So the other thing I think, and this is from personal experience of when you're working with a lot of the people who are heavily brand focused, is that they are going to be maybe a little slower to make some decision. They want to have the brand be the focus

to a point where some of the other messaging takes a little longer to create, or we have to make sure that we are in line with this property over here and this property over here, everything, you know, I think it just tends to slow down on the agency side as we're trying to work people through the process of creating a campaign or doing something like that.

It is, there's more of an investment in those decisions. So I love investment in the decision making, I think that's great, but again, as that direct response marketer, I wanna kinda go, go, go so I can get data coming in so I can make some more data driven decisions based on what we see coming in there. But dive into some of those a little further there

if you want to and where do some of those, where have you seen more of those happen to you and where have you seen those downsides occur? I think it's really interesting too to think about the stage that the company's at from like a growth perspective to compare how much brain awareness is needed and is necessary versus how much direct response is necessary. So I'll give an example. I think in our space,

if you were to go to the Four Seasons website and see a lot of brand messaging about how luxurious the stay is and how premium the properties are and so on and so forth, that would be a very logical thing I think for a brand like Four Seasons to do. Sure. Who already has built up the hospitality luxury awareness in a lot of people's minds. And sure, people today are hearing about four seasons For the first time, you know That's obviously occurring as people get older or they experience the property or something like that for you know

Again for the very first time but they're not probably gonna get the same response I would argue like necessarily if the four seasons was the only focus on trying to rank for a keyword like hotel, you know But I'm looking as an example right now just like understand where their logic and where their philosophy is. I did a search for four seasons first one that came up in auto suggest on Google was Maui and the homepage for the for the four seasons Maui page if you will on that just says Maui at YLA four seasons resort and it doesn't really have I would argue any like strong SEO intent on this

page other than like very brand navigational keyword intent. But that's the four seasons you know if you, if you're listening, you're probably, you could be, I mean, maybe if you are, please reach out. But you're probably not the Four Seasons, right? You probably don't have that level of brand awareness. So I think one thing that I think can occur is people try to emulate something very aspirationally. Like I want to be the Four Seasons or I want to be a brand that people are aware of that has this thing, but they're very small and no one knows about them yet. So it comes off, like you said,

very unclear because I'm looking at the brand. I don't really understand what it is for using all these like fancy words to describe it. But I would actually argue if I go back to Four Seasons example, when you come there to the page, like it's very obvious that they do have some I would argue, right? Some like SEO intent on this page. So like their title tag on their homepage is Maui luxury five star beach resort separator Four Seasonsi at YLAA. So it's like, obviously someone on the SEO team got a hold of the title tag, right? Now is that messaging reflective, like as you go and look at some of the individual, you know, content on the page, not really like their, you know, H1 tag, for example, is like experience elevated luxury Maui at

Maui's most glamorous beach resort, right? So that's like kind of a little bit of both boxes in a way, you know, that sort of thing. It's not just like, you know, like, some of these, some of the things that we struggle with that we've talked about before is like, just buzzwords, right? Basically, people just saying things that doesn't actually really mean anything. You know, like, I would argue maybe a good example, we've, we've talked about them before, on the on the podcast is

I'm a von Stein, where they have a little bit more of like a brand focus, I would say, I don't know anyone there haven't worked on anyone there. But it's their homepage title tag is Vacational Design for Groups, and then their subheading is Feature Award-winning, Design Unparalleled Service, and Your Favorite People. So it's like the subheading in my mind is more of the brand messaging,

the H1 is more of the SEO or like direct response intent. Oh, Vacational Design for Groups, I can understand that idea very quickly in my head, I don't need to like think about that a lot. And then if you go look at some of their subp pages, that's where they do more of their direct response work, the homepage is more brand focus. So that's what I think, broadly speaking, is the problem with people who are a little bit too brand focused is that they're often too brand focused

initially, when they first get going, they have this idea of building this company and building this brand, I want to look a certain way, I want people who book with me to have a certain feeling. And that's awesome. But I don't know if that always connects to the person seeing it for the first time, who has no idea what they're looking at. I think that's where a lot of those mistakes occur. Just to give one more example, I think we talked about this when we're doing the outline together. So we'll say through the recording, I would be a very bad marketer for Yeti coolers. Yeti coolers is, in my mind, pretty much solely brand marketing

focused. So if you look at Yeti's marketing, it's like people who do outdoorsy things use our products to do outdoorsy things But they never say anything about like the product benefits or features or they don't talk about things very much in their marketing and advertising So I'd be bad because if I was selling Yeti coolers, I would be like first of all It is good product which obviously helps in these scenarios Like you gotta have a good product that you're actually marketing or advertising But I would be talking about how it keeps your ice cool for X number of days and stuff like that. And they've done stuff like that before.

It's not they've never done any of those types of campaigns. But if you go look what they're doing today, it's like all brand, nothing about the product. In fact, you make the argument that like the Yeti product in a Yeti ad is like almost hard to see. Like you don't even initially see it at first when you're looking at the campaign. Cause it'll be a picture of someone like, you know,

flaying a fish on the back of a boat and there's you know, it's it's at sunset and it looks beautiful. And all this stuff looks awesome. You know, don't get me wrong. But I would not be good for them because I would be like, why are we not talking about the cooler? Like, we're selling the cooler, right? And it's like, no, you're not really selling the cooler. You're selling the idea that someone who buys the cooler is, in fact, someone who plays the fish on the back of their boat, you know,

and has this whole persona lifestyle about them. So, again, going back to like what the broader concept is here for vacation rentals, it's like, what is your property actually made for and focused on? And maybe you are more of a yeti cooler type of company or type of property where you're selling more of an idea, and that can work. Or maybe you're more of a, it's a beach house, there's 50,000 other beach houses in my market, and I got to figure out what gets people to click and book online. So that's, you know, going back to like our our thesis here of like trying to find the right, you know, middle ground, that's kind of where I learned thesis here of like trying to find the right middle ground.

That's kind of where I land there. Anything else there before we talk about the upsides maybe of being more brand focused? The one question I think, because you were just touching on it there is that if you were going to advise someone early on as they're building the business, would you say, should you be more brand focused early on

or should you be more direct response focused early on? And I would tend to say brand focused, but what do you think there? I think you've got to have some semblance of a brand because I think being memorable is so important in our industry in our space So if you go but way back in the feed You'll have to go back and look at the review we did of naming like both the company and then naming You know naming like the properties maybe that you manage So I've changed my opinion on that a little bit my career, like if you would ask me that in 2015, I

would say no, I would I would kill to own, you know, to give an example of my local market, I would kill to own Myrtle Beach vacation rentals calm. I mean, that's an actual company. But just like pretend that was available, right? I'd be like, that's the way like, right? Number one in Google will be so easy. We'll get all the traffic and we'll go from there. I've changed my tune a little bit to now where it's like, No, I think I'd rather own something that's like the example, the fictional example I give on the show was like

Conrad school cabins, right? He feels like a brand now that I would be more interested in building or working on. Because I think that's what it could be. It could be a brand of Conrad's. I mean, it's not really a good name. But it's the point that it's just, you know, roll with me for a second. You know, I would be more interested in doing that than let's say I did that in North Carolina somewhere than owning Maggie Valley Cabins.com or something like that. That would not be as appealing to me now as it would be five or six years ago because I've realized and I've seen clients that we've

worked with that have this brand awareness, how much of a pull it is and how honestly much better it is to understand where your demand is actually coming from. So I think you've got to have some semblance of brand thought put in early on. even if you're going to focus most of your advertising and marketing efforts early on in direct response, I don't think you want to do it in a very generic way. I think that's what some people can do if they get too focused on direct response and they ignore the fact that we're trying to build something that people recall and remember. And no one remembers, you know, ashton ll cabins.com no one remembers myrtle beach vacationals.com no one

remembers these things. In fact, companies, if anything, you feel like are going away from this idea. Now, all the new startups are not trying to do like diapers calm back in the calm boom They're trying to be like no I am you know, whatever like chewy like chewy is a concept not based on like pet food calm It's based on this concept of everything you need for your pet and then we're gonna build a brand where it is some SEO and other Marketing layers on top of it. So yeah, that's your question I would say I would fundamentally build it a little bit with brands at the beginning. And then I would apply a lot of direct response marketing techniques to my brand to try to make it more well known and make

it more, more successful. How about you? How would you pressure? I think that's where I, I would tend to having seen a lot of these companies who are just trying to start off in the space, it's interesting to see how they kind of try to put the brand together and try to get it out there. I think the, you know, kind of what we'll talk about on one of the upsides, the companies who have really put a focus on getting, putting a brand out there on social media and then growing through there and then kind of transition into the direct response from there, I think those are the ones that have been the most effective because they do.

Again, we're gonna kind of tick off some of these bullet points for the upsides of being brand focused. They have, they found their tribe. They found their 5,000 followers or their 15,000 followers in the first five months, 10 months, something like that. And that helps them to, I would say, again,

the companies that have been most effective in doing this, they've used what they've gotten back from the social. They talk about how they've communicated with these people through Instagram, through TikTok, through things like that, and use that to help build their business in a more effective way. So I think it's, again, if you need, if you need a little bit of direction,

you don't maybe have the brand as in tune as you want to, I think kind of going that route and trying to build that brand with the help of crowdsource for lack of a better term there, I think that can help you. I think everybody's ready for the direct response at a different time. So like when you're ready to grow and scale the company, I think that's where you have to transition.

It's just a matter of is that year one, year three, month six, where is that? And I think that's depending on a variety of different factors, that's a spot that everybody gets to at some point there. But yeah, I would say brand is where I would focus initially, even though admittedly I'm not the branding guy there, but I know that those who have put that foundation in

have been more successful down the road there. Yeah. Well, I think that's part of it too. Like I gave some examples. I have one example in my notes here about Live Oak Lake, just because that came up again in my feed recently, Isaac. And I know he's not involved in that project anymore. I think he sold it. But it was like there was no pre existing data. We talked about this before in the podcast that would indicate that Waco Texas was a good market for

traditional vacation rentals, right? Right. Like, because you bought a property Waco and put it on Airbnb and got some level bookings, of course, but like, he essentially built something new from scratch and then built it in a way that was very appealing from a brand growth perspective. So I'm going to build these properties that look nice, they photograph well, they video well, I'm going to put that out there on social Instagram in particular, I think it was like his biggest channel of awareness. And then people who see it will want to stay that was kind of like his thesis nailed it, he nailed it. That was completely correct. He was proven to be correct. And that continues to be successful from what I can tell from afar, you know, looking at it. So that's awesome. But I don't think that's

most people in most markets in most of the situations that you and I deal with most of the time, right. So I don't think that it's necessarily something where you can say, ah, person ABC was successful on Instagram, building it mostly through awareness there, I can do the same thing. Maybe like maybe what you want to do, though, is find a middle ground where it's like, I can put some of my properties on Instagram, there's demand for people looking at vacation rental properties on

Instagram. That's a fair assessment, I think of the situation where we stand today. But can that be the only growth channel if you have 25 condos and that's all you have? I don't think so, because I don't think that, you know, being brand focused in my mind too is also being like a little visionary or a little bit like of a tastemaker, if you will, where people consume what you're posting and they go, that looks amazing. I want to watch this. I want to consume this, you know, one, two, three minute video about your destination, about your properties, that sort of thing. And I think a lot of people will fall into that,

not actually having the right ingredients for that. They're drag racing on to civic, if you will. And the car next to them is a Ferrari. And it's like people are looking at Ferrari, not the Honda Civic, basically. And I think that's a challenging spot to be in. So to focus on the upsides, though, for a second. And well, if you want to add anything else there, go ahead. But otherwise, upsides. I was just gonna say there are Instagram specifically, there are a lot of people in this space who have experienced a lot of success with Instagram. And there's a lot of loud voices who have seen that.

But I think it is it's about the market. It's about a whole lot of other factors. It's not just Instagram isn't the answer for building the brand there. And I think in some corners of our space, we have, we've gotten into that point of Instagram is the answer, or Google My Business is the answer, things, things like that. So they could be as part of the overall flow here as part of the you know, we asked, what do you what do you marketing, I think is what

it comes down to. And I think like, if you sit in our seat, we sit in a different seat than a company builder in the sense of like, right, we've seen, we've been exposed to a lot of different types of companies, a lot of different types of approaches. And I think the cool part about what you and I've done over the years is that we've seen actually people that have taken opposite approaches and they both but successful. So there are people who have never opened an Instagram account and who are getting 60, 70% direct bookings.

They're getting millions of dollars a year in revenue from their, from their properties they have. And that's cool too. Like that's fine too. There are people who gosh, without Instagram, live Oak Lake would have never, you know, seen a successful perhaps that level of success as far as occupancy demand, and so on and so forth. Awesome. Those are both the correct answer, right? Depending on what you actually are offering and what that thing's there. So to fold it into

upside, then really quickly, again, growth through Instagram, attracting people possible guests, maybe be easier if you're the put a thing that I put in our notes here is striking a chord with your target persona. So if you know, people really want a pet friendly getaway in insert market here, the Virginia Shenandoah Valley area, and all the other properties that are kind of pet friendly, but not really, and you go make the most pet friendly awesome getaway with a fence and yard and all these other additional things. And then you create an Instagram account around that and create people who are like showing pets running through this field of you know, perfectly manicure grass and it looks awesome. You're gonna attract people

that are like that looks awesome. I want to do my pet that looks fantastic. Right? There's a lot there. These whole like viral backyard Airbnb accounts that you see. Those are obviously striking for people because people post them and they go, that's amazing. Look, there's all these toys and things like that in the backyard. My kids would love it. Cool. Again, those are both the right answer. You know, it's not right or wrong. I think it's like we said earlier, right? Finding your

tribe can be easier. The word I put in my notes was a poll. People have a poll where they're like interested in that brand, they're interested in what they're posting, they're interested in what they're talking about what they're what they're showing. And they just they find it's like a magnet, they find themselves drawn into it, where they want to check it out and see what's going on. And that creates this off platform demand, people see it on Instagram, and they go search it on Google, and they try to find it that way. And

they look for it through that means or that methodology. So I think that's very valuable asset or tool to have a being brand focused is that you're not competing on price as much at that point. You're competing not even really on value. You're competing on just desire. Like I just want to check this out. This looks appealing to me and my family. I want to go book his place and see what it's all about, that sort of thing. And then finally, I would say, yeah,

carving out your own niche or niche. I don't know how you say it. I think I say niche. So if you're trying to build something brand new, you don't want to rely on copy and pasting the direct marketing strategy from someone else who isn't playing the same game as you, right? If I go copy the strategy that this company used

and my company is something different, it might fail. Whereas if I go and build a brand and I draw people to me, they see what I have to offer, they're going to be, they're going to see some benefit from that and my company is going to grow because of it. That's how I think about that. I think that's, that's the, I mean that, that pull is, and I think the also not just the pull of the brand, but I think those brands that have built up more than just the name, it's the company, the values, everything like that. And it is a lot of times they're going to bring people in through means that aren't necessarily the hospitality, the accommodation related. There are just some other roundabout

ways to get people in because you are tying them in with the tribe, tying them in to be a little closer, maybe to things to do in the air. It's not just about traveling to your accommodations. It's your location, your market and all those all those other things there. Obviously, you're not making your market, your brand, but it's a part of your brand. So it's definitely got to be part of that pull there. But I can I can jump right back into the downsides of these Monday negatives, I can I can do this, but let's do the downsides of being too direct

response to performance only focused. I would say these are things that happened to me quite a bit. Sometimes when we're too numbers driven, that can be a bad thing. I think it's because it's part of its expectation setting. Part of it is just being able to tell the anecdotal story with the numbers as well. It's qualitative with the quantitative. But when you are two numbers driven, when those numbers change in a very rapid way

or something like that, or you're reviewing them in a very frequent cadence, weekly as opposed to monthly or something like that. It is. You maybe will force yourself into making some bad decisions because you are too into the numbers and you think, oh, if I have the right machinations here, I can pull the right switches and make something good happen. It's something that we all want to prove out that ROI, whatever that looks like. But at a certain time, it's, OK, let's take a look back

and actually look at what's contributing to those numbers. And sometimes it is. When we're so focused on the analytics side, we forget to look at the landing page or the website or any of these other factors that are certainly playing a role in how people are interacting with your brand there. So we can get too into the numbers and go down that rabbit hole and just make some, either make some poor decisions, make some untimely decisions. Maybe you make a decision to turn off ads. Oh my goodness, please don't ever do that. But that sometimes if the ROI isn't there,

if the ROAS isn't there, that is something that those numbers driven people are gonna look for another thing to turn on to get the numbers to look better there. And on the other side, investing in the future. I think when you've got a brand plan, you've got a brand strategy, it's usually not like a three month strategy.

It's a year long, three year long, five year long, 10 year long. You have all those built in in some way. You may be thinking that you're going to do run specific campaigns and direct response marketing over that same time period. But the reality is that you're not going to, I mean, we don't know how Google is going to change, how Facebook is going to change, how different segments are going to change, how travel audiences are going to change, whether we're even going to be able to use specific campaign types or audience types. I mean, I sent you something a couple of weeks ago that Facebook is once again going to try

to restrict us and what we can do on the advertising side with housing, employment, and credit. So I think that we get short-sighted in thinking about when is the next campaign going to run? When we get to the end of the month, when is this ... Okay, we spent $500 this month. How is the $600 we spend next month going to perform? So it's difficult to get that futuristic thinking in there. And then, yeah, sometimes the direct bookings are bad coming from this, where when we can look in Google Analytics and we see all these bookings coming in on the direct side of things,

or they're all coming in through this channel, or they're all going in this channel, or do you have true control over your revenue, kind of that long-term control over the revenue? So I think those are the easy ones, the clear ones there, but do you have anything to add there? No, no, I think those are the easy ones, the clear ones there, but do you have anything to add there? No, I think those are the correct ones to pick at. And I think that ultimately it's like you've got to find,

you know, we've said this few times now, right? But you got to find, you know, kind of what those right numbers are for you in your business. Like there are some people who have higher commissions than other people. So going back to the ROAS conversation for a second, you can be so focused on the numbers that you miss the forest of the trees. And you don't realize that like, you're driving a lot of demand outside of that that's happened

to us recently with clients where, you know, they're, they look at it and they go, Oh, well, this month, we only got a 5.5 to one, we need at least a six to one, let's just turn off all the ads. And they sort of throw the baby out with the bathwater not realizing that a lot of other demand is coming from that. So yeah, I think it's it's understanding kind of where the numbers fit into your overall business, it's got to make sense. I always say that, you know, with client relationships, we

talked about this before, I say win, win, and it's not like a tagline, like really mean, it's gonna make sense for you. And it's gonna make sense for me. But that also means like, that whole dynamic needs to exist throughout the relationship. Like, if you start taking the edge of my team, and you know, being a bad fit for working with us, then we don't want to work with you. And vice versa, you know, like, if you're feeling like you're not getting ROAS, like, please leave, like, you know, if you're not happy, then, you know, being a bad fit for working with us, then we don't want to work with you. And vice versa, you know, like if you're feeling like you're not getting a ROAS, like

please leave like, you know, if you're not happy, then you know, I don't mean this in a bad way. But like, I encourage you to not if you're not happy with us to move on and find something else. I want to work with clients, I want to work with us that sort of thing. Right? I think that same logic can apply with like, people that are very, you know, like overly Airbnb reliant, I think they can fall in this camp a little bit where they're like, well, Airbnb performs well, therefore,

that's all I need. Well, does Airbnb fill every single property, first of all, like to your satisfaction at the rates you want, like there's so many factors in that discussion that I think people just skip over it. And they just look at this low customer quote unquote, low customer acquisition cost, not realizing that the guest is paying, you know, 10, 12 13% of acquisition cost, and they're sort of fronting it. So you go, Oh, well, I didn't pay that I never saw it. So therefore it

didn't exist. Well, it existed, like it just because it didn't pass through your hands doesn't mean it's not real, like, is real money that the guests would have paid for their vacation that did pay for their vacation that you didn't capture you didn't get. So to just like write it off as nothing is folly, like it doesn't mean that you can't, you may say like, I can't do better than that. That's I'm okay. Like with you making that conclusion, I don't think it's true. But I'm okay with that conclusion. But to say like, it's not real, I think something sometimes happens for these people that are like, very performance, very direct response driven, and they don't see the forest of trees, they don't see what the next month is going to look like, and so on and so forth. And I think that could be that can be problematic. So yeah. Alright, so I get the I get the red meat here at the upside. Our last section here is being the upsides of being very, I would say like performance and direct response driven. You don't waste, right? Like money clicks attention. I think if you have this mindset, you look at a homepage that's poorly optimized and it sort of sticks in your,

it's like a pebble in your shoe. It just really, you really hate it when you see stuff inside your company that's not working well and you wanna work hard to fix it. And I think that's actually a really, really positive attribute to have in a company or like a leadership team is for them to look at something and be like, why are we doing this? Why? What is the net

effect of what we're spending in terms of time, cost, effort, energy people? And could we be doing something else that would potentially produce a better return? I think that exists a lot of these like, very numbers driven companies that sometimes doesn't exist in like, Oh, the vibes are good companies, you know, or, yeah, the bookings are bad, but like, it's fine. Well, you know, we'll figure out a way around it. It's like, no, what figures what usually solves that is like better advertising and marketing. That's like a good chunk of what solves it and better operations and better, you know, XYZ. So yeah, this idea of like not wasting is valuable to me. And I think that that is something where like, I tend to like to work with

companies that look at something and say, this waste of time, effort, energy, I'm not going to do it anymore. And I'm willing to admit when I'm wrong. I think that's also something that a lot of good data driven companies or performance or direct response companies do, is they look at something to go, okay, we did turn off those Facebook ads or those Google ads, and things went down the toilet. My bad, let's turn it back on. Like, that's not always the focus. Sometimes with the very branding focused companies, they look at something that's not working, and they don't always know how to solve it. I think that's one thing that I see as a pattern over and over again, is it's

not working, but they can't really articulate why it's not working. Or they go, well, it's not our fault, you know, the weather's bad, or, you know, it's the election or this or that, like, they have all these excuses. The data driven direct response person understands, like, yes, that's true. But like, are people not traveling? Like, is this okay, March 2020, people didn't travel. But other than that, like people are been traveling nonstop for the last five years, like throughout COVID. So that's not a valid reason anymore. So yeah, it comes to this idea of like, you're squeezing as much out of your traffic as you can. So it's pretty hard to fail. I think if

you're looking at the numbers frequently, you're focused on direct response, advertising, marketing, you're putting a dollar in, you're getting $5 back, like if you're diligent, and you're focused, I think these are the people that I see be more successful over the long term, because they're thoughtful about how do I make sure that I'm continually growing or improving my margins, improving my guest experience, improving my homeowner experience, all these kinds of mindsets, I think often come from that idea of being, you know, again, numbers driven or direct response

driven in that way. And I think, yeah, generally speaking, people in this bucket, we kind of spoke about it before in the negative side, but in this side of it, I think it's better to make a decision quickly. If you look at data, you know, it's, it's some people that I work with are very corporate, and they refuse to approve additional budgets, even when that budget is performing very well. Like I have to go to a client and I should think she listens, actually, she might even know who I'm talking about here. It's like, budgets are set, those are the budgets, we're not changing them no matter what. And it's like, but if I spent another thousand dollars, like you could potentially get a lot more bookings. The answer is no. So I think that that can happen inside of like large corporate brand

organizations. That doesn't often happen with small business where I'm like, Hey, client ABC, I'm spending this amount of money. We're getting this kind of demand back out of it. Could I spend more if the results are relatively similar? And they're like, Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, like, that's kind of like, direct response mindset. When you got something, you work it as hard as you can, as long as you can, until maybe it falls apart at the end. So those are kind of some of my thoughts on the backside of what it's like

to potentially be, you know, the upsides of the positives of being very direct and responsible, performance marketing focused, excuse me. Anything else you want to add in there? I think when you are more direct performance role focused, it's really a matter of the, I think there's more opportunity to grow at a potentially faster, higher rate because you're aware of the growth opportunities. I think maybe it's a thing that you're not focused on the growth opportunities on the

brand. You're going to grow that a different way, but there are usually some clear opportunities in the indirect response market. It is whether it's improving the amount of impressions you're getting, search impression share, number of clicks, there are things that can be manipulated. So I do, I think that when you are focused there, there isn't the opportunity to open up,

hey, let's invest $5,000 more here, let's invest $10,000 more here and truly see it as an investment, not just I'm gonna throw money away. My final point, and they is kind of bring this upside, not necessarily the downside of the branding, but that wasted money is a real thing when you're doing some branding thing.

And I don't want to say it's a waste because I'm sure there is some intrinsic value there. And I just don't maybe get that much. But boy, when I can see this number, the number of clicks, the number of the exact amount of money that I've spent and I can see follow the path through. I mean, that's the other thing is we have really great visibility when we're doing this direct response marketing into how that is actually performing. So being able to follow that click all the way through, being able to follow that dollar all the way through the process. You're not going to do that on the brand side of things.

If that's something you feel like you want to have more control, just a consideration to make when you're looking at the types of campaigns that you're running there. Yeah. Well, one joke I always make, Paul, with clients is I give a lot of it depends answers. I call these lawyer answers because if you ask a lawyer any question, their first response is, well, it depends on... and I've dealt with lawyers a little bit over the years. And that's always what they say. And so the question of should you be more brand focused? Should you be more direct response focus? We get out some people this episode to kind of

hear some expanded thoughts. But you know, the answer is Paul, it depends, you know, it depends on what you're trying to achieve. It depends on what types of properties you're marketing, it depends on what your budget is, it depends on what your cost structure is, it depends on what your goals are, so many things it depends on. But it's a good way, I think, to realize, am I tilting myself too far in one direction and getting myself in a bad spot here? Am I tilting myself too far in another direction, getting myself in a bad spot here? And I think that's a healthy way for people to think about their companies or like their approach to marketing, branding,

advertising, all these pieces, and understand if you're playing the game the way you want to, maybe you should stop doing certain things and do more of other things and vice versa. So that's a decent way to think about it. One thing that people should be doing a lot more of, Paul, by the way, is leaving us a review of our podcast. So we've got all these downloads. We see the analytics, 10,000 plus downloads about to cross, you know, for us recently here, which we're super excited about. Excellent. Now, I don't know if people make it all the way at the end.

Maybe that's the trouble is that they don't. That's probably that. We got to start giving the plug in the front. That's it. We should. All right, that's going to be our next intro. We're going to ask for a plug. All right. But all the way at the end here, if you made it all the way to the end, you're an awesome listener. You deserve a cookie.

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