Heads In Beds Show - How To Adapt When New Homeowner Marketing Channels Open: The Secret Triangle (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

In this episode Conrad and Paul break down "The Secret Triangle" of Dan Kennedy's book - The Ultimate Marketing Plan and explain how each of those three corners apply to the homeowner marketing side of any vacation rental business.Part II of a two-part series - go back 1 episode to see part I with guest marketing.Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101The Ultimate Marketing Plan: Target Your Audience! Get Out Your Message! Build Your Brand!🔗 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. Hey there, Conrad here. We thought we would do something a little bit different. We actually ended up splitting this one into two parts. So last week we talked all about the guest marketing side of this equation. And then this week we're talking all about the homeowner marketing side. So this was kind of one continuous conversation, but it ended up super long. So we ended up chopping

it into two bits to make it a little bit easier for you, the listener to get through. So we're going to go ahead and roll part two of this interview, which is all about the homeowner marketing side of things, please enjoy. So let's turn the page over to the owner side of things. Yeah. If that's good for you, or, uh, we're probably, if you're listening, by the way, we probably cut this into part two. So welcome back, but yeah, let's go down that side of things.

So to recap, um, last episode, we talked a little bit about guest message, guest media, guest market, right? And that kind of mapped out to property unit, marketing channel, you know, that could be OTA, and then guest demand or guest desire. So we've kind of got some of the same types of things here. But maybe Paul, walk us through this idea, this triangle as it relates to owners, and then we kind of dive into some of these specifics.

Yeah, I think that certainly, you know, going, we'll start kind of in the same fashion there, looking at the message. I think it is, that's something on the owner side, I think becomes even more important because what we've talked about so often before is, how do you differentiate yourself? That message becomes your brand, your USP.

How are you holding true to that? I just did a little rant on it a few minutes ago there, eat yourself, that message becomes your brand, your USP, how are you holding true to that? Just a little rant on a few minutes ago there. But I think that that's something that when you are really trying to distance yourself from in a competitive market, let's say 30 to 50 professional property managers, what is actually going to help you stand out? What is that foundational piece of your business that you are the best at or you're nearly the best at? Are you the best at housekeeping? Are you the best at laundry? Are you the best at, you know,

what does it actually look like? Maintenance, you know, on time maintenance, 24 seven maintenance. What is it that actually helps you stand out? And as I say all those things, doesn't it sound like those are fake USBs out there that we've all seen those sadly enough, on the landing pages, I help create some I think there's a difference between someone putting that up there. And again, everybody kind of can say that.

And actually being able to when someone calls you out on the conversation about, hey, able to when someone calls you out on the conversation about, hey, on your landing page, I saw you had X, Y, and Z. What does that look like? How does this, how does that 24 7 support actually look if one of the guests that's staying at my property needs this? That is something that you need to be very concrete with your brand and your USP. I think you can be fluffy on the guest side. I think you can kind of go with the flow a little bit, Thorin. You can feel free to correct me. But once you say something from an owner perspective, you have to deliver it on the guest side too. That's not to say that you don't have to deliver, but you truly have to deliver that expectation when you have set that out as what's what helps you stand out from your competitors. If you're leveraging

that conversation when you're selling to these owners, because that's what you're doing when you're marketing to these owners, you need to make sure that you're delivering on that because based on the longer sales cycle of it all, in most cases, based on the fact that a lot of the marketing has a lot more life to it, a lot more longevity to it. You can't compromise on that foundation that is that message, that is that brand that certainly should be that USP that helps you stand out from the rest. But what do you see that, how do you feel about that fluffiness versus the concrete messaging on the owner side guest side, but what does that look like for you?

Yeah, so I think you nailed it. I think the brand and USP is kind of part of that owner messaging, which is more akin to kind of this, you know, original idea again, and we've talked about this at length before, and you highlighted it well there, is that many, many messages are not credible, they're not believable. Right? Right. So, you know, I said in our notes here, I said there's a lot of fake USBs out there, right? So there's a lot of USBs that sound good on paper, or they sound good on landing page, or they, I mean, I guess paper in some cases, right, like a postcard that they get in the mail. Yeah. But if the if the person receiving that doesn't believe it, then, you know, the words are sort of meaningless, right? We can say that we deliver the best revenue and like you said the best service, you know that reminded me of I don't If you've seen this joke before where it's like anytime there's anyone

Online who has a lot of fans and the little like let's say it's a man, you know responding to a beautiful woman You know and trying to you know I would love to take you out for dinner sometime or something like that And if it's on like a public forum like Instagram or something something, guys will go behind the comments and be like, thanks Paul for letting me borrow your Lamborghini the other day. That was so nice. Or thanks Paul for saving my, you know, donating your blood so my kid could, you know, go and, you know, be careful with cancer. And the point is that like, it's a collection of things that are absolutely ridiculous. Like no person has Lamborghini and donates to get time for kids

and does all these things. But we laugh because it's this ridiculous idea that there's this perfect person out there, right? And the person maybe seeing it would see those examples of this person being amazing and they'd be drawn to it. So it's a silly example. My point is, on your landing page, if you put, we are gonna get you the most revenue. We're gonna deliver you the best 24 seven service

at all times of the day with amazingly competent people and professionals. We're gonna have the best inspections. There's never gonna be damage in the property. We're going to blah, you know, we're going to have the best inspections, there's never going to be damage in the property, we're going to, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, right, all these USPs. I think at some point, it becomes like that type of thing. It's like a guy making a dating profile, and he's got a Lamborghini, and he's got, you know, he's six foot four, of course, and he's perfectly tan, there's not a pimple on his face. At some point, you're just like, this is a bot, like, this is not a real profile, right? Like, I wonder if the owner might think the same thing, you know, they just

toss in the garbage, right? When they get that postcard doesn't make any sense to me. So when it comes to owner messaging, I think it's actually sticking to like one lane and actually trying to master that one lane, right? And, you know, one thing that we've talked about at length on the owner marketing side previously and messaging in general is that sometimes

the actual owners you have today may be better salespeople than, you know, you might be, right? Of course you're going to say awesome things about your own company. But when the owner says like, I tried for their property managers, and then I tried Conrad's cool cabinet rentals, you know, and they're the ones that actually delivered for me, that may is cool, could go a long way, even though it's not even making any claim, by the

way. But there's so much that we can, there's so much we can tie together when we hear that phrase. So if someone said, I tried four other blah, blah, blah brands of toothpaste, and they all left me with cavities and problems. And then I tried crest toothpaste and all those problems went away. It's like you don't even need to articulate any of the other reasons why because of the the mint this the chemical this the chemical that you go, oh, well, they tried four other ones in this one work like you believe that that's a more believable claim. So I think messaging the problem that a lot of people have with it is they just go straight into like chest pounding mode, so to speak, right? And, and it's, it's not believable on the homeowner side. People, I think, just tune it out. And I think that's the number one problem is that not how can I make a claim? Anyone can make a claim. How can I make my claim believable? What examples, what proof could I show? I think proof is the thing that we're missing, not the USP itself. The USP itself is relatively easy to come up with.

Hopefully the real challenge I think of the homeowner side, the owner messaging side is how do I prove that my USP is actually true? So I think on the revenue side, one example that comes to mind is that if you're marketing to a bunch of owners inside of a building, and you showed your actual direct booking revenue, or your revenue, I shouldn't even say direct booking, all your booking revenue for a two unit condo in that building, and it's the best in the building. That's good. That's proof, right? So saying I'm the best revenue manager, that's

that's a good idea for owner messaging, right? The way better idea is I took a two bedroom unit in this building, Mr. or Mrs. other owner in that building, mine did 84,000 last year. What did your two bedroom do? And they go, oh, well, mine only did 50,000. Boom, now you've built up some credibility, right? Now you've, and you show a screenshot

or some kind of proof, and of course, that has to be true, right? So I think that's the thing that people probably get wrong a lot on the messaging side of things is, you know, that believability of it. So that's my reaction to it. I think we've talked about this one, you know, before, so I don't know if we have a lot more to tie in there, but that I'll just close it up by saying a lot of people they do,

they've put so much focus on the guest side that they think is it's there's just less effort that's put in on that owner messaging it because it's it's should less effort that's put in on that owner messaging it because it's it's should fall in line with the guest side for the most part. Again, shouldn't be that different when we'll talk about that a little bit in the channels themselves in the media. But I think that you still have to put some of that focus into just focusing on that one item.

You're right. It doesn't have to be you don't have to be everything to everyone because if you're trying to be everything to everyone, you'll get owners that have very different, again, that are going to have very different desires, different, looking for different outcomes that you will not be able to deliver on. So yes, holding true and kind of sticking to that one,

two, three things that you're incredibly good at. And then again, bringing those into the media side of things. So finding the right marketing channels that aren't necessarily going to be the same channels that you're going to do on the guest side of things. But regardless of what channels you're using, I think it is it has to be that omni-channel approach. It's not just multi-channel just using all these different things, saying all these different things in different channels.

Because again, that's something I think we a lot of people fall into is putting all of this great content out here on all these channels saying completely different things. And it might not be the messaging itself in that channel might not be meeting the audience where they want to be, you know, in either the process and the sales funnel or just their persona of who you're actually targeting there. So I do. The my will say my chorus over the last three years has been, boy, it is really difficult to only target 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300 people just knowing how difficult it is to match the right channel there because I got to tell you, it's not easy to do on the Google side of things with

the from a pure search volume piece. It's not easy to do on the Facebook side of things because with such small audiences and again if you're only getting 50 people a month to your landing page for owners, it really takes some time to get that retargeting list to grow. So again, a lot of times when we were running marketing efforts, it was people anticipating a big surge right up front. And that just doesn't happen. I mean, for the first couple of months, it is, it's really about getting the right people to that page.

And again, driving that as in whatever fashion you can, whatever channel you can, whether that's direct mail, or making sure that you are, you're trying to reach these people, find these people. A lot of this data is available. I mean, you can find out from your county records, who is the homeowner, and kind of piece together some of this information.

There's a lot of great vendors out there that do the same thing. They're finding this data, building this data, finding these homeowner contact information so that you can reach them because that is that compelling piece still. People wanna see, I mean, people want to feel like, like you know their area, you know their home.

You can reach out, get down to that local level, send them that postcard and really put some compelling messaging in there. It still works. Now it doesn't work in every market, but it is something that is effective. And I tell you, I know Bacasa sends a lot of it because we've done that little survey of who sends it with all this direct mail and Bacasa still sends it. And we've talked about during that success and during that success episode,

they still do a good job of bringing some of these owners on. So you can't also come into the owner side of things with that preconceived notion of I'm going to do x, y, z channel because I know this is where those owners are. Yes, I will grant you that often the professionals that use LinkedIn, they are going to be the people who have the income to afford a second home or do something like that.

That makes sense. But again, you have to think of the platform that they're using there and are they really looking to engage with that type of ad, more of a, we'll say recreational side of things, maybe business driven, maybe investment driven, but are they really looking to focus in on that messaging through that channel? So again, very similar to what we talked about on the guest side, you just have to understand where you're trying to find those people at the different stages of the funnel,

certainly. It's hard to get people into the top of the funnel, certainly, you know, we, it's hard to keep, get people into the top of the funnel, but then re-engaging them and bringing them back in and retargeting those people. I think those are, those are some channels that they are universal. You should be doing that across the board, I would say, but I think become extra pivotal,

just working on the smaller volumes that we do on the owner side of things. And knowing that you're really, really good, you may be getting a thousand visitors a month. I love you, like, I mean, exceptional. You're paying for a lot of traffic. And I wouldn't say it's all that great traffic if you're getting that much traffic.

I do, I think maybe it's when you're looking at the different channels, it's bringing yourself down to a different level right away of I'm not working in the scale of thousand. Thinking that you're working in the scale of hundreds, yeah, you're going after 200 specific properties, 300 specific properties. You should be thinking about whether or not

they're a good fit for your brand, for your company and all those things. So what do you think about that on the media side of things and those marketing channels? Yeah, yeah. So again, I think you know, I think so last part, we talked at length, or we talked with some detail about, we should be somewhat neutral, or we should be somewhat

agnostic about what specific channel that we're using. And I think the reason for that is obvious, right? Because those channels are going to change over time on the guest marketing side. Now, in the owner marketing side of things, I would say the same thing is can be true, right? Now the difference is that here we're really limited, right? There is no marketplace, there's no button I can click where it's like, I'll pay whatever but give me a homeowner lead for, you know, the next property, you

know, owner that's looking to have his property manager in x, y, z location, maybe there's some folks working on that, you know, you may know some of them. So we'll see if that comes to fruition. If it does, I can imagine it's gonna be extremely valuable to have those leads coming in because the property managers desperately want them. We know that. But again, you know, even if someone gave you a lead,

you know, it doesn't guarantee success, right? Like there's no promise of success at all. And I know during your time, you know, working on these projects in the past, you had been at times frustratingly, you know, angry with the fact that they actually, so many people get leads by the way and they blow them. Maybe that's the sales discussion. That's different than what we're talking about today with

respect to, again, message media market, that kind of going back to the beginning there. But no, I disagree. Or excuse me, I agree with everything you're saying so far. I think that those the small targets are, I guess, really a blessing and a curse, I guess a blessing, because we know exactly what we're going after. So it's not with guests where it's like, hey, we'll take it in the middle book, we need a lot of bookings every year, it feels like it's a lot more, you know, feasible to go out there and kind of cast a very wide net with respect to guest marketing. And then for homeowner

marketing, it's almost like we got to flip on kind of a little bit of different lens, like, okay, these are the 300 properties we want, you know, that sort of thing. I'll skip ahead a little bit because again, let's go to market. We talked last part all about guest demand, guest desires, right? So like, I want a stay that's peaceful, that's serene, that has these sort of things in it. And I can get that or I can see that happening from a property once I see it, right? Like, so the example that we gave last part was like, an Instagram reel going viral is a good indication

of what people demand or desire because it goes viral because people are clicking on it, liking it, sharing it, oh, I would love to stay here, that sort of thing. On the homeowner side, they don't really make their desires as well known, right? And that's why, again, we beat this one up quite a bit, but the idea of revenue. So if you're leading with marketing with revenue, it's a natural assumption that people who have a vacation or property want to get a lot of revenue out of it, right? They probably spend a lot of money and time and effort and energy to acquire that property so they want revenue. But that may not be what they actually desire or demand initially or first.

What if their current property manager drives a ton of revenue for them, but they're horrible at property maintenance and care? So they go into that property as the homeowner, right? And they say, well, I can tell they're booking it a lot. Like you could almost take a positive and turn it into a negative if you position that sort of, if you position against the owner desire or demand

incorrectly, you take something that may seem like a good thing and turns into a bad thing. Right? Like, ah, man, like that's that's, you know, I can tell they're booking it like crazy, because these walls are beat up, there's all these, you know, scratches and dings and dents in them. All these pots and pans are left behind, you know, they were in good shape, you know, when I had them here last time we were here a few months ago, they're in good shape. Now all the Teflon scraped off the bottom, I don't know, don't eat Teflon kids. But um, it's one of those things, right? Like you you if you're not tapping into the correct demand or desire with your messaging and where your marketing so if it's I'm saying this in a direct mail piece, I'm getting it to the right person going back to the first two legs of the triangle for homeowner here. But then it says what I don't really care about, right? It doesn't really matter to me or doesn't bother me like you're talking about

revenue and revenue like it's fine. Like I know it'll book, you know, it's a good property, that sort of thing. Then you're landing, you know, you're going to not succeed, right? You've got to kind of have all three of these pieces of triangle, you know, in place for it to work well. So do you actually know your owner demands or desires? Like it may be revenue, but it may not be. It could be property maintenance. It could be property, you know, upkeep. It could be security. You know, are you, are you vetting and carefully checking all the guests that come through? It could be inspections. It could be safety or, you know, limiting damage, that sort

of thing. There was a LinkedIn post today. I think Eric had something but I think also Justin had something about fire extinguishers recently. And someone, I think it was I think it was Justin Gordon that had, he was talking about the fact that someone messages him once a day or something like that. And they were saying that when they put put, you know, fire extinguishers in the property, they get, you know, it's not used that often. But when it is, it might save the property from being damaged or something like that. Right. So that's interesting, by the way, Justin Ford, sorry. But my mistake there. But anyways, I think that's that's one of the examples right of like, that if they imagine there was a fire in the last property manager had a small fire, maybe it wasn't

horrible. Maybe like no significant property damage occurred. They were able to, you know, and then one of the things that you talked about in your homeowner, you know, postcard that you sent out, you're getting it to the right person. They see a postcard in it was, we have a 34 point safety check and we install carbon monoxide detectors, smoke detectors, and fire extinguishers in every single vacation property.

Let's say that was on your landing page. One owner might be like, oh my God, they actually care about, you know, the integrity and the safety of my property. Let me reach out to these people and have a conversation with them, right? That may be what they actually desire or care about. So the trouble is at times, let's be honest, when you're marketing to a small audience, you may have to try a bond, you know, messaging to kind of find what is

landing. And I think that's why to your point, it's so hard to see results when you're marketing to 300 people, whether it is online, whether it is, you know, through Facebook or Instagram or something like that, or whether it is through direct mail, it doesn't matter. Again, let's be channel agnostic for a second. But if you put something in front of someone, and let's assume it's the right person, and they don't respond to it like at all, like your click through rates are sub half of 1%, you know, and it's just kind of washing over them, you know, two things might be true, they might be happy where they are, they don't really see a need to change or swap or switch, right? They may be like, Oh, that sounds like a pain,

right? Like, what's my benefit there? Which is why I think you've seen, you know, we complimented Vakasa on their owner acquisition strategies before. They used to have sign-on bonuses. I don't know if they're doing those before, but I know at one point they had things where it's like, we'll give you $5,000 after your first year of listing with us.

We'll take $5,000 and give it back to you. And I think that's such an interesting, compelling idea, right, of like, well, that kind of gets you off your, maybe seed a little bit, you know, if you were considering swapping anyways, or you weren't perfectly happy. And then I see something in my inbox that's like, well, that kind of gets you off your maybe seed a little bit, you know, if you were considering swapping anyways, or you weren't perfectly happy. And then I see something in my inbox, that's like, I'll give you $5,000 if you change your property from them to us, that you know, I don't know they're doing at the moment, but it's an idea of testing a different kind of message through direct mail to try to tap into my desires, right. So it kind of ties all these pieces together. So yeah, feel free to kind of beat those up a little bit. But I think that's the one thing that's really, really hard to figure out. Because you've got to have a lot of deep, detailed conversations with homeowners to understand what their struggles actually are. Then that's the key right there is that if you're actually talking to these homeowners,

then you do you get the brutes on the ground, whether you're talking to them in Facebook groups, or you're literally having conversations with them. I think that's, that is important and actually understanding those demands and desires because I do I mean, it's it's kind of interesting, a couple of couples little anecdotes there. But we had a couple of people not even just one because a couple people tried to sign on for themselves of, hey, I'm going to do a $5,000 if you don't have a booking in the first 30 days or something like if you're putting some of those qualifications on there at the very least, but putting that signing

bonus on it. And it was funny because we put it on a pop up for a couple of these people get just to just to give it a little extra pop little extra spice there. And being able to watch those clarity sessions on when someone had kind of avoided that when someone had seen the pop up ones versus when someone hadn't and when someone had seen more of a vanilla messaging versus when someone had seen more of that compelling offer, the vanilla messaging had more conversions coming through. And again, it was, that was, it didn't give us a perfect blueprint of what the desire was at that point. But for most of the people who engage with that specific offer, it wasn't money. We could kind of put two and two together and say that that's it. And I do, I think that specific offer, it wasn't money. We could kind of put two and two together

and say that that's it. And I do, I think that's where, because we are going after those small subsets, being able to use a Facebook dynamic ads and doing that some of that dynamic creative. Now, I don't necessarily know what really compels Facebook to serve up this headline with this primary text with this image.

I can just kind of make those assumptions. But that stuff is behind the scenes. And it was always intriguing to take a look at that reporting and see by dynamic element, okay, this book more, you know, make more increase your booking revenue was more effective than just check your ROI calculator, see how much get your customer ROI report and just really trying to understand what is this compelling messaging, trying to match those owner demands and owner desires, because again, they are going to be so far reaching for different people that on paper, maybe have the same profile, they you know, they make the same amount, they

are in the same industries, they're this and that. But we know the cycle, the psycho graphics above that are really better drivers of marketing performance and those, those outcomes that we're looking for there. So that's where something that we always wanted to keep in mind because of the micro level at which we're doing this. How do we really understand that, that those owners demands and owner desires desires because again, once you get into some of those features and benefits that everybody has, it feels cookie cutter. It feels like, oh, they have that and they have that

and they have that. I mean, I can remember another conversation with the property manager. He's like, all my owners are angry because we're down year over year. I looked at his landing page and it says, will increase your euro, we are the top performers on the ROI side. And you're screaming and at them that ROI is what you're all about. Yeah, that's what you're having to answer to. So again, you've created that owner

demand and the owner desire in this case a little bit by how we've messaged and how we've done these things. So yeah, when you have to deliver on those goods, if you're not delivering on that owner demand that you've created, because I think that's another side of it is that we can create that owner demand by understanding those desires. But again, getting into that finish line and understanding, okay, now I've promised this now I've actually set this expectation, how am I going to deliver it? And and yeah, I think that that's, that's something that I think I harp on that probably a little too much. But it's because I have seen it. And

I've seen people just say these very broad and general statements and not be able to back them up. And then when they have to have a conversation, again, the benefit of having all that data behind the scenes, I can hear the phone call, I can see the landing page experience that led to that individual. I mean, we can connect the dots pretty well here. So where was it actually let down? And I do I think that more often than not it is it's it's not understanding those demands desires. And if you are communicating with the owners and not pre establishing those demands and kind of creating your features and benefits around that. Yeah, I think that that's something that it kind of makes sense.

It's logical, but it doesn't always connect with some people. So jump on that just a little more and talk about, you know, trying to automate more things into that and maybe kind of toss that over to you because that's one thing we didn't talk about as much on the guest side, but I still think automation, you know, whether it's a friend or a foe for us, I think it is that that's something where people don't want the quick response. Owners don't want the quick response. Owners don't want the quick response. They want the right response. So kind of being able to help people replace, I mean, can AI replace that understanding? Can it replace that psychographic knowledge that

we have? Can it understand bi-dynamic creative element? Can it go down that same path? What does that look like? I've talked for a little while here. What are your thoughts on all that? Well, this is this is your part. You're the man I talked a lot last last time. So yeah, by the way, of course, dog barking the background too, during this. But um, yeah, what I would say is, are you are you telling them what is true? You know, what you believe your company actually does and what it stands for,

etc. Again, are you saying that message? because, you know, you really, you know, can show or give lots of examples of here's how we turn this two bedroom and make it make 80,000 when everybody else makes 60,000. Like that's that's that's an itch that could you could scratch very well. Or are you telling them what you think they want to hear? Right. I think that goes back to it's tapping into those desires. If you understand them and you hit on revenue and you say, well, if I say revenue, I'll get homeowners, right. Good, good. Like that's happy.

I'm happy with that. But if it's not, if you can actually deliver to your point, Paul, then you have the goods to the goods just fall apart, right? That you'll have that momentary bit of, you know, good news that, Hey, I've signed this homeowner. I've got this right, you know, this correct thing in place. And then you have a lot of bad news after that, right? Where you're not delivering and you know, that homeowner may not be happy with you.

So Hey, it's hard, man. You know, we, we, uh, we won't dispute that side of it, right? When they're, when it comes down to attracting that homeowner and starting from zero or near zero and getting the first 10, 20, 30, 40 homeowners, I think honestly, it's probably just like way over delivering for whatever you're charging, right? So maybe it is like lowering commission temporarily or charging less than you're actually worth or over delivering on their expectations. I think you're better off saying, I think the property will do 50, then if you deliver 55,'re happy. If you still do 70, and you deliver 57. In those two scenarios, they're actually unhappy because you said 70 and it did 57. So it's a lot of a perception, you know, that's why the homeowner marketing thing is so so challenging, because it is more of a, it is more of a B2B type relationship. How do I convince this person that I'm going to deliver, they're going to judge me very harshly for a long period of time about how I'm delivering for them, they're going to judge my communication, they're going to judge my reporting, they're going to judge how do I convince this person that I'm going to deliver? They're going to judge me very harshly for a long period of time about how I'm delivering for them. They're going to judge my communication.

They're going to judge my reporting. They're going to judge how quickly I pay or how slowly I pay. They're going to judge the condition of the property. They're going to do all these things. By the way, I only get, you know, 15 to 25% of the actual reservation revenue. You know, the rest goes to them as it should,

in some respect, right? They own the asset, but it makes it really tricky to get all the way through it. So yeah, you know, on the automation and AI bit, I do hope that we can get to a place where, you know, maybe certain things can be programmed or set up to kind of answer the small obvious questions. I think there are situations today where, you know, I'm happier or I'm, you know,

I'm okay dealing with an AI. If it's just a simple question to an answer, actually, my accounting software just started using AI to like, we think this is a category for this expense. We don't know what it is. We think it's this based on you know, our I'm assuming there's looking at the charge and they dress and things like that. Tell me from right or wrong. So it's like, Oh, cool. Like most time it's right. So I click Yes. But it's

like, I'm looking at and evaluating it and reviewing it. But I'm going in and they're kind of giving me a suggestion of what to do. That could be useful. You know, could I ask questions to my report, my owner statement? Hey, what does this charge mean? Or what was done on this date? Or what was this booking they came through? How many bookings occurred last month? I could see AI being a lot more useful for things like that, as opposed to all right, let me sit down with you, the property manager

and go through this owner statement line by line. That doesn't seem like a very scalable thing. So I'm still hopeful that a lot more things like that are going to come in the future. I think we'll probably get there. I think we'll stop calling it AI or stop calling it, you know, it'll just be like, oh, yeah, on every page, there's like this box that you can like ask questions into. And if you're not sure about something, it'll try to explain it to you. So maybe that's a waste of way, but I kind of see those pieces happening.

But yeah, it's one of those things, you know, I think we can maybe wrap here on this side of it with respect to owner. It's one of those things where I think it's really challenging to kind of get to the right spot. And it takes a lot of time on the owner side, I think to master these three ideas. Again, message market media is kind of our original triangle,

but as we've kind of adopted it for homeowner, it's marketing channel more so brand USP, what are you standing for? And then again, owner demand owner desires. It's, it's tricky, as you know, to get it all right. But when you get it all right, you know, that's when I think you see success. So one of the main premises of the book, again, some of these ideas were inspired by the ultimate marketing plan, Dan Kennedy. So if you're interested, you know, pick up a copy, do a Google search, it's not specific at all to the vacational industry. But I think it's like, again, these classic, you know, marketing, you know, ideas. Anyways, the second chapter, he highlights what you can do if one of these elements is wrong. So maybe you

actually understand the owner well, and you've got the right marketing channel in place, but your brand doesn't strong enough. Well, what can you do? How can you build your brand? He gives examples in that, you know, maybe we could do more episodes on that in the future. Or the other way around, I think this is more common one, right? Where it's like, I know who to target, I know what to say, but they don't believe me, right? I think that's like the most common sort of outcome

that we've picked before. And there's examples, maybe more stuff we could do on that down the road. But yeah, anything else you want to tie in here or should we put a bow on this one? Kind of our two-part series here on creating this secret marketing triangle. You know, how to adapt with respect to home

and our guest marketing, anything else that we should tie in? I mean, I think it's, you know'll the last triangle reference will be Phil Jackson's triangle. That's it. That's that's that's how we'll end this up. We'll bring it back to sports to end it up if anybody stuck around that long. That's someone can reference a famous NBA coach and then we'll we'll get you something you get you put the let's see or you get get in the review side of things and you put that in review. I'll buy something. Yeah. Tangentially related to triangles is stars.

And you know what we want Paul? So go to your podcast, leave us one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. Five stars. We super appreciate it. If you made it all this way through both parts, maybe just part two or part one, whatever it kind of pleased you. Um, we appreciate reviews. So go to your podcast, have a choice. iTunes and Spotify listeners, you are where we get the most downloads.

So therefore you help us the most, but anyone helps us. If you leave us five star reviews, we appreciate it. More downloads, more topic ideas coming, but this was a fun one to put together back to basics, back to what really matters. I think is ultimately how you can kind of understand marketing and then you can adapt a lot quicker. You just see things a lot more clearly and I think you can have a good outcome there. So thank you dear listener for making all the way to the end. We appreciate you. You're an awesome person and we'll catch everyone on the next episode