Heads In Beds Show - Revisiting Meta Ads vs Google Ads

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

In this episode of The Heads In Beds Show, we revisit our chat on Meta Ads vs Google Ads: what we're using them now to get more bookings and more homeowners. ⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagram🚀 About BuildUp BookingsBuildUp Bookings is a team of creative, problem solvers made to drive you more traffic, direct bookings and results for your accommodations brand. Reach out to us for help on search, social and email marketing for your vacation rental brand.

Welcome to the 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 back. So the listeners don't know that there's been a little gap in recording because you've been on vacation and stuff like that. So they're not going to notice any interruptions of their feed.

But here we are. We're back at September. What's going on? It feels like September. It's anybody who's been on a call with me over the last, ooh, give or take month and a half, maybe year and a half, if you really want to go back that far, knows that I've been just,

I have been really looking forward to September of 2025. Because it is, I can run my business. I can run a business right now. Kids are back in school. It is really great time. it is, we've commented already during our little pre-show, but it's quiet. It's quiet in our houses right now. You've got one left in the house. I've got my wife upstairs still working. So my coworker is, she's a little tough, but we get by. We're still, we're still doing after

four or five years working from home, both of us. So I'm happy. This is good times. How are you doing, sir? Oh, I'm doing good. Like I said, for me, it was like same old, same old. Nothing that new and exciting was happening in my world, but you've got all the Brookside gear on. Was this your vacation that you took? So you're up there in the middle of nowhere? No self-service, no nothing. Up in the middle of the north? Yes, yes. Anybody who texted me over the last week and a half? You didn't respond to a single text.

I sent you many just for the record. I did not. That was, I, there was a couple times. I was close to responding to a couple of texts. And my wife gave me the absolute, again, my coworker gave me the absolute dirtiest look I had ever seen. I said, you know? It was about writer cup picks, and then there was other vacation and stuff. And that's the other, I mean, Rider Cup.

I think this will come out after. So we're recording this before, but this will come out after. I'm also gearing up to head out to New York. So it's a good time right now. Are you going to the Ryder Cup? I am going to the Ryder Cup. Oh, we didn't actually talk about that. I think we touched on it right away.

And then we just kind of, I haven't, I've been kind of, I've forgotten a couple times that I'm going out there. I won't lie. And so my dad sends me a quick text and said, hey, we're going to do this. We're going to do this. We're going to do that. I said, oh, yeah. Which day are you going? Which is like a tournament day?

practice. We will be there on Wednesday, and we will be there on, I'll be there opening day, Friday. Oh, nice, nice. Here's my prediction. So for the record listeners, we're recording this in advance. So if it turns out to be very accurate, I deserve all the credit. It gets a little tense at one point on Sunday, but the U.S. ends up winning by three points. That's my estimate. I think that's fair. Now, here's, I think they'll win. There'll be a moment where it's like, we're down in four of the five, four matches and we're like, oh, no, you know, but it'll all work itself out that's my take i think the european team is is uh is going to be that's a tough team it's a good team it's uh it'll be interesting what i mean i've again i've been very fortunate over the last

now eight years seven whatever it is got to go to hazel teen and 16 got to go to whistling straights in 21 that's what that's right 20 and whistling straits was different because there were no european fans i think it's going to be right in new york at that page it's going to be an interesting experience uh i think it's going to get a little nasty So that is maybe one of the... They said that, but then it's like very corporate, I guess. A lot of corporate tickets, so that there's not the same kind of rowdiness. Yeah.

We'll see. Yeah. So yeah, so yeah, end of the month here, it's also going to be a good time. Nice. Well, we're doing a bit of a rerun today. And so when I say rerun, we're not rerunning back the same exact episode. This is a new recording. But we thought maybe this will be something we do every year, maybe, or every eight months.

Because these platforms change all the time. And we haven't updated this one in a while. So we did an episode. I'll put it in the show notes here, maybe when we did this one. But we did Google versus Metax. ads back at some point last year. I'll get the exact date in here a second. I had it open and then I closed it in my bed.

But it's something that I think we should just redo because, number one, I've run a lot more ads since then on both meta and Google for our clients. I'm sure you'd be doing the same, both for guest and homeowner and ton stuff. And yeah, like, let's refresh our kind of mindset here on these different things. Yeah, we did this last in May of 2024. So here we are doing it again, September of 25, you know, it's been a little over a year, actually. So, yeah, some of the things that you might, it's episode 84.

So if you scroll back way back in the feed, you'll see that May 2024, episode 84. If you want to dig that out, feel free to do so. But this is kind of like a refresh notes on what we see as the kind of changes on these platforms. So break it down, Paul, are you still spending a lot of your client's money on Google ads and meta ads? Or are you going to greener passions? What's your current thought process? I mean, it is.

Google ads and meta ads are still where we have to play for the most part. And I think still that doesn't change because of what we talk about every week. That's where the eyeballs are. I think that that's something. that when you are trying to go after a certain audience of people that you have to go where the most people are and then kind of winnow down and find ways to target more appropriately. And as that stands, I mean, as there's not an LLM advertising channel, there's not some, you know, all these other things.

Yet. Yet. But I think that is still the place you need to be. It's the one, you know, I think the one area. that is outside of that right now is still something that factors into Google ads and meta ads and it's a DSP. It's a display, but ultimately, that's display ads

and we are still super skittish on the overall results of display ads. So bang for your buck, audiences you're getting in front of Google and meta are still the place where you need to be. And then it's a matter of what is your unique use case, what are you trying to drive, you know, and certainly how are you fitting these into both

the owner and the guest journey, because, as we both know, as a lot of people who listen to us, like, those are different experiences that you're trying to drive people through. So getting people to all levels of the funnel, of the sales funnel, of the marketing funnel, I don't think there's a whole lot of areas within that funnel that you're not going to be able to reach with Google and meta ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, whatever that is. So that's how I still feel. How are you feeling about these two channels? yeah you know and again I know and we poke fun of this a lot on on LinkedIn in particular and we poke fun at it on the show a lot this idea that like the lLM tools are taking over and

stuff like that and it's like okay like let's go talk about this practically let's go look at our analytics look at the numbers of referral traffic that we're getting from these different sources and to your point on the advertising side there is no way right now to run ads on chat up anyways even if we did think it was some massive emerging opportunity that you weren't taking advantage of anyways yeah google Google is the majority of our spend by a wide margin And then meta definitely is a second. If there's a third, by the way, it's Bing ads, which we could touch in maybe on a future episode or down the road.

But the short answer of Bing ads is that we mostly just duplicate what we're doing in Google or we take our best performing campaigns, at least in Google, dupe them over on Bing or on Bing or Microsoft ads, and then we run them there. So there's not really any magic secrets sauce there on Bing other than like set up all the tracking, understand it properly. So that's probably a quick note there. So actually, I can do this as well. Last 30 days Google ads spend in our MCC, which is much easier to check in Google than it

is on the meta ads for sure. I could give you a quick, yeah, there's no like simplified view on this side of things. Last 30 days is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of, yeah, $906,000 on our MCC in total. So 1.26 million clicks, 25 million impressions paying an average of 72 cents cost per click over the last 30 days. We don't manage every single one of those campaigns and accounts to be clear, but that's just what we have linked in our MCC over the past 30 days.

So, yeah, we're spending low season right now. In peak season, our clients collectively, we're easily spending over a million dollars month on Google Ads and then probably I would say for most of our clients they're spending probably anywhere from like 10 to 30 percent of their Google Ads budget on meta and that depends that such a wide range because it depends a little bit on how they've got things set up what they're trying to achieve which we'll talk about here in a second so why spend what was Paul why would a spend a million dollars a month on Google ads why would they do that what's the benefits what the pro oh boy well I mean I think the key here is that last time I checked

there's a lot of people that still use Google search and this this Right. The contrary reports and everything otherwise that the LLMs are going to take over. When I look at most analytics accounts, it's still 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 visits a month coming from chat GPT. I'm getting leads through. I've gotten straight booking through every once in a while. This is happening. This is, but you know what? Still seems to be that 50, 60% of traffic comes from Google Organic. if 30% comes from Google ads. And that's the reality is that people are still searching for travel with Google.

Is the trip planning process changing? Yeah, sure, absolutely. But ultimately, and I think this is where I've addressed it a lot, that Google doesn't touch this ecosystem because there's so much revenue that comes through it for them, that why would they piss off booking holdings? Why would they piss off people who are spending? billions and billions of dollars in the ad spend just to try to take a more direct path. There isn't any advantage to that right now.

So I think that is. I mean, the fact is that people still do the searches, even though that experience of what people are seeing when they do those searches, beachfront condo and outer banks, all these, you know, vacation rental in X destination, all these things, the search results are different, but they're still using Google. And there's still power in having that top real estate spot in a high intent, you know, sales marketing atmosphere. So even when we're looking at different campaign types, you know, performance max versus, you know, enabling AI max, enabling some of these other things, I'm not super gung whole about all that, but ultimately the bread and butter of targeting the right keywords. targeting the right audience, targeting the right locations.

That is something that Google delivers on in Google Ads better than I think any advertising platform out there outside of something where you're paying a significant amount of money just to get that enhancement of the tracking, of the who you can target and how you can target and do things like that. I mean, Google Ads is a free system outside of you, the ads spend you're paying. So there's negatives, but the pros of Google Ads far outweigh the negatives. as long as you know what you're doing behind the scenes. Now, you put someone who doesn't have the experience that we have,

the years of experience of running ads and campaigns, that might not be the case. And you can get upside down and irresponsibly spent. We could say waste. A lot of money on Google app. We'll talk about on the cons, just the additional reshot that happens via Google Ads. But again, the performance that you see,

the performance that we see, I think, on a regular basis is this is a channel that drives results. It drives a strong ROI if you know how to use it properly. I was going to say, ironically, if you let Google set up your Google ads, it's often a bit of a mess, which actually makes no sense when you think about it for like two seconds. Like, wait, you're telling me the company, you're telling me to run Google ads. And then someone runs out there and says, cool, I'm going to go sign up for Google ads. And then I got a call from a guy from Google that says, I'll hope you set up your ads. And then you do that. And then it's a disaster. And then you're listening back to this podcast later. And you're like, these guys are idiots. They just told me to run Google ads.

I let Google set my campaigns that it didn't work well, which is a little bit funny. I'm quoting now from a SCIFT article published in summer of 2023. So this data is slightly old, but the trends probably hold pretty similar. Booking Holdings, which is, of course, booking.com, kayak and price line public company spent $6 billion on marketing in total in 2022. The biggest chunk of traffic that they get is from, advertising-wise, is from Google Ads. So think about that. Booking Holdings is spending 35% of their total revenue on advertising.

The biggest chunk of that $6 billion that they spend is on Google Ads. So I mentioned this $1 million a month that we spend during peak season. Booking has been spending that much since we've started this podcast. If they're spending $6,000 a year, then they're spending how many millions, you know, on a daily basis, you know, or something like that. We'll do the math here in a second, no public math, but it's fascinating, I think, to think about, you know, kind of how effective these ads are. Because at the end of day, if we zoom back for a moment and just think practicality, when people are going on Google and searching for, vacation rentals in Destin, Florida, vacation rentals in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, vacation rentals in Northern Minnesota, whatever they're searching for, cabins, maybe they would search. It's that high intent traffic. And they want to book something. So if you put yourself in that conversation, the moment that they're interested in doing that

thing, then that's why we like Google so much. And that's why Google drives such amazing demand. So like does, it's almost like we can make the case that like chat TBT has become maybe if anything, if I try to like steal man are kind of not inside chat TB stands because you and are both lovers of these platforms. But if I could steal man, it would just be like, it's just a new way to like explore what you're looking for. But then the practical purpose at the end of the day of like an LLM style conversation is to eventually get to the point where you're like, cool, now I've decided I want to go to Myrtle Beach and then now I need to find available options there. Oh, cool, let me Google it and I'm going to find something from there.

So it's this idea that like one is completely replacing the other, that there's this stick and that the stick is getting replaced. Okay, now Google is gone and then, you know, Gemini or AI mode or chat TBT or whatever are there. I don't feel that way. Now we'll say I follow some people who believe that Google AI mode, which is very similar to like how Gemini works, will become the default. You know, the idea that would be that you log into Google and that the default version would be AI mode.

Hard to know, you know, at that point, is it plausible or some middle version plausible of what they currently have versus AI mode somewhere in the middle? Certainly plausible, but like you're fooling yourself if you think there's not going to be ads on the top of the results or as they've already, as they've already alluded to, which we covered a little while ago, there will be ads literally in the AI reviews in the results of like, hey, this is an ad coming from an advertiser. So it's like Google Ads will still exist, obviously, in 2026 and 27 and 28, 29, you know, because they make literally, they make $6 billion just from booking holdings, you know, never mind every other advertiser out there, you know, who's running the search ads. So these things aren't going anywhere. But like over the years, they've changed in format many times. They've changed in style many times. They've changed in text limits and number of headlines. And, you know, right, you know, like the, it's been almost like a bit of a clay that's been remolded over and over again. But at the end of the day, in 2004, you know, when you ran a Google AdWords, campaign and you get a search and there was ads that came up and then in 2025 when you go do a search whether it's AI mode or whatever down the road or regular Google search you see ads come up like that traffic is still super valuable right like that's that's the thing we all can agree on if you just apply this much logic to it this much comments on and I think the other side is that we are I'll say a little protected verbos out there and and and Airbnb is out there

and but they're not really a part of the meta search in the same way like I mean if you're in the hotel space on the hospitality side of things. The meta-search game is a whole, whole different game than you're playing just on the general search side. Again, you can pull some great ROI on those campaigns as well. But that's where thinking about that AI overview experience, and I've used it a couple times. It's fine. It gets us down to conversational stuff. But ultimately, I still think that there's, I mean, when I look in a search console to see the queries that are coming,

through, I don't see a ton of four, five, six-word queries that are coming through. We did the regular expression to try to find some of those as well over the last like six months. And it's just not there. Again, I think that part of it is the search habits and the search intent of what we've kind of gotten people into thinking. We've educated people. We've trained people on how to do those searches.

It's this vacation rentals, this Airbnb, it's city this. So I don't think people are ready to create that prompt. in an AI in an AI mode that says, find me this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this. Because that's at best, it's middle of the funnel with intent and what you're doing. And that's just not how people explore the travel space. It is more of a visual thing. It is more of a, as we go into the Facebook side of things, that is an area where you can see exploration, dreaming, inspiration, all these things.

I think that right now, the value of an AI overview for, let's say, half at least, and probably over half of the searches that are half, just isn't necessary because we're not giving the search engine or the LLM in this case enough. We're just saying, okay, I want to find vacation rentals here. I want to find this. You know, you may know what kind of accommodation you want to use. You may know what destination you want to go to or you may have no idea. And I think that that is, A fundamentally different buying process than a lot of, let's say, goods versus the service, timing, that type of thing is, yeah, I may be looking exactly for a specific type of pants, specific color, specific brand, size this, this, that. That's where the AI overview is really going to bring you, or the AI mode is really going to bring you down to a better shopping experience. But going back to the, we haven't been touched by the AI side of things. we haven't been driven to a better shopping experience by Google or overall until we get to some of these direct booking websites. So, yeah, I think that there's, I mean, there's a lot to unpack there.

Well, and we were joking before you record that because you were on vacation, you missed the whole Airbnb fee debacle conversation that happened, just like funny conversation. Timing on the timing was there. But what I said to someone, we were having conversation at the end of that week and there was all this reaction, you know, all over LinkedIn about it. And, you know, people were weighing in from all over the place. I'm like, look, again, let's zoom back for a second. Airbnb is just a place that guests go.

Guests are in all sorts of places online. They're in all sorts of platforms online. So if we just think of it as like every time we enter into a platform, it's almost like we're going into someone's house. And each house has their own set of rules associated with it. You go into a house that my friend Dan lives in, who's Korean, you take off your shoes before you go in that house. You might do that in any house, but certain people wouldn't be bothered by it.

Yeah, you want to upset a Korean guy wear shoes in the house. That's how you upset a Korean guy, right? So there's all these things where it's like every rule, so the Airbnb house, if you will, if you were to walk in that house in your neighborhood, it's got its own set of rules. The Google house has its own set of rules. The meta house, the Facebook Instagram house has its own set of rules. But they're all just places where guests are. So if you're trying to attract gas, you want to figure out the things that yes, you're going to get good results from.

And the gold in marketing is not to do everything. The golden marketing is to kind of figure out almost where can I put the least effort or least budget and get the most out of? Because there's things that you could spend so much effort, time, energy cycles on. and that you get nothing out of. Like, for example, I'll give you a good example. We tested audio ads last year for a client who had extra budget and wanted to try some different things. So we actually ran, got a voiceover artist, ran audio ads on Spotify,

with a vanity domain. So in theory, we could get good tracking if someone would come off an audio ad and then later convert on the website using the vanity URL. So, like, we're only using that URL in the audio ads. Long story short, we spent a bunch of money. We got very little out of that. Certainly no better ROI than something like Google. But does that mean that that was a failure?

If we only measure from an ROI perspective, sure, it was a failure because we didn't get the same ROAS on Spotify audio ads targeting like our core demographic as we did on Google or meta campaigns that we run for that client as well. But maybe it wasn't in the sense of how much branded search occurs for your vacation on company or in this case a resort, like more of a premium resort from people who say, oh yeah, I've heard of that place before. You know, in the ad explained the type of accommodation we had, the type of water park that was at this resort. It gave a lot of detail that may have, it's hard to know, might have converted later into branded search. And we asked people how

they heard about us. We saw some responses that were marked as Google, but we're actually from this other thing. So I would encourage you to be aware of Google ads. Again, it's just another place to guess are. Just like we're, again, we'll transition over to Facebook and, you know, Instagram here in a second. It's just a place that guests are. So learn that channel, embrace that channel. You can probably master or at least get very good. Let's call it B plus or better at probably two or three channels, reasonable to assume. You know, so like let's just say OTA is kind of one channel. And then within OTA, of course, we have breakdowns, Airbnb, booking.com, burbo, et cetera. And then maybe some regional sites.

then we've got Google and then within Google there's kind of almost subtypes of campaigns like you mentioned earlier there's search there's PMAX which is mostly searched

by the way there's display there's video etc and then yeah within as we turn the page over to meta there's Facebook and Instagram

and now I would say if you make a new ad campaign recently as I'm sure you have and I can run the ads and threads and WhatsApp that's a new thing that differently exists

when we recorded last year so that's something that's probably worth mentioning but these are just places that guests are and it's up to you to figure out what's the creative what's the messaging

what's the format what stage the buying cycle are they in that's actually going to make them book. And if you get that dialed in, you understand what you're buying from an advertising perspective. Any ad channel can work. I've always said this. The only question is how effective is it? How much am I getting in? Putting in, how much I'm getting out? And almost how much rope do I have to explore? And with Google, I think you have a lot of rope to explore. You have very high intent visitors. But you're looking for people that are already looking for

what you may have to offer or what competitors do. That's a pro and a con, in my opinion, right? Because it's like everyone else is competing with you too, the big guys, the booking, the Airbnb, etc. I'll always maintain this. The goal is not to outspend those platforms. The goal is just to make your ads profitable, but it is more competitive than if you go into, you know, less crowded waters.

So I think that kind of puts a wrap, at least on my thoughts at a high level on Google, at least maybe a better way to describe it from how we talked about before as just like anything you do. It's just a place guests are, you know, figure out the thing that's going to work well. So on Facebook and Instagram,

what we've learned that over the last little bit is that we were always running video ads. That's not new to us. I've run video ads for a long time. But at this point, I feel like I kind of just mostly only want to run video ads. That's probably the change from when we last recorded, right? Where it's like, hey, I was running some statics and we're doing this. And then,

hey, if a client is a video, we'll pop it in there, et cetera. And now it's very clear to me that like the only thing that gets, you know, I would say the best results in most situations is video ads, particularly for like top funnel awareness targeting. So what's kind of been your shift and process on meta on the advertising side? Video is great on meta. I mean, I think one of the things that is the, not the con, but it's the, the biggest opportunity is you got to have assets. You've got to have some visuals that are actually going to play. And if you are lacking those, you have to do the work to get some more of those assets, which I think is easier for some people than other.

I think that's the reality. It's easier to get some of this information to know where to get it, to know how to create the right staged photos, the right how you're showcasing different amenities and different aspects of the potential stay in the potential guest experience. So I think as long as you've got the right visual, I still have tended towards more static ads than I do. I still am definitely more of a, using the dynamic, you know, dynamic assets.

So putting in multiple images, putting in multiple, multiple, all those static images, multiple headlines, multiple descriptions, and really trying to learn then from meta, what is a value to this? that I'm trying to target what is the call to action that's working what is i mean a b testing is great but i do think that there's something to really doing that multivariate testing and maybe it's not true multivariate testing but that's how i see it in being able to really test okay this image with this headline with this description versus these other combinations i don't think the one thing i don't think facebook does a great job of and i think google does do a better job is the combinations you know

we can go into that combination of this headline showed more frequently. You got impressions on this combination, 100 impressions. You got this combination, 75 impressions, this 50. But still, being able to understand, and this was a huge deal on the owner's side because we really tried to focus on the USPs and really differentiating all of the USPs that any vacation rental managers trying to highlight. So we wanted to talk about more ROI.

We wanted to talk about a better hands-free experience. how we're going to take care of your home. And it truly allowed us to put more of a qualitative story together of, okay, people don't care about the ROI at all in this market. It is much more about having a local presence. It is much more about, you know, how are you going to take care of my home? How are you going to, you know, instant communication, things like that. So I still think a pro of meta is you're able to test things at a lower cost.

And I think that's valuable because we're not paying an arm and a leg for, meta ads. It is nice to be able to generate some, some cheap traffic to the website. But what we lose on the meta side is obviously that intent. You don't have people who are absolutely going through and doing a search for a brand or doing a search for vacation rentals in X market or doing anything like that. So I think that's where, I mean, as long as you know what you're using these meta ads for, they're beneficial. They're positive. I probably have a more positive outlook on Facebook than I did in May of 2024 because I got to say at that point I was probably pretty fed up with them and all the small audiences were trying to serve up to

and some things like that but well you were you were trying to find a needle in a haystack expedition there right but yeah and but going into that you know talking about the targeting there are some custom audience stuff you can do lookalike audiences there are some cool little things that you can do I know you can do them and Google the same way, but I don't think we test those as much because there is more of a, not a straightforward play, but there's more of a playbook. We know the playbook of how to get the right people seeing those ads. It's a little create your own adventure on the meta side of things, but they still have

many of the same tools that are going to allow you to target in ways that if you can catch the right people, catch the right audiences at the right time. and get them to stop what they're doing and scrolling through their feed, yeah, there's nothing wrong with building awareness, certainly through Facebook. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, so our typical approach,

and we've talked about this before, is always to have like a top funnel and awareness type campaign and the middle funnel campaign, which is mostly comprised our middle funnel. Typical approach is website visitors recently. We typically define that as around 90 days, although we've gone plus or minus there in the past, people that already followed the page on social media

and past guests. So uploading an email list or a phone list are both of past guests and then marketing to them that way. So in theory, people seeing our middle funnel audience are aware. If you think awareness, interest, desire, action, they're kind of in that interest stage at minimum. Hopefully they're in the desire stage where they're actually planning a stay and that sort of thing.

And then that top level funnel, that top funnel, right, where it's more in that awareness stage of just like, I'm looking to a book somewhere or I'm willing to be persuaded. I think that's the interesting thing about Instagram in particular is that people use Instagram for 100%, not 100% for, but a good chunk of their usage, is essentially travel inspiration. So I think that's why you see these so-called viral Airbnb-style properties do so well on Instagram

because it's like I didn't see it before. Once I saw it, then I wanted it. It's like that classic Henry Ford example of like, if I asked them what they wanted, they would have set a faster car or a faster horse, not a car. So that's the angle on like if I say, if I wait for someone to go and Google and search like Potato House, like I'm thinking to Christy Wolf, who's kind of like the OG in that, I feel like unique stays base. No one would ever search that.

There was no one that was ever going to search Potato House, but then they saw it and they were intrigued by it. Then they search it because they had this pre-context, this pre-awareness, this priming, almost, if you will. If you study some priming stuff on the marketing psychology, you may find yourself really interested by that because the premise being, yeah, people will look for, they'll see information, they'll see something on Instagram, then they want it. Another example I can point you more practically in our space is I have a client that's near the swimming pigs in the Bahamas.

These things have gone viral many many times across many different accounts and my client was never involved in any of that, but he's benefited from it because his properties, his vacation homes, and the Bahamas are close to that. and that used to be for a while one of his number one questions oh how far are you from the swimming pigs well actually pretty close you know the boats here will pick you up and bring you over there

awesome they were booking this you know $30,000 per week I kid you not vacation rental and the thing they were looking forward to was swimming pigs in the Bahamas like I don't know if that makes a lot of sense but that's what people are interested in why Instagram Instagram show them swimming pigs and it's just such an absurd combination of things

that it worked out well so yeah I think that there's so much there to explore in meta as far as unshackle yourself from I need to show someone came from this exact ad and then convert it yes with the pixel yes with conversion tracking. You can get closer to that now and we've gotten better at that significantly in our agency, but then before. So I appreciate that. I do think there's people in our industry that will claim that Facebook can solve everything. I'm a little bit more skeptical

of that. I think they can figure out a lot of stuff based on your website behavior. I don't think they know exactly what dates you put in. I don't think they know all this information to this level of detail. I did a demo with software provider recently. He was saying some pretty, you know, stretch the truth kind of things in my opinion about how Facebook does this targeting. But yeah, in theory, like they're going to find you more of the right people, particularly if you can tell them in your pixel data who is already converting. Hey, here's my pixel, here's 20 people, 30 people on my website that I've converted recently.

Go find more people like this and then get them to convert. Facebook is much better at that and getting better over time, in my opinion, at finding those right people on Facebook and Instagram. So that is a huge plus when you're trying to build that awareness. Yeah. And we were both aware of what we're talking about on the Facebook side of things, the company that's, and it's, there's, I think there are because we understand that it's a very visual platform and we understand that there's a lot of travel inspiration that happens yeah it makes

sense that you would be able to just flip a switch and and make some bookings happen um but i i think it comes down to that ultimately it really doesn't matter what kind of data you're feeding into facebook it's up to that you got to you have to stop that person from what they're doing the nobody comes on to facebook and that's this this i think this this is kind of that be all end all of Nobody comes on Facebook to book a vacation rental. That is not the intent with which they're coming to Facebook. They're coming to Facebook to do a variety of things. I mean, you may be checking in on.

Dude, you know what it is mostly? You know what it mostly is nowadays, by the way? Yeah, I don't. So there was a study. This is my LinkedIn queue. I don't know if it probably hasn't come out yet. Maybe it'll come out in the week or so because I scheduled like a month of stuff in advance. So there was this Facebook recently, like, there was some like antitrust

or certain they were sued and they had to go reveal some of their, you know, private, like, consumption data. 87% or something like that, it's like 80% of people who go on Facebook and Instagram are there to watch short-form videos to be entertained by short-form videos. It is actually not really a social media platform anymore. It is a short-form video consumption platform. So, sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to get that across because, yeah.

And I think that's critically important because, I mean, it is like Instagram, reels, the TikTok. They're all, is it a testament to the downfall? of society who knows we're not here to make that judgment but no nobody wants to read anything anymore nobody wants to it is you you want visually stunning things but yeah i i can understand where those static images go a lot less far when we're not doing that but um that doesn't surprise me that doesn't shock me um it's turned into i think like you like we we do we're just looking for that quick 15 second fix.

You know, the YouTube shorts and just keep on the scroll. Didn't like it. It's, I think we brought... They get me sometimes. I'm not going to lie.

I'm like, wait. How has it been 45 minutes? Oh, goodness. Happ is the best of us, unfortunately. We've, I think it's same way. It happens to me.

Like, and once you get sucked in, it is difficult to get out. And then that's where, again, I don't know how to, it's hard to interpret that from the standpoint of,

So then what, like, what type of content does compel people to book? Like, is it like the cheeky video? Like, do you have to go viral like some people in this space really like to do? Because that's going to make it. I don't think so. I think more eyeballs are a good thing if they're interested in your product, right? Like, I think one thing that we've learned. Yeah, like, I would, again, I would much rather have an audience of 20,000 people on my page that are like, live in the area.

They're willing to drive to vacation at this destination that are interested in the product than, quote, a million followers who are just like maybe following along for whatever reason. I do think some property is almost like break and they just become, again, the potato house I've referenced or this guy, Devin Loup, I think I'm saying that properly or Devon Loup. He's someone that fits that bucket as well with like the Pacific Bens type stuff. So yes, the top 1% of the top 1% they break and tame, they become these like overwhelmingly popular things that people just check out.

We have a chance to work with field trip for some time. They have this invisible house property. Very iconic. It's been booked many times by Brian Chesk himself and so on and so forth or the Airbnb team. So it's like, that's super interesting as a concept. But again, we're talking, you know, maybe 10, 20, 30, 40 properties on Airbnb's 6 million listings, maybe fit in that category. You know, it's not very many.

Most people might build more of a regional awareness or like a small group awareness. But if it's to the right people on Facebook and Instagram, absolutely you're going to have success with it. You know, think of Isaac French, Live Oak Lake, a good example before he sold that business of like seven cabins, Waco, Texas, got all this attention. But it was mostly like for the right people in Texas that were willing to drive, get a car, drive to Waco and stay there. that he got all of his, most of his success for, right? And it is. And I think even as we're talking about it, we are talking more about the people who grew it,

they didn't grow it on meta ads. They grew it organically through Facebook, through like, ads supplemented them. Exactly. They built up, they built up a community. They built up a small mini digital ecosystem that they could own and create

and bring people into. I think that's where, and I still think that if you're running social ads, You have to have a pretty solid organic social media game as well and organic strategy because they don't, and it is, you cannot survive on just one or the other. It's, you don't have the following. You don't have all these things, the benefits that Facebook and meta sees as, okay, this is a solid business that's, nope, just, just running ads or, no, just running, just doing Facebook. It's just doing posts. okay that's fine but yeah i just i don't i don't think that you can just rely on just throwing those

videos of just doing this just doing that and i think that's i mean ultimately the overarching conversation here is yeah what's changed that we know as what's changed about google and facebook for us nothing's changed really i mean it ultimately they are parts of the greater strategy and you search social email still a pretty big part of those marketing best practices here so we should be more open to using all channels we're certainly using them in tandem certainly leveraging one to get better results off the other that's these are things that you can do this is this is not like magic rocket science some of the stuff is pretty logical and straightforward but many times especially on the meta side of things we get sucked into the volume game of oh boy

6,000 more people to the website good good start now what's happening so I mean this you know one of the notes we have on all of these is attribution reporting stuff like that well here's the thing is that ultimately if you can't measure what's happening when you're running these ads It doesn't matter what channel is running. Like, that's, like, if you're not, if you don't have the framework to say, I have this ROI. I have this return on my ad spend. I have this lift in my brand visibility based on over the last three months when I've been running these video ads on Facebook. I also see a corresponding lift in my search console that people are doing a lot of branded searches for me.

This is awesome. You have to be able to tie something back to that. So I think any time you're running ads, it doesn't matter what kind of ads you're running. make sure you're actually able to report and actually able to make data-driven decisions after you set that first ad live because everybody can set the first ad line. Everybody can set the first campaign live. Everybody can kind of start and some in the space set it and forget it. That's the reality.

And that is not, it doesn't matter at that point than what kind of ads are running because they're not going to do what you want them to do. Yeah, that's the long and short of it. Yeah, if your ad doesn't reach your objective, it doesn't reach your objective. if it doesn't reach the right people, then yeah, I mean, we're just, you know, the joke I typically make with clients is like, you know, when I see some wasted ad spend or we're doing something, I'm like, yeah, we're going to stop that. You know, Google's rich enough already. That's what I say on the Google side. And same thing for meta, right? They're rich enough already. They got

a few billion in the bank. You don't. So let's not make them richer if we don't need to show in there. And yeah, let's not let our vanity or desire for quote unquote numbers or, you know, metrics or high level views actually paint the wrong picture context as far as like, again, what are we trying to achieve? Who we try to reach out to that sort of thing. The goal, again, is to make your advertising profitable. It doesn't really matter. or what channel are using in that sense. And, you know, as you go along, you'll find, okay, that's working. Okay, bringing from $2,000 a month to $4,000.

Okay, it's still, okay, four to eight. Oh, shoot, you know, something broke. I got to come back and figure out, you know, I reach my ceiling. Let me come back and try it. Or like, you know, this ad was working on Facebook. This video was working on Facebook that we had. And now I've showed it to enough people that the ad frequency is too high. The, you know, interest is falling off.

Shoot, I got to come back and reshoot the ad or do a bunch of new video. That's where you will find yourself very quickly once you start doing this and spending, you know, three, four, five, six, $10,000 a month in advertising. But if you're in that bucket, you're generating enough revenue where it's actually working well. There's a lot of pros there that you're going to find between. So, you know, this is like our, I think we know our typical listener at this point, right, Paul?

And it's like some of the big fish here, you know, might be spending 40, 50, 60K a month in Google ads. You're probably more rare in my experience. Like the biggest company to big market can do that. We have some clients that are at that level. But for a lot of people, it's like, how do I get this advertising to be profitable? And you almost have to be, like, very diligent about it. And to your point, you've got to set yourself up for a success.

You know, you can't send ad traffic to a website that doesn't convert well. You know, you can't send ad traffic to a website that doesn't have the right tracking. That's a problem that we face over and over again. So you don't actually know what's happening. You know, you're making assumptions. You have to actually track the conversions the right way, you know, in the platforms natively, in Facebook pixel, not in analytics because people don't click from Facebook and then make a booking right way. It's more of this weirdest channel. And then to your point in attribution, I know we're coming up against the time wise here, but to close on that, go review all your multi-channel.

Get your tracking hooked up the right way and then go review multi-channel. And go back 90 days, you know, if you're not massive and you don't have like hundreds of books. booking is rolling in on a monthly basis. And you'll see all these weird and crazy paths of, man, this person went to my website 17 times before they made a booking, you know, four times through an email, they direct eight times, you know, through Google, through a Facebook ad. And you just start tracking your head of like, how can I, what deserves credit here? And the answer is like all of it and none of it, you know, it's impossible to answer.

But that's just a reality of how people book particularly large, you know, longer stay vacation rentals. It's not this like, hey, I saw it and I wanted it, you know, which is like maybe your typical D to C e-commerce strategy. I saw this thing on Facebook. I clicked a button. I bought it right away. cool but like again in the real world it's never in our world i should say maybe it's never

so straightforward in my experience it's i still that that is still one of the reports that i think google hid that they kind of nerfed it a little bit they it's it's not they they that was that was one that was lost now you can find it it's not the same but it is one of my favorite reports and understanding just all the touch points because it is it feels like it should be much more straightforward a much more like I remember when Google used to say it's 30 to 40 touch points along the way and we used to spit that regurgitate that back out during the talking about the trip planning process and I don't think it's that anymore but it is not uncommon to see 15 to 20 interactions with the website from multiple different channels so understanding that

that is the varying pathways that people are going to take and again trying to make sure you're in front of those people with the most compelling messaging and the best images and assets and everything like that. It's all we can do. And then we got to hope that the business itself can deliver on the expectations and everything after that. And again, we get to that step four in whatever we were talking about with the marketing and then post day or in stay post day, got to give it up to the vacation rental manager and hope that they can take the hand off for us. Yeah, exactly. Well, cool. So that is 40 fun minutes updating all of our thoughts on Facebook ads, Instagram ads,

meta ads, is what we call nowadays, and Google. Yeah, and there's a lot more there. Yeah, again, make your ads profitable, figure out your tracking. Don't get overly obsessed with attribution. Understand it. Understand it's limitations.

And then, you know, get more bookings. That's what we're all about. One thing we're also all about, Paul, you know what it is. It's been a few weeks since we recorded, but you know what's up. They've got to leave us some reviews. Go to your podcast app of choice.

How are we going to get to a million downloads until we get a lot more reviews? So go to your podcast app of choice. Click five stars. Leave us a review. If we stay with you as a vacation, or we would leave you five stars. We sure would.

We sure would. We're good people in that respect. So you should do the same to us. Now, we're joking, of course. We have great time recording these. We hope you do as well listening. Hit the five-star review button. We appreciate it.

And we'll catch you on the next one. Have a phenomenal way.