Heads In Beds Show - The 2023 Homeowner Marketing Master Class To Get More Properties

Episode Date: December 28, 2022

⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellVintory🔗 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 Beds show where we teach you how to get more properties, earn more revenue per property, and increase your occupancy. I'm your co-host Conrad. And I'm your co-host Paul. All right. Hey there, Paul. How's it going today? How are you doing?

I am doing fantastic. Just getting, because we get closer to the holidays, it gets colder in Minnesota. So I am at nine wind chill today. It's, yeah, I've got space heaters at my feet and a blanket on my legs. So that's how we're recording today. How about you? How thick are the wool socks that you own? Oh, boy.

They must be good. Yeah. It's, the Dickies make some, this is my, if we need a sponsor, sometimes Dickies can come in, but Dickies has some great wool socks and they've got to be like an inch thick and necessary. That's what you lose temperature on first, right, is your feet and extremities. That's where it gets extracted out to. Do you have a fireplace in that place? You got a fireplace?

Yep, yep. Fireplace has been rolling pretty consistently. We have the heat on a little bit, but we've got the house shut down to about it's a three level house it's two levels now because now i'm the only one who comes down to the icebox so that's we've put the heat up in the house where we sleep and where we do most of our living but yeah so it's it's i'm the only one who comes down here and there's a reason for it so gotcha but you've got the right gear so it's not too terrible then. Right, right. That's important.

All right. So Dickie should email us, number one. I got some opinion from that. To what global warming? No, I'm kidding. Don't email me. That's all I was going to say. It's not our fault that Paul lives in the middle of the frozen tundra.

People should not live where he lives, basically, is the gist of what we're saying here. It is. Further north, I don't have any problem with Canada. But weather-wise, I'm sorry. Any further north. What do they do? That's, I have questions. I just have some questions.

There's bears up there. Jeez. Come on, guys. Speaking of things that we like that are not bears or Canadians. No, I'm just kidding. We like Canadians. I have some Canadians as clients.

Just lovely people. We are here today to do part two of the 2023 marketing plan. I guess, mini series that we've put together here. And today we're talking about the homeowner marketing plan. So my plan is to kick back today. Everyone's ear off last episode. So my plan is to kick back today and let Paul take it because Paul is the, I would say,

expert in the space. And it's done for, I don't know if we could say the number, but many dozens, hundreds of four partners with his work at Vittori. So Paul, I guess I'll turn it over to you. You have created an outline around, maybe you can start with just a high level overview of homeowner marketing in general. Can you see mistakes people make or how would you put together or approach putting together a plan?

And then I know you have a lot of things that you want to get into as far as offers, research, different marketing channels that you can use, that sort of thing. So yeah, let's get right into it. Tell us about your overview of the homeowner marketing plan process and what do you think about it today? How are things improving? Yeah. Yeah. It's, this is something where I think that when I admittedly, when I joined Venturi almost two years ago now, this was a big talking point. I always felt like getting on calls with the traveler side partners and it was, it was, well, now we want to grow our inventory. That's we, and I think timing wise, that was early 2021 when a lot of people had just realized, oh my goodness, my, I've just sold out my entire

summer. I sold out my entire fall. I sold out. And it's not that I can't get more money by raising my rates, but I just don't have the inventory. So that was, I think, a huge eye-opener for me is that there was a need for it. And again, I got the opportunity to hop on inventory and really learn more about it because admittedly, I didn't know the process. I didn't know the strategy. I didn't know the steps. I didn't know gross booking revenue, GBR. That's one of the first things that Brooke, the CEO at Venturi, was saying consistently to me. It's like, GPR, what is this? This is a new KPI.

It's a new key performance. It's a new statistic. I don't know about gross booking revenue. And really understanding what the value of each property is because we can see it on an individual booking. We can see it at different levels. We can see it on an individual booking. We can see it at different levels. But really being able to focus on the long-term value of a rental and really what it means to put a new rental in your inventory, in your portfolio, and the importance of keeping that inventory in your portfolio.

So it is. And I think very similarly to you, we'll do a very similar outline, but I think as in most marketing that we do, identifying that target audience is so critical. And it's something that it is, I think, a little more difficult on the homeowner side because we aren't, we're going always after a much more limited audience, a limited subset. Not everybody, potentially anybody can travel, but not anybody is going to own a home in an area or own a home in a specific area. So really understanding what that market is and whether it's understanding holistically the market. And I think part of that is that we've seen more recently is the regulation side of things. So when I'm talking about the market itself and doing market research,

it's not just the total addressable market of how many rentals are available. Really, it's understanding how can you or are you able to rent in this area? What's the regulation like? That's something that we heard over and over again at VRMA, that regulation, if it's not there, it's going to be there soon. And whether that's permitting, whether that's putting regulations on, maybe you can do it on this side of the house, or you can't have consecutive short-term rentals. I've heard some ridiculous regulations that are out there. So that's the last thing you want to do is plan on starting a new business. And in a lot of cases with Venturi, we are. We're getting people who are fresh into the business. They haven't gone through the slings and arrows of 2019, 2020, 2021, where there's a roller coaster right there to be sure.

So they know what location they think they want to be in, but they may not understand that, hey, there's only 900 permit holders in this specific area, or there's only this many people, or you can only rent in this area, or this condo complex doesn't even allow rentals, short-term rentals. So I think it is, it's really understanding where you want to be in a market as far as primary market, secondary market, tertiary market. Do you want to open up a new market? Do you want to do stuff like that? But then taking it to that next step, is that market going to be short-term rental friendly, vacation rental friendly, stuff like that. So I think that's maybe one of the underutilized planning or strategy tactics

is really digging down and understanding what that market is. And Conrad, I know you that as far as markets and identifying that target audience, that's something that certainly would work both sides. But anything to throw in there? What are your thoughts on really getting that target audience right on the owner side? I'm wondering if you could expand a little bit on something that we've talked about around how many units are even changing hands in a given month or year. So if you're in a market where, let's go through a fictional market, this isn't real numbers, this is just something, numbers that we've seen similar though over working together. Let's say there's a thousand units in a given community or sub area of a market. So not massive, but not a

tiny market with no demand. Let's assume that maybe 20% of properties are even going to change hands at all in the next 12 months. Correct. So only 200 of those properties are really going to come up for grabs over the next 12 months. But talk about that a little bit. If 200 properties come up for grabs, how many could a single property manager even snag of that market? And does that paint that in the context of planning for as far as legal? I think it is. I think that we've done that math many times before is that again, if you if you say that the 200 are eligible, again, how many people are when we look

at the actual channels you're using, how many people are searching? How many people are self managing? How many people are with a local competitor, and it's really breaking it down even further like that and understanding that at any given time, yeah, maybe you're marketing to 200 people, but of that 200, maybe it's actually only 10% that are willing to change at any given time, yeah, maybe you're marketing to 200 people, but of that 200, maybe it's actually only 10% that are willing to change at any given time. So you're not even micro-targeting to 200 people. You might be targeting to two dozen people, 20 people, something like that. And that is, I think that's something you always want. When I'm marketing, I always like my audience to be as robust as possible because certainly on the digital side

of things, there are some advantages to being able to serve up to a larger audience. Usually you get lower, lower cost per click, hopefully some better engagement if you're really matching that target audience and the messaging there. But it is when you're only going after a handful of people and that's literally what you're doing. You have to be so much more targeted. It can't, it has to be having all of the possible ways to connect that experience. So it's one of the things that I'll talk about a little later is some of that automation as well, and making sure that you really can give someone that customized approach to the sales funnel or that marketing experience and really bringing

them home. Because yes, if you're only going after, if you're looking to grow 10, 20, 30 units, you're going to really have to in a year. That's actually a really big number. Even if you're in a really big market, that's tremendous growth. And regardless of whether your portfolio size is 30 or 300, growing that much, certainly doubling the portfolio size is going to be substantial, but it is. That's with such a limited number of people at any time that are going to be willing to switch over. Your strategy, your targeting, everything really needs to be exact and you really have to go down to that very deep dive detail level. And if you're not, and it is, and in addition to that, you really have to differentiate yourself and set yourself apart, which is the next transition and the next bullet on the list here is really developing that USP,

that unique selling proposition. There are in a competitive markets, there are dozens of property managers that you're going up against. So it's really important to understand what sets your vacation rental apart. And this is something that as we're going through with different partners and going through onboarding, it is, it's really making those property managers understand that not everybody does what you do. And you really want to go into detail and tell people everything that you're doing, whether that's, hey, we're doing revenue management, we're using Beyond, we're using Wheelhouse, we're using Price Labs, any of these awesome tools. People want to know about that because that's incredibly important to

how they're going to make their money. We're marketing your property. We have 24-7 maintenance, housekeeping, inspections, correct bookings, all these things that we may just take for granted that, oh, everybody does it in the area. Yeah, everybody may do it in the area, but you still want to make sure that all those features and benefits that you're talking about are clear and all those potential homeowners and prospects really understand what you're doing for them to help them earn more, to give them that peace of mind, to really ensure that their asset is being managed in a way that they feel comfortable with. So it is. I think when we lead people down that path, it is, it's not just the USP. We are looking

for those features and benefits. We're looking for the attributes that are going to set you apart from that competition, why they're going to help that target audience. So it is. It's about all those feature benefits. It's about the social proof, going through and knowing that, hey, I'm an Airbnb super host, or I'm with Marriott Homes and Villas or I'm using all these channels, that's that third-party validation. Additionally, when we look at that social proof and third-party validation, look at some of the owner testimonials as well. That's something to be able to say that, yeah, I've got owners who are incredibly excited and they're going to talk about our features and benefits as well and all the great things that we're doing to help give you that peace of mind, to help you earn more. It is. I think there's a lot of different ways to try to

differentiate yourself. And I think different prospective owners are going to value different things. So some are looking to earn more money. Some are looking for that peace of mind that their home is going to be taken care of. Their home is going to be managed. All those things like that. So it's a lot there as far as talking about the features and benefits and the USPs and stuff like that. But talk about how I know you've helped us work with some of our USPs and help determine some of those things. So what are your thoughts on determining and identifying those? The problem that I see, I think, is that a lot of people repeat the same feature as benefits over and over again. So if you go look at five property managers, they all claim the same thing. It's like anyone can claim that they're going to drive you more revenue. And I think the trouble with that is that it edges into that territory of everybody

says the same thing. And you wonder if it's even truthful at all. Every car manufacturer claims their car is reliable. Every car manufacturer claims their car was the most comfortable, but that can't be true. There has to be varying levels of comfort and reliability with regards to every car. And then over time, you get, I think, pigeonholed into these narrow conversations. So that's one thing I think that's important when you're setting up your homeowner marketing plan is that if you're talking about revenue, are you truly the best revenue manager? And it's really hard to be honest with yourself. It's really hard to be honest with yourself, I think, with regards to that, because everyone wants to say that they're the best at a certain element of this property management game,

if you will. But there can only be one person that's actually the best at driving revenue. And maybe what you need to do is talk a little bit about what drives revenue, because what drives revenue isn't always necessarily just the skill of the property manager setting the rates. That's something to consider, obviously. And an unskilled person doing that job versus a skilled person doing that job, there's going to be a pretty big delta, the difference between those two things. But you know what matters even more is the properties you manage, like their quality,

fit, finish the property. And then a lot of it comes down to like photography. A lot of it comes down to care of the property itself, right? Is it kept in good shape? You can take a really nice property, give it to someone who doesn't care for the property properly and have lots of issues to where by the end of the summer in a beach market, you're going to have negative reviews like that. You can take a million dollar home and mismanage it and have a bad experience. Whereas maybe a good property manager can take an average property that doesn't have standout amenities, but keeps it very clean, keeps things in good shape, takes care of the guest, has the right expectations as far as the rates that they set, has the right expectations as far as the photography that they put up on

listing sites, and probably end that summer on a better note and have better long-term prospect in earning it than someone who doesn't know how to do it. So I think that it's so if I was doing copywriting for a property management landing page, which we have done some projects like this recently, even on our side of things, we've done it for Venturi projects as well. I would look at each of those different components and I would say, what are these things that actually make me stand apart? And then I would go look at 10 of my other competitors and see what

they're claiming and see how I match up to them and realize that it's not just a copy and paste strategy as far as they claim we're doing this, guess what, we're doing that too. Maybe, but that may not actually be your unique selling proposition. And if you're not good enough, if you don't have all the right things that someone who's larger in your market has, you got to compete on something else. You can't just say, oh, I have this marketing because homeowners aren't stupid. Like I've said this before, but like a homeowner that has a million dollar, $2 million, you know, beach house or cabin or something like that, that they're intelligent. Like they wouldn't have earned the amount of money to be able to go buy a second home unless they had usually success in their

life, whether that's business or investing or whatever the case may be. And that's my sentiment is that you can, it's easy to fool a guest, right? You can claim whatever you want to claim when they get there. People get away with that six days a week, unfortunately, but you can't fool homeowners. Like they can sniff through the BS and they can sniff through nonsense really quickly. And if your USPs come off as flat or they come off as something that just sounds very mimicky and very copycat as to other people in the market, I think it makes it really challenging. And we've talked about this before. We're empathetic to the small manager that's trying to get that foothold in the ground. And if someone that's coming up with a marketing plan for next year, if they are realizing like, man, it's really actually challenging for me to get

in front of the right homeowners. Yes, that's the truth. It's not so hard is that a lot of people are going after these right now, both your local competition and all the nationals out there. All the nationals pretty much have an unlimited budget to market to your homeowners. And there's been stories on LinkedIn I've seen recently where a large national company might even say things that are not true to consider to get a homeowner switch over. We won't say any names, but if you want to go out on LinkedIn, you can find messages and comments from a recent thread that someone put out there where it was basically that their competition was calling and lying.

So it's incredibly challenging to do this kind of marketing. And I think admitting that and realizing the, to your point earlier, the size of the pool that people are going after is so small that getting four or five homes, if you're a small property manager over a year is probably excellent growth. The number I'll leave, I'll end on this and then we'll get back to core of it. But I think if you're setting up your goal for next year, the number that we've talked about is let's say the company has been in business for three years and they have 20 properties. We would divide those numbers and we would say, okay, you're probably only gaining about this many properties per year. And in some cases, you may have started with a headstart, like you had your own property or something like that.

You can't really count that because you're going to have to go out in the marketplace and get more. So if you're free to grow 30%, that may only be picking up five properties. Now, if you're a large property manager and you have a hundred, but you've been at a hundred for three straight years, because you've had new ones come in, you've had ones churn because of all the stuff that's been going on the last few years, you've got to realize too that growing your business by 5%, picking up 10, 12, 15 new properties is going to be very challenging as well because everybody else is trying to do the same thing. Now, I do think that, and Brooke has talked about this as well in some of the stuff that we've done, that the inventory is going to loosen up a little bit over the next, let's say six, eight months, there's going to be people who are not renting currently, who will consider renting. So I think that's a good boost to your effort, it should be a little bit easier to be a little bit less like pushing a boulder up a hill to get someone to consider listing with you. But it's never going to be easy. I think even whether it's good market or bad

market, there's gonna be a lot of locals and nationals going after those homeowners. And you have to put forward your best foot and set realistic targets. We talked about smart goals last week, I think the same logic applies here to make sure that you're setting yourself up for success. So the next point I had was around like, let's say you have those pieces in place. So going back down your list really quickly, feature, feature benefits, what do you actually offer? What is the benefit of using your service? What is your unique selling proposition? What do you do that sets yourself apart from your competition? How are you unique? What do you offer that other people don't offer? What's the service that you offer that other people don't offer? And then backing those up with claims.

So that's what I call a claim to a social proof. That's fine. I say, I do all these things. Here's proof. Here's five happy homeowners that have worked with me and they're having great experience. I think your next bullet point was offer. Could you talk about offer a little bit? Because now you're actually ready maybe to put some marketing together.

How would you make a compelling offer to a homeowner? Let's say there's two dozen that we're considering switching, why would they pick you over someone else beyond the obvious? Yeah, compelling. I think the offer is something that in some cases, it's just kind of working on that content, that messaging of what you're doing. Again, you may be doing a free digital lock, free income projection, free, you know, what other things have we said, free photography, free 3D tours, free home tech installation. You can see a lot of stuff, but it is really, I think it's the idea of packaging that together. You may do all those things and take care of it for people, but how are you actually packaging that?

One thing I've seen, do that onboarding package. With this onboarding package, you're going to get this free $1,000 credit or $1,000 value. Because we're going to do this onboarding package, we're going to waive that fee for you, and we're going to give you the free digital locks. We're going to implement everything we do. That's just part of our process. But because nobody else does it, it really does. It feels like it's that additional, that differentiated offer. It's that irresistible offer. I think we've said it before, the mafia offer, the offer that you can't refuse. And I do think that it is, it's trying to differentiate yourself once again, because everybody's doing something. If you're just differentiating yourself

with, it is, while I've seen the USP, we drive 70% direct bookings, or we do weekly payouts, or we do guaranteed rental income programs. We've seen all those come through, but it is, if you're just talking about earning more or increasing that occupancy, then you are. I think you're relying more on factors that are sometimes out of your control. You can't, we can't really, you certainly, on the guest booking side of things, we can put all of our efforts in possible. But if someone doesn't click to book, we're up a creek there at some point along the line. So being able to really give them something tangible with that compelling offer, I think helps. I mean,

I've seen it as simple as, hey, we're going to give you a free rental income projection with Venturi. A lot of our partners have ROI calculators, which are pretty darn cool in the grand scheme. It is. It's an interactive little tool that people can see, approximate how much they would make in a specific area. I think a lot of property managers do a really good job of kind of visualizing that, whether it's a pro forma, whether it is just some people are going to do a three-sheeter or

a one-sheeter for you, specifically for every prospect that's coming through. So I think the compelling offer is nice to get people in the door, but ultimately, I don't think it's what's going to keep people there. So yeah, it's going to be flashy. I think while we don't like the spamminess of saying free all over the place, that's what people are looking for at the same time. So we have to kind of balance that between providing the value while still giving them something that is eye-opening and compelling that they aren't going to be able to refuse, or at least they're going to have to, if they're stacking you up against a local competitor or even a national competitor, that can be a differentiator to say, okay, that's what pushed you over the edge. What have you seen with compelling offers there? My sentiment there is always just that

the direct mailer stuff that I see, a lot of it just seems very, a lot of it seems very copycat. Actually, part of me desperately wants to own a vacation rental just so I can get direct mail so I can start to see what, but like Brooke in the Slack channel will post stuff all the time because he has a personal property and he'll post stuff all the time. What do you see? So people pitching him and a lot of it is the same. It's like, you know, basically fill out this form.

We'll tell you how much money you're going to make which i get it that's not like a terrible offer and these companies have grown significantly some of the nationals like picasso have grown significantly through essentially that offer see how much money you're going to make we'll tell you we'll manage it and we'll do a good job managing it that's basically their pitch right now they wrap it in a nicer wrapper the technology landing pages are nicer a lot of stuff that they do looks nicer than like your average individual property manager in a small market is able to put forth into the marketplace, like actually put out there. So I think that's a fair assessment of their stack, but their offer isn't that compelling.

So a few minutes ago, you were describing some of these things. The reason that I think that these can work well, and we've seen them work well, is that it's a little bit of a pattern interrupt. Like you see that and you're like, oh, that's actually like something that I haven't seen before. Like these large national companies aren't telling me that they're going to go of a pattern interrupt. Like you see that and you're like, oh, that's actually like something that I haven't seen before. Like these large national companies aren't telling me that they're going to go put a smart block in my house.

They're going to do a deep clean. I have a client that really pitches the deep clean a lot. And I don't know if that's just something that was more appealing to the homeowner, but they do a deep clean. It's a $500 value. And they do pay the cleaner pretty much that much

for 50, 500 bucks because they bring the big vacuum in there and they go through cleaning all this stuff off the top of the fan blades as well, not just the size so that the guests can't see it. And that's something that's compelling to their homeowner, especially if the homeowner does an owner's day right after, which he in fact encourages. We'll do a deep clean, you do a homeowner's day right after, and then we'll get you ready for the season and we'll get things off on the right foot. And that's a compelling offer for him. So it may depend a little bit on your market, but I do think that it breaks through the noise a little bit. That's ultimately how I

would summarize the offer component of it. When you're putting out messaging out there, if it looks the same as everybody else, it's going to be picked up, it's going to be looked at, and it's going to be tossed in the garbage many 95% of the time, unfortunately. So if you can break through just a few more people, every single mailer, every person that sees your offer, if they're more drawn to it, I think that could really differentiate you where everyone else just talks about revenue and see how much you can earn. And you say, sign up by January 31st, 2023. And I will include one, two, three, four, five things. The value is X, Y, Z. That automatically is just going to feel a little bit more unique, a little bit more differentiated. And that's going to help you

get a little bit more attention. It's not going to guarantee your success, but it's going to help you get a little bit more attention into the right spot. So that's how I see the offer creation. And I think that honestly, it's one of those things where you can't do one, two and be like, Oh, I tried for a lot. I'm trying multiple things. And it has to be like a habit within the company to be like, what does a homeowner care about today? I was joking with someone the other day. I'm like, go look at a mattress company. I don't know if you have lots of mattress companies near you. I do for whatever reason, maybe it's just the nature of where I'm based. And there's three, like in the same like shopping center. It makes no sense. We'll do a deep dive

into this on a future episode. Why is there so many good centers? I think the story is the margins are ridiculous. But anyways, what do they always have? They're sending you direct mail and there's it's a Christmas sale right now. It's going to be a new year sale a week from now. After that, it's going to be a new year, new you. It's going to be a January 2023 sale. After that, Valentine's Day, get a new bed for Valentine's Day. What's going to be after that? It's going to be spring is spring sale. What's it after that? It's going to be President's Day. What's it after that? It's going to be Memorial Day. You get the point, right? Is that they just literally invent sales. They just make stuff up so that they can actually go and create promotion and create marketing

activity. And the same thing could apply to a vacation rental manager targeting owners. If you're trying to get in front of the owner and stay in front of them all the time, sending them different pieces of media, whether that's direct mail, it could be a letter, it could be a postcard, it could be an email, it could be a digital ad that you put out there.

To Paul's point earlier, we're trying to reach so few people that we have to try a lot of different stuff and see what's actually going to generate a response. We can't just sit down and go run the same stuff that's mass market that appeals to everybody or might appeal to everybody. Because by doing that,

you're probably appealing to nobody. So sometimes the best way to get in front of 25 people is you have to put 25 messages out to 25,000 people. And then the right 25 will select themselves and enter into your orbit and into your actual marketing channel or marketing system that you've created, whether that's on your own or whether that's through someone like Vittori. So that's kind of the way that I see it is that to stand out, you have to be doing more than what other people are doing. And you have to be staying into a messaging cadence that makes

people not forget you. I think I did this the other day, email marketing research for someone. And it was basically like, every week, we're exposed to 10,000 marketing messages, whether it's TV advertisements, or a million things that we're exposed to brand messages. So if you don't talk to your homeowners, but once a year, they've been exposed to literally 500,000 plus messages since they last saw your marketing message. And you were just so far in the bottom of their priority list. You may as well just be like on the other side of the earth. They just don't even care. So the only way that you're going to have any, any success, I think on the homeowner side too, is you have to be consistent and you have to be spreading these messages across many channels and you have to be always hunting for it. I imagine it's similar.

Some of our clients on the rental side do real estate as well. And that's how I feel about listing agents, people who are really strong at getting a home listing because there's a brief moment in time when you're considering listing your home, right? But all the marketing that you've done for the past decade could apply to that one moment when that homeowner goes, you know what? I think we should list it with X. I think that's the point. We should actually take our home and sell it. And that's the kind of mindset that I think you should have to have. And people who do both maybe can see parallels between those things. But if you don't do that, you realize that all these marketing, all the marketing that goes on for a listing agent

might take years to pay off. They might be good. They're putting yard signs next to your neighbor's house in 2018, like in my case. And then I saw him and I hired him three months ago. What a long payoff he had by putting the yard sign in and paying the 200 bucks that he paid to print it in and put it in there. But here we are today. So I think there's branding component to it. There's an offer component to it. And there's this long-term consistency that has to occur

that can't just be one postcard. One postcard is just not gonna penetrate the market nearly enough to actually have success with. The other point to have in it is it's not just the compelling offer. A lot of it with the homeowner side, we have to consider risk reversals too. And Evolve's got a really good, they've got the risk-free guarantee.

Canceling after six months, and I'll read the fine print, between six months and seven months, you can get 100% refund of all your management fees. It is. I think that that's something where, but giving people that peace of mind. I think the CASA will beat your current revenue by 5,000 or more, refund you the difference. Only pay full commission on a five-star review. There's different things that you can do. No long-term contracts, you know, that 100% satisfaction guarantee. We've all seen those, but if the compelling offer isn't enough to follow it up with that risk reversal. And then again, they do do it consistently over time and writing, writing the content on your landing page, on your digital ads,

on your emails, on your direct mail pieces. That's what it's all about, making sure that people are seeing that messaging consistently. So it is touching on some of those digital presence items. I think that's another item that certainly is a non-negotiable. Whether you have a specific website, microsite set up for your owner side of things, or whether it's just a landing page on your full website, people need to be able to make it of things, or whether it's just a landing page on your full website, people need to be able to make it to that page, whether it's the search engines, making sure that it's optimized for SEO and people are getting there organically. But certainly if you are, if you're doing some of these other either direct marketing,

if you're doing direct mail, while I'm always going to be more on the digital side of things, there is something to be said for it. There's a reason why, because there's a reason why all of these competitors are out there sending a lot of direct mail over time. As Conrad just talked about, it is, it may be that you get that same direct mail piece or you get direct mail

pieces consistently for 12 months. And finally you've made that decision that, okay, it's time. I don't want to manage it anymore. I'm not happy with my current manager, whatever it is. That's now, now you've got something where you've got your direct mail piece and you're sending them to that landing page. That's really giving them all of these features and benefits, that compelling offer, the risk reversals, all of that should be included. All this great messaging and content

that we're putting out there, it should be unified and it shouldn't just be on that website. It is. I've seen some people who will create social media accounts just specifically for their management side of things. It is. Certainly that adds a little more of a lift to it, but it does allow you to reach that wider audience and allows you to establish that credibility, which is so important. We've talked about that risk, all the trust and social proof that you're putting into this already. It is, that's just another layer of that. So it is being able to create that social media presence and being able to really leverage that to, in the long term, do advertising. And whether that's running Facebook ads, whether that's running Google ads, LinkedIn ads, that's another way to hit what I would say a more affluent market, a little more difficult.

I know we've both, I think we both tried to use LinkedIn as a channel, both on the traveler side and the owner side, but it really is. It's allowing you to pour some gasoline on the fire. You're just waiting for all these organic efforts because most of what we've talked to up to this point, building a landing page, establishing your strategy and your USPs, we're not really pouring anything onto it. It's just, those are the table stakes to being able to grow that inventory. So being able to actually utilize those digital platforms and those paid advertising channels, I think is important because on the Google side of things, you are, you're able to find people who are searching specifically for

management in your area or not going to happen, but it is. And I, but I think it's important to really build that comprehensively and that granularly because there are so many people using so many different co-hosting keywords or all these obscure words that that's just in the United States. And we're working with some international partners as well. Then you add in holiday letting and holiday rentals and all these other things that it makes it, it just, it makes it very difficult to find those keywords, especially because ultimately, even if we build out all those keywords, maybe you're getting a dozen searches or that dozen searches a day. I see a lot of the partners that I work with that over the course of the month, we might get

150 impressions for the keywords we're actually looking for. That is a tiny number, even if you know you're converting 10% of those clicks. Okay, so you got 15 clicks. Awesome. The conversion rate on that is X, Y, Z. You start to do that math, maybe you're going to get a third of a lead, maybe you're going to get a half a lead, stuff like that. So when you're talking about those percentages, it just puts that premium on why you have to be so comprehensive with that strategy and really leverage as many channels as possible as well. It's not just Google and Facebook, it's email, it's direct mail. It's finding some other ways to do unique campaigns, just organic social outreach, talking to local, it's email, it's direct mail. It's finding some other ways to do unique campaigns,

just organic social outreach, talking to local, there's something networking offline with local industry professionals and making sure that you really are connecting with every potential prospect or partner that you can. Realtor programs are huge in our space. And because there is such a connection to real estate across the board, it really is making sure that you're leveraging every channel there. That was a lot. That's a lot of channel talking about. We're talking about the omni-channel, multi-channel, all of that.

What are your thoughts on really aligning the digital side of things and then implementing offline component as well? I think tracking is probably one thing that I didn't hear in that piece, which is like, how do you all tie it together? How do you try to figure out what's working? And it's hard, I admit, right? Because like we're saying, you spend a lot of effort and energy and time to get the right message in front of the right person.

And you just don't know which is the piece that tipped them over and actually convinced them to buy that thing, right? Every brand advertiser in the world wants to know where's my money being wasted and where's it being effective? I think it's an Ogilvy quote or something like that, right? Where it's 50% of my advertising is wasted. If you tell me which 50%, I'll gladly stop that. But I don't know.

And that's how I feel homeowner marketing is. There's probably half those efforts are wasted. You just don't know exactly which 50% it actually is. So that's the only thing that I could think of, which is that as we're building all this traffic into the page, how do we know where the most traffic is coming from? Even simple systems like analytics can tell you at least a rough sense of traffic and things like that. I know the inventory side, there's been vanity landing pages and things like that in the past QR codes that you can scan and get to the right page. So I would bucket that into this overall, I would say area of measurement and trying to see where

traffic's coming from and understanding that you're optimizing for again, it may be 20, 50, a hundred people a year, you're optimizing for their conversion to occur. So the numbers are always going to be relatively low with respect to depending on the size of your market, it might be modest, it might be a good amount. If you're in the biggest markets in the US, you might have, you know, a few dozen leads coming in on a monthly basis. But it's going to be a significant amount of effort to get a very few homeowners in there. But to the very top of the call, like you had said, the value of these homeowners is just so great. And that's also something that I've learned quite a bit over the past few years is that the value of them, both at

exit, like Brooks talked about a lot with me before, and during the actual operation of that property, it always made sense to me, right? Big companies have more big properties, but actually seeing it quantified with regards to a property might be worth anywhere from 30 to 40 to $50,000, all the way up to several hundred thousand dollars if it's a very high end premium home, that really puts it into perspective that, yeah, you're paying a lot of effort and money and time to get just those few conversations with the homeowner. But those conversations can be long term, potentially million dollar value if you keep care of that homeowner, and they stick with you for a long enough time period if it's the right property. So that's my takeaway as well, which is like

measuring, and then realizing that you're really you're coming in here like more like a sniper, right? You're coming in here with a very specific goal, a very specific mission with regards to promoting or getting in front of that homeowner. And then once you do, it's really a lot of effort on you to convert that homeowner and get them into. And some clients that we work with are great at that. Some clients I think need more improvement on that. But if you're sitting down and making your plan in 2023, I would be considering each

of those different stages. So maybe you could recap them for us real quick, Paul. Do you mind going through just features, benefits, USP, like from the top and just put it all above on this idea? Most definitely. Going back to the target. It's identifying that target audience, making sure that you know where your homeowners are and really understanding your market as well. Really getting that understanding of what's my total addressable market, what's the total addressable market, and what's the realistic market that I can expect to actually grow and gain from there. And that it is. I think it's really developing those USPs and going through all the key messaging

pieces that you'll need to really sell your services. So features and benefits, having that unique selling proposition, getting that social proof, making that compelling offer, having the right calls to action, putting those risk reversals in place so that when it comes time to it, you've given that owner all that they need to have confidence in your ability to earn them more and take care of their asset. I think that's really important as well there. And then it is really making sure that once you've got that strategy, once you know the people you're going after, giving them the right place to go after. So creating that website or landing page to make sure that anybody who is engaging with

you online is able to do it and get that same messaging that they got from a direct mail piece or got from any of the other channels that you're leveraging there. And then it is. And then it's really all about once you've established that framework, once you've established that strategy, adding fuel to the fire, using different channels, whether that's email to start and then keeping things more low cost, whether that's adding some digital advertising with Google ads or Facebook ads. And then making sure anytime you are obviously sending traffic to a landing page, you're understanding how that traffic is getting there from a reporting perspective. And certainly

something that we didn't quite touch on, but making sure you understand what people are doing on that landing page, something that we use Microsoft Clarity for to get that session recording and heat mapping in. Because again, if you're only going after 20 to 30 sessions a month or 50, 60 sessions a month or 50 60 sessions a month you really want to understand how people are in engaging with that page as well and make sure that landing page and that experience is as optimized as possible so having all that reporting in place once you're adding a marketing component or a digital component or adding traffic to a page is critical because then you can learn you can can iterate. And again, when we're going after these small micro sample sizes and micro

doing some micro campaign targeting it's really important to, to have that all unified and it is being able to offer an incentive and we've talked about that a little bit, that compelling offer to grease the wheels, get them over the edge. Um, And really making sure that as you're getting some of those leads through, I'll make a quick plug for having that automation, having that CRM to help you really manage those leads because it is, you can be the best salesperson in the world, but if you're trying to run it through spreadsheets or trying to run it through Post-its, which we've all kind of been there and you're going to lose track. So having that ability to automate as much of that as possible, whether there's some

property management systems that are trying to push for that as well, or having a CRM built specifically for the owner side of things, there are certainly some solutions out there. So hopefully that ties it up in a bow on how you should be trying to attract more homeowners in 2023. Conrad, if you want to toss anything else on there, certainly feel free to do so. When Jordan takes it to the cup and scores scores i don't think he needs someone to assist him after the fact like you've already scored so i guess that's how i'll boom i'll wrap that up which is that you've got it that's the thing is that i hopefully people going through this episode if you've made it this far you understand that this is challenging this is comprehensive there are people who have a lot

bigger guns than you that are coming into the fight and in order to fight back like you're gonna have to put forward a significant effort to get in front of those homeowners and make your offer compelling. So if you're looking at this and thinking this is a lot of work, I agree with you. This is a lot of work to get in front of those homeowners. I would argue this is harder, significantly harder, like to our point at the very top of the show, than doing guest marketing, because there's, I think Ruka said 100 to 1 ratio. I don't know if that's true. It might be higher than that. It might be 500 to 1 ratio as far as guest owners of your marketing. So you really almost have to take off your guest marketing hat, put that down on the

table to the side and put on a homeowner marketing hat when you're going through. And I think your summary at the end there did a good job of highlighting that what you're optimizing for and the different techniques that you're going to use are quite a bit different. It's almost more of like B2B marketing where you're marketing towards a specific person or a specific business in a way, like the house is the business, the property is the business. You're trying to attract them versus guest marketing where we're typically trying to get broader, reach broader appeal, get more people in the door.

So maybe even different people in your companies or to our point, how we got connected in the first place is different services. You may hire a mentor, you may hire a buildup, and they ultimately could work collaboratively together because these are different goals, different outcomes, et cetera, to be able to get there. So that's all I have. I don't really need to add much more. I do think you did a great job of summarizing it. So well done as always. If anyone has any feedback or comments, how could they reach you on this one? I'll just going to stay to the side. They should email you, not me. Any owner questions, happy to help out with those. And I can find you the answer to someone who can

help you there. Phenomenal. I think this was a great show. This concludes our little mini series here. We had 2023 guest marketing last episode. If you didn't hear that, go back and check that one out. You had 2023 homeowner marketing today. 2023, I think is going to be a good year. It's going to be, there's going to be some markets that are going to return to normal demand. And the numbers might be down if you look objectively, just compared to where we were last year. But I think some of the cruft is also going to just stage exit left as well. Some of the people that aren't really taking this seriously, they're not really in the business for the longterm. They're just doing it to make a quick buck. I think some of the cruft is also going to just stage exit left as well. Some of the people that aren't really taking this seriously, they're not really in the business for the long term.

They're just doing it to make a quick buck. I think they're going to exit left and open it up to really the people that are actually trying to deliver an excellent experience. If you're trying to deliver an excellent experience to your guest and to your homeowner, then you're doing the job that is hard. And that's the thing that you should be lauded for and applauded for. So thanks again. If you've listened this far, we appreciate any reviews or feedback that you have.

You can email Paul about homeowner marketing questions. I'll leave that to him. But if you have show questions or future episodes, email myself, Conrad, C-O-N-R-I-D at buildupbookings.com and keep begging for reviews until we're never going to stop begging for reviews. So just leave us a review and then we're not going to stop begging, but at least you'll feel like you've done the right thing, right? It takes one second. So you hit the right thing. That's what we both want for Christmas and New Year's. That would get us started off on the right foot in 2023. It's you leaving a review in your podcast app of choice. Thank you so much.

And we will see you next time.