Heads In Beds Show - The Four Part Process To Build A Guest Marketing Plan

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

In this episode of The Heads In Beds Show, we come back and talk the four-part marketing for guest focused campaigns. Enjoy! ⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellConrad's Book: Mastering Vacation Rental MarketingConrad's Course: Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing 101🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook 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 vacational properties, earn more revenue per property, master marketing, and increase your occupancy. Take your vacation rental marketing game to the next level by listening in. I'm your co-host Conrad. And I'm your co-host, Paul. All right, Paul, we're live. Good afternoon. What's happening? you know we're just mosey in our way through the month of october here it was school it was summer now it's going to be winter here soon so i i don't know it's been it feels like a dead sprint from

august just like it always does i'm happy to see that another year doesn't change that cadence but how are you doing sir how are things going for you yeah i think this is interesting month you know to your point of like what are people setting up for because it's pre-holiday season it's kind of into the fall like you said like everything's just ongoing like school's ongoing like all these things are just ongoing. I think clients are kind of in their ongoing mode. And then I think the next month or two proved to be pretty interesting sometimes of we typically sign a lot of business around this time of the year. That has been the case in the past over the next like, let's say 60 days or so. Sometimes a lot of people change and want to go a different direction as well.

So we, you know, I'll be honest. We've had people certainly leave during this time frame and say, I want to change what I'm doing or I'm, you know, consolidating or I'm bringing something in house or whatever the case may be. So yeah, think of that moment of change. It's kind of like understanding where, you know, your value proposition is. And one thing, I'm talking with my team right now is just like, just remind the clients everything we do. It's nothing that revolutionary, but I'm always surprised by like sometimes people don't understand how complex it is to do something very simple. Like you and I were talking before you record about the fact that we're publishing over

100 blog articles this month with formatting, with human editors, reviewing them, with, you know, all the right SEO practices. It sounds simple on the surface, but then you realize how many people have to be involved to publish 100 articles with images, well, the right formatting, et cetera, et cetera. And it's a lot of work. You know, so it's, you know, people understand the, service that we're providing and how that has helping them drive more traffic and get more bookings and all those things. Hopefully they, you know, see the right value from it. But you've got

to remind people of it. I think it's the same way that a vacation rental, you know, manager has to remind their homeowner all the value that they're bringing to them. I tell that to my clients all the time, which is like you're probably doing a lot of things for the client for the homeowner in this case. They're not even aware of. Like I feel like, again, we fall in the same trap. Maybe a lot of us do. So they see like a check or they see like a statement at the end of the month, but, like, just double down that kind of stuff. I think this is a good time of year for that type of discussions. Like, as a reminder, like, X, Y, Z, ABC, you know, D, F, here's the results.

Here's the revenue. Like, and when I do that and I look at the numbers for like almost all of our clients, I feel like we're in good shape, like we're doing what we should be doing. But never a bad idea to remind someone. That's for sure. That was always a very interesting discussion of, well, everybody else does it. Well, that doesn't mean you shouldn't tell somebody that you do it as well there. That was a, it's not really bragging when you're telling people what you're doing about, you

know, in running your business there. And I think that that's, that was harder in some markets than other. Others just letting people, you know, kind of talk about themselves. But, but yeah, I think that any time you can reassure, you know, remind people that you're not just clicking buttons, you're not just doing this. There's, there's some thought process that goes into this whole thing. And a hundred blog articles is, a blog post is an insane number. And a lot of work has to go into, not just on your side of things, but with, with your

customers, partners there as well. So kudos to you as well there. I deserve very little credit. You know, though my concept manager does almost all the work. I just sit back and watch. It's almost like I'm sitting on the floor and all the people underneath are doing all the work. And then, you know, I get credit that I don't deserve to be honest with you in that respect. But that's what marketing sometimes. You know, it's, in marketing can be very complex. We've got a kind of second part today. So if you go back two in the feed or might be three, depending on when you listen to this. We did a four part marketing strategy for homeowners a few weeks ago. So we're kind of doing this again right now, four-part marketing strategy for guests,

because again, marketing can be complicated. And I think sometimes we tend to get very down in the weeds of like, all the different strategies, obviously like AI is a trendy thing right now. People get very distracted by shiny objects and marketing. But let's just like zoom out. Let's get back to like the 10,000 foot view, the 10,000 foot level of what that four-part marketing strategy is on the guest side. And let's go through it really quickly. So we're going to talk today about targeting who are our ideal guests. Number two is positioning. How do we want guest to perceive us. Number three is messaging. How do we want to say it? And the number four is channels. So how are we actually going to communicate that message to those right

people that we're trying to attract? So dive in, Paul. What's what do you think about targeting when it comes to building out like those ideal guest personas? What's been in your experience there in the past? I think people don't do enough of this. And I think that there's the tools in place to do more of this. Segmentation is something that always comes to mind. If you're really using your property management system effectively to detail what each individual user is kind of doing, are they a family? Are they a couple? Did they travel with pets? Do they golf? Are they seeking luxury? You can really kind of break that down, tag appropriately, and make sure that you're understanding who each of these audiences are that have traveled with you,

will travel with you in the future again because you want that repeat booking. So I do. I think that that's one thing that we put a lot of focus on those property management systems and what they do to help us run the business. But that's a marketing tool that I think we've referenced quite a few times that I think is just under leveraged from that perspective because it does. It does so many other things to help you run your business. You forget that the marketing angle is a very important angle in understanding that segmentation. I would argue you could do guest journey and even talk about the guest pain points there as well

within there. So what do you think on the overall targeting and where are some areas that you like to focus there? I think it's almost another piece of conversation too, which is like matching up the properties you have to that ideal guest and better having like a stronger opinion on like what type of property is going to do well for a specific group of people. Like I'll say it's pretty common. I have this conversation with someone recently. They get a lead. They get a homeowner lead. They sign a property.

And they're just kind of like they plug it into some software or some tool that tells them it'll do X, Y, Z revenue. But they never like spend much time thinking about like the design of that property, the way that it should be laid out like some of those pieces. And as a result, sometimes they just get like, like that's an average, right? Like if you drop it into an AirDNI type tool and you say, how much revenue is this property going to do? It's going to do its best and it's going to use great data. Don't get me wrong. And it's going to try to estimate in the most accurate way that it can, you know, exactly how the property is going to do when it compares to other people.

But within that set of comparison points are going to be people that are probably pretty mediocre at marketing, certainly some people that are very bad at marketing and presenting that home. And then, of course, a handful that are really exceptional to do a good job. And as a result, I feel like your numbers are like, it should be relatively straightforward to beat the averages if you know who you're going after and why you're trying to serve that person. So I think that's almost like a, it's almost like a little bit of a matching thing. I think property managers don't think of themselves that way, but they should more of like, all right, people coming to this area for this purpose, want this kind of home for this

type of reason, and then saying, okay, that's exactly what I'm after. Like, I'm working with a client right now that has, to put it kind of vaguely, I hate to do that, but I think I have to, to be fair to this person. Like, they very unique properties that are just not a fit for most people coming to that destination. So as occupancy numbers are like pretty low, like in the high 30s, low 40% range for these types of properties, they have a very unique use case. terms of the location and some of the other factors on the design of them. But it's like hard.

Like the properties are built. He owns them by the way. This is a management situation. It's like we can't really change them at this point. Right. Like they are what they are. So it's like all we can do is try to market them and get the word out about what they are. But I feel like we actually, and this was done a decade before I showed up here. But I feel like the original thesis on like why someone would come and stay in this type of property was not perfectly well thought how. So as a result, like we don't, we know who our ideal guest is. There's just not enough of them to like fill the property at a high level of occupancy. So I think that's that can be hard. It's like if you set it up on a shaky foundation, it's hard after that.

I think, and I think the other side of that conversation is that, like, before it was, it was just people were comparing, I think, hotel versus vacation rental or motel versus vacation rental or, you know, had different travel needs for different accommodation types. Now I think vacation rentals are so all-encompassing that there are different, there are different vacation rentals for different travel types or people have to consider that so it is a deeper inspection of you're not just forced into okay location hotel versus vacation rental it's now location okay vicinity to landmarks within vacation and then amenities within accommodation and I mean there's just so much more that has to be taken into or not even has to because

doesn't necessarily have to be, but should and can be taken into consideration when you're trying to reach people at a deeper level or throughout the funnel at different levels there. So I do. I think that that's something that it is. Targeting is never easy to do, but I think really understanding and going down to that next level, making sure you do understand and define those personas and kind of do that work, it does help. It makes that messaging so much more effective.

And then you can, you can kind of stand behind that brand story, those core values and everything behind that as well. Yeah. Yeah. One note on this and then we'll kick it over to positioning because I think these things kind of fold together. I had a client recently that went on a trip to Japan. She was telling us about her trip to Japan last time we had our kind of monthly call

with her. And she was just talking about how different the mindset is of like real estate investors in Japan and this whole collectivist versus individualist mindset. And I was like, if you were an American and you went over to Japan and said, I'm going to do short rentals here. Let's just pretend you spoke perfect Japanese. like let's say you did all the duolingo and he's put perfect Japanese or no language barrier. I think you'd have a super hard time understanding that market based on everything she described to me.

So like culturally, it's so different. And it is funny because I think sometimes people end up with the right targeting because they chose a property for themselves. And they're like, I like this of my family. And then as a result, there are other people like that too. They're like, oh, you like this kind of thing in your property. I like this kind of thing of my property. Like I used to follow this guy on Twitter called Roheen. I think his last name is Dar, DHA, R.m. Reserves.

And now he's like kind of focused more on the real estate side. But he had like a few years where he posted about his short term rental portfolio. and he said one of my like key factors in choosing my personal like real estate investments that I bought you talk about this was like is the back deck a good coffee spot in the morning like whether that's view or location or setting next to the kitchen like he was just like is that accessible is something that I get out there and I'm like this is awesome I see myself having coffee here on this back deck and that was like the criteria for him to choose some of his rentals on top of surely other things wasn't like that was the only thing but but when he started

launch his properties they've done pretty well for you know for him when you used to put the post about them in the past before he kind of focused more on the real estate side of things And it was like, people liked it, too. Like, people would make comments like that on, you know, his reviews and things like that that they were like, oh, yeah, we had coffee on the back deck. It was amazing. The view, the location, et cetera. So sometimes it's little things.

It's not always like, hey, we have to design this property from the ground up. That's super themed and perfect and that sort of thing. Obviously, that's popular nowadays. And I'm not disputing that that does not get attention. But there's also like a higher cost entry point there. You know, is that all going to make its money back. That's more for the investor people to know, not me. But I know that there's like properties that I've stayed in where I'm just like,

this is the right fit for me. like I paid good a good price for this property. I'm getting good value for my stay. Does it have every single bell and whistle ever met it? No, but like for a couple's trip like you said to go to Blue Ridge, Georgia. Like I've stayed in a cabin there before because I have a client up in that market. And like this is like pretty perfect. Like I think like the location's nice.

Like it's quiet like all these things. And again, doesn't have all the bells and whistles. But it's like I bet the person who bought that cabin was like they enjoyed going there with their husband or wife. And they're like, this is perfect. Like I bet other people will like this too. So yeah, the same token like do your research, but also like sometimes you don't have to like make it a 20-page slide deck and overthink it either. Like sometimes it is just about like finding that and then positioning it to come into

number two here very quickly of how guests want to perceive us. So I think this is a bit of a brand conversation as well, not just property conversation. They'll like zoom back for a second. Obviously a lot of people in the positioning side, like what does your brand actually stand for? But I think Paul and I have another episode we were kind of outlined before today, not to like, you know, spill the secret saws on how we do all these episodes.

Sometimes we're outlining beforehand for something that ends up being a different episode. But it's kind of this idea of like, what do you want to be known for? Like if you want to be the budget value brand, that is not an insult, by the way. not a negative thing. You're going to manage every condo in that building and you're going to do an amazing job and these are all one bedroom, tiny studio oceanfront units and you're going to give a great value for a great price. You can build a really great business off the back of that. You know, the people are going to love? And if you take care of the guests, that's amazing.

Are you also moving mountains? Are you this really high-end luxury boutique experience where people book experiences and other things through you where we had a boat on the hot seat luxury rentals and Tutti talked at length about that on the VRMA hot seat session about all the non-rential revenue they generate from experiences. That's awesome, too. Like, it's a lot harder, by the way. Like, it's harder to kind of break into that and do that. But that's an awesome business, too. So I think it's like, how do you want guests to perceive us? What am I offering? And then it has to be, like, I'm big on this word. We talked about this word before, congruent. It has to be, those ideas have to connect together. What doesn't work is the idea that I'm a luxury property

manager, then I go on the website and I see $100 per night condo. Those things are not congruent. And as a result, you don't get results with marketing. So those are kind of some high-level thoughts. But what would you, what would you expand on that with? Yeah, I mean, I think differentiation in different markets is as we've talked about very different to do. I think that sometimes the properties do differentiate themselves. Sometimes it is that location. Sometimes it is and I think there's something to be said for those commodity markets where, yeah, you can do budget is fine. You just have to differentiate yourself within the budget category. I think that's one of those things sometimes is that sometimes differentiation comes by the category. But when you do

have as saturated a market as some of these markets that we work in are it is it's about differentiation even within your category there so i mean if it is if it's a proximity thing it's if it's a location thing if it's your local expertise i do think that not enough property managers really demonstrate that that local expertise that they have like they don't take advantage of really telling about why why the way they run their business is different or why the way the way they've made partnerships with the local area is different. And I do. I think that that's something that maybe it doesn't move the needle for everybody. But if you're consistent with that, I think it's one of those things that it grows over time. Like that that, that consistency of

brand, having the true branding, the true brand posture, whatever that is, you will be able to grow with that. And by, I would say, a little bit of extension there, those enemies, the OTAs will not have the same power over your brand because it is. It's not a vacation rental that I booked through Airbnb with this person. No, it's a vacation rental I booked with this company. Whether you're a budget company or a luxury company, as long as you're establishing that, I mean, it is. It's critical to owning that guest long term because we're all, maybe not all, but 99% of people are going to take a booking through an OTA at some point along the line. So how do you own that guest after that,

doing all these things on the positioning side of things to ensure that they know it was you and not Airbnb, not verbal, not booking.com, not Marriott, Homanvilles, wherever we're going there. Well, it's, again, these trips are repeated, I did a LinkedIn poll a few days ago as of this recording. You'll listen to this and it'll be a little bit after. But it was this idea that everyone says the same thing.

I'm going to get a booking from an OTA that I'm going to flip them into a direct booking when they come back. Everyone says that. If you go to any conference, like it was a talking point of the RMA, It's a talking point all the time. The biggest companies in the space say that. And then Ida Klein actually asked me to do that, pull that analysis for him. And then I realize that it's basically impossible to do that and get accurate data unless you are unbelievably diligent at collecting guest data on the front end when they book from Airbnb.

If you are, then I bet you're going to be able to pull that off. But I suspect very few people actually pull that off and actually are able to measure that. Like I got some response on my poll that, to be honest with you, I just don't believe. Because if you don't know the original guest email address or some kind of identifier, booking name, et cetera, like, okay, John Doe booked, but like there could be 20 John Doe's. Like you can't do it on name. You can't do it on phone number because you don't get the phone number. You can't do it on email.

You don't get the email. So unless you're breaking through getting those things. And by the way, getting someone to agree to give you those things is a headache within Airbnb. Yes, it is allowed, but you have to like follow very specific rules. People can just say, no, I'm not going to do that. And like, oftentimes Airbnb will like allow them to still get the door code or whatever. So the one client that I did the analysis for, sorry, I'm way of topic here. This is a small ramble.

But they do require, they have like a guidebook that's sent to the guest when they book. And within the guidebook is, is their door code. So they kind of have to fill out this guidebook, like, little intake form from one of these major software companies in order to get their door code. So you presume, like, you're motivated to fill that out. So you can get your door code and you get into the property, right? So I'm like, this is going to be cake. And then I start digging in. I realize their res team spends hours every day dealing with people who didn't fill out the intake form or like this little welcome guidebook. And they're like messaging like, yeah, I never got the door code. Like they're

messaging their, you know, res team that was offshore in the Philippines for this. And I'm like, a lot of people like every day. That's what they battle with that. So it's like, they have this process that like isn't really working that well. I guess the owner wasn't like super dialed into how common this was. So he thought it was more rare. And then I started taking in and I'm like, oh, it's like 25% of people. We don't have an email address for or 30% of people. So I'm like, I can do this analysis. Like we don't actually know how well people are rebooking because we're missing 30% of the data. Like that's not an accurate representation of it. And the numbers came out super low, but I'm like, I don't trust those either. It was like five or six percent of people

who book again will or book through an OTA will book again directly. But I was like, this could be 20% or it could be 5%. We have no idea because the data discrepancy. So that's that's a whole other thing to go back to that point of like, you know, I don't believe the OTAs are enemies. I think that they're going to exert control. That's maybe the way that I would describe it more so on my side of things. And so it's your job as a company to position yourselves differently discreetly from them. I agree with you there 100%. And it is hard work to do that. I'm not going to I think it's a touch point thing. I think when it comes to the property itself, you have to have many, many visual reminders. I think your messaging has to remind people of that. I think you're

obviously your post-day communication has to remind people of that. You have to keep hammering the point home over and over again. I was listening to a podcast this morning and they were talking about, it was like the CEO's primary job as a chief explaining officer, like just explaining your value proposition to your team or explaining your position to your team over and over again about what you want people to do. And I'm like, that happens to my own company. And I have like a 15 person company. I can't imagine what it's like in a massive company where it's like, all right, guys, like Bezos at Amazon when he was the CEO. Like, here's what we're working on today. Like just reminding people over and over again at this massive

company what we're optimizing for. So same thing with the guests, right? The guest is assaulted with marketing messages. And I don't mean vacation rental marketing messages. I just mean in general, like open your Facebook feed scroll five minutes and you've seen 50 ads like the chance of them remembering you are so slim like you have to be hammering these points home so yeah i think knowing what your positioning is make sure it's congruent is so critical that's like the first two things that i see people goof all the time and then to you know to your point to kind of hammer that that piece home and then go to the next one year it really is all about i think here's my positioning and then reinforcing it over and over and over again having every touchpoint line up to what you're actually saying and then living through that you know that journey so that they remember you versus the oTA it's like one or two touchpoints just honestly is not going to do it. It has to be physical in the property. It's got to be like a digital advertising strategy. And it's got to be like email, out by own SMS, like all that kind of stuff has to be lined up there. And then you've got a chance. All that, to be honest with you, you've only got a chance to have the guests remember your name and your brand. It's certainly no guarantee. So it's just a lot of work for sure on the position. No, I mean, it is. And you're

going right into it, into the messaging side of things is what do we want to say to the guests? Because yes, you have to continue to say the right things to the guests. And you have to say it through every channel, I think it's harder to do it on the guest side of things because there are so many different ways and different things that you're going to say, I mean, what are the benefits of traveling to your destination with you, you know, being able to tell the story of what people can do? I think that that's something that we've talked about often. And it really does allow people to, I think now more than ever, they want to see that story. They want to visualize. It's not just about reading.

While blog content is critical, you've got to be able to tell those stories in different ways. And so I do, I think that that, I think maybe bringing the content that you have in some areas to different channels, it's super important to be able to make sure that that story is being told across the ecosystem. And I think everything is kind of a digital ecosystem from your website, from your social media profiles, everything like that. I mean, that's the one thing I think the case for rental industry is at a disadvantage that is that you can't, you don't just have the standalone sign messaging of, okay, we're going to have this single unit of we're going to all come into this area. We're going to physically have, maybe you do have the front desk chuck in,

but there's something to having that centralized location where all the messaging can go to come from that a hotel has that as a more spread out property, property management, business things like that i think it's just that is the beginning of where the fracturing happens with the messaging and then from there you know obviously to channel to channel to different areas from there it just kind of fractures further so i um you know there are obviously tools that you can use to have better messaging communication and do things like that but where do you know where do you fall on on how important each of these levels of messaging are and and really painting a more putting together better messaging moving forward.

Yeah, this is, I would say, where we can get more creative, right? Because it's like, all right, again, do we want to say, like, we are, you know, Steve Boat Springs, number one, luxury property manager. It's like, not really, right? Like, there's so many things within that that we can create it with as far as how we say it, you know, like you said, how we position it, logo branding, I think kind of all falls in this messaging bucket to me, storytelling, like you mentioned a moment ago, those are all important things.

So, yeah, this is where, like, there's certain brands that I think that I've sort of grown of working with and respond well to, and I think they do a good job of. and there are certain companies that look at and go, like, I think we need to work on that. We just signed someone and it was interesting. Like, we're in the kickoff call and we're having this conversation with someone. And I was just kind of like, I didn't know when to bring it up of like, I don't like your branding, you know, but I was saying, all right, like,

we're just meeting kind of for the second time. And here I am saying, like, I think you should change the name of your company. That can be like an awkward thing to come off on. And then he brought it up. He was like, oh, yeah, like, I don't really like this brand was actually meant to be more of like an investor-focused brand. And then somehow it ended up being like our guest-facing, you know, vacation rental brand.

And he's like, it's not good. And I'm like, okay, good, you know, because I was willing to say that. But I wanted to find the right time for it and not, you know, again, after knowing you for 45 minutes, even though that is kind of what he hired us for us to give marketing advice. So I think that's one of those things that if you miss it out of the gate, like you can come back and do it again. It's not the end of the world. But it also can be a bit of a project to say, all of our aboutos pages, all of our homepage copy, all of our logos. Like those are things that can be very time consuming and costly.

I'm not going to lie. And to be honest with you, when you're done with all of it, it's not like there's some pot of gold waiting for you at the end of it. It's like, let's say you launch and you get the branding right again and you're kind of happy with it. You're kind of like just at the starting line. You then have to go run the marathon of brand building, right? Like ads and all those kind of things. Now, what's waiting for at the other side I would argue is very valuable, right? Like, and I've talked about this before, but we have clients who, if we turned off all their ads tomorrow, stop sending emails, turned off basically, all the marketing just left the website up.

They would continue to get, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40 percent of more direct bookings because they built a brand of people seek them out specifically. They go to their website directly and they book with them. it's very hard to quantify that though on a like week to week month-to-month basis with those clients right now because it's like it's all mixed in amongst all this other advertising marketing and promotion that we're doing so I'll be honest like I have a hard time you know being transparent with the client the same token it's like I can't exactly write and six bookings that one of the 106 bookings that one of our ads you and I were talking about that before you record it's all a bit of a you know edict of you exactly I'm in 106 saw one of our ads you know interacted with some of that stuff the tracking is never perfect you and I were talking about that before you record it's all a bit of a you know educated guests at best, but I'm like, I know that we got 106 bookings. I know those bookings are on average $2,500 each. I know we got a lot of revenue from this, and that is very profitable for you, you know, those bookings coming in. And then, sure, if we only look at people that clicked on the PPC ad, the tracking never broke and they made a booking, maybe the the raw ass is just okay. But if we look at the whole picture of like what we spent versus what

we got, we're super happy. And I think that we should be happy about like the messaging that we have. Again, the advertising that we're doing, the marketing that we're doing, the guests that we have, of course, the fact you have great reviews, properties, like this idea that I have lately is this idea that it's like a bunch of individual train track pieces have to be lined up pretty perfectly for them to work well. And I know you and I talked about this, the hot seat as well at VRMA. And if one of those train tracks is like crooked and sideways, the whole thing kind of does fall apart. The train falls off the tracks. If like a guest sees our awesome ads, they click through one of our campaigns, they book on this fancy fast website, everything's

nice and cool. And they get to the property, it's not clean. Like all that doesn't matter. Like, all that is just thrown in the garbage. None of that work is valuable, essentially. And we're going to get a horrible review from that guest. If they walk in and it's a disaster, right? Like, the cleaner doesn't show up, right? The cleaner could do their job well, but like if you got no advertising, you're not telling going about your company, like you're going to be fighting for scraps, right?

Like, so it's all the, it's like doing 10, 15, 20 different disciplines at a very high level and like a little wicker room exists. It's not like, you know, they'll be perfect, right? But like, you've got to be like within one zero of perfect for things to actually work well. You can't be like, yeah,

like I'm cleaning them kind of right half the time. I do like a little bit of advertising. You know, like the brand is just okay. Like all those things just aren't going to get you very good results. They're going to get you at best, mediocre results and at worst, just no results and you're wasting a lot of money on it. So I think that's where messaging comes together,

which is like, this is what we'll deliver. And then you're hopefully over delivering on that. And then people get there and they're like, that's awesome. Exactly what I thought I was going to get. I got. And you want people to leave and have the kind of commentary. I had a client, a review come in another day for a client.

You know, like put a huge smile on my face. I will not book with anybody else. Like they booked here. They've had this experience and they put that review in there. I booked other places before. It didn't work as well. I'm not going to book with anybody else. And I was like,

that is the best review ever because it just made marketing's job really, really easy to get that person to come back. That's the one you printed out, you frame it, and you keep that up on the wall for the rest of them. I mean, that's just. And that's their boots on the, sorry to interrupt, but that's the boots on the ground team crushing it. Like, we deserve very little credit for that. I would say maybe we got them in the door, maybe. Like, we could kind of take some credit for that on the marketing side.

But their team on the ground did, again, they had 20 train tracks. They lined up on their operation side, on the guest experience side, everything. They nailed all 20 of them. And now marketing is going to be like on easy street because of the work that they did on the ground. that's cool i mean that's that's that's why we put you know that's why we do the marketing that we do in the channels that we do so i'm going to just transition transition us right down into channels here and on the guest side of things you know i think you primarily say search social and email again but on the social side i think this is where being more

visually driven whether that's in instagram whether that's in youtube shorts whether that's in TikTok, whether that's, you know, whether channels you're going to, I think there's certainly a difference in the social channels that you're going to use in owner side versus guest side. On the email and the search side of things, you know, that's, you're probably going to focus your efforts in a similar manner there as far as you're going to use the same email marketing tools probably that you're using on the guest side or you know, some more, that's a different discussion there. And then I think on the website side of things, again, you do want to to have standalone areas where you can land both your guest and traveler having a website,

a direct booking website that talks too much about owners, certainly not what we want to go with too much of the time there because again, this is, it is, it's a direct booking website. You know, do you need a separate website? Again, another discussion for everybody has a different need there, I think, depending on their growth goals, but primarily it is. You want to focus on making sure that you're getting that high intent traffic from search. You know, Google search were pretty big proponents, I would say. Bing search is also effective.

I mean, here's the thing is that when we look at Google Analytics, people are doing searches in a lot of different places. Making sure that you're showing up in all of those areas, I think, is critical. Making sure, you know, luck checking your Google Analytics report. You don't have to have a thousand sessions coming from chat GPT, but you should consistently be having some coming through. Same thing with perplexity. Same thing with Bing.

Duck, duck, go, Google, all these areas. measure a baseline and track that from where they're coming on the search side of things because that is going to continue to fluctuate. I think it's going to be important to monitor that certainly as that's a primary way that people find our sites. I mean, this is a travel planning. The guest side of things is much more planning based and has a lot more elements of multiple touch points along the way.

So they might hit your website. We know that. They might hit OTAs. they might hit local DMOs. They might hit all of these nice areas. So just make sure you're understanding where you are out there and making sure that communication is consistent throughout all those channels.

But you go ahead and talk about it in here as well. I know you've got all this lockdown, really. Yeah, no, I mean, I think that you did a good job of it. You know, again, see our previous 140 episodes if you want ideas on marketing channels, right? Like we've probably covered that one the most. So it's funny that we're finishing on that one because I would argue it is the thing that we've covered the most.

But again, people seem to want to rush here to like, all right, let me get the word out and then they skip the previous three steps, right? They don't know who they're actually going after. They don't really know what they're saying that well. They're just kind of throwing out very generic copy and content. And they don't really know how they're going to speak about their offer, how they're going to speak about their properties. They don't really have that understood very well. So as a result, when they get to the channels of like, all right, let me go make a Facebook video or let me go make a YouTube video about my company. They actually, a lot of that falls flat because they've not put much thought into it.

So, yeah, again, is there something like maybe one thing you didn't say that I would. add in there just as extra flavor, extra context would be that don't try to master everything at once. That's very common. There's a lot more, there's a deeper well of like SEO and content there that I think most people understand. And as a result, they tend to try to do multiple things too early on or they expect too much out of doing too many things too quickly. And as a result, they don't get the results that they're after and they're unhappy or they don't see the results immediately. So they kind of cut bait and they say this isn't working and they move on. Like again, long-term play. A lot of brain building that has to occur for all these things to work better.

but I'll give you an example, like I'll give you an SEO example. A lot of people seem to rush to want to do a second site. I've had a lot of these conversations lately before the first site's ranking well. There is a time and place to do a second website. I do believe that. But it's once your first site is taken like pretty much to the maximum where it's like, I don't think I can get any more traffic on this website. We've covered every meaningful topic.

Carefully, we've updated all that content. It is accurate. It is again refreshed. It has original photography. It has original pictures. The content has been reviewed by a local expert. Like there are so many layers to doing one website. well. And then people are rushing and trying to launch seven different websites.

Like we had a conversation recently with someone that had like nine or 10 or 12 different brand websites. And like each website in isolation was getting very little traffic. When you summed them all up, it was okay. And the only thing I could think of when we were done with the call was like, dude, if you just put all that effort into one website, you'd be getting probably two, three, four, five X or more of the traffic because the way that you kind of had is split out there. So even though, you know, Paul did a long list there of channels. And within those things, there's a lot of things that you can be doing. I think you're really, really much better off with channel marketing of like, let me get SEO in a really, really good shape by doing a lot of

content, a lot of link building, make sure the site's in good shape. And that's going to be an ongoing effort, whether it's internal, whether it's with a fractional kind of part-time person you're hiring, a contractor, whether it's obviously with an agency like ourselves. There's different ways to go about it, of course. But like, just you got to give these things time and you have to do, you got to go a mile deep, not just like a mile wide and inch deep. And I think a lot of people do that when it comes to channels. They think, oh, I'm on 20 things. That's better than being on one thing. Actually, it's worse.

Like, you're better, you really are better off doing one or two things well, for sure. That's all of things. Paul, that's it. So we'll recap it for the listener. All right, the four part, marketing strategy for a guest. Number one, targeting. Who are you actually going after?

Who are our ideal guests? Number two, positioning. How do we want guests to perceive us? What does our brand actually stand for? And how is that brand congruent with the service that I actually provide an offer? Number three, messaging. What do we want to say to guess?

How are we going to say it? That's copy, that's creative. That's some of the branding elements, the visual elements, those sorts of things, messaging. And then number four, all right, when it's all of a sudden done, how are we going to get the word out? What marketing channels are we going to use within search social email? And there's paid organic within each of those components to some degree.

How am I going to get the word out and get my marketing in shape? If you do those things well, though, Paul, what waits for you on the other side of the rainbow is a lot of direct bookings and a lot of awesome success for your business? And we've seen it again and again. So this is possible. Paul, any parting thoughts before we put a bow on this one for today. Skull. It's Vikings game on Thursday. Oh, let's go school.

All right. Quick prediction. Quick, by the way, is JJ back? Where are we out here? He's not. No, it's the Carson Wednesday again. So I am. So at least two picks, but other than the two picks, what else is going to happen?

Unfortunately, I... The Chargers are kind of crashing right now, though. They are, but it's Thursday night, I'm thinking 21-10, I think we're going to lose. So this is the Minnesota. We're getting to that point of, you know, if we're not really high on the horse, it's time to go into the doldrums. So Minnesota sports doldrums is where I'm headed. This is,

and I've got the Timberwolves to take me back to the heights. Hopefully, fingers crossed. We'll see. Your NBA team will be better than my NBA team for the beginning part of the season. Let's see when Tate comes back. Yeah, let's see the same comes back. Oh, man. You know, it would be cool, though.

Paul, if the Vikings were to get to five wins by the time the listener, I think the world played five. Hopefully they'll have five wins by time of the listener. Here's this episode, because they'll hopefully get four tonight. And we need five stars for each of the Vikings, hopefully five wins. I will get, I will say, I'm pretty confident the Patriots will have five wins by time you're listening to this because we've got two kind of cup game games coming up. So we'll see.

Again, I'm not guaranteeing that are promising that, but, you know, we certainly need five stars. So go to your podcast, have the choice, leave us five stars to represent the five wins of the Vikings or the five wins of the Patriots or maybe both. Who knows, by time you're listening to this, that might be the case. Or the fact that Paul was hoping to see five playoff games, you know, or more in his home state of Minnesota, as it were. That's it. We appreciate it. Sorry for the rambly weird ending there, but we appreciate listening all the end, dear listener. have an awesome day.

We'll catch you on the next one.