Heads In Beds Show - The TRUTH About How To Leverage Influencers In Your Vacation Rental Marketing

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'Connellhttps://about.fb.com/news/2022/11/facebook-widely-viewed-content-report-q3-2022/https://www.searchenginejournal.com/new-era-google-search/466631/#closehttps://share.cleanshot.com/4IZ4W9🔗 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. Hey there, Paul. How's it going today? Great, Conrad. How are you doing today?

Doing awesome. It's our first post-Thanksgiving recording here. We had a little friendly wager. Should we say it publicly? I think that's fine. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead and gloat for a second. So what happened on Thursday night? So on Thursday night, for those non-football fans out there, I happened to text Conrad saying we should probably put a little juice on the Vikings-Patriots game. We are both diehard fans for both of those teams.

You know, my team, the Vikings, did end up making my Thanksgiving, whatever we're going to go there. But really, serving up a great Thanksgiving dessert for me is all I've got to say on that matter. So we will. We'll have maybe a little money change in hands here, but certainly we'll have a little Vikings apparel for Conrad on one of our future recordings.

So that's really all that matters to me in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, just brutal. I mean, I'm not one of these sour grapes people. Like there was bad calls that didn't benefit the Patriots. But the Patriots have won games in which bad calls benefited them or good calls from my perspective. So that's just life. That's watching football.

But yeah, just not enough. I would say that it's a good lesson in like marketing and competing and the world that we live in which is that sometimes the other team is just better and you just gotta your hat or nod to them and say yep you got us fair and square on this in this case because patriots had two chances to come down and win the game and they didn't even mount an attempt a solid attempt at either one of them so that was what i did text paul after the game which is that ultimately we can hem and haw about this call or that call, but whether in business or in life or in sports or whatever, when the ball's in your hand, when it's your responsibility to go and fix the problem and correct it and you fall flat on your face, you don't really deserve to win. So that's my takeaway.

Speaking of companies that actually do win though, maybe we can get into a quick marketing minute. And I had one that kind of caught my eye. So Facebook just released last week, or maybe it was two weeks ago, the most widely viewed content report, which they've abbreviated WVCR. I'll put a link to this in the show notes. I thought it was kind of interesting. And they give all these different examples of things that they perceive to be high quality content and things that Facebook perceives based on what's actually viewed the most on Facebook organically, what they perceive to be low quality content. And I saw two things that caught my eye that I think are actionable for folks that listen to the show. Number one, the group's reach has gone up significantly in the past 18 months, 24 months, right? So I used to be kind of on the fence about doing a group. And I've had some clients recently that have built a group. And the group will be something like this. It'll be like friends of Myrtle Beach or fans of Myrtle Beach. It'll be something to that effect. And they are actually the admins and the creator of the group. They link it to their page, but they say, hey, if you have questions, come into this

group, ask us about your favorite restaurants, your favorite things to do, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, if you want to know a place to stay, of course, they can then drop links to their particular vacation rental company. But Facebook was saying this side of this report that this can be a legitimate content strategy that you can actually use groups to your advantage because people engage with and they have an affinity towards going in and leaving comments, asking questions inside of a group versus just seeing your page where it does feel like typically more of a one way conversation. So that's one thing that caught my eye. If you haven't done a group and you have the bandwidth to do so. To be clear, I think this is something that you do once you've mastered other areas of your like ongoing marketing.

I don't think this is like the most important thing for you to be doing. But if you're on social or if you have a social budget or a social team and you have the ability to have folks on your team, maybe even who work for you, especially local folks, maybe someone in the reservations department or something, be the kind of admin or the local resource in that group. I do think it's something that might make a lot of sense for you to consider given the trends that Facebook shared in this report. That was one thing that caught my eye.

The second thing, which is that in many cases, Facebook was talking about organic content being posted with links in it. And they were admitting basically that we killed the organic reach or links inside of content just kills the organic reach of whatever you're trying to do on Facebook. So if you didn't already know, we've been saying this for two years, probably three years at this point, it feels like, but if you didn't already know, just having a Facebook page that's full of a photo and a link or a link post constantly all the time, it's just going to take your reach down to

low 1%, half of 1%. It's just going to make the, you may have 100,000 fans and 500 of them might see your link post. So I just don't think you can go in that direction. Again, I felt this way for a while, but it was good to like get it straight from the horse's mouth, if you will, with this most widely viewed content report. So again, I'll put this into this link into the show notes. You can check out the report for yourself. It's from Facebook. So it's all kind of legit, not a third party. And then a few other

things caught your eye. So I think you had to do, what was your perspective? Any other marketing minute headlines that you had on your side, Paul? Yeah. So what I mean, and mine was kind of a, wasn't exactly the first one was in the news piece, but on the Facebook trend as well, while we were building out some partner campaigns and partner ads, we actually saw an offer to do Facebook's offering a hundred dollar credit to do some AB testing, which not a whole lot of, not a whole lot of actual items you have to do. I mean, all you have to do is create an AB test. So, you know, whether that's at the ad set level, campaign level, ad level. But it looks like I would assume usually when Facebook is trying to push people to test A-B testing, it means that they're trying to roll out some new enhancements or some

optimizations in those areas. I mean, it always feels like when Google or Facebook is asking you to do something and paying you, compensating you to do something, it's because they're trying to get more data. They're trying to push more people into a beta or do something like that. So when you can get $100 in ad credit, I'm usually pretty happy to take care of that or at least to sign up and figure out if it's worth our time. So for $100, if you are running Facebook ads right now, certainly if you're running with Conrad, if you're running with Vintori on the owner side, or if you're just running generally Facebook ads, run with Conrad, if you run with Vintori on the owner side, or if you're just running generally Facebook ads, take a look, try to maybe create a new campaign, see if you're directed into

that same offer, because certainly that $100 goes a lot further in Facebook than it might in Google or some other channels there. And then on the other side of things, Google started to release some new updates. We'll say they're calling it a new version of search. Well, every day there's a new version of search. Let's just day there's a new version of search. Let's just call it a spade and say that the algorithm is changing every day. We are just at the whim and whimsy of whatever Google wants to do there. But some of the most recent things that Google seems to be really pressing on with this new article that we'll put in the show notes as well is talking about new dynamic features,

new enhancements within the results, adding more images. They're certainly doing some testing behind the scenes and just the overall organic results. But ultimately, I still think this goes back to really the basic principles of the ETH algorithmic update, which goes back to 19 or 20, even 2021, when we're getting some more of the refinements there. But it's all about that expertise, authority, and trustworthiness. And if we don't, I think that's still the key is that making sure that you are writing for people. All of your content is written for people. All of your images are this, it's for the people. And by continuing to put quality, consistent content and I think getting that trustworthiness,

getting that expertise, getting that authority, certainly built a lot on link building as well, something we've talked about. And it is, it's following those best practices. If you continue to follow the best practices that we talk about on the show, and that's why we talk about them because we've seen that consistently in articles

and when Google makes these updates, when Facebook makes these updates, they want people to be using the best practices. So it is, it's putting that consistent content up there, getting those links, coming back to it, and really establishing yourself as an authority in your vertical. And Google will give you the necessary, I would say, platitudes by increasing your placement in the rankings there. So certainly it is. I think that's an article that we will touch on more and more because it is in depth. And I think we're only in this marketing minute, we're touching it at a high level, but I do think it's something that it's worth a read for anybody who really wants to understand the next updates that are happening with Google.

So certainly worth a read if you've got a few minutes there. Yeah, we'll put both links in the show notes as well as a link to the widely viewed constant report and the people can kind of check it out. And what both those examples are, which is that what is the platform incentivizing? So if you're trying to swim with the tide, not against the tide, right? And Facebook, it's about gauging, right? It's about having valuable information on Facebook, not letting people leave Facebook other than what it makes sense to do so at that very bottom of the conversion process, right? In the case of Google, it's all about this quality information. How do I make myself seem more knowledgeable and more detailed about my destination when I go to create content on my website? So if you look at what they're incentivizing, then you can pretty much,

you don't need to be an expert to figure out, well, if I do more of that over the long term and make it good, like I'm going to get a good outcome. So I think those are both two really solid things to button up. Now, I want to switch gears a little bit and head into our topic of today's episode, which is working with influencers and bloggers to get more bookings. Now this has to be, I think one of the most misunderstood things that I encounter, at least on a regular basis. And the trouble I think with it is that there's not really one source of information and there's not one like metric, there's not one thing that you can point to like we can with some of our other areas that we talk about on the marketing context.

So for example, with paid search, we could be like, well, what's your ROAS? You're spending X, what are you getting Y? With SEO, we can say, okay, what type of content are you creating? How much organic traffic are you getting? How many clicks do you have in your search console? With these types of folks, so working with an influencer and a blogger, they'll throw a bunch of numbers at you and kind of confuse you sometimes. So every single client that we've worked with, if you have any sort of size or significance to your operation, you've gotten the Instagram DM,

you've gotten the email on the contact form on your website. Hi, I'm an influencer. I want to stay at your place for free and you should be thanking your lucky stars that you woke up today and had God's grace upon you so that I'm reaching out to you to want to stay for free. So that's like the sarcastic take on it, right? These influencers want stuff for free. Why? Like, why would they want something for free? What benefits do you get out of it? So here's my first section that I want to go through, which is that when it makes sense to work with

influencers. So here's my number one question that you should be able to answer when the influencer reaches out to you, or if you're considering like offering an influencer, someone, you know, to stay in one of your properties at a reduced cost or free, who do they have influence over? So that's my first question. So if you're considering working with an influencer, my first question is who do they have influence over? And I've learned this lesson the hard way. So I'm telling you now, basically you don't have to go through the pain that I've gone through in the past of, we've had clients that have given away $10,000 plus value stays a good week or four nights

at some of their highest and nicest properties. And we basically learned that the influencer had followers. And I'll just be very honest about the situation because of the way they looked. It was an attractive person. And that's basically the reason that they had followers on Instagram. It wasn't that they actually had any influence of people who are looking to vacation in the market that you're in. It was basically just, they looked a certain way and the people on Instagram followed them

because of that. And that was the benefit they got from it. So that is my number one question is that when you're going and looking and considering working with this type of partner, this type, let's say creator, if we're to be more fair, maybe to this type of individual who's out there doing this kind of stuff, if you're working with a creator of content, whether that's video or images or written content, bloggers, things like that's my first question. Like they can splash numbers at you that might sound kind of impressive. My website gets 50,000 pages a month. Where?

People on your site, where are they looking to go? What are they looking to do? So that's the first thing I think that someone should consider when they're, and if you can answer that question quickly, you may actually disqualify 90% of people, 95% of people who reach out in the first place. If someone has influence because they're popular in, let's say gaming, let's say they do online gaming and they're reaching out to you, well, then promoting your,

plugging your vacation rental company during a stream of Fortnite is not going to make any difference to your business whatsoever, even if they had a million people watching it. Like the chance of those people overlapping with yours are so slim. But if someone is a travel blogger and they specifically cover, they might have 2000 Instagram followers, but if they specifically cover everything in Georgia, let's say, and you're a company based in Georgia, that person might be able to deliver you 20, 30 bookings over the course of a year of having an article on their website, having story Instagram posts on their feed and things like that. So that is kind of my long, I guess, monologue to get us going here on working with influencers, asking kind of ultimately what makes the most sense,

what makes sense is who they influence. So maybe even kind of this in the past, Paul, I don't think we've seen this as much on the owner side. I don't think people are necessarily going that direction. Although there are people on the, I would say like Airbnb, like we'll teach you how to buy short-term rental property space that might be considered influencers in a way.

So these people are out there and they credential themselves. But what's your take on the content creator today and how they have influenced both positively and negatively the short-term rental industry? It is. I mean, I think for me, my, I would say, objection to the influencer marketing, and you kind

of touched on it already, is you don't really see what you're actually getting in return. And I think that is a lot of it has to do with the follower numbers. And for me, that's like the cost per click for ppc it's it's kind of a vanity metric i mean i can get just penny on the dollar clicks but are they going to be quality for you and i think it's kind of ties back to what you're talking about there as well is that if they've got a million followers that's great a million people's awesome but it is it gets down to is the audience the right people? We didn't, we weren't working with a whole lot of influencers. I think they were kind of growing as we were growing as well on the traveler side of things.

But what we saw most frequently was reaching out to those bloggers and really trying to find out, okay, can we hit a home run with X content piece or this and that? I think it was, we were effective in finding some of the right people, but you're right. It wasn't always about the people with the most followers. It was about the people with the right followers. We had a lot of luck with mom bloggers or family bloggers, travel bloggers, actually not as much, which was kind of funny there. But just because I think the ask from the blogger or the influencer in this or the content creator, whatever, was too much for the value we were going to give back. So I think I'm guessing that's on your list as well, but making sure that the commensurate value of what you're getting as you're using that influencer or that content creator, whatever that is, is right coming back for you.

But it's something that on the owner side, fortunately, we don't deal with as much. Now, if we found the right person who had the right reach or was able to find the right subset of people, yeah, certainly I would entertain it. But I do. I think that as far as the messaging that a influencer or a content creator is typically going to use, I think it is more driven towards the traveler side. They're going to be able to really highlight maybe the images or the experience that they had at a property as opposed to, I feel like it's difficult to put content out there for the return you're getting on your home or your second home

or something like that that you're getting on your home or your second home or something like that that you're having someone manage. So, and it is, I mean, what are your thoughts on, if you would see, if you would think that it would be effective on the owner side or just where it has been effective for you as you've used it or leveraged it for other partners? I think it's mostly just a trends thing, right?

There's people who are creating videos and a lot of short form video people. There's people who are creating videos and a lot of short form video people. There's people on TikTok I know that I've actually had the chance to collaborate with through a client that I've worked with. And they are these influencer type folks on that platform. And they're basically encouraging people, hey, this is a great way for you to invest your money and go buy a short term rental and you can let someone manage it and it's more hands off. So I've seen that kind of content out there. I think a lot of it is very aspirational. How many people can actually afford a premium vacation rental in a top 20 market? I think the answer is a lot less than most people think. To buy, this is a short,

I guess, a diversion here from the actual topic, but to actually buy a vacation rental in most top 20 markets, you need like $100,000 in cash between the actual purchase of the property itself, the down payment, the furniture, any updates or things like the property needs so that not many people in america like have a hundred thousand dollars cash laying around that they're okay just investing into a thing that might or may or not work so i guess that's the trouble typically there's a small percentage of people that can actually even afford to purchase a vacation rental home never mind a nice vacation rental home in a top tier market so that's like probably why you don't see the influencers flocking there there's just you're sifting through a lot of hay to find those five

or six needles in the haystack. So that's kind of my assessment there. Now on the guest side, the reason that they want that, I think, is that they're looking for that. They're looking for people to actually reach out to them and they feel like they have this broad influence. They feel like they can take someone sitting on their couch at home and turn them into a guest. So you touched on it, but I think this is the next section may be highlighting how much an influencer might ask to get paid. And if it's worth it, how would we evaluate this influencer and what they're asking for, whether it's free stay or whether it's money or both in some cases, and if it's worth it. And it might go back to some of our digital advertising conversations that we had a few minutes ago. So if an influencer is

saying, I will come stay in your place, ideally the most ideal scenario, I think for a lot of our clients is that you might stay in the shoulder season. So you still kind of reflect a positive light into the actual property itself and what it's like to be there in that particular season. Like going to the ski market during the mud season probably isn't a good idea, even though you probably have a lot of openings because they can't really experience the resort and things like that, or going to a beach market and they're sitting on the beach in a winter coat, probably also not ideal to kind of promote the messaging of what you're really trying to do. But if you can find an influencer that can work on a shoulder season and ultimately work with low notice, so you can ultimately put them into a vacant property that's not going to get a booking, I think that's the

most ideal scenario. And some can't plan their travel around that. And that's understandable. We've done influencer work in the past where they say, Hey, look, I need to plan three months in advance so I can ultimately figure out the path that makes the most sense for me. And that's okay. We'll just have to plan that far in advance. We have to block out a week and it's just like an owner week. You block it out far in advance and that's the week that you get them. So how much is that costing you? That's an interesting conversation. If that week was going to book that the answer is that might've cost you a few hundred dollars in commission. It could have cost you a few thousand dollars in commission, depending on the type of home that you manage, the value, how likely that was to book and so on.

Maybe you're eating the cleaning fee. That could be a few hundred dollars that you're having to just eat the cleaning fee itself. So you still have to pay to get the property clean before the next guest comes in. So working with an influencer may cost you, let's say from a few hundred to a few thousand on the property itself and either lost commission or lost rent to the homeowner if they are getting it for free. So I would, if I was paying that cost and I was advising someone, one of our clients on that, I would say, okay, what are we getting out of it?

What's the short-term benefit we might get? And what's the long-term benefit we might get? So the short-term benefit that the influencers typically will lean into is social media impressions, right? I'm going to go on Instagram and post your story or post your property multiple times. I'll tag you, I'll take a picture, et cetera. I'm okay with that. There's value, I think, in brand building happening there. Again, especially if you've vetted them and proven that they are influencing the people that you care about. So now I would say, okay, let's assume that they have 10,000 followers, roughly 20% of people maybe might see that content in their feed, 2,000 impressions. So am I okay paying $500 or $1,000 for basically 2,000 impressions? Well,

my CPM in that scenario is several hundred dollars, right? We can go buy ads on Google all day long of our website visitors for $20 CPMs, $30 CPMs. So you're paying a huge premium. So my logic would be, okay, what's the long-term benefit that I'm going to get? And that's where I think when you can actually pair it with written content, I think there typically is, I'm a lot more driven or drawn to that influencer who can do that as well. The social thing is like a burst, right? It's like a star that just burns brightly and then it tails out very quickly. Very few people are gonna go to that influencer's content a week later after their stay

or two weeks later or two months later after their stay and come back and reference and be like, oh, where did Paul and his family stay? These content creator people I follow. Four months ago, it's very unlikely to occur. So if you get any bookings, you're almost gonna know right away. Like, did this actually produce anything?

You're gonna know within the first like three or four days of them actually posting content on social media. Especially if you get any bookings, you're almost going to know right away. Like, did this actually produce anything? You're going to know within the first like three or four days of them actually posting content on social media, especially if you say, Hey, give them a promo code or give them something with a track, then you can kind of evaluate it from there. But if they write an article and that article is something akin to things to do in a market, and then they mentioned you there, but things to do in Destin, Florida, and then they mentioned your company. Oh, when we were in Destin, we stayed with company XYZ. Or what are the best places to stay? Or they do a review of your company, a review of property management company X. And then they talk about your company.

Those are things I think that have a lot more long lasting value. Like we have clients who have done influencer type stays in the past where they get that content actually over time tends to rank better in search. It tends to get more traffic over time. We've had clients that have worked with influencers that used to be huge on Pinterest and they would be sending thousands of clicks to property detail pages if they featured it on like a certain board. And even though it would get a very low conversion rate, it was profitable because they were getting a 0.01% conversion rate, but they sent so much volume that it actually ended up turning profitable for them.

So that's the thing that I would look for. If I'm looking for the ideal influencer for any client that we work with, it's someone who has a reasonable ask, shoulder season, maybe a shorter stay, three days, four days. You're not losing a booking because of it. Someone who can have a quick turnaround time. They're going to get social content out quickly. They're going to get written content out quickly. And someone that doesn't just have a little burst, a little shark tooth of activity or a shark fin of activity, and then it just falls down to nothing two weeks later. And then it just falls down to nothing two weeks later. Someone that's, yeah, I'm going to go and I'm going to write this article on the site and I'm going to promote that article. And then over time, you're going to see traffic, continual traffic referring to your site for the next year or two years because of the stay that I had last year. So those are some of the parameters that I would look for. I don't know if you have some different criteria that you would also consider, but those are things that I've thought of covering the bigger ones there, the most important ones, especially. And again, being able to quantify it back to different channels and make that comparison. Is this the right channel? Are there better options to getting people at a cost-effective? I mean, not just looking at the dollars and cents of it, but is it going to make my brand stick in people's mind long-term? Yeah, I think that it's certainly something that that is difficult to measure. And I like those analytics behind it. So that's something where if you're predicting, trying to put those numbers out there, I think that's certainly it is. I think

you've covered the big points there. Now, my question would be, is it and I think this is something that we see more people doing in the vacation rental space is kind of developing their own personal brands. And I think, I mean, we're trying to develop our personal brands. Is that, is it some, is it something where, and this is, we've recently talked to Amber Erickson. She does a lot of this with personal branding as well, but are there people in the space right now that you would recommend for another property manager to be able to be able to say, Hey, this is someone that you'd want to partner with. Maybe not direct influencer, but is there a network in the vacation rental space that you think there are some influencers out there that are of value to your partners or to other partners or other managers who are looking

for that additional exposure? Yeah, that's a good question. I don't know if I can point to any specific thing where I look at it and say, oh, this person is going to be the person that can move the needle significantly for you. Because it might be market by market, right? One person might have a decent amount of influence in market ABC, but none in DEF. So I think that ultimately, it's something you probably have to evaluate on a per person basis. And what might be gold to someone else might really not move the needle for a different person. So yeah, nothing really sticks out to me in that respect, to be honest with you. But maybe that brings up the next point, which, you know, that I had listed, which is that what are some red flags that you should consider when you're looking to work with an influencer? We've danced around some of them, but what are some things to come to mind for you? What would be, if you had a partner approaching you or a client approaching you saying, hey, I'm working, I'm considering working with this person. What might you see early on that would indicate to you that they might not be a good fit for

working with? I mean, it's, I think the clearest is that just their audience isn't a right fit for what you're actually looking to sell your product to or anything. I think it's really about the demographics that they're presenting. Or here's the other, I mean, if you're, let's, my hope is that you're taking the time to consider what influencer you're using. So in doing that, you're reviewing their metrics. You're reviewing their followers. You're reviewing this. If you're seeing major fluctuations in numbers of followers and stuff like that, you know, more recently on as the social media channels shift and give different value or add users or take users off or suspend or take all that good stuff.

If there are wild fluctuations in people's followings, ask about it. Like, what did you do to do? What action did you take that had this wild fluctuation that brought you from that you lost 5,000 followers for a thousand followers for? Like if you're seeing and it's the same thing for big gains. It's not just big losses, but anything that looks a little suspicious, take that into consideration because, yeah, this person has gained a lot of, has gained a following. How did they do that?

Did they buy that following? Are they actively posting and doing all this? I would hope that they're actively engaged on the channel but if there's a lot of fluctuation in who's following them the types of accounts that are following them kind of if you can dig in a little more i think it's a value to really understand how that following shifts too because if they're going to say something that's going to i mean again if you're if they're making big statements that are getting those big changes, are they going to go off the cuff? Are they going to kind of go a little wild? Are they going to independent on the

bit? So I guess that would be a huge red flag for me is understanding how they got the following and any shifts that happen. What about you? Yeah, I think those are good ones. I mean, maybe it doesn't, maybe it needs to be stated very clearly, which is that people can buy followers very easily, you know, to your point, right? Like there are Instagram bot accounts that will follow your account and for us to take an account. And if we didn't care at all about the quality of the follower, we could sit here today, build a 10,000 follower account in a month or something like that, make it look a certain, but to your point, I think the follow-up there is go look at the accounts engagement, right? So go look, click into the most 10 recent posts, see the type of comments,

see the type of feedback that they're getting on the post. If they claim they have 10,000 followers and yet they're getting two likes a post, well then there's obviously some disconnect there, right? People don't even care about the content that they're posting. So what percent of people are even seeing their post? And that's one thing that usually is a pretty red flag disqualifier for me is in just lying, straight up lying things that I can easily verify on my side of things, especially on the website side of things. Oh, we get 10,000 visitors a month from Google. And then I popped them in Ahrefs and I see like two keywords ranking.

And I'm like, really on what site? Cause it's not this one. It's not the one that you sent over in your, in your media deck or whatever the case may be. So yeah, don't lie to someone. Maybe you think maybe you get away with it. Maybe these folks get away with it. That's why they do it.

They lie to unsophisticated operators out there and take advantage of them and get free meals or free stays. If you're someone out there doing that, I hope you get a paper cut today. That's brutal. For someone who's working with an agency that can verify this kind of information in a minute or two, that's something that would be an instant disqualification. Even if other things turned up good. Like if you're lying, I'm just like, I'm automatically like out of it.

Like I don't really want to go in that direction. So that's fake metrics, fake followers, someone that's not really being completely truthful or whatever. Someone that's not really respectful of you and your business, someone that sees you as just an asset transactional thing that you can get from it. A good influencer or a good like content creator will actually talk to you first and be like, well, what do you want to promote? Like what, you know, what are you struggling with right now? What are your slow seasons? What are things that if I'm coming here in April and it's a beach market, how could I talk about the things happening in April in a more positive light that's going to help you get more bookings? Because when you work with a good content creator, a good influencer, a good blogger, you really notice the difference because

they really do lean into a lot of that type of stuff. They actually want the outcome to be good, because a lot of the best ones actually will come back and say again, Oh, yeah, let's do a campaign next year. And it's that reoccurring business. I've had the chance to work with someone like that in the past on kind of some of her SEO challenges and struggles, and she gets a lot of repeat business. So she's trying to create an awesome experience for you and a profitable experience for you buying this influence from, from this particular creator, because she wants to come back next year and say, Oh, let's do a winter, you know, post, or let's do something about the summer. Let's do, Oh, you have new homes. Let's go talk about family vacation this time. Or let's do a family reunion piece of content or whatever.

So I think that if you work with the right one, you're going to see the type of questions they ask and how they approach it. The red flag stuff is I just want a free place to stay there feel entitled, they feel like they're owed something just because they have certain follower count. They don't approach it like professional, they're emotional about some things. They're not like, Oh, here's the business. Here's what I do. Here's how I provide value. And then all the best ones over deliver. So you say, oh, one post and two social posts and three of this, and they actually give you a little bit more, right? They give you a little bit more. They go and add your link in a few other places on their website. They do five stories, even though they said they would do two, right?

So like all the best ones I've worked with typically do over deliver a little bit here and there. Not saying that they don't take advantage of the people who are kind and working with you on this type of thing. But the worst ones that I see are the ones that deliver the under deliver or don't really give you what you're looking for. They have no long term value they're trying to create because it's literally just turn and burn. They stay with you, they go try to stay with someone else. And those are typically the not type of people you want to work with. So yeah, look for more of a partner, not just a one time sort of relationship, I think is also a way to think about it. Do you consider age, because admittedly, a lot of these influencers are quite young,

do you consider that to be a red flag? I think it can be because like, if you have someone, again, it goes to the whole audience piece, right? If you have someone that's a young girl on TikTok, who has a lot of followers on TikTok, because maybe the way she looks, or she does certain dances or whatever, again, that may not map to any real world influence of someone who wants to book a vacation rental in Colorado, right? Like if that's where you're located. So I think that it goes back to the audience question. Why is this person being followed? What do they have to offer? And to our point from earlier, like the mom blog comment, I feel like that's maybe turned into like a derogatory term. But like essence of that

is that the families are usually who you're marketing to. So the reason that the mom blogger stuff can work a lot better, even though the mom blogger might have again, 2000 followers on Instagram, and she only talks about Georgia and Florida, that might be the perfect person if you're based in Blue Ridge, or if you're based in Destin or something like that, because people who follow her, the 800 people that actually engage with her content, and respond to it, this 42 year old woman with three kids or whatever, that might be a much better match for your actual ideal guest profile. Maybe she doesn't do the same things on TikTok that the young girl does as far as the dances, but who cares? Are we into the dances or are we into the actual results

of the business? So yeah, I think it's easy to fall into these traps of falling into the numbers and just, oh, big numbers, that's going to help my business. But that's really not often the case. And hopefully this can be some tips and things like that we can share with folks. One last thing I had here was the idea of sharing cost of the influencer between companies like other companies or even Chamber of Commerce. Like I know the local Chamber of Commerce here, even been talked to them about it or seen them post about it, but I just look through their backlinks sometimes. And I can literally see that they're constantly out there promoting and working with influencer content creator folks, because I can see they referenced the top of the article, this day was sponsored by

and then the name of the chamber, they're doing that. So that might be something to consider, which is that you don't have to share the complete burden or cost yourself. If you're out there in the marketplace, and you're considering doing this type of more advanced marketing campaign, look to other companies, could the restaurant ship in a little bit of that cleaning fee, let's say, if that influencer agrees to go eat at that restaurant mentioned and a piece of content they create, could they do a tour, an attraction, or an activity that maybe during their stay, they could also mention an article and they could do an awesome R72 hours in Destin, Florida, and they could write up three or four or five different businesses of which you were one

core part of their experience. But is there other business that you can partner with? And then go to your chamber. Could your chamber who might already be hosting people, as is the case here locally, at least with where I'm at in my neck of the woods, if they're already hosting influencers, perhaps they need to put that influencer up somewhere. And maybe they could feature your particular type of accommodation, your resort, your vacation rental, your condo, your home, whatever you have to offer as part of that influencer stay. And maybe again, there'd be a much lower cost to you to actually deliver that thing. So that's one other thing, which is that because there's no like standardized set of protocols to follow in these scenarios, you can go wherever you want with it. Sometimes the best thing to do is to come up with maybe more creative solutions, share cost,

look for the right type of person. And then ultimately that person can be an asset to you. I think if you do it the right way. So yeah, anything else that you want to add, or does that give us a decent overview into this idea? Did we hopefully break down the scary mythical person that is an influencer or a content creator? Maybe a little bit? I think we did. I mean, I think just to piggyback on the every travel experience is an experience. They're not just going to go to your property. They're not just going to stay in the rental. They're not just going to stay in one spot. Probably. They're going to go and enjoy the area. So I think that idea of really giving people that experience, it is. it's going to ultimately give

better content for any of your users down the road. So recommending that I think would be a good idea. And then if you can split some of those costs, I think it's a perfect way to just get that experiential idea through. So yeah, I mean, I think that's on the experiential side, that's where influencers can be helpful, can be important, can share that experience with their end users, with their followers. And hopefully they'll be so excited by it that they'll want to come to. I think that's a great way to put a bow on it, which is that these people can be an asset to you if you manage and have the right expectations. And you realize that this is mostly a brand building activity with a small amount of direct response that might occur on the back end of it. So if you think of it that way, I think you can have a good outcome.

Some of these influencers are out to get you. They offer no value. Bet them. Trust. I think we said two weeks ago, trust but verify. I would say the influencers don't trust and verify. You just don't trust what they say. Verify everything they do and then you're probably more likely to have a more positive

outcome. So that puts a bow on it for this week. Thanks so much, Paul, for your time as always. Hopping on here to the Heads of Med show. I think we broke down a pretty interesting topic that's come up many times in the past for me. I can now send this episode to folks. We're trying to gather more reviews. We're here. It's November of 2022. I would love if we had maybe, what do you think, 25 reviews by the end of the year? I think we're maybe a half dozen short. So if you leave a review, please do leave a review. And when you do so, email me. Maybe we

can send you some kind of thank you as your effort of leaving us a review helps us a ton, get more people to check out the show. So it's the cheapest gift, cheapest Christmas gift you all can give us. And you know, maybe we can find a way to little, give a little Christmas gift in return. So I, there's the push for us, a little, little Christmas gift to Paul and Conrad, and maybe we can get you something out there in return. Okay, this maybe will be my clip then. All right, so what we want for Christmas, what Paul and I want for Christmas is for you to go on iTunes and leave us a review.

That's it. You don't have to buy us any gifts, nothing in our stocking, nothing like that. Just leave us a review. We appreciate it a lot. That'll help us done. All right, that's a good ask. So if you do that for us, we appreciate it.

Next week, we're coming back, I think with two, maybe two awesome episodes. We're going to talk more about kind of an advanced marketing plan. So stay tuned for those. Those are going to be awesome. But thanks, Paul. We will talk again next week.

And thanks again for everybody who listens.