Heads In Beds Show - What Would We Do: Marketing Edition

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

In this episode, Paul and Conrad break down "scenarios" around a single property host, multi property host and property manager: What Would We Do: Marketing Edition. Enjoy!⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellNick Gerli False TweetJamie Lane's Correct Tweet🔗 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. How's it going today, Paul? It's fantastic. We're recording this on July 3rd. So just enjoying the weather a little bit here, but certainly the timing of things and the holiday excitement and everything like that

with the young kids. Everybody wants to be thinking about the fireworks right now. So good to focus in a little bit and get our conversation in today. But how are you doing? Yeah, hopefully this conversation is enlightening enough where there'll be some fireworks here. That's terrible. No, it's all good. I think my kids are excited. My oldest in particular is excited for the fireworks that we're going to be able to experience. We have a little plan.

So here at the beach, obviously it gets very crowded during July 4th. So our plan, because our golf cart is street legal, we're going to see if instead of getting in the traffic and the snarls and the snafu down there in Cherry Grove with the car, we're going to take the golf cart is street legal. We're going to see if instead of getting in the traffic and the snarls and the snafu down there in Cherry Grove with the car, we're going to take the golf cart. We didn't have the golf cart last year. We're going to try to drive it down to the pier. And then when we drive it back, we're going to go on the sidewalks. If we can go low traffic areas and see if we can actually get home in a decent hour.

No expectation that'll actually work, but we're going to give it a try. Given we're like a mile and a half away from where the fireworks are actually being set off. It might take us an hour and a half to get home if we don't use that strategy. Walking might actually be better. So it'll be good. It's fun, but it does get a little bit crowded down here at the beach. So what recession? I wonder as I sit in traffic. That's what that is. So technically in Minnesota, fireworks are illegal. However, you go across the border to wisconsin and with its fireworks world essentially

so for many years we've always gone either gone you've gone east to wisconsin or gone south to missouri in most cases but that's where you get fireworks so is there any illegal firework trade that happens from the south carolina murder bridge okay there's no laws i think they're actually they're more it's not that they're illegal in north carolina i think they're just more restricted so sure there are shops that are right on the south carolina border that are like bigger ones but they're not illegal in north carolina i just think they limit like the size and scope of how big they can be which is honestly probably smarter than what we do here in south carolina which is you can buy whatever you want but they say don't send them off at the beach and yet people

send them off at the beach all the time so it's weird i remember when was in high school, like we went to the beach one year and set off fireworks and cops were like walking past us. And it seemed like as long as you weren't being an idiot, they were fine. But if you did something stupid, it was like rounds for them to get you or something. Yeah, weird things here with fireworks. Although where I grew up in Massachusetts, fireworks were completely illegal. And I wasn't that close to a border of a legal state. I think they actually did drive to I think even New Hampshire maybe or something like

that. I forget. It wasn't close. I think we live free or die the new hampshireites there and we set them off at the golf course and it was fine because we were like the cops knew like all right there's no one within literally thousands of feet of this area so we frowned upon it but we're not going to do anything about it so that was our little loophole when i was a kid and set them off at the the sixth hole of the middle of nowhere yeah that we have we've grown up on the farm that was it was free for all.

You hoped that the fields weren't dry enough that you'd see a fireball out there after the initial boom, but it's kept us on our toes. There's no doubt about that. Yeah. Luckily it all didn't burn to the ground. Analytics has burned to the ground. We are officially past that. Do we want to do a little quick eulogy here?

And I say quick, quick for universal analytics, or you said there was a heartbeat left on the patient? It appears that there's a heartbeat, maybe two. Hopefully by the time we're publishing this, or maybe hopefully not, I don't know. I feel as mixed as you feel about it, but likely you'll have limited or no data running through your old universal analytics property. The shutdown date there was July 1st. Again, I've got access to quite a few analytics accounts. I'm still seeing stuff come through, but as you talked about, they've got a lot of instances. We talked about it last week, 28 million people, instances were still installed on websites. So there's a lot to turn down there for Google. Yeah. I don't know.

I would assume that you'll probably have data running through here for days, maybe weeks in some cases, but just know that at some point it's going to turn off. Like I've seen a lot of like John Mueller and a lot of the other Google gurus going through and they've been making jokes on Twitter. Oh, you think they're going to extend the deadline? Obviously they're not going to do that. But yeah, it's I think for those once it finally cuts off, it's just going to become a little more real for people. So keep an eye on it. If you're still relying on universal and you haven't installed G4, what are you doing? Best of luck when that data finally shuts itself off. Yeah, I did duck a few under the deadline. I'm not gonna lie when I say under the deadline by a few hours. There you go. One of the last ones that I actually emailed a few clients on I think it was Wednesday, but some of them didn't get back to me until Friday last week. So I was like, all right, I'll do it for you. And whatever, I'll send them an invoice because they weren't like ongoing accounts. They were just random once a week

connections. Yeah, all good. But there was a few other things that caught our eye last week. Do you want to do a quick rundown of some other things, including the viral Airbnb tweet? I think it's been thoroughly debunked at this point on several platforms. Maybe your take on it. So it is. The viral tweet was, and I think it got like 22 million views, which is really frustrating because Jamie Lane from AirDNA responded to it like later that day. He got like 500,000 views on his tweet. So it's okay. People saw the big viral tweet that according to what is all the rooms, they posted it from that source, but it was even like synthesized from another source or something like that.

But yeah, according to this, you know, the graphic I'm looking at right now, I'll put a link to the show notes for people that are on Twitter, Twitter. It was from this person named Nick Geerly, Gurley.

I think that's maybe I say his name. Sure. He claims that his Twitter bio that he's the CEO of red venture, reventure consulting, excuse me, the reventure app, which according to him is the number one real estate channel on YouTube with 4 million monthly views. So someone that should know, I guess, what's going on, but he put out some pretty misleading data, that's for sure.

Yeah, I think it is Rev Prevalable Listing down 46% across some major markets. Looking at that list, there's some big markets there. Suburbial, really traditional markets there. I think Panama City or Destin was on there as well. There's some big names. And again, it's just misleading. I don't know how they got the numbers. That's not for me to say. Maybe they have a calculation where they made the numbers look or actually appear or be that down. But that's where you make sure we get the Jamie Lane tweet in there as well or that connection in because looking at it, it's down front. It is down in some of those markets. They're down.

There's no doubt about that. Revenue per available listing is down, but not 46 percent, like five to 10 percent. In some cases, it was actually up a little bit. And I think the other key thing to think about there to note there is that they yes, maybe revenue for available listing is down year over year, but looking at some of these operators and managers who are in these markets, they're still making significantly more money. I think as with any news story, any data that you're looking at, you have to put that perspective or put that frame on it. And there's no frame here. There's no perspective. It's just Airbnb is

blowing up, imploding, whatever it is. Yeah, it was, I don't know, disconcerting. It was a little confusing, but it was immediately that Good Morning Hospitality team jumped on it and refuted it. So I think anybody who is paying attention in this space probably knows and understands and acknowledges that's not right but anybody else who saw that and again apparently 22 million people saw it there's i don't know what they're thinking right now are they thinking maybe i'm gonna if i own the property am i gonna sell it what what is the actual action item coming out of this what are your thoughts there yeah i have a few thoughts my my first thought was my quote tweet i put on it was the mark twain quote that

said a lie can make it halfway around the world where the truth is time to put his boots on, which I love that quote. I think that's perfectly appropriate here. Because this tweet made it halfway around. And I think your numbers are a that. Oh, back to your core question there. My thought here is number one, I think there was obviously he intentionally chose maybe some misleading, either data or misleading source, all the rooms, I just don't have any credibility around them. I don't know, maybe they produce good information, maybe they don't. Certainly, I don't have a single client that goes, Oh, yeah, all the rooms says XYZ. They say either, you know, key data dashboard, that's their number one source, right? I trust it because it's not scraped data. And the number two would be our DNA, I think, with regards to... And then their chamber. And their chamber may collect tax information or their information that's more like first

party based. In fact, our client in the Outer Banks uses tax information because it's updated more frequently. So we can go to that. There's a dashboard that attracts all the room tax being paid, which is remitted, I think, monthly or something like that. So it's pretty real time as to what's happening right now in the marketplace. But actually, to Nick's credit, I'll give him a tiny bone here. He makes some decent points later in the thread where he gives specific examples.

So Phoenix has 1,800, I think, I'm sorry, 18,000 short-term rentals in the greater Phoenix area. There's only 8,000 homes for sale right now. Now, he makes some incorrect conclusions from that data, in my opinion, but that is a new trend. There wasn't a time in the past when there was 18,000 short-term rentals in a given metro area, and there was only 8,000 for sale properties. Now, the classic mistake that I think a lot of people make is assuming that every property that's a short-term rental could be traded one-to-one into a normal house that people would live in. There's some of that occurs, obviously.

I think you're lying to yourself if you say that's not the case, that Airbnb does not contribute partially and the boom of short-term rentals not contribute partially to home shortages or to more expensive homes in some areas. But it's never the only culprit. There's so many factors. And in fact, he even mentions there's less than 1 million listings on Airbnb and Vrbo. I wonder if they do duplicate that, by the way. But let's assume that's correct.

1 million listings in the country. There's 330 million housing listings in the country. There's 330 million housing units in the country. So one out of every 300 housing units in the United States of America broadly is a short-term rental that's listed on Airbnb or VRBO. So yes, in a micro example, we've talked about this before when it comes to like demanded rates and things like that. If 18,000 coincide in a very small geographical area, obviously that's going to typically raise the prices and then make less homes available for people, broadly speaking. I think there's a lot of thousand coincide in a very small geographical area obviously that's gonna typically raise the prices and then make less homes available for people broadly speaking i think there's a lot

of logic in that but just a lot of his copy a lot of what he's saying the airbnb collapse is real that's first line of his tweet it's just straight up complete garbage bullshit you know what i mean and it's not there's no basis in reality a lot of what he says yeah it's just him some of the graphics too in the thread are funny where he's like using like microsoft paint and then he just puts airbnb crash and then he like points it in there so whatever check out the tweet thread at your own i guess like peril or something like that i think his copy and his his general approach here is incorrect i think there's a few decent points mixed between a lot of nonsense that maybe you should take a look at but he was thoroughly

debunked in the quote tweets by multiple people not even including jamie i think the best job but so many people said here's my actual data from this market. Like, here's what I'm seeing in this market. And yes, I'm down like 12% of revenue, but my bookings are actually flat. It was more so just a rate compression from last year. So you got to just be super cautious and careful with this stuff. And I think there's just, what's it called? A Rorschach test where you see what you want to see. That's what this tweet was. People who saw it and they saw what they wanted to see automatically were engaging with it and go, oh, I knew this was going to happen. Like that sort of thing. When of course the reality is a lot more nuanced. Yeah.

There you go, Nick. There's your two minutes of fame on the Heads to Beds show. I think ultimately we'll be okay. And I think now to talk more, we're just going to transition into the other Airbnb side of things, but looking at, you know, maybe there isn't an issue right now. However, Dennis from Cassiola did put a pretty good LinkedIn post out there updating everybody, hey, we're going to remove the Airbnb alias email feature. So you're going to have to just communicate right within the platform.

And going back to 2016, 2017, something like that, I can remember I was still at track, like going through the secure messaging stuff and all of that happening. And boy, this feels eerily similar to that. And that's, I don't know, keeping communication in the platform. Now you're rescinding that guest, you're the ownership of that guest. There's a whole lot of fallout from this, but most notably, there's a whole lot of upset property managers that are thinking, what am I going to do here? I'm sure a lot of the property management systems are trying to find a solution. And even within the, I think Dennis had actually tagged the product owner at track and he gave their update right off the bat. But what do you think about this? What are your thoughts about just email communication through Airbnb in general there? just email communication through Airbnb in general there.

Yeah, I mean, I don't even know if it was a successful loophole where you could actually use it for marketing communication. But I've said for the longest time, Airbnb is always going to restrict your ability to communicate. You need to get emails all platform. Obviously, there's lots of in-property ways to do it. StayFive being the most obvious one I recommend. But you could do also through a guidebook. You could do it through a rental agreement.

But again, the comments that I saw on that thread that you're referencing, I think a lot of property managers said, that's how I send the rental agreement. I can't send a PDF document or something. All right. I don't even know if you can send links through the Airbnb chat. I'm not 100% sure on that, where you could link to DocuSign maybe, and then they could sign it from there. I'm not sure. But they were like, obviously, this is the way that we do it. So by restricting that ability, you're just making our life a lot more painful. We're still going to get this thing signed. You're not changing our approach, but you're just making this a lot more challenging for us to do. So who knows why Airbnb does what they do? Maybe it's just like a technical thing

that they were just trying to clean up and not have to deal with this anymore. Obviously, all these emails expired, I think seven or 14 days post day or something like that. Anywho, anyways, so right, it's annoying. I think it doesn't change my point of view on things, which is that you should be working hard towards getting the guest real email address with their consent and permission, of course, and then using that for marketing. That's my approach is the same there. Yeah. Completely agree. That's not, and it is, I think the ones, the examples he gives, printable parking passes, digital keys, resort content, consent forms, and HOA requirements, not even Cassiola requires it. It's

that these individual communities that they're managing in. And that's, I think that's that kind of breakdown there is ultimately in a lot of cases, these property managers are, they're managing in. And that's, I think that's that kind of breakdown there is ultimately in a lot of cases, these property managers are, they're dealing, they're answering to Airbnb, but they're answering to not only the individual owners, but in some cases, these HOAs or these resort communities or these onsite property management associations that they get a little silly. Let's put it mildly there. Yeah. I think that one is obviously anything that you're able to do to get more direct communication. And I know that's why Airbnb did it in the first place is everybody was taking all those, they were taking payment

processes out of there and saying, hey, just book the room. So, well, it's a fun world that we live in here, isn't it? Yeah. It's like you said, they make it harder than they should. And that's obviously an annoyance at the minimum. We got to work you right through that. I guess it is what it is. But like I said, it. So we came up with some ideas today. And we thought we would go through some fictional but real life based on real life scenarios that we have some knowledge in of different sort of styles of hosting different combinations of what people are struggling with, whether it's guest or owner marketing, we're going to touch on both. And we're going to go through these five fictional scenarios, including Tom, Sarah, Linda, Derek, and Jackie. And we're going to lay out their scenario. And then obviously, for some of the listeners, it might match what you guys are doing. And then we'll tell you what we would focus on. So if that sounds good, we'll dive into it with Tom. Let's go. All right, here's Tom's scenario.

Tom is an architect who recently inherited a family lake house in Michigan. He doesn't have the heart to sell his family lake house, but sees an opportunity in vacation rentals to generate extra income. Tom manages the property himself as invested a lot in making it cozy and comfortable for guests, focusing on the details to make it stand out. Here is Tom's marketing challenge is that he's new to the game and has very limited resources. His priority is getting noticed and just attracting positive reviews to build credibility for his house in Michigan. So what are your initial thoughts around Tom? This is kind of your typical single property host. So yeah, what's your thoughts on Tom initially? And what should he be focused on at first with his Michigan lake house? Yeah, initially, and it is with a single

property. It's difficult there. But the first thing that pops in my head when I listen to read that scenario is Google my business listing because it is and this is something that I think it's better for a multi property owner just because it's more of a business listing. That's not anything you do there per se for a single property. But if you're talking about getting noticed and attracting positive reviews to build that credibility, boy, Google is going to be a really good way to do that. Again, making sure that people know where you are on the map, making sure that as people are doing searches in your specific local area, that you are showing up in that local pack, especially in Michigan, where depending on which lake he's potentially on there, there may

not be a whole lot or there may be a ton of vacation rental management companies. But to be included within that list is just going to help them get more eyes on the prize there. And the ability to get reviews in a hurry. It's pretty easy on the Google My Business side of things, but it's a gray area there, whereas a single property host, I don't know that you necessarily need a Google Business listing. What are your thoughts there? Yeah, I think a Google Business listing, if you're eligible to do, is a good idea. The trouble here may just be that is that it's technically, if you call the letter of the law, it may be a little bit challenging for you to get that verified. But if you can, I'm all for it. I think that's a really good starting point.

I would start one layer back. So that's a good tactical thing, I think, for him to work on. I think Tom could also consider doing like a guest persona, ideal target guest kind of research process, like understanding like, okay, it's your family, Lake Housh in Michigan, but are their families your target? Are you targeting couples? Are you targeting groups that are coming together? What's your construction of the way that you've put things together inside the property? Because I think that maps out quite well. I saw a thread on Twitter the other day and someone said, if you can fit a king bed in a bedroom, do that no matter what, because a guest is always going to be drawn to that, all other things being equal. So as long as there's a room in the bedroom for a

king bed, plus a tiny little end table on either side, and then table could be like a foot wide, you should do that. I thought that was an interesting example of knowing a target guest, knowing what they care about, and then setting up the property for success, knowing that guest is going to be drawn towards a king bed versus Oh, just stick a queen in there. It's fine. Maybe not like some people are going to look for that. So that's just a specific example that's tied off of creating that guest persona slash ideal target guest. But I think that's a good starting point there. My second starting point would be actually that he creates a recognizable and unique brand name for the property. So this is something that I have in our tiers worksheet that is coming soon out there will be released shortly. Once we have some new things in the works, not ready to announce yet, but it will announce soon. But anyways, the recognizable unique brand name, I think works well, whether you have one property 10, 100 or 1000. Because ultimately, people can search and find your specific listing. So I think to your point about doing a Google My Business listing, they would need to come up with a brand name for that. You wouldn't want to call it like 123 Cottage Avenue in Google My Business,

if that was the address, right? You'd come up with the unique name. So those are two things. Who's the property actually made for? And then trying to match the properties can like layout and amenities and things like that to what the ideal target guest is. And then what is my property called creating kind of some initial brand assets doesn't have to be anything crazy. But just having a name, have that name be obvious and visible throughout the property, I think is those are three really good starting points as well. Love it. Love it. I think I agree with that fully. Right. I'll move on. Yeah, Sarah, break it down for Sarah. What you got? Multi property host Sarah. Sarah owns several-end condos in downtown San Diego,

which she has converted into vacation rentals. She's in the game for the long-term and knows the ins and outs of the business. Her challenge is maintaining a consistent, high-quality experience across her properties. Sarah needs strategies to efficiently manage all her properties, handle turnovers, and deal with unexpected issues that arise. That never happens in this space. Her marketing focus is on high-end clientele looking for luxurious downtown experiences. What should Sarah do? I think Sarah is facing the issue that a lot of people face when, I don't want to say they're fully scaled up, but they're starting to feel scale. They're starting to have five check-ins on the same day. Oh, 10 calendars are open, not one or two.

And I think Sarah's situation is pretty common for when we might just start to talk to a client initially and understand what they're going through and starting to battle with. So I'm empathetic to this scenario because I've seen it in the real world quite a bit. Sarah probably needs some really nice software to make her life a lot easier. I would say it's not necessarily directly marketing related. I would say in a flawless one-to-one connection although i would argue a good pms can certainly help you do better marketing because you have things a little bit more shirred up from like a back-end standpoint but at this point i think sarah needs to be all in on finding the right pms for her there's a million of them out there maybe we'll do a separate episode on pmss because it would take us all day to mention all the people

out there but do research look pick one that obviously makes sense for her and i think sarah needs to start to build some of the automation and workflow into that PMS so that she can actually free up her time to maybe do a little bit more marketing activity. If she's trying to attract a high-end guest, she needs to present a high-end image and high-end experience to that guest. And I think that can be done with a really well-done setup PMS that has all the right communication flows in there from a marketing perspective. So that would actually be my first thing Sarah should work on. What's your thoughts on Sarah's issues? It is. I assume that she has a website of some kind or something where she's running

all those business. So I think that really, we're talking about really focusing on that high end clientele. I think it is. It's giving, like you said, giving them that luxurious experience. So that website, maybe if she's grown the business up and the website is a little behind, she's really bringing that website with a PMS solution into the next level here of presenting the units in a very high end way. And I think it is really making sure that everything is connecting in an experience, a unified experience, but making sure that there is truly a flow of what you can do while you're in this location. Downtown San Diego, certainly some high-end properties there.

I can think of quite a few luxury property managers that are currently in that market. Yeah, I think that really making sure the present the guest presentation is as optimized as possible is going to be key because with the high end clientele, high end properties, probably going to be a higher average daily rate there. So it is there's that expectation that if you're showing something showing someone a Wix site or a WordPress or a lower end WordPress site, you're not going to really tap into that target persona that you're trying to market to. So that would be where my mind goes immediately here when she's focusing on the luxury experience there. Yeah, I agree. And I think two

other pieces of content that would map well into what she needs to be focused on. Number one, having what I call a comprehensive property description. So all nine sections being filled out on the OTAs, the higher end guest is going to have questions. They have information. They want to know all about the property and what it has to offer. And then certainly having a guidebook for incoming guests. I think those are two really good pieces of written content for her to focus on. And at this stage, when she's focusing on this high end luxury guest, the photography needs to be on point. There needs to be not just professional photos, but stage photos inside the property that kind of show dusk, they show sunrise, they show sunset, they show San Diego is a beautiful city. So you want to show that off in photography. And it needs to be more

than just here's a picture of the front. Here's a picture of the room. Here's a picture of the bedroom. Here's a kitchen shot. And then you move on, you need to kind of take that photography to really the next level at that stage to really attract, like you said, that higher ticket value guests that's coming in the door. Do you think that, and I'm trying to think of some other enhancements that people do with units and stuff like that. Do you think like the video overview or the drone footage or things like that

would help to further accentuate the listing there? Or is that overkill where it'd be a better option to, again, do with some lower cost solutions as opposed to investing maybe five thousand dollars to get that drone footage there yeah it's a good question i think because in this scenario that we created that's a condo property i think i would yeah a little bit towards away from that because obviously it's not the whole building if it was like a huge estate type property and you need to show it from multiple angles that would be a little more bullish on what you suggested there where the properties that i see that get a lot of engagement

on the virtual tour stuff on the drone shots on the videos tend to be bigger properties where they're trying to see like where it's set okay i understand it's here but show me what's around it and we have client we have a client in the bahamas that has a very like private location and you take the he takes the drone and he zooms out the location and you're actually at the beach oh man there's not a house for like a thousand feet on either side and it really shows it shows better than words better than a single static picture can do how secluded you are when you're off this property which is obviously very appealing to his kind of target persona so i think that's more so i would lean a little bit away from that in this scenario because of sarah's setup there i would say maybe spend a little bit more time inside the property

maybe have the brightly colored wall maybe have something that's a little bit more eye-catching inside the property that would make it a little bit more appealing as opposed to the basic IKEA furniture. I think you've got to get past that at this stage when you have really high-end properties in a high-demand market, high-ADR market for sure. Awesome. I'll move on then to Linda. We wish all the best to Sarah. I hope she figures everything out in San Diego. All right. Linda manages 40 diverse properties in the Florida Keys, ranging from beachfront villas to small apartment suite type properties. She works for a mid-sized property management company and her challenge lies in marketing a varied portfolio to a wide

range of potential guests. Linda has to work on a segmented marketing strategy, understanding the unique selling points for each property and identifying the target market for each. So turning the page a little bit more so into the property management persona, one that you and I have a little bit more knowledge of, what should Linda be doing with her 40 various properties in the Florida Keys market? I think it is going back to those basics of really identifying those personas that you're going after. I think the Keys is a unique market. Certainly the people who are traveling there are, it takes a little more effort to get there. So I think that's something to take into consideration as you're looking for, as you're

looking for that property or you're looking for that, that right fit. Yeah. I think it's really about nailing down those personas of who's going to fit the villas versus who's going to fit the apartments and dedicating specific budgets, specific strategies, writing the content. When I think of the keys, I think of all of the, a lot of blog posts. You can write content till you're blue in the face and really try to create that experience. And because you're going to need to identify all these USPs for each of these

properties. I think that kind of certainly building out the comprehensive property descriptions is going to help here, but you really do. You want to tie, I would say, specific blog posts back to different experiences that you can have and really try to let people envision that on the site and give people opportunities to search for things that organically they can make it there and get to that ultimate process of booking. But what are your thoughts on this individual scenario? Yeah, I think you're on the right thread there. So when I, the word segmentation was in our scenario for a reason, which is, I

think the segmentation could occur at two levels. It could occur on the website with regards to like collections. That's what you were, I think, hinting at there with law content. So a collection of properties and a, Hey, like here's our clients don't like this word, but here's our affordable set of properties. Maybe that would be on a page. Then you might have a luxury page or you might have a three plus bedroom page or a four plus bedroom page. And that would show all the listings that have that specific criteria associated with them or private, like a, like a condos versus a homes page. That may make sense. We have some clients that have a mix of both. We have pages in the navigation that can separate them because the condo market customer is not always the same as the home guest in my experience.

So separating them on the website is probably a good bet. On the backend though, segmenting them based on the email list, we touched on email a bit earlier, I think would make a lot of sense too. So having a list, guest list, and then specifically focus and saying, here's all my condo guests that may be a little bit more budget oriented. Here's my home guests. Maybe they're willing to pay 10,000 a week. Maybe the condo guests is only willing to pay 4000 a week, and understanding the difference between the two customers. And then when you're sending out marketing communications, if you're in that scenario, it's not a one size fits all, it's a lot more work. That's the downside of what we're suggesting. But it's worth it because you're

actually sending a relevant message to the guest on the backside of it, not just hammering everybody with every property when you really don't have that singular focus when you're bit varied, like your single geography, but you're varied in terms of inventory that you're offering. So that I think is probably what I would be worked on with that person. On the more tactical, practical level from an advertising perspective, the good news is once you have all those pages built out, like I suggested, you can do a different Google Ads campaign for every single keyword set. So if you're targeting people searching for villas or condos or something like that, you can give them a page that matches what they're looking for. Whereas a lot of people just send traffic to the homepage and they get a pretty poor conversion rate. So that's kind of a better way to structure that in my opinion. And that's what I would

probably be doing in this scenario is a lot of segmentation on the website and the backend guest list as well. And then the other side of things, if you're sending them pay the better, the landing page experience, you're sending some, the traffic to from Google, certainly Google's going to roar that hopefully with a lower cost per click and a higher quality score there's as well. So I agree with that 100% there. Yeah. And this is just a more of a, like a long-term SEO plan that would apply to any company.

But at that point, when you have all those pages, now you really need to be thinking about how can I get more traffic organically? So my typical SEO approach that I would have her recommending is like, you know, what are the actual links that she needs to be building to the site? We didn't say in the scenario, but let's assume it's a newer brand that doesn't have a lot of authority established with it. It might make sense to have an ongoing link building campaign. You mentioned content.

I think you did a good job there. So she should be probably starting to produce some content that maps to that guest that she's going after. And then ultimately it's making sure the site's in good technical shape, and then researching keywords. And like we said a minute ago, finding out what people are looking for, and then build a page that matches your inventory that matches that particular query or search idea or whatever the case may be. So Linda's in for it. But the good news when you're importing properties in a market like the Keys, you should have a little bit of a little bit of revenue coming in, but a market like that,

to be able to budget out and build like a more comprehensive strategy. I think Linda will be in a scenario if this were one that she was facing where she'd be able to spend a few thousand dollars a month with an agency or with a partner or the part-time marketing person to supplement and augment her efforts to be able to get a lot done to kind of keep growing that company for sure. Agreed. Agreed. What's going on with Derek? Do you want to turn the page, get a little chilly here in Colorado? I guess. Derek is a seasoned property manager overseeing over 100 properties in Colorado, most of which are ski chalets and mountain lodges. His main marketing challenge is seasonality, with most of his bookings happening during the ski season. Derek needs to develop a strategy to attract customers during the off-season months to maximize revenue. Maybe not this past year,

as far as eight months of snow, but how would typically you go about that off-season challenge with seasonality in those mountain markets? Yeah, I think one, we've had this scenario a ton because we have a lot of clients that are in ski markets. One of our big clients for years

was in a very seasonal ski market. And what we learned is that people come in the off-season for different reasons and they book at very different windows. So one thing that we noticed is like mud season is just dead in most of these markets when the snow's gone and there's not really a lot of warm weather to be excited about the ski markets. They tend to be pretty, pretty

light and there's not a ton that you can do to drive demand in those scenarios. But as soon as you kind of get past that and you get into the warmer months, we had a client where we flopped all of our messaging, everything, content, all the email copy, everything on Facebook. We actually changed the cover photo on Facebook to market a different season because it was a different season and you're going for a very different reason. Are you going to a Colorado ski market in June than you are obviously in February? So we changed all of our messaging to be here's all the fishing opportunities that you can do. Here's hiking trails, here's biking trails, here's the restaurants we have. All of it just really changed completely. And then we were

marketing specifically to all of our past guests that were coming in the door that were looking for that type of experience they booked in June, July, August before they would get put into a custom audience list on Facebook, we would do ads that target as well as all the look like people who are similar to that target as well. So I think Derek's strategy here is to actually ramp up the marketing, it's going to take more time and effort to probably get the results that you're after because there might be less search demand and things like that. But it's a great place to be,

most ski markets in the summer. So it's really talking about what makes it great. Again, outdoor activities, all these different events going on. We had an events calendar on the website that attracted some traffic coming in. We had a client in a market before where there was like different concerts

and things like that would occur. We would promote those concerts and events. We would go to those concert and event organizers and say, hey, we offer places to stay. People are looking for that. That helped move the needle a little bit. So it might be harder for Derek to get the results that he's after. But I know that there's people coming in the off season. So it's about doing those other types of activities and messaging and branding the area completely differently.

And then, of course, you get to maybe September 1, November 1, etc. You get that time frame. You start flipping the switch into what the other marketing looks like. But I took a few ideas there maybe from you. So your thoughts? No, it's funny because the events was certainly the first thing that popped into my head and being able to even do blog writing about those events and being able to do backlinking there and maybe some type of partnership there. I think that's always a good opportunity, especially because if you don't have true summer activities or varying seasonal activities, then yeah, you're trying to go after the more of those event based things.

So that was certainly something that we saw to be successful when we were trying to drum up some more off season support or off season bookings there. But the seasonality, we actually did the same thing. We had a property manager who not only did spring or summer and winter, but had a spring, summer, fall and winter setup. So you could actually click and toggle to each of the different experiences right from the homepage. And that was pretty effective in just making sure that people were, you saw that time on site really increase and engage as people were going down the specific timeframe that they were looking to

travel for. And they were, it seemed like more frequently we saw them hitting additional content pieces, whether that was a blog post, whether that was another article that was just on the site or navigating around different parts of the website, then would just be that standard booking experience of going in, picking my dates and toggling it through like that. So yeah, I think those two things are really when you don't want skiing or some type of downhill activity is your main driver. And we obviously have no control over the weather itself. Being able to pick apart some of those event or more timely instances of events or anything like that is super helpful there. Yeah. I think it's a common situation that Derek has here. Pretty much every market has

seasonality. So ultimately it's more about what do you do to make the area, the star, maybe the properties in the star during that timeframe. It's more about making the area, the star. And I think that ultimately there's ways to do that. And a lot of it is like we said through content and through events and other activity going on. All right. this one, I like that this worked out well. I get to ask you about this one. Excuse me, because I don't know Jackie very well. All right, Jackie is a property manager in Branson, Missouri, working for a prominent company that manages a variety of vacation rental properties. Properties under her management are a mix of rustic cabins and modern condos. Over the last year, a surge in real estate sales significantly reduced Jackie's property

inventory as many owners decided to sell their properties. Common thing that's been happening quite a bit. Now Jackie has faced a critical challenge. She has to replenish her portfolio and attract new property owners into her management company. So how can Jackie here bounce back and get new inventory into her program when she's lost inventory? Not maybe because she's done a bad job. In fact, sometimes you lose a property because you did a great job and then it doesn't always make its way back into your program. So how can Jackie replenish her inventory? Maybe her bookings are okay to kind of save her company and get her revenue back on track. Yeah. I think that some of the things that we see most frequently and are the low hanging fruits are hitting those real estate connections. There's a lot of realtors out

there that their job is not just selling the homes, but selling these short-term rental properties. They can identify what's going to be a vacation rental property there. So I think the networking or the connections with those, if you have a partnership of some kind with the local realtors, and not just one, but making sure you're connecting with everybody, I think that's huge. Whether that's attending specific local events with the real estate agents or anything like that, I think that's huge. Whether that's attending specific local events with the real estate agents or anything like that, I think that's really important there. On the other side of things, certainly being able to...

Not the in-person events, but Facebook groups are huge for not just owner acquisition, but I think just in our short-term rental space, vacation rental space, that's something that's really taken off. Some of these local property managers, in some cases, creating the groups themselves and just getting that communication and more of a community out there. So the ability to participate in those areas, because there are, there's a lot of those homeowners who are considering whether or not they want to join a portfolio, do any type of professional management like that. So it's a great place to educate. And honestly, in those Facebook groups, the best way to be able to connect to those people, potentially do some Facebook advertising to them is to post a little video, an overview video of

your business or what you're doing. A lot of those groups, you're not trying to sell hard, but really just giving people insights into the space or anything like that and doing some remarketing based on video views. And that's something that we've seen be very effective. There is more traditional marketing efforts if you want to send postcards, if you want to do email marketing. Certainly, Venturi has a platform, a full CRM where you can run the entire communications game and omni-channel marketing right through it. But it is, that's not a solution for everybody. So like little steps you can take to get up to that point where you want to have something that's a little more automated. Certainly, I think that any networking potential that you can do or networking opportunities that you have there, whether they're digital or whether they're in real life,

are critical to making sure that you find more of those homeowners that are looking for the opportunity to have their home managed. But what about you? What do you think on any of that there? How can I be? I don't know how else to add. No, I think that you covered all the things there that I think are solid. Maybe because you thought of her issues and where she was at, you didn't cover the base thing. So I would say, how good is her landing page when people come and check out what she has to offer on her website? Does her landing page do a good job explaining the value that she brings to the table? Or like you said, a lot of these relationships do drive a lot

of business, but certainly there's people coming to our site that might be interested in what she has to offer from a management perspective. And she may not be doing a good job. Unfortunately, we see that quite a bit. So I agree with the relationship things. I would say one thing, yeah, is like figuring out the home left, maybe turn that more into a positive. So maybe do a case study. Hey, I worked with John Doe. John Doe bought this property. He thought it was going to do 40K a year. I ended up making it do 75K a year. He did sell the property, but look at the success that I had managing that property. If you have a similar property, obviously I can probably do 75K for you a year. And that's the implied benefit of doing that. I agree with everything you've said there for sure. I can't

disagree. And then being involved in the community, I think, like you said, it could be a local thing where you're actually talking to people in person or having those types of meetings, or it could be virtual, like you said, taking place in a Facebook group. And a lot of owner acquisition, good owner acquisition, I've said this before, is basically brand awareness. You don't know exactly when someone's going to be in that mindset of looking to go for that manager. So when you're trying to just attract the last mile people, that last click people, the number is so small. We've talked about this before in generalities on this podcast before, so that you're trying to, you have a little tiny net and you're trying to go catch a fish in it and you can do it,

but it's just, there's not enough. You're not casting a big enough net using like Google ads, for example, to replenish, let's say 20, 30, 40 lost homes, unless you're just in a market where that's a very small percentage of the inventory. But as most markets, that's hard to do. So I think you need to focus on, like you said, these brand building activities so that when people think vacation manager, they automatically think of, in this fictional scenario, Jackie, they don't think of other companies out there.

That brand awareness investment is hard to pin down exactly what to do and where to do it. But it looks more like what you described in my opinion than what some people do, which is, oh, I just want to get people the moment they're ready to decide. It doesn't work that way. It's like real estate agents.

Like real estate agents, the best ones tend to be the ones that have been around a long time and have done a lot of deals and hopefully done them very well. So they get that word of mouth flywheel running. Once you've had 100, 200 customers that you've worked with on the real estate, they're all out there. If you don't have a good job and go, oh yeah, John Doe sold my home. He did a good job. Just call John Doe Realty. He'll take care of you. I think that's a sentiment that you want on the management side as well. Oh, go manage my property with Jackie Realty. She does a great job out there in Branson. And that's a sentiment that you want on the management side as well. I'll go manage my property with Jackie Realty. She does a great job out there in Branson.

And that's what you're looking for a little bit there as well. Yeah, that third party validation is always huge, whether it's from an owner, it's someone you can get those owner testimonials or whether you can get that third party of a real to real estate agent doing anything like that. It's huge. The less you have to sell personally, interpersonally yourself, the better off you are. So making those connections, I think it's a non-negotiable on the owner's side of things. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right. So those are our five scenarios. So to recap really quickly, single property host,

Tom, multi-property host, Sarah, property manager, number one, Linda, property manager, number two, Derek, property manager, number three, Jackie. We hope all their success. They're like these, did you ever play Sims, Paul? It's like we have a little Sims world and they're all living in the Sims world. No, I joke. But I like this idea. It was fun to do it today. We got to our brains thinking in a different way and how would we come up with these specific scenarios

and help people. Anything else that we want to add in before we put a bow on this one today? Just the standard little, it is the 4th of July, the fireworks. We would really make the fireworks to go off for us if you could maybe lend us a little review here. Send us in a review. Tell us how you thought we did. Tell us if you fit any of these personas here. Certainly, we want to know what works, what doesn't work. If you want to give

that feedback or suggest new potential what would you do scenarios for us, we'd love to get that feedback as well. Yes, we are celebrating our independence from a lack of reviews by deleting this review. And we're also celebrating America's independence from the overbearing nation state that is Great Britain. It's so funny how friendly we are. And then every year, we're just like, yeah, remember that? We didn't completely forget about it. Hopefully there's not too many UK-based listeners that have a certain take on that. But I think we're all friendly now.

I think it's all good. We'll forget about the no taxation without representation and no reviews. No more podcasts without you leaving a review. See, I think it's a review. We appreciate it. I love that idea, Paul. If we could do this for real, if you'd be interested in it,

yeah, please do email us. That might be fun. It's paul, P-A-U-L at ventori.com. And then I'm conrad at buildupbookings.com. If you actually would be okay with us breaking down your scenario on the show, hey, what would you do in this scenario? That's a little bit more tangible to you.

We'd obviously, we'd love to hear hear that so thank you so much for listening we appreciate your time and attention have a great holiday or you might have had a great holiday by time you listen to this have a great rest of your july we'll be back next week with a new episode and we'll catch you on the next one thanks so much bye