Flashback: 5 Ways to Drive Direct Bookings Before the OTAs Put You Out of Business with Vanessa Humes

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. With more than 35 years combined industry experience, alex Huesner and Annie Holcomb have teamed up to connect the dots between inspiration and opportunity, seeking to find the one story, idea, strategy or decision that led to their guest's big aha moment. Join them as they highlight the real stories behind the people and brands that have built vacation rentals into the $100 billion industry. It is today and now it's time to get real and have some fun with your hosts, alex and Annie.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Welcome to Alex and Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex and I'm Annie, and we are joined today with Vanessa Humes of Inder Coastal Net Designs, a great friend and local Burtle Beach residents. Vanessa, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3: 0:57

Thanks guys. Thanks, I'm glad to be here. I've been following your podcast, really enjoy the content that you guys are putting out, so appreciate the opportunity.

Speaker 2: 1:07

Yeah, so excited to have you here. So this is going to be this is a special episode and we are bringing on Vanessa as part of our Alex and Annie's list a team member. I see, indeed, very proud to have them as part of that. And this is going to be part one of probably many episodes with you, but part one of a two-part series about how to build your book direct brand so that the OTAs don't put you out of business, basically, and we're going to go over five tips today and then we'll come back for part two and do five more tips. But Vanessa has an incredible, just realm of knowledge within digital marketing, marketing in general and branding and very experienced within the space. So you are, I would say, the guru of that within Vacation Reynolds. So we're just excited to hear about all the great things that you can teach us in our listeners today.

Speaker 3: 2:02

Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah, so just a little background for those of you who don't know me I'm Vanessa Cumes and technically the sales director with Intercoastal Met Designs. I don't know if I would really consider myself that. I used to call myself Jill of all trades, but I didn't want the tagline master of non attached to it, so I think the website might say master of the universe.

Speaker 2: 2:29

I really do a lot About appropriate.

Speaker 3: 2:32

Yeah, so I started back with ICND in 2009. Prior to that, I had two jobs. Kind of out of college, I went to Coastal Carolina University and applied too late for my internship. So I had two choices I could be a Copenhagen girl and pass out dip in the bars, or I could work for a startup real estate slash vacation ownership, slash time share company. It was called great places and so I took that job, obviously, and one of my first things that I got to do was build a database and access to track all the prices of Myrtle Beach real estate during the boom and then the crash. So you know, taking a look at a VISTA oceanfront one bedroom condos and they were basically going to buy them once that price sank and then develop a portfolio of luxury real estate and a cross part of beach, which wasn't really the right time or market.

Speaker 2: 3:45

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3: 3:47

For the startup, but it was. It was a really good opportunity for me because ground roots effort, I fell in love with startups and then Brandon Sales was actually doing our website. Okay. And so back then Brandon did a lot of the work with the local advertising agency, so they would do the creative and then he would program the websites and did a lot with real estate. So MLS integrations was one of the big things that they did back in the day. So, once you know, everything kind of happened where great places lost all of their funding and the real estate market wasn't great. I got rolled into another company called New Resorts and just kind of saw where things were going with real estate and I was like this is my time to make a jump and so I went to work for DSL marketing, which I think was DSL services back then. That's how I got to meet Alex.

Speaker 2: 4:49

Yeah, we work together. That's how I met you and a lot of people that are still in my life actually. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 4:56

It was a great team and you know so I was the account manager to the president there. So I got to work with the Britain Resort Group and vacation Myrtle Beach Group and on their you know com competitor website, myrtle Beach now, which was competing with Myrtle Beach dot com, and they were a direct mail company. So they didn't really know a lot about what we called interactive marketing back then was the buzzword and they wanted to, you know, make that switch to being an interactive agency and do websites. And so you know, that was that was a lot of what we were doing is turning that ship. But you know, for whatever reasons with, like the Myrtle Beach politics and things like that, there was just still a lot of concentration on doing direct mail and brochures and my passion was really with interactive. I wanted to do websites, I wanted to do email marketing, pay for click, seo and be involved with that. So I reached back out to Brandon and started with him 13 years ago probably like to this week, oh my God Back in 2009. So, yeah, so you know, at that time he was again doing a lot of the agency work and he knew if they just hired a programmer that he would basically be really hurting for business. So he, you know, we hired a designer and he mentioned to me that you know he was. He went to these B or M a conferences with his wife, whitney. So Whitney is Brandon's wife. She's a third generation vacation rental manager for Sloan vacation, so in realty vacations, and so, you know, at that time you had Blizzard on scene and visual data systems and Blue Tent and they were all very welcoming to Brandon and really, you know, just gave him that vision that you know this is something that I can do. He's a programmer by trade. He understood the API's, that instant software, yeah, we're offering. So we built a vacation rental website here and there. But in 2014, we came up with one of the first mobile responsive websites. So that was like our big claim to fame, because a lot of the websites back then it was when you had your regular desktop site and you had a mobile site, so that we figured out that technology to make it responsive to whatever and adapt to whatever device you were on was really a big thing. So that's you know kind of where we started and how we ended up in the vacation rental space and we brought on a lot of what with that booking until we brought on a lot of clients from outer banks to Palm Springs, california, and today we work with over 350 vacation rental managers across the globe. Wow, incredible, yeah, both with websites and digital marketing. So we're that full service agency. We always change about being and still independently owned and operated, no investments or anything, just haven't grown and a lot of grit. So, yeah, it's kind of our back story.

Speaker 2: 8:25

That's such a good history trail of so many interesting years here, and you and I's path obviously crossed in the early part of that. And it's funny too. You know, you and I were at DSL marketing, which became new media, and back in those days when we made the change to interactive, a lot of the things that we were trying to sell we didn't even know, excuse me, we didn't even know about, right, and the industry didn't even know about. I remember when we first started doing social media somebody making the joke, you know how do we sell a Facebook page? That's like selling somebody a library card it's free. And we were like gosh, yeah, that's crazy but then. I realized, ok, well, but somebody needs to manage the Facebook page for the business. So, ok, that makes sense that there's a business here. And that's actually that started my relationship with Condo World and I left that company and you left about the same time. So I've been in Conroe 13 years, you've been ICND 13 years and, gosh, you know so much has evolved and changed and it's been just really exciting to see Brandon and ICND and you and the whole team grow over the years. I know if Roy was here he would say that just watching that has been he's. He always loved watching Brandon and seeing how much you guys have grown, because he remembers those early days when it was just Brandon, he was just the programmer and it was real scrappy and it's definitely a great success story.

Speaker 3: 9:48

So yeah, absolutely. I remember one of the first meetings I had with with you and Roy, such an amazing guy. You know, back then the website wasn't the powerhouse that it was. You know, coming from the hotels, they were at like 20, 30% doing online reservations and then most of the vacation rental companies were at like 15, 20%. So they weren't investing in websites, they were investing in their brochures, they were investing in reservation systems like Navis and you know that's. Everybody wanted to make that push towards the websites and I think that VRBO back then was the front runner and maybe HomeAway was starting to come on scene and then you had maybe just a glimpse of Airbnb back at that time. So it's quite the evolution of where now they're not putting as much emphasis on these reservation systems, they're putting the emphasis on their websites and really doing that book direct. But you know, my experience with the hotels at DSL was really helpful for me to start and ignite that passion for direct bookings, cause I remember talking to John Daniels at the breakers and he was like you know, this is a big mistake for us to take all of our loyal guests and drive them with lower rates to travel off to a surprise line and you know we're really risking our business here, and so that really, you know, hit home with me and when I saw HomeAway and VRBO as the main sources of bookings, when I came on scene, there weren't bookings back then, they were leads.

Speaker 2: 11:43

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3: 11:44

As they evolved to try to take in those direct bookings. I kind of put two and two together and it's like you know what we're doing with websites and digital marketing is really going to make an impact, and so that's, you know, always been our focus. We've never gotten into the channel manager space. We've always been very diligent with that's a little bit of a complex of interest for us that having a good website and, you know, sending traffic through digital marketing is our main item. If we start taking a cut of Airbnb and bookingcom and that you know why, would we want the direct booking? So we've always kept that focus and I think that that's been a part of our success as well.

Speaker 4: 12:33

So I think with that, you've laid out a really good segue into the topic for today. Yeah, and you're going to share some really great tips. Yeah, so it's Alex alluded to. We're going to have to do this in a two-part series, but we'll do today. We've got 10 tips that you're going to share, but you're going to share five of them today.

Speaker 3: 12:50

Yeah, yeah. So you know, like we were talking about earlier, they missed a great conversation that we had prior. Yeah, we had prior to this and obviously I have no trouble talking a lot, so we'll have to watch our time, but you know with where we are at as an industry right now there's. It's not like it was back then. You don't need to get an expensive server and put it in your closet and you know, run your software and to the barrier to entry is really low to start up a vacation rental company right now. Right. So, you can. You can go out there. You can either invest in your own properties which I'm going to give, the successful vacation rental managers of today started that way and, and you know so, how do you market your property? So I want to kind of make sure that I touch on both, as far as those people that are are starting out and those that are have 100, 150 properties, 200 properties and what they should do. So number one it's not the most.

Speaker 2: 13:52

Drumroll please.

Speaker 3: 13:56

It's not the sexiest topic, but email marketing, I definitely think, is probably one of our least used mediums in the space. You know, everybody kind of talks about doing it. It's like, yeah, we need to do it, but are we actually doing it and are we doing it right? So obviously, when you're you're you're using the OTAs for your main source of bookings. They're not inclined to give you that email address, and I know you guys talked with Pete about making sure that you know you're using something with the Wi-Fi connection. I think is a great idea. I think that's going to be just like a best practice staple here. And then next few months, with Silicon Travel out there and StateFi, you know you definitely should be looking at that so that, no matter how many people are in that group, you're collecting each and every email address. Yeah, absolutely, and it doesn't have to be that the reservationist is calling the person, being like, hey, I need your email address. And they're like, for what?

Speaker 2: 15:03

Right, exactly, yeah, yeah, and that's a big, I think, two parts there. One I agree with you that not enough managers are leveraging the power of email marketing just in general. Even just with the email addresses that you have, you can run really successful email campaigns even with a small list. I mean, we've been very heavily focused on email marketing and probably kind of the same. You know what we talked about earlier. You and I got our same, our base, within marketing at the same time that even at DSL back in those days, we were selling email marketing and we learned the importance of that because that was the most direct correlation at that time to direct mail, which was, you know, really the main game at that point. But we've always kept a huge focus on email marketing at Condo World and that's definitely one of the secrets to our success, for building our brand to what it is, and I could not recommend companies more that you start to put a focus on it. But it's at the same time it's not something that it can be super easily done. I mean it does. It takes effort. If you don't have somebody internally, you need to have an agency that can help you with it. We have an internal team that does our emails and we actually use a service called Revenate Marketing that sends out our emails. But how does for your clients? How do they interact and how can you help with email marketing? If a company has a small list or no list, what do you do?

Speaker 3: 16:23

Yeah, any list at all right.

Speaker 2: 16:25

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3: 16:27

Yeah, so there was. I did get a question from one of the smaller managers I was talking to recently about like terms and conditions with Airbnb. If they're using Airbnb, their terms and conditions, to kind of talk them out of using those email addresses and retargeting to those audiences, Annie, had you heard anything about that? I told them that we would be having this conversation. Do you think the terms and conditions of Airbnb outlaw them from remarketing to guests that stay with them?

Speaker 4: 17:01

You know, I hear that, but I know Marriott has it in there, marriott has it yeah, it's like 18 months that you're not allowed to use that.

Speaker 2: 17:09

Airbnb doesn't even give you the email, though I mean you can get it on your own. It's a must email.

Speaker 3: 17:14

Yeah, right and like, according to, can spam and things like that, you just have to kind of do business with someone. They have to offer that email opt-in to your list and you have it. I would have no idea how they would track that you're doing that. So I really wouldn't be as cautious. I would start to market to those people, especially after a year, 18 months. I'm sure that you're pretty much in the clear there. We utilize MailChimp, constant Contact, pretty much any email provider out there. They're all pretty much the same. You know, being able to get your list either from your software into the program that's gonna be deploying the emails and starting to segment those lists is kind of the big thing and getting that automation in there. You know you're gonna have other programs in there, like what Navis used to be, or Track, pulse, or I think there's you Send. It is another one that's an up and comer. They're all more of that CRM where you're gonna be able to tag people and start to put them into the different personas that you may be building, and I think that that's. I don't think many people have gotten to that level. There's a handful of our clients that have are able to tag them that they know that they came down for a golf or that was a girlfriend's getaway, or birthdays and anniversaries, and they send automated emails out based on their interests and different segments that they have on them. But for the most part I would say, you know, any email is better than no email. So if you're small and just doing a monthly email loss, that is going to be better than trying to over complicate it and take the you know 1500 people and try to drill them down and target it. You know. So essentials for a good email list or an email campaign is, you know, obviously a good offer to get them back, showing off new properties, featuring properties and featuring events that are up and coming so that you give somebody a reason to come and visit you. So if you've got a wine and cheese festival or country fest or things that are going on in the area, it's a great time to start targeting for our beach towns the shoulder season the secret season we would call it, because the beach is so beautiful and it's less crowded and getting them down here.

Speaker 4: 19:55

Absolutely One thing that I've done in the past and it was kind of to answer in the panhandle we had. Windom was our big competitor, but Windom also had multiple markets, they had complementary markets. So one of the things that we did at a company that my husband and I had started with some friends was that we actually went to complementary markets. So we went to Gatlinburg and we partnered with some properties in Gatlinburg and we actually did co-branded marketing so that, hey, come to the beach in the summer, go to the mountains in the fall, and we were able to share that database and that was a really good way of being able to double our database in a really short amount of time. And so I think that there's other ways of thinking outside the box that maybe people could take a look at, that they're not necessarily. They're thinking right within their market and thinking I can only get what's coming to me and not necessarily what potentially could be coming to me. So again, just throwing out that as an opportunity.

Speaker 3: 20:49

Yeah, that's a great idea and certainly there's always been some value in getting leads off the chamber the local chamber that are interested in accommodations and being able to you probably get to blast that list like one time and just using other sources like that I wouldn't really recommend going out there. Back in the day, alex, we used to do those targeted lists.

Speaker 2: 21:18

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:19

You know families in.

Speaker 2: 21:21

Charlotte with you know that's right. Yeah, oh, my gosh, yeah.

Speaker 3: 21:27

And you know just the frequency. But that guest history already has some loyalty with you, so it's always just a great means of being able to get them to come back to book direct. You know, so staying in front of them and that frequency and getting them to dream about their next vacation.

Speaker 2: 21:45

Yeah, I think that's really the sweet spot that we've found is, you know, what is that blend of inspiration, inspirational content that you're sending them, plus offers, plus things that you need to push. So if we have properties that we need, that need help, we use our emails for that, but we're not you know the way that you display them. That's when we're not saying these are distressed properties and they need rentals. I mean, you, you feature them and you make sure you're bringing out the best things about why somebody would want to stay there, and we definitely see a lot of results from being able to do that. So, figuring out that cadence we send emails three times a week. I mean, we're very heavily into our emails. I don't think that everybody has to do it to the level that we are, but I think if you can send at least send a monthly work up to bi-weekly and then one a week, and then you'll see a massive difference. But I think part of this whole process too, of course, is collecting those names. So not just the guest history names, but people that come on your site that don't book. Do you offer or do you have anything for abandonment, or we do look at that concept.

Speaker 3: 22:49

Yeah, so we do it so that if somebody comes onto the checkout page, the booking page, and they start filling out their information, it's automatically added to a database and you know, once they're they're opted into that we'll check their property management software to see maybe Alex called and booked her reservation for this property. So we're looking for your email address and if you don't have a reservation then we'll send an email saying, hey, act fast. You know 15 other people are looking at this property. You know, hurry, come back and book now with the direct link. So always trying to hit them up, but you can certainly enroll that into a drip campaign too. Yeah, so you know to keep keep hitting them and and make sure. But we have other automated triggers like price alerts and cancellation notification. So if the price goes up, then they'll get an email saying hey, due to popularity of your dates and limited availability, prices are going up. Or if the price goes down, they'll get an email saying, hey, this is a great price, you should book now. So we're always throwing urgency with them as just a an extra book direct tip, yeah, of any of the booking engines out there.

Speaker 2: 24:01

I definitely give you guys credit for that. You have the smartest triggers. It really do. Yeah, I mean between you know how many people are looking at the unit If the price has gone up and down, cancellation. That's all really really smart stuff and very clearly done by a company that knows the industry well. You know, and I think that's that's a big part of why you guys are so strong I mean Brandon and his ties with his wife is slow in vacations. I mean a lot of the things that you guys are able to try and test. You know you actually have real experience. It's powering those decisions.

Speaker 3: 24:31

So we do, and Whitney has kind of opted out of being the test dummy. Oh, okay.

Speaker 2: 24:39

You've got tired of it.

Speaker 4: 24:40

You've got enough companies now, yeah, she's like bring me the finished product. I don't know if it works, right, yeah, so why don't we? So what's your tip number two?

Speaker 3: 24:49

Tip number two. So deals. You know I think deals are definitely going to be coming back into play with just you know how the economy is going. Everything has been really strong in the last couple of years with all the attention that the vacation rental industry has gotten. But as things start to soften and we still have a lot of as a as a industry, a lot of pressure from our owners to keep those rentals and heads in beds deals are going to be what comes about. So making sure that you have it well, merchandise on your site so people can see what the price was, what the price is, and there is nothing more of a conversion killer than having a promo code on your checkout page and no promo code on your site and no way to get back to the booking page. So either hide that something that they call comment out in the code. You can either hide that or, you know, make it easy for somebody to come back or easy for somebody to see the promo codes from the checkout page and always that ability to book online. So you don't want to have it called a book and it'd be 10pm and you don't have anybody there. Yeah, right.

Speaker 4: 26:09

Do you have any, any statistics on conversion for? For promotions, for deals? Are there deals that speak more to specific audiences? You know, like I know, buy one, get one free, or 25% off, or third night free, like what are you seeing is the ones that actually convert the most.

Speaker 3: 26:30

So that's a great question. I mean I would definitely want to run some newer tests because in the past couple years I would say that 98% of our clients haven't been running specials. Sure, the cross through so that you can see the original price and what the new price is have definitely had a better conversion rate than just saying you know, this property is 25%, often never saying what the original price was Right.

Speaker 4: 27:01

They want to see the math, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they don't really know.

Speaker 3: 27:04

It's sure the price I'm supposed to be getting, or is it 15% more? But definitely by outlining historically, if we say we're going to give you $25 off for your email address, they know exactly how much it's going to be off. It doesn't have to be $250 off, you know. It can be just a special incentive so you can start small. But they want to see that dollar amount percentages. It takes too much to figure out Right.

Speaker 4: 27:34

they want transparency.

Speaker 3: 27:35

Yeah, and it's off the base rate the total amount. You know too many questions there. $250 off, here's your price, here's your total amount. Boom book now. So yeah, price transparency for sure.

Speaker 4: 27:48

Yeah, we so, like on the channel management side. That's one of the things that we coach our partners on is to run a promotion, not just drop your rates, because on the channels the algorithms are going to pick up the promotion. They're not going to pick up the fact that you dropped your rate by $25 or 25%, so loaded in as a promotion. So it's one of the things that I wrestle with when people use some of the pricing tools where the rates are just automated and it's like well, I dropped my rates by 25%, why isn't it?

Speaker 3: 28:15

Yeah, because the algorithm highlighted. Yeah, the algorithm didn't notice it.

Speaker 4: 28:19

So to your point, I think that people like to see that cross there, even if and you know, let's be honest people mark up their rates to discount their rates in a lot of ways. So I think it is charged I mean, I think we all are but I think that, again, people want to see it because it's a feeling, you know, it's tangible. They can see it and it's the perception more than the reality.

Speaker 3: 28:42

Yeah, people when they buy, yeah, and you know, just one of those marketing factors is take away If it's too, too much, too hard to think about people don't get it.

Speaker 4: 28:52

Yeah, I don't want to have to do math, I just want to book my stay Right, exactly.

Speaker 2: 28:57

I think just for us. I mean, we normally do percentage off sales and they always work well. You just have to be above 25%. 20%, 15%, 10% those just don't really seem to click with people. But anything 25% and higher normally does pretty well, and definitely showing the before and after price. That's really important too, and I think your booking engine does that right. On the checkout page you can see that it does.

Speaker 3: 29:22

Yeah, so we either do the math or API call is always helpful. That way it's the exact amount, so it just depends on the software the API call is available, what discounts and things like that the you know it does. It gets more and more complicated all the time with the dynamic pricing and the nightly rates and the like yeah, pricing. So it's always a challenge for us. But, um, and that's why it's like, keep it simple. You know, if you can just show them was is amount, then it's going to get you the best.

Speaker 2: 29:59

Yep, okay, so we've got email and deals. What is number three?

Speaker 3: 30:04

Number three uh, well, optimized site. You know, you know, obviously this is, um, it's a big difference between if you're just starting out or if you've been in business for a long time. But there you know, go back to the basics of the absolute essentials of what you should have for your website, and that is your metadata page titles, your URL structure and then what Google calls eat, with your expertise, authority and trustworthiness. So, focusing on on those things. So what makes you an expert at vacation rentals in your specific market? What kind of authority do you have on that? And trust factors would be your reviews, your associations, your certifications, um, and things like that. And then for your property detail pages, specifically having that information well honed in, I think that it becomes, um, a little bit of a trend for vacation mental managers and marketers more managers who don't have those marketers and are just using a team that they focus a lot on the homepage and not on the booking pages or creating segmented you know, gatlin Berg, pet friendly condos. So that would be a long tail keyword phrase with a lot of intent. Um, that if you have a smaller inventory, drilling down to those lower in the funnel Keyword phrases, so top of the funnel would be Gatlinburg, gatlinburg vacations, gatlinburg condo rentals, and then you've got Gatlinburg pet friendly condo rentals. It's really far. Somebody who is searching for that is really drilling in and trying to find some good options, and so they have a lot of intent to book. They've already figured out where they're going, what they're looking for and and specifics. So when you don't have a lot of inventory, looking at your inventory and figuring out what your niche is, it's going to be the best thing for SEO and then for your property detail pages. Having that well optimized with your H1 tags metadata, we've seen a 62% increase in property pages as landing pages SEO. So, people are definitely figuring out hey, I saw this on an OTA, but I'm going to go and figure out what their prices on their direct booking site. So we've done a lot of marketing and promotion for that as an industry, so I think that's great. Just make sure that you are optimizing your pages so you show at the top and it's not the RBO rent a beach.

Speaker 2: 32:53

Yeah, and that's that's a really important topic because I think a lot of websites, because of how these pages are generated, for a unit page or property page, they don't actually have their own page. I mean, it's dynamically driven, so if you go to Google that, that property, you're not going to find the direct link back to the company's website. So that's definitely a very important question to ask your website company as you're building those. But and we definitely have seen a huge rise in that the more that we've pushed on to verbal and Airbnb in the last year or so, the more we're getting those individual searches on units. And it used to be at one point that for it, for Verbo, you weren't allowed to put the property name in the headline and then we put them in there. Now I don't think that I guess they've gotten gotten away from that, but it's, I would definitely recommend it. I mean, put it. Put a headline that has some details in it, but it would also always put the property name in it too.

Speaker 3: 33:49

Yeah, I mean it goes off the topic of your. You know you're not only marketing your brand, but your marketing the brand of the individual property.

Speaker 2: 33:57

Exactly yeah.

Speaker 3: 33:58

Don't be 123 Elm Street. Be Freddie Cougars. You know, has a name that you can. You can type in and and market and people can can come back and book because once they, if you're doing a good job and they have a great experience, they're going to want to come back or they're going to want to tell their family about it. Yeah, and so that that whole brand of that property to be able to to come in and market it as well.

Speaker 2: 34:26

We had Terry White on the show yesterday and did a deep dive into websites and PMS is in a bunch of different tech things. But one of the things we talked about was the complexity If you switch software and you have a website that the software company did. Now you're not only switching software, you're having to have a new company build the website too, and I think that that speaks to the benefit of working with company like IC and D, because your site is agnostic now of the PMS. So it is that you are using track and you had an IC and D website, but now you've switched to a different software. You can connect it to other providers.

Speaker 3: 35:04

Yeah, yeah, and it's happened so frequently that during COVID, when we reinvented ourselves and made our our first mobile first sites or rather than it being just mobile responsive, it's now mobile first we also recreated our database structure so that if you are on track and you need to switch to streamline, you don't know. You no longer have to rewrite your entire booking engine.

Speaker 2: 35:30

Yes, here.

Speaker 3: 35:31

Yeah, we just come in and you know you still have to write any kind of customization so we can still customize it. Yeah and out of the box solution. But from a guest facing perspective, they have no idea you switched websites from Google. They have no idea you've switched websites. Yeah, we're still doing everything we need to do. So when we do a website, we do what's called a screaming frog report. That basically says you know, these are all the pages that Google has Index for your site and making sure that you have a one to one page represented on the new site so that none of none of your your pages are left behind. No page left behind. But yeah, but yeah. Yeah. That's a great point is you know you're investing. You should be continuously investing, so it's a really big investment.

Speaker 2: 36:24

Again, if you have to switch software and not on on some sort of website, something that you have for the long haul and hopefully you don't have to change PMS as often, but it's pretty likely that in some course of business you might have to change. So that's that. I think that's really important to keep in mind, because those SEO rankings are also critical. I mean, that's that's another huge component of our ability to have built a very strong book. Direct brand is our organic placement. So Absolutely.

Speaker 4: 36:57

Yeah, yeah you don't want to be holding it hostage.

Speaker 3: 37:00

Yeah, we could go into so much more detail on that.

Speaker 2: 37:03

I know we'll be back in a minute after award from our premier brand sponsor wheelhouse, the ultimate revenue driving machines.

Speaker 5: 37:12

But will house for me has been game changer. I mean I probably make 3040% more revenue and definitely get a lot more bookings because of it.

Speaker 2: 37:21

We're back with john held, a brand from Hilde homes. Revenue management still requires a human touch and it helps to have an outside source to validate your thinking. How does wheelhouse to support help john know if he's making the right pricing decisions?

Speaker 5: 37:33

Mostly, I just talked strictly with the customer service over there. I'm like hey my one property is kind of slow. Am I doing something wrong? Can you mind looking at my pricing? And they're usually pretty amazing. They'll jump in, they'll look at it. They're like okay, you know it's really saturated right now and you're in a slow market this time of month, but the next two months it looks like it's going to pick up.

Speaker 4: 37:55

Wheelhouse is offering listeners of this podcast 50% off your first two months. Go to use wheelhouse calm and enter promo code Alex, annie or contact them and mention this podcast. Let's go to number four.

Speaker 3: 38:12

Number four is going to be paper clicks. That's hand in hand with SEO. Paper click is my favorite because it's an instant gratification. You don't have to work months, even years, to get up top for that North what will be 20 Hill, conor Reynolds. You can just target that keyword phrase. Then you can see how you convert on it. It's something that you can really track specifically too, because of course, you can't track specific keyword phrases with SEO anymore. Being able to track which keyword phrases you actually convert the best is really great. You can do more test marketing with that which type of page converts fast, what landing page converts fast and which keyword phrases convert best. Then you can take that and shift your SEO towards those types of niche keyword phrases. Meaning, if you're out there for a specific marketplace let's say Gatlinburg, pet friendly condo rentals but it isn't converting, what can you do to make sure that you're either showing more listings on those pages or you're?

Speaker 2: 39:34

hitting that more options? Isn't it converting?

Speaker 3: 39:36

Yeah, before you invest the time and effort in SEO to show number one.

Speaker 4: 39:43

How do you coach people? I always used to get this Again. My husband used to handle it and then I went to Expedia For a management company. You're competing against Airbnb and Expedia and bookingcom, now the other 50 channels that have popped up, and then again in a Myrtle Beach market you're competing against the condo world, you're competing against the Casa. For me, just say, I've got 25 units. How do you coach somebody? Because I think the natural instinct of somebody starting out is like oh, I want condo rentals. Well, everybody's bidding on condo rentals. How do you coach them and drill down into the words, the keywords that work for them? What does that process look like?

Speaker 3: 40:24

Yeah, experience helps. We already have that experience to know what tactics. But think more granularly, think more, rather than going out there for condo rentals, because when somebody comes to your site and they only see 25 listings and then they put in their dates and they see two, the likeliness that they're going to bounce is pretty high. So if you can come in and give them something that's more targeted, where, like we were talking about with Gatlinburg, condo rentals that are pet friendly or outer banks oceanfront event home, those are very targeted keyword phrases. So what we do is we look at your inventory and we figure out what people are searching for and what you have and we match them up and then we create those campaigns that are very specific to your inventory and then making sure that they're landing on pages that are going to convert the best?

Speaker 2: 41:27

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things that we've done that has worked really well for us too. You have to make sure that you're looking at your cost per conversion, but not just cost per conversion. What is your actual gross profit per booking too? So we've got 500 condos between Myrtle and North Myrtle and then essentially 5,000 with our partners at Myrtle Beach. So we can go after Myrtle Beach condo rentals, Myrtle Beach vacation rentals and play right alongside Verbo and Airbnb because we've got so much inventory there. But if you're a company that has 100 units, no, it does not make sense and you'll drain your budget on that and your cost per conversion will be super high. There's no way that you're making a profit on it. But what we do we look at our cost per conversion is. But then we also know because we've got various, we make different amounts based on if it's a managed property or if it's a partner property. Our commission structure is different, so we need to know how much we're actually making on every single booking and we really dial that in, and that's been really helpful and people don't really talk about that at our events and I'm not sure why we do that differently, but I think actually I do know why Roy would go crazy about our Google bill. So I think, without a necessity, we figured out, we knew that we were booking a lot from it, but I think his concern years ago was that, well, how much we're really making, because the commission level is there. But that's an important thing for anybody to look at and it's a formula, but it's figureoutable for sure.

Speaker 3: 43:05

Yeah, it's a lot of spreadsheets, a lot of data, but the numbers are definitely there and it's a good point. You might think that you're making money and you're making a profit, and you're actually really not, but I would also argue you have to look at that, as that's the direct booking and so it's something that the OTA didn't get. Right, you're not paying that additional commission, and then you have that long term value of that guest. So once they come stay with you, how many times are they going to repeat booking Exactly, and what means are they going to use then?

Speaker 2: 43:39

So, Definitely not just black and white. That's a really good point too, but I think it's an investment. It is yeah, absolutely yeah.

Speaker 3: 43:47

Yeah, and it's an investment and it also puts less of those eggs in the OTA basket when we're talking about that. So look at it that way as well.

Speaker 2: 43:59

No, and if you're going for volume or if you're going for I mean the heavy booking. So in our market, for example, if we do a booking that's $1,000 and we're making 10% commissioners, who's round numbers on that we're only making $100 on that booking, Our cost per conversion. If our cost per conversion is $200, we've lost money on that. So that's where, from a volume basis, we've got to balance that out over the long haul. That's how we look at it. But some of these markets Hilton, had and Beach Home markets, where the booking could be $10,000, $15,000, $20,000, your one booking and your whole campaign is quite healthy. So having somebody to balance that strategy with is really important, because back in the day I used to manage our pay per click campaigns and at least I'm glad I did at one point because I got to learn a lot about it. But it's so complex now that we have an external agency that does it for us. But it's important to have somebody that can talk you through these decisions.

Speaker 3: 45:03

Talk you through and keep up to date on what's going on.

Speaker 2: 45:06

Yeah, because it's changing all the time.

Speaker 3: 45:08

Always changing. Yeah, the algorithms, the needs, the types of ads, it's always changing. So you get to a point and I agree with you.

Speaker 2: 45:19

I managed enough pay per click to my work time to not want to do it anymore, just like those Facebook accounts and library cards.

Speaker 3: 45:28

That's right.

Speaker 2: 45:29

Yeah, that's right. Awesome. Well, what's number five?

Speaker 3: 45:32

Number five is let's dabble in on social media. I don't think we'll get to go into as much depth as I'd want to with social media, because it's never going to be that one driver that's going to drive the most revenue, speaking of which, it's really hard to track. You're going to be trying to look at the attributions and or attributed revenue and seeing how the different funnels work together with social media, but it's really important as far as a branding tool. Absolutely, I would say it's like your billboard effect in most cases, but it also gives you some of that trustworthiness that we were talking about that you're an actual business reviews how you interact with your guests, your brand voice. So a lot of different aspects of your company are communicated best through social media, and so if they're not ready to book, they can follow your brand if they have booked with you and they like you following you on Instagram, facebook, tiktok, all those different platforms that are really great. If you are looking for the best social media out there to drive traffic and conversions, the best one that we have figured out is going to be Pinterest.

Speaker 2: 47:05

Really Pinterest. We have had no luck with it. I'm definitely going to pick it right on that.

Speaker 4: 47:10

Wow, I've never had that we started using it this year and Pinterest ads are.

Speaker 2: 47:15

Pinterest organic.

Speaker 3: 47:16

Pinterest ads.

Speaker 2: 47:18

Okay.

Speaker 3: 47:18

Pinterest is now going to be less of a social media platform and more of a search engine.

Speaker 4: 47:27

Right, yeah, for sure you can go on there. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3: 47:29

I'm always looking for stuff. Sure, looking for design ideas, looking for hair ideas, nail ideas. So why not look for vacation ideas? Right? So it's top of the funnel. And then you come up with all these different personas of travelers, the weekend getaway, the bucket list, the fluity, and so you can target different personas out there. And most social media is not going to let you take a direct link back to your site, but that's all Pinterest wants to do. You know, tag you, they can build their board and then send the traffic to your website. So it is something that allows you to do that. We had one of our clients over six months. They spent about $1,800 and generated $50,000 in revenue.

Speaker 2: 48:21

Wow, Wow, are you setting those up as are they actually searching for vacations and that's why they're seeing the ad, or you're targeting those people based on their demographics, that they could be on there for something unrelated?

Speaker 3: 48:35

to a vacation. It can be both. You can run it both ways, right yeah? So, when you're in the searches, it could be, you know, see more like this and a sponsored ad, and so those can also travel. Or you know, moms looking at recipes and all of a sudden she sees an ad for an out-of-banks vacation rental.

Speaker 2: 48:57

That's so surprising that that's, and I'm willing to give it another try because, honestly, I feel like there is a lot of potential with Pinterest. I think it makes sense. We just we did not see hardly any conversions and we just were dabbling with a smaller budget to try it out, but I feel like at the very least I mean, you can also do remarketing on there. So that, I think, has some legs to it that we probably need to re-explore, because at anywhere that you can put your remarketing ads, if somebody finds you on Google, they've been on your site and now they're going to see you on Facebook or on Pinterest, you have much higher percentage of conversion. Is that? Are you running those ads for that client too?

Speaker 3: 49:38

I'm not sure if that's incorporated in that number. Certainly, we're always running remarketing ads in some capacity, but the way that we set everything up is always like very granularly. So with the Pinterest campaigns, one of the biggest parts of the cost there is going to be the setup, because it's going to take us, you know, five, six hours just to get the campaign set up correctly. Yeah, and you know, just like revenue management and everything else out there, nothing is set it and forget it Right? I'm wondering you have to come in and look at how the results are going and where they're again the landing pages and things like that so there's a continuous improvement on those as well. Yeah, interesting.

Speaker 4: 50:26

I haven't created a Pinterest board for travel, but I will say that Italy targets me a lot. Do they know how to come? Yeah, so I'm definitely going to check that out. I think that's really interesting. You say that because I've often wondered. I know that, like our DMO here does Pinterest, I've never asked them how effective it was, just because I'm not super engaged, you know, on a regular basis. But that is interesting that you say that. So I think there's probably more to come, sure In space, for sure.

Speaker 3: 50:56

I could see TikTok rolling into it too.

Speaker 4: 50:58

Oh yeah.

Speaker 3: 50:59

For sure. Yeah, you know, as far as being more of a search engine, people certainly keep scrolling and things like that. But I think that they've tried to do it with the hashtags and things like that. But you just have a lot of people on TikTok and so like. From a DMO perspective or an employer perspective, you've got people who are going like live continuously. So they grow that audience, right Right. So there's definitely opportunities for vacation rental managers to jump in the bandwagon there. If you've got Gen Z or Millennial and your social media marketing, give them the opportunity to consistently go live. At the same time, build up those audiences and then you can start. Well, you have to build up your audience before you can go live. Yeah, you know it's kind of a technique, but invested well, I think that, if nothing else, it's a big brand awareness. You're getting people dreaming about it. It's just always is this amount of time and effort that I'm paying for worth it down the road?

Speaker 2: 52:09

Yeah, and looking at it with the organic or paid side too. I mean using TikTok organic that you're actually out showing destination, showing the properties. I think that's a good strategy, certainly worth trying. But then running ads on TikTok is a separate thing too, and I think with any of these, whether it's Facebook or Pinterest or TikTok or Instagram, that's what's important for companies to look at is organic and paid needs to be looked at as two different strategies. I mean your organic really is more geared towards brand awareness and visibility, which is very important. I mean you're not going to get that immediate satisfaction, like you mentioned, with pay-per-click, that you see you put out an ad and a keyword and you got a booking. It's not going to be like that. But you've got to have that mindset of looking at this as a longer term brand awareness campaign for your whole company when you put into play these different things.

Speaker 4: 53:04

So, yeah, Absolutely, I think also to the point of the personas is that people often think or I at least in conversation. I think people perceive and I would say especially my age and older perceive that the social media is you can do the same ad across all platforms, but there's a different persona for everyone social media platforms and you know the Gen Xers are kind of going across all of them, but obviously boomers are not on TikTok and boomers are likely not as much on Pinterest. So having that plan for each kind of social platform is you need to drill into that as well. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 53:40

Absolutely yeah. I couldn't agree more. And that's where it's just that time and effort and set up costs for a good social media plan. It can be high and it's really hard to track. Yeah so when you're going in and looking at the funnel and those attributes and what's attributed to that booking. It might be pretty far down there that it's tagged but it did lead to and was part of that guest journey before they actually booked.

Speaker 2: 54:12

Yeah, yeah. Looking at that multi-channel attribution within analytics and having somebody help you look at that to draw conclusions is important, and especially we haven't gotten into this side of it yet. But Google Analytics, the new rollout that's going to go into effect next year, and essentially all the data that you have, I mean you have to have everything moved over by. What is it about a year from now? I think yeah. So it's completely different. We're already switched over and I make sense of it.

Speaker 3: 54:44

So it's very different than me. Me and you go, okay.

Speaker 2: 54:48

Good Luckily, we have people on our team's elbow.

Speaker 3: 54:51

Yeah, it's crazy. You know this isn't the first time Google's done this. They have definitely done this before but so I think in order to have a year over year data, you needed to have G4 set up on your site by the end of July. Yeah, that was kind of our push, just to get everybody up and running end of July. That way, you know, july 2023, you can do your comparison. Yeah, but it is a new platform. Everybody's getting their feet wet with it and I'm sure that there's going to be some changes. We are maybe thinking that they might start doing some paid to see more data opportunities for Google?

Speaker 2: 55:43

Probably yeah.

Speaker 3: 55:44

That's all speculation. I don't have any insight on that. That's just what it seems to be set up on, but it is a complete rethinking of how you use Google Analytics.

Speaker 4: 55:54

Yeah, when you figure it out, they'll change it again.

Speaker 3: 55:57

Yeah, exactly yeah, I think it's actually been the longest that they've had Google Analytics in this format. I'm sure it was.

Speaker 2: 56:07

Out of frustration. I heard somebody say the other day we'll just go back to using Omniture. I heard that name no, no. You remember that from back in the day.

Speaker 3: 56:17

Oh yeah, oh yeah. They counted everything as traffic. Yeah Many, such to Google. It's like where did all my traffic go?

Speaker 2: 56:26

Yeah, exactly. Well, we're about at time, Vanessa, but I know Annie's got one very important question to ask you that we talked about in our pre-call.

Speaker 4: 56:35

Yeah, I don't want to make sure we get to before yeah so, and I think again, we'll have you back for a part two, but we never want to leave the wrap up or a call without asking you an important question. So we talked about what do you think is the single biggest issue that is not being discussed in the industry. Everybody has a different take on this. Very very keen on your take.

Speaker 3: 56:54

Yeah. So obviously I'm thinking from a marketing perspective and I do think that it's not that it hasn't been talked about. It just hasn't had as much complete emphasis on it and maybe just not a complete thought. But I think as an industry, you guys have brilliantly come up with the t-shirts we're not Airbnb and I think consistently that is a big push for the vacation rental managers that we are not Airbnb. We don't want to be associated with Airbnb, even though we might be using Airbnb as OTA, but we're completely different than, let's say, somebody who's running their bedroom out of their home right, absolutely. And causing advocacy issues and everything else that we don't want to be associated with. So I feel like it is a great time for our association, VRMA, to come up with an actual brand. We are this.

Speaker 1: 57:59

What this?

Speaker 3: 58:00

is because, professional vacation rental managers does not sound as sexy as Airbnb.

Speaker 2: 58:05

Right? No, it doesn't, it's been too long.

Speaker 3: 58:07

But we are this and then, just like the American dairy farmers of America did back in the 90s, come up with a really great campaign like Got Milk Milk Does the Body Good to really promote to the public. Buy the ads, do it right and come out with this is who we are. This is why we're different from Airbnb, and I think that it will help us stand apart when we're going against advocacy efforts in a specific location that we're not who you say we're not in the box that you put us in we are outside that box, we are bringing business to your local area, we're bringing in tax dollars, we're professionals, we're following the books, everything by the books, and an integral part of the community and the accommodation sector. So I think that it's time. I think we've kind of gotten around and beaten around the bush and I think doing a big advertising campaign, working with a great branding company and advertising agency that can help us put together that campaign, would be great, because we've ridden on the coattails of the RBO back when I started, then Home Away and now Airbnb, and I'm very grateful I really am. I'm grateful for the awareness that they have brought to our industry. None of us would be as successful as we are today without that. But it's time for us to.

Speaker 4: 59:47

We need to grow up and stand on our own.

Speaker 2: 59:49

Yeah, that's a really good point too that I'm not sure if that's being talked about Burma, but it is time to bring in an agency, I think, to help with that whole branding perspective on this stuff, Because, yes, and we agree that this is definitely the biggest issue that isn't being talked about, but I think it is it's slowly now it's starting to creep into a lot more conversations but identifying what we're not we're not Airbnb, but what are we then? So that's key to building any brand is what you're, not what you are, and what do you wanna be perceived as, and making it very clear, Like you said, that when we're in a room, they know who we are, they know what we stand for. There's no confusion, and because that's what we're seeing across the country is that the people that are putting restrictions in the place don't understand the difference, and these are people that you would think maybe they would know, but they don't, and it's not their fault, but there's nobody that's told them that we are. We've been doing Airbnb without Airbnb for decades, and these restrictions that they put in place could jeopardize the good apples, like the condo worlds of the world and Sloan vacations and all the big companies that have been paying in tax dollars for years. So it's definitely a thing, and I think bringing an agency, that's a really smart approach to it too. We need somebody that can really help strategize with us what that campaign looks like.

Speaker 4: 1:01:10

So yeah, we need somebody who's not in the industry to take a look and help us look outside of ourselves to really come up with that. I think the problem is we get kind of mired in our daily world and it's very easy.

Speaker 2: 1:01:21

We know what we are, we know who we are. Why do we need to explain it? Yeah, other people go.

Speaker 4: 1:01:26

Yeah, it's beyond time and I think that we are not. Airbnb hashtag resonated so heavily because everybody is frustrated.

Speaker 3: 1:01:34

Everybody's frustrated and we wanna open up that conversation, and I think it's. We wanna open up that conversation with the public, not just in defense, but I'm always that type of person I love. I like to be proactive rather than reactive, so I think this will help us get ahead of some of the problems that we're facing in different communities.

Speaker 4: 1:01:57

So we'll stick a pin in that one. There's more to come on that space and we'll certainly be bringing you back to talk about that one.

Speaker 3: 1:02:03

I appreciate it. I've had a blast talking with you guys and sharing some knowledge.

Speaker 2: 1:02:09

This is just, we're just etching off the iceberg.

Speaker 3: 1:02:12

I'm never.

Speaker 2: 1:02:13

And those top five things are 100%. I'm glad that those are the five you chose. Those are the five that have built our company to be such a big big book direct brand. So I stand behind everything that you said 100%. But I think we're gonna have a lot more opportunities to dive into details on some of those individual items and then more. I mean there's so many more tips that we can bring and I know there's so much trust within the industry of what you have built and how many companies that you work with, and you've got great success stories to show that this does. It does work and it makes a difference for your bottom line.

Speaker 3: 1:02:48

Awesome. Well, I appreciate that. I appreciate those kind words yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:02:51

Yeah, if anybody wants to contact you, it's the best way to get in touch.

Speaker 3: 1:02:55

Yeah, so my email address is via Zinfinessa Humes H-U-M-E-S at ICNDnet, or you can visit us on our website, icndnet.

Speaker 2: 1:03:09

Awesome. We'll include that in the show notes and if anybody wants to contact Annie and I, you can go to alexandannipodcastcom. And until next time, thank you for tuning in and we will talk to you soon. Thanks, ladies า.