Getting Your Foot In The STR Door Using House Hacking

Marketing in hospitality is more specialized than in almost any other industry. And today we're going to be talking about all the things that you can do as a host to attract more bookends, more guests, more lookers and turn them into bookers. So you're listening to the Boostly podcast and this is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training, and most importantly, the confidence on how you can go out there and get more direct bookings. My name is Liam Carolan. I'm Mark Simpson's co host. And today we have the Spotlight series where we dive into people, services or businesses that you as a host need to know about. And we've got a special guest with us today. We've got Dustin Baker. He's from www.dustinbaker.ca host accelerator. He is an awesome influencer on YouTube. He's a marketer and he really knows his stuff when it comes down to short term rental marketing and tactics and tricks, which is why I'm excited to have him on today. So welcome along, Dustin. Thank you for being here.

Thanks, Liam. Glad to be here. Huge fan of Blue SLE in general and what you guys have done for the industry and yeah, looking forward to offering any tips and actionable advice.

That's cool. This is going to be fun. So first of all, can you give yourself an introduction to yourself and your business?

Yeah, for sure. So I've been in this industry for about two years now. I started doing a marketing agency for vacation rental hosts to get more bookings and scale their business and yeah, and then now I'm shifting into a coaching program because I'm finding that a lot of hosts are wanting to learn these strategies for themselves, especially since a lot of them can be automated to fit in with their daily routine. And yeah, that's pretty much what I've been doing for the most part.

That's cool. That's cool. So what would you say is some of the mistakes? You've probably worked with quite a few hosts. What are some of the mistakes that you see that hosts make and what tips would you like to share with us?

Yeah, I mean, mistake overall would be not treating it as a hospitality business and treating it like a passive long term rental. So many hosts, in fact, the majority of them tend to just think of it as listing on Airbnb and kind of sitting back and watching, you know, the bookings come in. But as most people are finding out, that's definitely not the case. And there's actually so much that could be done to take this business into your own hands and get more bookings, market it, create a brand, create a. Your own direct booking website, gather emails and pass guests and, and really turning this into a thriving business that can grow steadily over years.

Yeah, 100% talking Boostly's language there with especially direct email marketing. We love it. Just before we dive more into the tips and that side of things. Just take me back, what did you do before this?

Yeah, so I've been, yeah, I've actually been in marketing for about 10 years now and I started in the mobile app industry and that's pretty much where I learned most of what I know and what I fell in love with. It is basically they were so like insanely sophisticated when it comes to marketing. Data driven decision making, consumer psychology. And that's where I really fell in love with marketing and all the different things that you could do to grow businesses. But the one thing I felt was missing was there was really no room for innovation because they were just so advanced in every area. And innovation is what excites me the most. And so my goal became can I find another industry that is, say, less developed and evolved and translate and carry over some of these strategies. And vacation rentals became the perfect option because it's still relatively new. It's only really been around for about 10 years or so, at least publicly, like with Airbnb and what they've done. But yeah, it's, it's an incredibly marketable product. It's, you know, wide appeal. It looks very well when it comes to kind of content marketing and, you know, all forms of marketing. And it's. While it doesn't necessarily solve a problem, it pulls on the emotional strings of the consumer. And so being able to market it as an experience and market like couples retreats and family friendly getaways and making memories, it's just, it's such a powerful thing for, as a marketer to be able to use. And so, yeah, just been really enjoying kind of translating this into the vacation rental industry.

That's very cool. One of the things you mentioned there was like couples places and different kind of avatars. How do hosts understand their guest avatar and the people who come and stay with them? What, what sort of tactics or tips have you got around that?

Yeah, I usually give this thought when I think about branding. And so when it comes to branding, like a lot of people think of, you know, if they post on Airbnb, they typically name it, you know, keyword driven or family friendly getaway. But I like to create a brand and actually give the property, a name. And then when you go to build this brand, it really all centers around the target audience and the guest avatar. And so what you want to do is, is you don't want to think about it as a name and a logo and colors. You want to think about creating a brand identity that solves a problem and speaks to an ideal target guest. And so, for example, if you're in a beach getaway and you know your ideal target guest is, you know, like a family, like a mom who loves to sit on the beach and watch their kids play, then you want to build up that brand and really understand that you know who that customer is, what their pain points are, what their desires are, and then focus all of your marketing and your positioning around speaking to that guest avatar.

It makes sense. That makes sense. So what are some of the tech that you would suggest to hosts to be considering? I mean, I know there's a lot of different, lots of different softwares, apps, and tech out there. What tech would you recommend that hosts consider?

Yeah, so one of which I'm a big fan of is Stay Fi. I think at the very least, you know, it can be pretty daunting to try and turn something from an Airbnb listing into a full business. And there are a lot of different parts to it. But the first thing that any Airbnb host can be doing is at least start capturing the emails of the guests who stay at their property and then remarketing to them to try and get them to become loyal customers and come back again. And this is really a key part of the process that most people are missing, because to get a repeat guest, which is an incredibly important part of any business, you basically need two things. You need to give an incredible experience, which a lot of hosts are already working hard to do, and they're even giving reviews, come back and saying, you know, can't wait to come back, and, you know, would definitely stay here again. But the problem is life goes on people for forget about it. And so what capturing their email allows you to do is stay top of mind, remarket to them, give them promotions, and basically get your best 5 to 10% of your customers to come back and actually stay with you. And then from there, that that becomes the bottom funnel foundation of your entire business. Because if you're constantly getting even just 5% of your best guests to come back and stay, now you're actually growing a whole business on top of that. So everything that you do to improve the guest experience improves that. Everything you do to get More guests in and increase your demand all comes back to that growing base of repeat guests.

How important is social media to, first of all, your business and also to hosts, businesses in general?

Yeah, the way I look at social media is it is just the. It's a limitless source of demand for any business. And, you know, there's not a business in the world that's not trying to tap into it because there are billions of users all on these platforms and they're there all the time. Like, that's where the attention is all going. And so the beautiful thing about social media is it allows you to funnel that attention toward your business. And all you have to do is basically just create content that people like to engage with. And for vacation rentals, that's incredibly easy because we have really wide, appealing product. We have beautiful vacation homes that just photograph and are really good on video. And then we have the emotional element of being able to sell an experience and kind of speak to people's desires that way. And so basically, to be able to funnel limitless traffic, you just have to get good at creating content that people like to engage with and then use that to funnel that traffic, ideally toward your own direct booking website. Yeah, that could be the ultimate tool for anybody looking to increase their demand and bookings overall.

What does success mean to you? And also, what does that look like for your clients?

Yeah, so success for me, as far as like helping clients is basically getting them to the point where their business is fully established. And so I like to walk it through a step by step process because, you know, there's a lot that goes into it. The end result is basically having a massive stockpile of really good quality content that can be repurposed for social media, for email marketing, for website, for paid ads, promotions, and then building out all the different things. So, you know, first optimizing the OTAs and making sure that that's the best they could be, and then increasing your traffic with social media and then moving that traffic toward a direct booking website, which if, as a marketer, if I'm sending traffic anywhere, it's going to be a direct booking website, because it's way more optimal than sending traffic to Airbnb, which a lot of people still tend to do, and then ensuring the email marketing set up so that you can do that. But basically my goal is to set this whole system up for host so that it becomes this marketing system that supports their entire business and makes everything that they do way more valuable and just get a higher return on all their efforts. So everything that they they do after that is basically going to just improve their success overall, get them more bookings and hopefully scale their business so that the longer they operate, the more followers they get, the bigger their email list gets, the more repeat customers they get. Whereas for most hosts that only ever operate on Airbnb, the only thing that really increases year after year is just the review count. And so it could feel like you're just kind of spinning your wheels. But yeah, that's pretty much the thing that I aim for the most.

Quick break from the podcast to let you know that the two boostly books that we brought out, the Book Direct Playbook and the book Direct Blueprint, are two of the top rated and the best selling in the hospitality category on Amazon. For just two pounds. You can grab both of those books right now the foundations and the structures that you need to put in place is in the Blueprint. And then for 101 marketing tactics, that is in the Playbook. So go and grab a copy on Amazon now, just type in Book Direct Playbook or the Book Direct Blueprint and we'll see you on the other side.

That's so true as well because I've spoken to so many hosts even today and just explaining that the first place you start is just optimizing where the existing traffic is coming in from. A lot of people here listening to the podcast always assume us at boostly dislike the OTAs. We don't dislike them, we love the OTAs. They help to be a big shop window to bring people to be a direct booking ultimately. So you can, instead of you working for the OTAs, they work for you once you've got it branded, as you say, in the right way, and bringing people across from the OTAs to the direct booking website and then, you know, the email marketing and social media also directing traffic towards it. What are some of the challenges that you've that you've faced while growing this coaching and marketing business?

Yeah, so the biggest challenge that I've run into personally is pairing pricing with marketing. So for anything that I've done in the past, it's mostly been working with fixed prices. And as you know, with vacation rentals, it's almost completely arbitrary. In fact, it's mostly governed by supply and demand. And so when you have something like that and then all of a sudden you incorporate marketing into it, that can completely change how you price the property. And then at the same time too, if you you're selling a different product and value every single time, whether it's a Different day of the week or different time of the year. And then you factor in promotions on top of that, which can increase your conversion. And then you know, like, how do you factor that into the pricing? So, so that overall has probably been the biggest challenge in terms of coming up with a clear, refined system. But luckily I was able to overcome that by not focusing on what the perfect price is, which a lot of people tend to think about, and focusing on the ideal booking lead time. And so for those who don't know, it's basically the average booking lead time that you want to aim for. And so, for example, it depends on the property, but if you want to be average one month out, booking lead time, which would be 50% of your bookings are within a month and 50% after, basically what you want to do is set that as your goal and then let the price basically change to meet that goal and to keep that, that road ahead of you essentially. And so what that allows you to do is basically if you're over that. So for example, if you're 80% booked one month out, the, then that means your prices are too low and you should increase your prices. If you're 25% occupied one month out, then you should be lowering your prices. And then the other thing that this is really helpful for is you can actually predict your likelihood of reaching that ideal booking lead time by looking at your traffic volume as well as your conversion rate. And so you could take those two things and easily calculate your likelihood of achieving that and then preemptively adjust your prices so that you're more likely to hit that goal. And then you could even impact that again by increasing your traffic with more marketing or increasing your conversion rate with promotions, for example, to help fill midweek or off season, slow season times. But that's probably been the biggest challenge and it's been nice to kind of like come up with something that remotely overcomes it.

That's cool. And thank you for sharing that. I mean, you've got my mind whirring with some of the things, even the language that we use, niches, you know, the leads moving across conversions. When people first enter short term rentals, I mean, especially me, this is talking from experience that I was just like, hey, I just want some people to come and stay. I don't know who they are or why they're booking, but I just want them to come and book the place. But as time moves on and you really consider it a proper business, every business needs leads, Every business needs conversions. Every business needs you Know, sort of the delivery of the product, which is where people are staying, and of course, then the cash flow, the admin that then comes after that. And that is where, when you start to look at it like a business and you've just got these levers like price or marketing or which channel am I using, you can really start to steer the business along. And just even understanding that has been really helpful for me and hopefully with you sharing that, as well as helpful for the people listening. So, flipping it around now, what has been the biggest wow moment so far?

Honestly, it's probably been starting to share content in the last few months. You know, like, it's. It was mostly just a small business that was not widely well known, but I think when I started to see the. The Airbnb bust and hosts struggling to get bookings because oversaturation is becoming a huge problem today. And this is kind of like where hosts are starting to realize that they need to take more action in their business and, and take it more seriously. And so I felt I had some. Some advice to share on that topic. And so when I started creating advice and tips and things like that on YouTube, it just blew me away. The. The feedback that I've gotten and how many hosts are. This is like the thing that they are looking for to take their business to the next level. And then it's also allowed me to network more, to meet more people in the industry. And it's. Yeah, it's just been a really glad I started doing it.

It sounds fun. And that's. That's the cool thing is, you know, it's. It's. You've got to have fun while you're doing this as well. So. And your YouTube is. Is. Is blown up, hasn't it? I mean, this. You've got over 3,000 followers in a relatively short, short period of time. Is that. Is that right?

Yeah. Yeah. I think I was worried that most people say it's like a really slow, tedious process and you kind of have to fight through it for the first time, you know, year or so. But luckily, I think, because people were really looking for this kind of information. And, you know, that's what I love about this community and this industry in general is it's basically made up of a lot of entrepreneurs who are looking to. And they're really passionate about vacation rentals and hosting. And so they're out there on YouTube and social media looking for tips and actionable advice. And so I just love working in this industry and kind of about talking, Talking and Meeting with more people.

That's cool. That's cool. And just before we sort of begin to. To wrap things up, what would you say to hosts who, listening to this, they might be saying, yeah, but I don't think my area works now. I don't think. I think the market's oversaturated. What advice would you have for them? And I guess, how do you track what locations work in general for. For hosts?

Yeah. So, I mean, if there was one thing I was to tell is it kind of builds off of what you were saying is, is to treat it like a business. I think that's the beautiful thing about this, is we all know real estate is an incredible business to be in, but with vacation rentals specifically, you can treat it like a business, and then when you operate better than your competitors, you can grow and outperform anybody. And so over saturation, to me, is basically the result of an incredible opportunity. But this is no different than any industry. If there's an opportunity, people are going to move in. And eventually, like, even if you try to improve by, you know, adding a hot tub and features, like, it all becomes the same like everyone typically will have. You know, there will be more competitors, people's products will start to line up and become more similar. And so that's kind of where marketing comes in. Because regardless of who has the better product, if you can position it and market it better than anyone else, the traffic will come to your property. And then at that point, it's not so much about looking at the area, like the location for the supply and the demand and the average nightly rate. It's when you're funneling in so much traffic through social media or paid ads or email marketing or any of these things, basically you're just. It's supply and demand. And so as your demand goes up, your prices will go up, your occupancy will go up, and you can really stand out over all the competition, regardless of how saturated it is.

Absolutely agree. It's. It's so true. When everybody else is just putting it on Airbnb. There's so many more things that we can do as hosts to attract business. Is it always going to be easy? No. Is there work involved? Yes. But the result is more direct bookings, more income, and ultimately more guarantee of, you know, sort of growth, isn't it? You know, that's the cool thing.

If you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boostly and our team right now, we can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche, but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2000 hospitality businesses all over the world in increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to Boostly. B o o s tly.co.uk call and book in an appointment with one of our sales team.

So, Dustin, I'd love to know what the future of your business looks like. What's the. What's the plan?

Yeah, so basically I've been shifting away from the marketing agency because like I said before, a lot of hosts want to learn these strategies and apply it to their business because they are entrepreneurs at the end of the day and, and luckily a lot of this can be automated. And so I've been focusing on coaching and kind of helping people grow their business and learn all the tools for that. I am building a platform to automate the one part of it that technically does remain like a lot of effort and work, which is the social media marketing, because that's something that you have to be consistent on. And so, yeah, I'm basically building out a solution to automate that for host. And then outside of that, I am getting into the investing side myself and creating an investment company that's going to be building cabins in more remote locations that are away from the major hotspot vacation destinations, and then using these marketing strategies to funnel in traffic, as opposed to just relying on Airbnb and ranking over the competition.

Nice. Nice. I like it. What advice would you have for yourself if you could go back at the very start of your journey and give yourself one piece of advice?

So, personally, I'd be getting into investing sooner, probably, because, you know, it is an incredible business to be in. But I think what I've been able to see and what's made it so appealing is when you treat it like a business and you build up a marketing system and, you know, as opposed to just the Airbnb, is you really are growing something like every year is not the same after this. Like you basically, like I said before, you, you're growing so many different elements that just takes your business to the next level year after year. And so the sooner you do this, the more results you're going to get in the long run. And so having done this now for so many different businesses and then I'm just getting into the investing side myself, you know, if I had started a few years ago, it's just be. And same thing goes for other hosts out there too is the sooner you start this, the sooner it grows. And like a lot of things, it is somewhat exponential because the social media exposure is exponential. The email marketing, the. Yeah, so many different elements of it is that. And so the sooner you start the process and get that, you know, first year or two under your belt and kind of build up all these systems and refine it, the sooner you can just watch your business grow year after year.

I like it. So we like to just do a couple of fun questions in here as well. So if you. And you don't get a heads up on these, by the way, Dustin, I know some of the others, we give you a little heads up. But if you could meet any celebrity, who would it be and why?

I'd have to say Elon Musk. Just a huge fan of him. I think it's because I like the way he thinks. He mentions in an interview a long time ago that he likes to break everything down to the core fundamentals so that simplify it in its earliest state so that you can build up the problem and the solution from the ground up. And so I love that mentality and I try to think about basically everything I do. Well, not everything, but a lot of things in that sense is just simplifying it to its core principles and then kind of building up from there.

I'm a fan, definitely. I like his, his vision. I don't. I think it's pretty unmatched, isn't it? His vision?

Yeah.

If, if you had the choice of any karaoke song, what would it be?

Oh, I think maybe like just to get everyone involved. Like All Star Smash Mouth is probably like a classic my generation kind of 90s kind of style.

It works. We're starting to get an image of what you're like on a. On a night out. And last few questions for you is what resources should everybody go and check out? What books, podcasts or movies? What would you recommend that somebody should check out which will help them either? It could be short term, rental related. Could just be generally for fun.

Yeah, I mean anything you could do to, to learn in this industry. Honestly, like I've been a fan of watching your content, like especially the clips that you produce from the thing. There's so many different hosts in the industry and every experience is very different. And so hearing from as many people as you can can just really help build like a well rounded you know, knowledge on the industry and all the different, you know, experiences that come together to make this. And yeah, I'm a, I'm a big YouTube fan in general, so I'm, I'm always watching content as much as I try to start producing it.

That's cool. That's cool. So we always end with a question which is, does, have you got a mantra or a saying that really resonates with you?

I wouldn't say it's like a saying or I guess maybe a mantra is basically just never stop learning. I think we basically live in the information age and so we, we have all the information at our fingertips to really do anything. And so personally, like I try to, you know, use that as much as possible, research as much as possible and even like test, I'm really big on testing and data driven decision, decision making. And so yeah, basically just never stop learning and, and always keep trying to grow and improve.

Lovely, thank you for that. And I'm going to throw open the mic. How can people come and follow you on YouTube or where should, where else should they follow you?

Yeah, so basically right now I'm posting videos to YouTube just on, on all the different things that you could learn from marketing and even scaling your business or you know, new investing strategies like finding cheaper remote locations and using marketing to, to get traffic. So you'll find me over at YouTube with, @ DustinBaker and then I'm on Instagram posting a lot of clips and kind of more personal stuff there at dustindbaker. And then if you really want to learn all the different processes and basically how to create this marketing system that can get you more bookings and grow your entire business. I have created the host accelerator program which is where I coach and teach Airbnb hosts how to implement all these things in a very detailed step by step process, which can't really do on YouTube because it would not work well with the algorithm and get no traffic.

Whatsoever. That's cool. Thank you for that and definitely everybody listening, please do go and check out Dustin's YouTube channel. We will add the links mentioned in the show notes as well. And yeah, this has been really fun. Dustin, thank you for, for joining us today. Thank you too. As you're listening to this on the Boostly podcast, we know there's a lot of places you can put your attention and we really thank you for putting it with Boostly. If you've got value out of this, please do share it with another host who will get value from it. And if you are a service or know of somebody who you think should feature on the Boostly podcast, just send an email to coachly.co.uk if and CC them in. Or if it's yourself, send it yourself to us. Dustin, was there anything else that we should have covered or anything we missed along the.

Way? I mean, the last thing I'll say is, as a marketer, the one of the best things you could possibly do is to get your own direct booking website. I think it could lay the foundation of your bottom funnel and getting, you know, even people from Airbnb to book again directly. And then also it's so crucial if you're building up demand and traffic to be sending it to your direct booking website as opposed to your Airbnb listing, because there are just so many advantages to it, aside from just the percentage increase and the fees and.

Whatnot. Yeah, 100% talking boosted language and Nice way to end it. Thanks for your time tonight, Dustin.

And yeah, thanks for having me.

Liam. Thanks very much. We'll see you again. Bye, everyone.