How to use AI to create your whole marketing strategy in 30 minutes

Mark Simpson uses ChatGPT to build a year of marketing strategy for Chris, a Richmond host with 15 properties, in 30 minutes. They map audience, brainstorm Instagram posts, find influencers, and plan email sequences. Simpson warns that Airbnb controls 64% of bookings, so direct-booking matters.
Chapters
I want to, in this session, help you create your next year's worth of whole marketing, social media, email templates in 30 minutes. Does that sound good? And what I'm also going to do is I need a volunteer to come up. Not yet. Because I'm going to do this with you for your business. Okay, now before we go into that, let's talk about the problem in this industry right now. And this is a prediction. I don't know who by, but somebody predicted that by 2030, 80% of all bookings will come via an online travel agent, otherwise known as an OTA, aka Airbnb, booking.com, vRBO, etc. Now more closer to home is that last year Airbnb had 44%, sorry, 64% of the total bookings in the short term rental industry. So out of all the bookings, Airbnb had 64%. So what that means is that Airbnb has started as a plucky upstart to catching up with Booking.com and Vrbo in our industry to overtaking them. Now the worry with that and my worry with that is that if we keep going on this trend and we keep letting one channel in particular dominate our industry, we potentially could go down the same route as Uber with taxis and Amazon with E commerce. And when that happens, you lose all the control in your marketing, in your business. As an example, I wrote a book three years ago called the Book Direct Playbook. I didn't have an option of selling it directly. I didn't have a printing press at home. I had to sell it on Amazon. And just to give you an example, for every dollar that you bring in on Amazon, you have to give them $0.66 back, 66% commission. And they do that because they absolutely dominate the industry. And when I sell a book on Amazon, a I don't know who's bought it. I get no data, I don't get a phone number, email, don't get first name, last name. I get nothing. So I am absolutely beholden to them. So if my Amazon account got shut down, then I'm gone. My worry is that you lot are doing the same with Airbnb. If over 60% say of your bookings are coming from one channel, I say Airbnb. But it could be booking.com or VRBO. If over 50% of your bookings are coming from 1 channel at any moment in time, they could thanos snap their fingers and your business could disappear. I know you think, well, Mark, you're being a bit dramatic here. Well, it's happening, and I see it a lot in my role and what I do. For the last 10 years, I've been helping hosts, property managers, whether you've got one property, 100 properties, 200 properties or more, with their marketing. We've done over 300 podcast episodes where we interview hosts and the stories and the horror shows that we see. Whether it is your listing being suspended, your account getting shut down, even if it is just you get one or two crappy reviews and then your listing just drops off the first page of Airbnb. That can happen, and it is happening at an alarming rate. Last week, I was speaking to a host and their account got suspended for six weeks because a guest complained about a camera in the property. That camera was a ring camera, which should be allowed, but there was no common sense. There was no. Let's check with the host first. It was straight up suspended. And we'll go through the review process and then we'll get you back online eventually. But six weeks without any revenue coming into this host business, and this host was 100% reliant on Airbnb. That's not nice. So how do you do that? What is the solution? The solution is sales and marketing. And I am looking at these slides and they are the wrong slides. So bear with me, because I am looking at it and we're just going to wing it anyway, but it's going to be good. So what I'm going to do in this web, in this workshop that we have together, is I am going to walk you through and show you how to do all of this. Now, the problem, when I say do sales and do marketing, I guarantee a lot of you are like, I don't know how to do sales, I don't know how to do marketing, I don't know how to do social, I don't know how to email. Well, the good news is, is that now that there is a free tool called AI that will help do this with you. Now, hands up if you've used Chat GPT in the last two years. Quite a lot of you, hands up if you have seen it make an impact in your business. So when it comes to AI, there's always, like, free verticals. There's either one where you're like me and you're in the rabbit hole, you absolutely love it and you're absolutely steamrolling you're along with it. There's the total opposite side, which is like, I'm not going near that. I don't touch it. I think the Terminator is going to come and ripe us all out. And then there's the middle, which is like, I'm not entirely sure I've given it a go. I don't like it. The problem with Chat GPT and how the majority of people use it is that it's the questions that you are asking, it's the prompts that you are putting in that is the problem. Because in reality, what you have, you have the world's most intelligent intern in your pocket for free. But the questions that you are asking of it is very vague. So a lot of you are going to draw me an image or write me an email. And realistically, the way to go about it is to give it as much information, as much context as possible. Now, in this slide and workshop, I'm gonna have one of you come up here, we're gonna sit down here, we are gonna tap into AI and we are gonna build out a whole year's worth of content marketing, you name it, in 30 minutes. Now, I've got all of these prompts written down on these slides and I want to share them with you because obviously you're going to be trying to write all this down. You're going to be, Mark, slow down. Stop. But I want for you to take this, take this home and bring it into your business. But to get them, you need to do something for me. So you need to go to Instagram, you need to go to Boostly uk. B O O S T L Y uk. You have to hit the Follow button and then hit the message button and you have to message me one word and one word only. And that word is Pokemon. P O K E M O N. Just message me one word and one word only. You can do it now, you can do it later, you can do it tomorrow, but write it down. And unfortunately, I had a really good slide of a cute little Pokemon and they've not put the right one up, but we'll get by that. Now, when we talk about AI, everybody naturally goes to Chat GPT because it's the one that everybody knows. It's probably the biggest one and the most popular one. But in reality, there are lots of different models to use. When you come to do this later tomorrow or whenever, feel free to have a play with the different models. So ChatGPT is OpenAI Google, which is Gemini Perplexity, which a tool that I probably use more than any other. And then you've got Cloud, which is anthropic. There are so many more on here. I couldn't fit Them all on this slide. There are a lot. So my advice is just to pick one and use one. Now, obviously I can see a lot of people with pens and papers and all of that, so please do write down any questions that you have and I will be more than happy to answer them if we have the time at the end. I am obviously very aware that, that we've been here all day, we've traveled from all over to be here, and there is drinks and alcohol downstairs at 10 past 5. So I'm going to try and finish because I need a pint. As I said, I need a volunteer. So who would like me to do this for them in their business? Just one person. One person only. Come on, sir. Thank you very much. Give Chris a round of applause. Now we are going to do this and like I said, I've never done this before and the wi fi is shocking, but let's hey ho, we'll wing it and see how we get on. So obviously we are going to do this with AI and this is working. So Chris, can you have that? So Chris is very, very quickly. Just 30 seconds. What's your name, where you're from, what's your business, what do you do? How many properties?
Just super quick, I'm Chris, I've got 15 properties in Richmond, combination of long lets, medium term lets and short lets.
Fantastic. So to do this, we are going to need our little friend AI Chat GPT. But we're not going to type this in, we're going to voice it. So who's ever played with the voice chat GPT, have a little chat. This little chat bubble here is pretty much my therapist at this point. It's amazing. I can chat to this all day long and it's amazing because it just listens, it doesn't talk back and it's fantastic. And we are going to talk into this and it's going to help Chris's Chris's business. So Chat GPT, can you hear me?
Loud and clear. How can I help with Chris's business?
All right, hang a second, I'll be right back. Okay, so let's go and get the first slide up. And again, you are more than welcome to try and write this down. You're more than welcome to take pictures, but if you just simply DM me on Instagram, poc em on, you're going to get all of these prompts and slides later on today, okay? Now, before we start, I just want to make sure that what I'm going to do is of interest to you, okay? So when I ask the question, is this of interest to you? If this is of interest to you, just shout two words and two words only as loud as you can. So we're going to get the FOMO down there? Hell yes. Do you all understand? Is this of interest to you? Hell yes. I think we can do a little bit better than that. Is this of interest to you? Hell yes. Okay, let's do this then. Right, so the first prompt and the first slide, we need to find obviously a little bit of context for our chat GPT here for Chris's business. Now, the prompt that we are going to ask and you are going to have to speak into our robot when it's ready. Suggest the top five marketing channels to promote an Airbnb property to travelers looking for type of experience. Family friendly, stays, luxury. So you will obviously say Richmond. Did you say 15 properties? Include why each channel is effective. Now, just to give a bit of context of why this makes sense. Instead of me saying to ChatGPT, oh, chat GBT, tell me who I should be looking for. Which is no context at all. It's very generic, very crap way of asking a robot this. We are giving it a little bit of extended context in here. Now, when you come to do this, you don't need to voice it in like we're doing. You can literally copy it, paste it, amend it and send it. Now, Chris, I need for you to face the screen and I'm gonna need you to. When I unmute this, I need you to speak into this. And when it's the orange bit, don't say from type of experience. Family friendly states give the context for your business. Okay. Do you make sense? You are literally gonna write it out. Okay. And then when it's here, it's your business. So it's the spirit spoke to you. You ready?
Okay.
Go. Suggest. Say, suggest.
Suggest the top five marketing channels to promote an Airbnb property to travelers looking for a place in Richmond. Family friendly, high end.
Include include each channel and why. So include why each channel is why.
Each channel is effective.
Good man. Thank you.
Here's why these channels work. Social media ads platforms like Instagram and Facebook let you target specific demographics. You can highlight family friendly amenities and luxurious features through engaging visuals. Influencer partnerships collaborating with travel influencers who cater to families and high end travelers can expand your reach. They bring trust and authenticity to your property.
Now, I'm just going to get her to stop for a second. Now, if you thought that that wasn't very good, you can actually interrupt this chatgpt and say, oh, my business is actually this. So I think that's a pretty crappy answer that she has given me here. So what I would like for you to do is just say, hang on a second, this is my business, I want you to give it a bit more context. All right, ChatGPT, stop there for a second. I want for you to just listen to Chris. He's going to give you a bit more context on the business, so tell him as much as you possibly can.
All right, so my business is mainly stays about a week or so in Richmond and we try and push people to things like experience is going to Kew Gardens, watching the rugby, enjoying the local restaurants. So can you help me with that?
Good, perfect. Give Chris a round of applause there. All right, so now we've given it a little bit more data. I'm going to mute this for a second. So the next prompt, and this is the one that you all need. Okay, so now that we've got a little bit more into the chat GPT and remember, every time that we do this, it is learning, it is learning more and more about Chris. So now when I speak to it again, it's not going to treat it like a new conversation because it's already learning. So now, Chris, you're going to do exactly the same and you are smashing this. You're doing amazing. Same thing. But the prompt is you are a marketing strategist. Create a detailed profile of my target audience for an Airbnb property offering. Obviously there include demographics, pain points and buyer motivations. Now again, what is happening is that ChatGPT here is listening and it's speaking it back, but also at the same time it is writing all of this down. So when I finish and I come out of this, it's going to have it all written down for me, which is epic. So Chris, when you are ready, please can you write that, speak that out.
You are a marketing strategist. Create a detailed profile of my target audience for an Airbnb property offering family friendly features, three or more bedrooms, proximity to River Thames, Kew Gardens National Trust properties include demographics, pain points and buying motivations.
Perfect.
Here's a profile of your Target audience. Demographics 35 to 55. Income level, Middle to upper middle class families with young children or teenagers. Location UK residents or international travelers looking for a luxury stay. Pain points, accommodation, quality. Finding a comfortable, spacious place that caters to both adults and kids activities. Ensuring there's plenty to do for all ages, from nature lovers to sports fans.
Now, obviously she keeps on going, would you say from what she has just said there that you feel that this matches your ideal guest avatar? So would you say that over the years that you've been doing this, you pretty much know who your target audience profile would be? Would you say by now or are you still trying to figure it out?
Yeah, I mean, it depends on the property.
So for anybody who was at the talk this morning, we were speaking about upsells and it all boiled down to knowing your guest. If you know who your ideal guest is, all of this becomes a lot easier. There was a lot of people in the room and one of the questions from one of the people in the front was that's all well and good, but how do we go about creating our profile? I don't know where to begin. And obviously if you were here this morning, you know, I gave a shameless plug to my book, which is the book Direct Playbook. But I did say come back here because now this is how you can do it without having to try and figure it out. This is going to help you get there. Now obviously I'm very wary of time. If Chris was like that's not, not kind of spot on, he could have come back and said, Listen ChatGPT, that's all well and good, but I actually believe, based on what I know to be true, that my avatar is actually this and it would have learnt it. Okay, but just for all intents and purposes, spot on, we're going to move to the next one. Now this is where it gets interesting because now it's learnt and now it's going to do. When it comes to marketing and when it comes to social media, a large majority of you, your problem is that you post content that is not speaking to your ideal guest. Okay? When you've got an ideal guest and this all becomes a lot more easier, it makes your marketing easier because instead of trying to speak to everybody, you're speaking to a certain person. Because when you're on social media, the post that stops the scroll when people are doom scrolling as they're watching TV at night on the sofa is when something is speaking to them. Okay, now this will help that because instead of you having to think about what to post, because when you think about it and you overthink it, you will just not do it because you get confused and you go, ah, sod it, I'll get my kid to do it later. I mean, I'm never going to work. So we're now going to chat to the best content creator social media out There. And we're going to get it to generate seven social media post ideas for Instagram. Now, we say seven, but seven could be 365. It could be. It could be whatever you want it to be, but we're going to do seven because it's interesting. Now, at the bottom of this prompt, I added a little bit of my own little touch to say, remember, no hashtags, because hashtags are crap in 2025. Now, I do notice here it does sell hashtag, Discover, Destination, etc. But from what I know to be true from the latest data coming out, that hashtags are just crap in 2025, please don't use hashtags, especially on Instagram. But that's another topic for another story. So, Chris, when you are ready, sir, can you again read that out with the features? For example, you can say image, video, carousel, whatever you want to say here. And then remember, no hashtags. And I want to hear you say hashtags are crap in 2025. Please, sir, are we ready? Are we all enjoying this? Is this helpful? Thank goodness you said yes. All right, when you're ready and then hold that up to your face.
Please generate 7 social media post ideas for Instagram promoting an Airbnb property with balcony overlooking the River Thames near to gardens near the River Thames. Include captions and content types. Image, video. Remember, no hashtags. Hashtags are crap in 2025.
Round of applause. Thank you, sir. All right.
Here are seven Instagram. Here are seven Instagram post ideas. 1. Image Morning View from the balcony showcasing the Thames. Caption, Wake up to this serene view every morning.
2.
Image Family enjoying breakfast on the balcony. Caption, Family time with a view perfect for making memories. 3.
Okay, she's gonna keep on going there, but you get the general gist and the general idea. Now, again, what's really important here is that when we look at the text, it will have actually given the text to use for chatgpt to go on to Instagram. This is my one takeaway that I want everybody to use because it's a bit of a bugbear of mine. When you do post this online, don't just please copy it, paste it, post it. Use AI to get you 80% of the way there. And the last 20%, you've got to actually check the words and add a bit of your touch to it. The problem that I see now, especially on LinkedIn, is that you're all just creating posts and I can spot an AI generated post from a mile off. Because it's got shit ton of emojis, it's got hyphens everywhere and hashtags at the bottom right. We are in danger of becoming so lazy that we have AI do everything for us. And so your content will start looking bland and vanilla because it will look like everyone else. So do take a minute before you do copy paste post to add a little bit of touch. What I do is I run it into a tool called Grammarly because my spelling and grammar is shocking. And what you'll find with AI is it will write everything in US English. I mean if you are American and you write in US English, fantastic. But I'm UK so I want to make sure that it is doing it in the UK English and I want it to make it sound like a little bit like me. Use this to get you 80% of the way there, 20% personalization. Now we've done that and again, if Chris didn't like it, it would say, you know what, you're good, but it's not quite there. Let's run it again. And it will keep on going, keep on going, keep on going again. This is the most amazing tool tool that you have in your pocket because this intern doesn't get sick, doesn't get annoyed, doesn't sleep, doesn't ask for a pay rise, doesn't ask for quick career progression. It will just keep on going and doing and keep saying yes, yes, yes time and time again. So let's move on. We're now going to ask IT to brainstorm five unique and engaging marketing campaign ideas to promote an Airbnb property with including themes, platforms and potential audiences reactions. Okay, so again, if you could just write when I unmute this, do that and it's going to give us marketing campaigns, please.
Brainstorm 5 Brainstorm 5 unique and engaging marketing campaign ideas to promote an Airbnb property with family friendly garden that has trampoline, football, goal and table tennis fireplaces indoors. Include themes, platforms and potential audience reactions.
Fantastic.
Here are five campaign ideas.
1.
Family fun challenge. Invite guests to share videos of their family enjoying the garden's trampoline, football, goal or table tennis. Feature the best clips in stories, platform Instagram reels, audience reaction, high engagement from families showing off their skills and fun moments.
2. We are very close to time and I can see that there's quite a few to go and obviously if you DM me Pokemon on Instagram, we're going to give you the slides but I want to show you this last one because this is a fantastic way of, of making sure that you can do all of this without you having to do the work for the next step. So the robot and the AI will give you the ideas, the suggestions, but you're still thinking, Mark, I still have to create this and do this. One of the easiest ways for you to grow your own bookings with marketing strategies in 2025 is working with influencers. Now, when you hear the word influencer, you all think about, you know, the Kardashians or some loser off Love island, right? Well, in reality, every single guest who stays in your property is an influencer because they are influential in their own sphere, whether it's the school chat group, local football group, or just friend group. But there's a step above that, which is this group where they've got not huge followers, let's just say under 10,000 followers, but they have very engaged communities. But the problem is, how do you find those people? Well, our little AI here is going to go and find these people because what it will do is it will go and search the Internet. It's still going. It will search the Internet for these people and give you the links. Now, Chris, what I would like for you to say is identify 10 travel or lifestyle niche influencers who align with my property brand for about engagement stats and potential collaboration ideas. Now what it will do, fingers crossed, I have never done this before in a live audience is it will go and it will find the people for you and also let you know how to get in touch. So when you are ready, please. You can interrupt.
Identify 10 travel or lifestyle niche influences who align with my Airbnb property band. Provide engagement stats and potential collaboration ideas.
Great work. So that sound is that it is now going out into the wild world of the Internet and looking for influencers. And again, we have done this in 30 minutes but I've been doing a lot of talking and we're going to be able to do it a lot quicker when you're doing it later. So when you're ready chatgpt. Having a good search.
Here are 10 travel and lifestyle influencers who align with your Airbnb property.
1.
Abby Dazra at Colorado Kid Adventures. Engagement rate 3% collaboration ideas, actual property. 2. Carla who at Sharma.
Okay, we get the general just about. So it has actually gone and found 10 people and like I said, when I hang up this, it's gonna give me the full transcript that I will send to Chris on LinkedIn or email or whatever and he will be able to do this. The next slide is going to be Add Copy Creator we're not going to do this because we push for time. Add Copy Creator so obviously a great way doing this is through advertising spend. The worry with advertising spend is that you literally do not know what you are doing or what's the right words. It will do all that for you. Competitor Marketing Analysis this is a fantastic one because it will look to see what your local competition are doing. It will tell you what they are doing well. It will tell you what they're not doing well and how you can take advantage. The next one is email marketing Content creator. It will draft fe you a 5 part email sequence that you can send to your guests. Whether it is a potential new guest or a repeat guest or somebody that you just want to get in front of. Video Content Creator idea so it will suggest five video ideas to promote your property which is great. Marketing Metrics List the top five metrics to track for a social media campaign and an asset. Again, if you want a copy of those slides, go on to Instagram Booster uk, tap the follow and then the message button is Pokemon. Who's done that in the room? Have you all had a message back for me? That's AI right. My name has been Mark Simpson. I really hope that you have enjoyed it. If you haven't enjoyed my talk today, my name is Brian Chesky. Thank you very much everybody. Have a fantastic day in escrow.
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