Str Marketing From An Influencer And Marketing Professional

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 bookings, more guests, more lookers and turn them into bookers. So you're listening to the Moosely podcast and this is the podcast that gives host 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 WW 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 Slee and 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. But 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 your own direct booking website, gather emails and pass guests and. And really turn this into a thriving business that can grow steadily over years.

How do hosts understand their guest avatar and the people who come and stay with them?

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What sort of tactics or tips have you got around that?

Yeah, so, 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 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.

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 it incredible experience, which a lot of hosts are already working hard to do, and they're even getting 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 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 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. 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, 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, 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, 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 setup 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.

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 a different time of the year. And then you factor in promotions on top of that, which can increase your conversion. And, 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, 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.

Having a blast gonna get it on the Boost Lee podcast Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee Cause it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf Making up those rhyme don't write it, just do it loosely.