Types of Influencer Marketing with Harry Hugo and The Hotel Man

Foreign.

Hospitality podcast. We're in episode 35 of season eight and today I am talking all about influencer marketing. I think influencer marketing has a pretty bad reputation of the last couple of years. People have seen people like Paul from the White Moose Cafe have a big.

Blogger storm with a, with an influencer.

Who wanted to basically promote his audience and property to her blogger audience. And you know, it all blew up because the, the blogger didn't do their research. It became pretty much world news, which was crazy seeing it was just a hotel in Dublin. A guy who's very, very good at outrage marketing and you know, it went everywhere. And I can say this because I've sit on both sides being somebody that has been in the hospitality industry and somebody who has been in the influencer industry. So for those who may not know this, 2017, my wife started up a blog called Two Traveling Tots. And we were traveling all over the world and we were blogging about it and we grew up a pretty big following of engaged followers. And we, as we were traveling, we were reaching out to potential hotels or accommodation places that, that may want it to work together. So we've witnessed it on both sides. I've been to big blogging conferences, influencer conferences have been, you know, to these events. And you know, I've worked, we have worked with companies from the blogging, from the blogging sphere and you know, obviously from the hospitality side. I have worked with influencers as well. So I can see it from both sides and it's, I believe it's one of the most un used marketing tactics out there. I wanted to speak to somebody who is in the world of hospitality and is working with influencers to bring in a lot of his, his bookings and inquiries. And I also wanted to speak to somebody who is the founder and the co owner of an influencer agency. So we've literally got two sides here. Now. The, the, the goal for this episode that I want for everybody to come away with is to know exactly the different types of influencers, because influencer marketing for, you know, a lot of years now, and it has grown massively from the, the Kim Kardashians of the world, who've got, you know, 50 million people, all the way down to nano influencers, which is less than a thousand followers on the page, but they've got such an engaged local community. I wanted to start off by interviewing Howie Hugo who is the co founder of the Goat Agency. I have known Harry for 10 years now. We first met, believe it or not, podcasting. We first met because he had a podcast when he was 17, 18 doing the bib Theorist podcast. I'm a big Liverpool fan and I used to go onto his podcast talk about Liverpool. We first met then he has grown and he has evolved and adapted and he has had a heck of a career so far. The GO agency is one of the, the most influential show social influencer agencies out there. It's massive. It's an award winning. They do daily vlogs, they do daily podcasts. They've got such a great business model there and you know, please do go check them out because I watch them on a daily basis and to see what they do and how they create content, how they work with the influencers. You know, they've got big YouTube people, they've worked with sports stars. I've worked with companies and massive brands all around the world. So first part, we're going to talk to Harry and then we're going to come back and then we're going to talk to next guest.

Sure. So at GO and you know, for all the influencer stuff that we've done over the last few years, it's, it's never really been about defining what those things are. We've kind of always rebuffed what, what they are and we truly believe that anybody who is talking about those things is normally trying to sell one of those things in particular because that's what their business is. So if someone's saying, yeah, nano influences are the way to get audiences and nano in their definitions, meaning people that have less than a thousand follow and sort of the everyday person, there's a good chance that that person that's telling you to do that and they think that that's the way is or has a business that is a nano influencer selling business. Yeah, it just, it just doesn't really ring true because there's so many different ways that you can do influence marketing. I mean as with all advertising, there are so many different ways you can skin the cat. We also don't believe that it's the only thing that works in the entire marketing mix, which I think a lot of influencer marketing agencies or people that work in influencer or even social media do try and make you believe is that it's the only thing in marketing that works right now. And that's just not true. Influencer is a great way to generate roi. It's a great thing to work in conjunction with other forms of media and marketing channels. You can use influencer content to create Facebook paid content. You can use Influence content to do influencer paid content, you can use it for billboards and tv. Obviously I'm talking about things in a sort of larger business scope, but you know, the opportunity when using influence content, I mean you can use it for reviews and things like that. So defining them down to certain definitions and kind of ring fencing them into those four categories, it's like, it's like a horoscope, right? You're trying to put millions and millions of people into 12 categories. This doesn't seem right. And with influencers putting, putting them into four categories based on a number which doesn't really tell you about how loyal the audience is, what the engagement is. Do people actually care about the content they create? Is that vertical that they're, they're influencing or creating content in? Even got the ability to become a mega influencer. Are they therefore a mega influencer or a micro influencer within that community or are they a micro influencer within the standings of the entire world? You know, what's, what's the barometer of it? So that's kind of, that's kind of where I stand on those definitions. It's mad that people forget how marketing works when a new marketing channel arises. Like you wouldn't, you wouldn't advertise female handbags on Sky Sports. You just wouldn't do it. It's not where the audience is. Yes, of course there are females watching Sky Sports, but there's not the major demographic. It's, it's the same for other things. You know, think about who your audience is. And when a new channel comes through, there's a short term memory loss as to how to do marketing. We kind of default right the way back to try and find as big a number as we possibly can. That's never been the way that advertising or marketing has worked.

This is your business. So this is my hospitality business and I cater for families. So what is my ideal customer avatar? Who's my ideal audience? Where are they going to spend their time? You know, I'm a farm stay business that is ideal for families. I'm not going to go advertising and promoting the local nightclubs around here. So it's the same core principle. It's just thinking about it when it comes to influencing.

And again, I think the problem with.

This newly coined term influencer market, I think so many people specifically in my industry, which is hospitality, they dismiss it because they just feel like it's somebody trying to blag a free holiday when really if you look at it from a another angle, then it's it's a fantastic avenue to get in front of a whole new potential audience that is around your niche of what you provide and they just don't currently know about you. And I think that what I want to achieve with this episode is you can start right at the very, very basics, which is your current customers, like you say, nano potential influencers, ones that have got maybe, you know, 600 followers, but they've got such an engaged, like, local audience that they could, you know, you could potentially work together. What would be sort of that one.

Bit of advice that you just seem to always give to somebody, specifically a small business owner, when you're saying, listen.

This is how I would recommend that you go out and find a potential person to work with, whether it's a nano influencer, a micro influencer, somebody to start working with there, they would talk about you online in exchange for something. Where's the best place? Or what's the one bit of advice that you seem to.

I think the one piece of advice is don't believe in necessarily the best ones will come to you and understand exactly what we're trying to achieve. I mean, we've always banged on about and become a bit of a mantra of ours that it's niche audiences. No, it's niche content to niche audiences at scale. That's kind of what we're looking for. So if you're. If you own an Italian restaurant, then find the best pasta connoisseurs, people who just create content about pasta and pizza and things like that, those are the people that are going to have an audience that cares about the content and the product that you're selling. Build things for experience, build things for social media, build things to be shared, because that's where it's all coming from. You look at certain restaurants in London are building, especially in the girls toilets are building amazing sort of murals or feature walls which are great and also lit properly.

What I like about this chat is that it's gone from influencer, but it's boiled down to how can you make your guest experience even better? So what you were talking about there.

With leaving, everybody's an influencer.

They have different influence over different people with different content. But everyone has the opportunity to influence someone else. And in hospitality, want anything. People are looking to share experiences. They're going on, we're living in a society where people love experience, they're buying experience for their partners, they're buying experience for their family, their friends, above products. And when they have that experience, they need to feel like they're one, getting their money worth and two getting things that they didn't expect and that didn't expect factor is unbelievably valuable to the point where you could just never put a price on it. And if that kind of comes back to the taxi and like example where we flew these guys business class over to Uruguay and they had 10 million followers each and then, and then, you know, we had the most amazing time and everything was planned for them. But the thing that he didn't expect was to be in a really, really nice taxi from one place to another. That's the thing they remember.

If anybody's watching or listening back on.

This and they're thinking, I don't even know where to get started. There's a great book called Talk Triggers by Jay Ba.

Go through so many different examples of.

How you can turn just a little.

List of things and one of the examples they give is the Hilton Doubletree chocolate chip cookie.

And that's the perfect way of getting started with something little like that. And you can build up to a Mercedes taxi.

But I like that getting in touch.

With influencers for the first time or getting in touch with a personality or.

Get in touch with anybody that you.

Want to potentially work with.

How do you recommend people bridge this? Because obviously there's going to be the money question. Obviously there's going to be what isn't it for me?

What's in it for you? Have you got any, any sort of words of advice of how to start the conversation? If you've got any sort of recommendations that you've learned over the years of how to approach an influence or how to potentially work together?

I think if you find the right match from the get go then that conversation should be easy. I don't think you should be forcing anyone to do anything if they don't feel like they're going with you with the experience, don't feel like they're excited about it and they're doing it just for the money, then it's not the collaboration that you want to be a part of. And we see that quite a lot. We see that right at the big, you know, in the big leagues as well, right when we're talking about the biggest supermarkets in the country or the biggest tech brands in the world. And sometimes, you know, it doesn't matter how much of a perfect brand fit it looks like for the influencer and for the, for the brand, the influencer just not into it that much. You can feel it. Again, that comes back to this amazing human to human Touch that we've got with these, these influencer that we have with no other form of digital marketing at scale.

You know, if you just go onto.

Your Instagram feed right now for your.

Business and just go and look at the people that have following your page.

Or somebody that maybe have posted.

If you go look at your location tags, there may be somebody that has stayed with you in the past that is got a very big social influence and you just never knew of it.

So that's obviously a lot easier to.

Have that conversation because you can just pick up the phone because you'll have.

The database still on your records, or.

You can just send them a message and that's an easier conversation to have. But yeah, 100%. If you've got a hospitality business that is more catered towards what they're talking.

About and obviously do a bit of research, don't just go in cold, actually see who they are and maybe follow.

Them for a couple of weeks, months, you know, engage with them and then that conversation becomes a whole lot easier than going in cold.

Really appreciate your time, Harry, on doing this. There's loads of takeaways for people that are doing this. If anybody wants to go and find.

Out more about go, where's the best place to go?

Jump on LinkedIn. We're pretty prolific on that platform. We create a daily vlog every single day about how the agency operates. So you can see, you can see my terrible haircut on a daily basis through that. My immediate.

Amazing. All right, buddy, really appreciate that. Thank you very much for joining us. To Harry right there. I've got a big favor to ask everybody. If you are enjoying this, please go and like this video, there should be a little like button right there. Whether you're watching this live or whether you're watching this back on the replay, hit that like button and also as well leave a comment with BookDirect. I will know if you're watching this video and you're paying attention to this video because you will pick up your phone and type in bookdirect in the live video or even if you're watching back on the replay. And the final thing, take a picture. Take a picture of this, of this video. Whether it's. Whether you're on your phone, take a screen, grab, record the screen. If you're watching this on your computer or your TV or your tablet, take a picture of it, go over to Instagram, go over to Facebook, go into Stories, into the Stories mode, put the picture up, tag in at Boostly and I will Share everybody that does this to give yourself a little bit of promotion through, through my channel. So go to Instagra, upload the picture to a, to a story or to a post, tag in O O S T L Y uk and I. And I will share it. The person that I'm going to interview next, he is a bit of a phenomenon. I've known him since meeting up with him, surprise, surprise, in Liverpool for before a football game. And we're going to be talking to somebody that just relies on Instagram to bring in bookings, which is, which is crazy. He has been in and around property and hospitality for a good few years now and he is well known in the area, so much so that he just is the person that people go to when they want to get accommodation. So I want to introduce you all to Manny, AKA the Hotel Man. Like Harry. Manny doesn't have a video. It's, it's, it's an audio, it's an audio version because he doesn't want his face on on camera. He wants to stay behind the mystery of the hotel man, which is really interesting. So if you've got a hot tub and you want to get a direct booking and you can work with Manny on this one, then please do reach out to him via Instagram and again, we'll give you all the links. Links will be in the comments, Links are in the post, links are in the show notes booster.co.uk podcast. But we also talk about it in this interview. Come back afterwards. We will finish this episode with a couple of tips on how you can get started in influencer marketing. So now let me bring in Manny.

So I'm based in Liverpool, Everyone calls me the Hotel man. Knows me as the Hotel man, but my name is Manny. I sort of got that name from like, you know, I used to work at a hotel, funnily enough, and I just said to the owner one day, I said, well, I could probably sell some of these rooms for you, you know, and this was almost 10 years ago, so we're talking nine years ago. This was in 2011. And yeah, from there people just used to say, ask the hotel guy for a room. Ask the hotel man. Ask Hotel Manny. And then that's how the hotel name sort of came. So at the moment we're managing, I think it's just over 30 properties now. We just got to 32 properties that we manage. So we do the management side of things. But then we also. I've also got my own properties in the mix as well, running as service accommodation and then I've also got. What happened from there was, is I used to, for example, I would go to hotels and ask them, well, look, if you are busy or if you're full, why don't you, you know, if you need a room, just give me a call. Because I remember working at a certain hotel, can't remember which one it was and they used to purposely over book which was, I don't know, in the hotel world it might be a thing, but it was Premier Inn actually. And they used to always on the system, they'd always be overbooked, you know, on the busy nights. And they do it because they know that not everyone would turn up or again, I can't remember why they used to do that or allow people to do that. So from there I just used to think, well, why don't I just go to these hotels and you know, tell, you know, ask them, tell them that I've got, you know, rooms available. And then from there I am, I don't know, people just used to give me like requests because they used to come to the hotel man page and they used to be like, hey, you know, can you get us a room there? Or I'm going here. So then I would just link up with other hotels. So, you know, let's just say yourself, you could be in London and I, you could have a hotel or an apartment there. And I just drop you a message and be like, you know, I've seen you've got the apartment there. I know some, we've got a book in here. And I tell them like bookings I've done before, I'd show them, look, go and check out my page. And they would see like a guest review on the page or where someone's tagged us from one of our stays before and it would just give them some confidence. And then from there I just thought, well, why don't I just start getting into all the different types of properties? And it was only, I mean the log cabins are the busiest now and I haven't, I've only been probably doing them for about 18 months.

Yeah, when then? Because this, obviously this episode is all about influencers, social media, media influences. When, when did you start to notice that the people that you were getting booked into rooms, apartments, lodge, cabins, for example, when did you first start to notice that they were people with a social media following that was kind of large and they had a bit of an influence.

I think it must have been in about 2012. So there's a city centre hotel and again, I Met the owner of this hotel just by. I actually went to book a room there for some family coming from London and then we ended up just having a conversation at the reception and then a couple of weeks later he bumped into this gentleman again and he basically got me to start working at the hotel. And so from working there I was probably about a year into the hotel now. And then I remember we got this, you know, from the in betweeners and the guy, his name, I think it's Jay from the in betweeners. I think that's his name on the in between. One of the in betweeners, he was doing a club pa. I remember just taking the picture with him at the hotel and then posting it and then, you know, getting a lot of, you know, feedback from it. I mean like a lot of people liked it and then I think that sort of made me realize that the power of influencers. After that, you know, we started doing like some stuff with some football players, local football players I think from there, you know, posting the picture with, you know, a few of them in the room and then, you know, people from Geordie Shore. I remember that, yeah, just grew from there.

At what point did you realize that having people that had a big social media following come and stay at your properties? When did you sort of realize that you could use it as a marketing advantage for, for you, like who was the first one that you approached to go, alright, so you're gonna come and stay here, I'll do you a reduced rate or a free stay and in exchange what I'd like for you to do is post upon your personal account, your account that you've got all these followers on and tag me in and talk about it. Who was the first and when was the first you started doing that?

Do you know, I couldn't. I did have a think about this and I can't actually remember the first but I do remember doing some. Someone approached me, they needed some last minute accommodation and it was for some of the Real Housewives of Cheshire and they were coming to Liverpool. There was a big event on somewhere in the end. To be honest, they didn't even do me the post in the end. So it's not them. They didn't even do me the post in the end it'd be one of the Love island casts. I just remember one year they were looking for route, they were, they were when they come out and one of them put up like something like oh, I'm looking for a room and then it was one of the, it was Alexandra Kane from Love Island.

So Alexandra came from Love Island. This is a good one to just.

Sort of circle down on. So when you saw that, she came out and said, I'm looking for a place to stay in Liverpool. Did you reach out to her and just say, this is what we got, or was it just a conversation where somebody came to you saying, we've got Love Island?

No, I reached out to her because I'd seen she needed the room. She's like, oh, looking for a room in London. And I just reached out to her.

Was that on Instagram?

On Instagram, yeah.

So you sent him a message on Instagram. The beauty of messaging somebody on Instagram is they don't have to be following you for you to get into their direct messages. That's the beauty of it. So you sent a message to them saying, hey, I can sort you out. And so what was the conversation? When you sort of go down this route, whether they either come to you or you go to an influencer and say, hey, I can help you.

Like what?

How do you sort of work it with a rate where they come and stay at your place and how do you sort of then go listen, in return, we'd love to give you this reduced rate, but in return we'd like you to do X, Y and Z on your social media to promote. How does that sort of conversation normally work?

So basically I'd send them the message and they get back to me and then what I'd always do first. So that send them examples of people that have guests that I've done before. So that's why, if you look on my Instagram, I have a guest to guest review section. So one of them's full and then the other ones just build them up. And that's of any guests who have tagged me. So that just gives them the confidence to know that. That gives them the confidence to know that they can come and, you know, stay with me and it's going to be fine.

What. What would you recommend them do to get started? So they haven't had anybody, say a social media influencer or a journalist or anybody come stay over in the past. Where's the good place to get started? Like, for yourself, obviously, you use Instagram. Do you recommend that or is there any other things that you could recommend they do?

Things I'd recommend are definitely Instagram and Instagram. I've seen Gary Vee put like a thing up and saying, like, everyone's so accessible via Instagram. Just message whoever you want. Like, everyone is accessible. You're accessible through Instagram. Do you know what I mean? Someone could message you. So definitely Instagram. I'd also look at, you know, people who manage like some of these celebrities and some of these social influences, message some of the agencies. I would also some of the Facebook pages. And as well, just, you know, if you know, again, you might know someone that knows influencer, I'd message them as well.

Again, I think that I would just say to add mine and is that if you're going to look to work with an influencer, try and have it around your, your theme. So if you're a, you know, a family friendly hospitality business and you're looking to work with an influencer and say you're based out in the middle of the countryside and you know, you've got your audience that you know that you like, then try and find influencers, bloggers, journalists, whatever, around that, around that niche. If anybody wants to go and find your Instagram and they want to go.

Look at these guest reviews as a.

Sort of an example. What's, what was your handle on Instagram again, buddy?

It's hotel. Yeah, underscore. Yeah, man, epic.

Thank you for that, buddy. Really, really appreciate it and good luck.

With everything and you know, continue to.

Put out the good work and yeah.

Thank you very much for sharing your experience with influencers.

I'm really glad that we managed to get him onto the podcast. He was very wary about it, obviously a little bit nervous, but I'm super happy that he did. And also thank you to Harry as well. Please make sure you go check out the Go Agency, go check out HotelMana on Instagram. And again, I just wanted to leave you with a little bit of actionable advice that I can give to you right now on how to find your first influencer. So we've all, we've obviously spoken about maybe going back and looking at previous guests that may have tagged you in and posts on Instagram or Facebook and just to see if they've got a big following. But also as well, I would be really pushing the message out to everybody that stayed with you in the past and contacting them and saying, listen, do you know anybody that would like to stay here? You know, please, do you have any photos that you'd like to share with us that we can share on our social media or have you shared them on your own social media? Can we see them? Can you tag us in now if you want to maybe start to reach out to somebody who's got 10, 20, 30, 40, 50,000 followers engaged followers. All you simply need to do go into Instagram, open up the app, go into the Explore feature and you're going to look for hashtags around your niche. Maybe get together one or five names, start following them for 30 days, interact with each post, get to know them, send them a message and just say.

Hey, I like your work.

You know, they will naturally come back and see who you are through your page. And then after good 30 days of being contacting with one to three people, then you can then reach out to them and go, hey, you know, I've been following you for a good solid 30 days now. I really like what you do. This is who we are. Is there any way that we could potentially work together? And that's how the conversation will start. I hope this has been useful. It's slightly different from the marketing advice you may have get from other channels out there, but I firmly believe this is a great way to go. As always, please, please, please share this video Share this advice Share this video right now on a Facebook group that you're a part of, hit the like button. Comment Remember comment Book direct. So I know that you're listening to this bookdirect all one word. Let us know if you've watched it on the replay. Let us know if you've watched on live with us. I'm, I'm loving seeing all of the reactions to all of these live videos that we are doing. Before we go, I just want to say thank you so much for the podcast sponsors Hostfully. For those who don't know About Hostfully, it's Hostfully.com they sponsor all of this. So they, they make it, they make it happen. And everybody right now can go and get one free digital guidebook by going to hostfully dot com. All you've got to do is sign up. You get that one free digital guidebook that you can send to your guests before they arrive. And then if you ever want to upgrade to their premium services, you put in Boostly 2M in the promo code and you get two months free. But for now, thank you so much for tuning in. Go to booster.co.uk podcast for more episodes, but until then, thank you so much and I'll see you on the other side.