Why bet big on paid social? Dustin Baker of Hidden Gem Media

Welcome And Why Paid Social Matters

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Welcome back to another episode of the Outdoor Hospitality Podcast. I'm your host, Connor Schwab. Today we are joined by Dustin Baker, the founder of Hidden Gem Media. Welcome, Dustin.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

Hey, thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

The reason I wanted to have Dustin on, he's the founder and CEO of Hidden Gem Media. Essentially, they do paid social email marketing and they're focused in the outdoor and unique hospitality space. My company, Clear Summit Investments, we just signed them up to help us with two of our properties. We're just getting ready to press launch on the first one. So we're still early days, but I'm very optimistic about Dustin and his team. Was extremely impressed by his pitch when he was walking me through his strategy as well as his portfolio and the performance of his clients under management. And, you know, as I've been vetting partners for our business, it's become really important to me to find specialists and folks who are, you know, totally focused on the outdoor unique hospitality space and becoming experts in that. And I definitely saw that in Dustin's field. And I think the paid social space is probably the single biggest opportunity for operators. So I thought it was definitely worthwhile to have him come on and just do a deep dive into his expertise, try to share some value with the audience. Yeah. So thank you for coming on, Dustin. Maybe we could just kick off with a quick question. What do you think, what do you think most operators, their biggest like low-hanging fruit is or change or adjustment they could make in the paid social or email marketing space to start, you know, getting more revenue or ROI today?

Content Beats Spend

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Yeah. I would say lowest hanging fruit for any outdoor hospitality or experiential stay business would, in terms of like social media or paid social, is by far content creation. So even in like paid social these days, the creative, the ad creative is gonna lead to the best performance and you know the biggest gains by a long shot. And so having the highest quality video footage for social media in all of your marketing, really, as well as good photos, is yeah, it cannot be understated.

SPEAKER_02 2:15

So it's more the ad so maybe to put this another way, it might be more important to go spend the extra money on the photos and the videos than putting that extra, you know. It might be better to spend $500 on really good photos and videos than it would be spending a thousand dollars in ad spend on just okay photos and videos. Is that fair to say? Is that what you're saying?

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Yeah. Like we've the the difference we found in even just organic social media, like posting average quality content for months, you could end up spinning your wheels, posting amazing, like 10 out of 10 video footage can easily get you like three to five to like like a magnitude of better results. And then the same thing carries over, I would say even more so to ads because it's more scalable. The creative being like 90% of the performance, if you improve the quality and it hooks viewers better, has a higher click-through rate, and just converts like down funnel better, then yeah, basically that difference in performance and then increasing the ad spend on that is you'll get a better ROI from the the spend on the content and the the better performing ads, as opposed to just trying to make average quality content work.

SPEAKER_02 3:31

And there's maybe marketing and advertising could be considered like 10 different buckets

How To Spend £10k At Launch

SPEAKER_02 3:38

and branches. And if if you're launching your own property and I gave you $10,000 to go spend on launch, how would you be divvying that $10,000 up between different different the different arms of marketing and advertising? Where would you be prioritizing that spend?

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Yeah. So like launching any sort of new project, like outdoor resort, I would say the biggest investment would go into the content itself. And then after that, it would go to ad spend. So like I have some interesting takes on both the content and the like the the push or the the amount, the amount you can like spend toward marketing, especially during a launch, is for content. Typically, what a lot of resort owners would do is they'll try and find a content creator. They they especially like to go after like the Free Stay Collabs, which we used to do like for you know the last three or five years until I would say like two years ago, we started realizing that we were just spinning our wheels, getting again, like to the naked, untrained eye, a lot of this content will look decent. Like there's a lot of decently talented creators that will exchange free stays. But when you start to use that content and it just gets lost in, you know, the billions of posts going out every month, yeah, you just quickly realize it's just not gonna get you the results you're looking for. And then so what we did was we actually pivoted to working with some of the best content creators in North America. So people like Shelby Willray and, you know, a few other kind of notable names. And the results were like much, much better, but very expensive. Like typically it's gonna cost like over $5,000 per shoot. You might get them out for different seasons. It's also frustrating if you get like fall content for marketing fall, but by the time you get the content, you're typically waiting to use it now until the next season because you're already booking out for winter. But yeah, things like that was all always like a big barrier to entry. We've now actually found a different way of getting content, which is basically taking your photos, enhancing the photos. So once you have like an accurate shot of the property, like say like a drone shot of a unit, you can take that accurate shot, enhance it so that it just visually looks as stunning as possible, maybe with like golden hour, like perfect depth, composition, lighting, essentially like what an extremely talented artist take on the perfect day, and then just apply like a subtle amount of motion to that. So maybe like a very minor zoom in or orbital pan. And we've actually kind of pivoted this to content creation and finding it just produces significantly better results than even some of the most talented content creators. So, but in general, like content creation, that's where I would put easily $5,000 a budget, like right at the gate. And then the other $5,000 in that kind of 10K budget theory is I would put it toward meta-ads without question. Another hot take that we've had is we've worked with countless influencers. I've talked to countless resort owners who've worked with influencers, and you know, we've just found across the board that it's more miss than hit. You know, very rarely are you gonna step back after a collab and and you know, clearly see meaningful results. Usually you're you're really questioning it and not really, you know, knowing. You also can't really track it that well, and it's not scalable, it's difficult to coordinate. Whereas when you really look at what they're offering, which is just exposure, and then you realize Meta, the platform that everything's actually operating on, has full control over the billions of users on the platform and who you know gets seen which content. Yeah, we basically see drastically better results with ad spend that you can clearly track, not just like top of funnel, but all the way down to the booking, clearly track an ROI, clearly scale it, target exactly the ideal audience you're trying to reach, and then just keep that going, especially if the economics you know work, which you know, we see you can get cost per bookings cheaper than Airbnb and booking.com, like their typical 15% fee. And at that point, you would just want to keep it running and scale. Yeah, yeah.

When Google Ads And SEO Make Sense

SPEAKER_02 7:51

And so how about SEO, Google Pay per click, PR? Sounds like influencers, you don't think the ROI, but what about those other areas? Are you are you saying you'd put zero, zero, zero spend towards those?

SPEAKER_01 8:07

Yeah, I guess it depends. So if you have a resort or hotel or inventory that isn't a high tourism destination, and I guess if you see that there's not maybe a lot of competition or a good opportunity to spend on maybe Google ads, that could work. But it's it really depends if what you're offering is better for a search traffic audience. When you're talking about outdoor hospitality and experiential stays, a lot of times social media inspiration is gonna be what ultimately is the best match for marketing. And in that case, ads will typically win, especially if your property is very visually appealing or you have experiences that can, you know, really be captured well with video, in which case it's just gonna be a much better path to purchase. It's gonna be not as like search intent driven, but you can build your brand an audience and have a lot of touch points that nurture them so that by the time they actually get to your website, they're more aspirational, less price sensitive, which yeah, we basically see like accumulate quite well from from meta traffic. So I personally wouldn't be spending money for SEO or Google Ads because yeah, it takes a while to get results. And it's also like that whole landscape is is getting a little bit tough to predict how it's gonna shape out with you know AI overviews and and all that. We've also got down a lot of rabbit holes with like yeah, PR and a few other things. And honestly, like we just keep coming back to the exact same things every single time, which is just maximize your top of funnel. So like try and reach your ideal audience in the largest you know quantity possible, which is just best done through organic and paid social. Capture as much of that as possible in the form of you know followers or email subscribers, just ways of getting back in front of that audience and then nurture that relationship, and then do efforts to convert that. So promotional campaigns on email or on social media, as well as retargeting ads from from website visitors, but you know, that funnel in theory is yeah, no matter what we do, like we've tried so many other things, that just tends to get the best results and pouring more into that just you know compounds.

SPEAKER_02 10:26

Is is there a scenario where you you kind of were talking about this a little bit, but the is there a scenario where investing in Google search, a scenario where it makes more where that could be higher ROI, and then scenarios where it would be a lot less in comparison to going like the the social media route? Like what what does that scenario look like? Super remote, buying attraction, low competition, high competition, more commoditized versus highly experiential. I'll just be curious.

SPEAKER_01 10:55

Yeah. No, no, the the best way for Google Ads to just thrive is when you essentially have a market that has low competition. So, say what you offer the inventory and the avatar, there's a lot of search traffic going to essentially what you offer and not a lot of competition. So as long as you get those two things in check and you have a lot of people searching like for what you're offering, and you can get your ads in front of them like cheap because there's not a lot of competition and other bidding, then yeah, that kind of creates the perfect storm. But in most markets we've looked into, or at least over a lot of the the experiential state clients that we've looked at, either the search traffic is low because you know it's a little bit off the beach path, or it's an experience that you know maybe isn't getting a ton of searches. And there's just a lot of competition because you are competing with some of the biggest companies in a lot of cases, or legacy companies that have just been in that market, you know, for a while.

SPEAKER_02 11:57

Yeah, that makes sense. So, like our property, the outpost Grand Canyon, it's South Rim Grand Canyon. There's a decent amount of hotels, and there's a pretty good amount of glamping, actually, like under canvas, clear skies, a couple other ones. And so the big search term that we would try to rank for would be glamping Grand Canyon. And you know, that those other properties are also bidding on those. So it's a high demand, but also semi-high competition for that. So we're kind of competing with them. But if we're going the paid social route, it does allow us to differentiate because at least that property we're using airstreams with private hot tubs plus communal sauna and cold plunge. And those amenities make us stand out because they're visually appealing and experiential, and we actually don't have any competition with those. So at least our theory is we'll be able to stand out and drive a lot of bookings through top of funnel with with paid social that way. And you know, you you brought up an interesting point. So trying to do influencers, which I've done forever with different businesses, and it's it's very cumbersome, it takes a ton of communication, it's it's even just annoying doing the nuts and bolts of like the contract, and you know, maybe they pay for the booking up front and then they get refunded after they do their thing, or there's just a lot of commun, you know, there's a lot of coordination that happens, and it's just like it's a ton of work. And then you don't, you know, you don't really know how good it's going to perform. It might hit, it might not, you might be upset with what they, you know, how they portrayed things. And so it's just like it's a lot of work, a lot of work for big unknowns. And when you're going the paid social route, you have a ton of control, and you can start with 10 creatives, spend $50 to $100 on each of those, see which one's performing, and then ramp the spend on that. So like you're really, you have so much more control of the outcomes, and you can you can scale and increase ad spend up or down depending on results. It's just it's a lot more methodical in the approach. So maybe I'd love to just get a little bit of your background, like how you got into the outdoor hospitality space, what you did before Hidden Gem and how that company came to be, and like a little bit more about just where Hidden Gem is at as a company today in terms of size, client center management, results, things like that.

How Hidden Gem Media Started

SPEAKER_01 14:32

Yeah. So my background is mostly in marketing. So for the last 10 to 12 years, I've been doing marketing in other industries or other industries like prior to when I got started here. And it was in the e-commerce space and the app industry. And for those who know, like these industries are incredibly advanced, sophisticated. They leverage data-driven tactics and consumer psychology better than you know, so many other industries. So I was just, you know, so engrossed with all the different strategies and nuances. But then I could I started to see that the industry is like pretty tapped out as far as innovation goes. So I wanted to see if I could take these principles and bring them to a more up-and-coming industry where marketing wasn't being you know fully like leveraged or squeezed. And so I saw the you know hospitality industry, especially like experiential hospitality, and saw that, well, the first shocker was that there's no performance-driven meta-ads being run across the hotel, resort, vacation rental space, which was shocking considering it's so mass appeal, it's so visually impressive, it's so emotionally resonating. So, and lead gen, you know, with similar paths of purchase has been, you know, really dominant in so many other adjacent industries. So I really wanted to kind of come in and innovate on that side. But then even like social media management in general, which is, you know, pairs extremely well with paid social. So you can't really, you know, master one without the other. But yeah, so that was my goal is to enter this kind of up-and-coming industry that had a lot of room for innovation and then see if I could build the perfect kind of social media paid strategy that could maximize the potential of discovery traffic for you know quality resorts that have a great experience. And yeah, it's just been a really fun industry to kind of innovate in. And everybody, my team, myself, is obsessed with travel and property. So it's been really fun to work on.

SPEAKER_02 16:31

Amazing.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

If and how long ago did you start Hidden Gem? Yeah, so Hidden Gem, we started about five years ago. And yeah, we've been doing this kind of marketing for uh either big H rental owners who have multiple properties, especially the property managers. But I would say now our biggest audience is glamping resorts, micro resorts, any kind of resort owner, as well as boutique hotels and doing social media management, paid social, email marketing for these to drive more brand growth and direct bookings in general. And yeah, I would say our biggest skill has really just been the paid social because once we've mastered social media management, paid social became that scalable thing that just is kind of like the end game. And yeah, we've just been constantly trying to refine and innovate on that. We have about 50 resort clients right now under management. And yeah, we we've also introduced something where we, you know, set up our marketing strategy and then teach, you know, owners how to do it as well. So we're we're still growing, but it's essentially a combination of full hands-off done for you with a results guarantee. So we make sure every resort owner ROI is working with us, or else they pay nothing. Or we do like a build and release where we set it up in their business and and then teach them how to manage it in-house with staff or whoever.

SPEAKER_02 17:57

Yeah, I love it. How many clients are you up to now? Keys under management?

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Yeah, 50 properties or clients, like brands, uh, most of which is like resort owners, boutique hotels.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Do you know how many keys that includes or like total listings or anything?

SPEAKER_01 18:14

Yeah, I would say most of our clients have on the low end like 10 units or rooms, all the way up to you know, 50 to 100 plus. So yeah, quite quite a lot of keys, I would say tough to estimate.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

Yeah. And if you know, we always try to we always try to bring experts on the podcast and then have them offer as much free advice as they can to the operator. So, you know, if folks are bootstrapping it and trying to do things on their own or don't have budget, you know, they can get some tools to to do things on their own. And then also if, you know, if they do want to hand it off to the experts, we give them that information as well.

The Direct Booking Funnel Explained

SPEAKER_02 18:51

So like if a well, maybe we could just talk about at least your yeah, if someone was going to do this on their own, what's the strategy? Maybe I could, maybe this could be a good quiz for me. Maybe I could try to talk back what your strategy and services that you offer, and then you can correct me. Yeah, yeah, go for it. So the the the property, they provide you with media, you know, photos and videos of the property. Then you take those, enhance them, then you start top of the funnel with very wide search parameters, wide audiences focused mostly on impressions to start to test and see who your audiences are. You test different creative, you test different audiences, you test those different combinations, start to see which ones are. You give each of those about a month to see which are the performant best, and then fund those with more budget. That's driving people to your landing page. You guys create a specific landing page specifically for email, you know, either direct bookings or lead capture. So best case scenario, they go make a direct booking right there. If not, you're trying to get an email capture to bring them into an email nurture list with your email funnel. And then I mean, that's really and you have pixels for tracking so you can see what the return on ad spend or cost per booking is for the different campaigns. And then meanwhile, all of this ad spend that you're doing, your clients are getting to own the media assets, photos and videos. That's something that they get to own. And then you're investing in growing follower counts on social media. You're investing in growing email lists of contact information of email of customers that you can continue to reach out to who've opted in and you can have nurture campaigns. And all of that with a goal of getting direct booking so you're not having to lean super heavily on OTAs who might take 15 to 20 percent of the booking fee. Instead, we're trying to spend and invest that money up front so that you get to own the customer information for retargeting as well as have smoother communication and like the customer journey.

SPEAKER_01 21:05

How'd I do? That was fantastic. Yeah. Are you hitting on I would say most of the points there? Yeah, the goal with paid is really how like can you get a cheaper cost per booking than the 15% Airbnb or booking.com would charge, in which case you really don't want them to get a booking on your calendar at that point. You want to scale budget and drive direct bookings because the direct bookings, especially if you can get it down to like five to 10% or less, are also going to come with a byproduct of a lot of targeted brain awareness, like high quality impressions, a lot of audience growth. So like thousands and thousands of followers a month, and email subscribers. Again, like all through like a tracked funnel that you can you know scale up. So definitely the goal. The other thing too is the retargeting. So retargeting website visitors and having the pixels set up across your website so you can see exactly how many people are you know doing checkouts or purchases and send that data back to Facebook. Because the thing that I like about this strategy the most is that it compounds. So like the organic and paid social, or the paid especially, causes the organic reach to increase like way faster than if you were to just post videos on your own. Meta treats their paying customers really well. And the targeting of the ads also kind of feeds into who your audience is for organic. So that compounds better. And you just get more reach from a bigger top of funnel. Your email list grows bigger, your folder account, like a lot of those things, like those leads, like typically convert on a delayed cycle. And then the retargeting. So, you know, everything in within your ad spend or your ad account is getting smarter and smarter. The more data it has, you start running look-like audiences. And so, yeah, it's great to see the brand awareness compound, the audience growth, the ad account, the reach.

Shari Heilala (Sponsor) 22:49

Hello, listeners. This is Sherry Halala, founder of Sage Outdoor Advisory. If you're launching an outdoor hospitality project like Clamping, we can help. We offer feasibility studies and appraisals. What that means is we look at your specific market and proposed business offering and complete an in-depth analysis to make sure that your planned business will be profitable. Getting a second opinion on your proposal and forecasted financials is critical to understand before you spend years of your time and hundreds of thousands of dollars. This is particularly important if you are looking to raise money for your project from a bank or private investors. They are going to want to see this type of deep dive analysis from an independent third-party specialist in the industry. We at Sage have completed well over 250 feasibility studies and appraisals in outdoor hospitality in North America in the last four years. So we understand what it takes to bring a project from concept to reality. If this sounds like it could be helpful to you, you can go to our website, SageOutdooradvisory.com, and schedule a call with our team. While you're there, check out our proprietary glamping database map too. Thanks. Now back

OTAs Bring Bookings Yet Add Friction

Shari Heilala (Sponsor) 23:50

to the show.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

Maybe to like walk through the audience my own decision making. So we launched the outpost Grand Canyon 10 months ago and super flat-footed, barely had a website, barely had anything. And what saved us, one, we were in the path of demand, we had a unique offering, we had hot tubs and amenities. But what really saved our bookings was being on booking.com in particular, and then Expedia and Airbnb. And we were able to get to, I think it's 65% occupancy our second month in the shoulder season, thanks to those OTAs. And that was amazing because we stabilized way faster than I would have predicted from my stage feasibility study days. But the downside was we're paying 15, 17% for each of those bookings, plus we don't get those customer email, name, phone number, and they mess up all of our communication. So like guests aren't getting our emails, guests aren't getting our upsell opportunities for romance packages, we have guests showing up confused, not knowing where to go because we have self-check-in. So we it creates a myriad of operational headache for our GM. Plus, we we even after the guest shows up, we still don't have their customer information to retarget them for their next day. And we're gonna pay them 17%, which is like a massive amount. So if you're thinking about every hundred thousand dollars of bookings you have, that's 17,000. So if that's over three months, you know, you're paying at least 5,000 a month in OTA fees. And so that was kind of how I looked at it, you know, when I was looking at Ponderosa, which is the larger property we're launching, and and Outpost, which is smaller. I was like, if if we if we basically the way I thought about it is if we pay those OTA fees up front and invest it in Dustin's team with Hidden Gem, then you know, we might be paying $15,000 in our first three months. And that's basically an investment so that we're not paying those OTA fees down the road, and then it makes operation smoother. We can drive a higher rate, we have the customer information, they have a better experience. So the way I looked at it was basically like we're just paying these OTAs up front, and then it's much better. The company's in a much better position down the road. So yeah. And did I miss anything there or anything to add on that?

SPEAKER_01 26:21

No, I guess like one thing I didn't really touch on is like the DIY solution. Like if owners are trying to kind of replicate this strategy and just max out social media. I would say don't try and just work with any content creator. Like if if they have a drone and they can be in the videos, like, yeah, like that's one thing, but you really want to, you know, at least like on your own, find the most talented content creators. And you will have to pay more. But like, yeah, we we've seen some that just shoot phenomenal footage and they put a lot of you know time and care into the craft. And it's definitely gonna be worth it to get that video content. And then outside of that, too, is yeah, basically don't link your website, especially not your listings, like Airbnb or anything like that. But I wouldn't link your website just straight in the social media. I would try and put some sort of you know short landing page together. It doesn't have to be, you know, that robust. It could just be branded, you know, think of it like an elevator pitch for your business, but focus on creating a core offer that can entice social media viewers to take a small step, which is you know, give their email address once they've shown some interest. And then that gets you the leads. You could follow up with a nurture flow sequence that just introduces them to your your brand and your offerings. And then, yeah, that right there has been such a big change of just better quality content and then capturing emails and sending like an automated nurture sequence to just converting social media.

What Video Content Converts

SPEAKER_02 27:47

What is what what's the optimal content? Like, is it drone shots? Is it is it shots with people in them interacting, or is it just the you know, uh units or amenities themselves? Like what is the ideal content that you found that people should focus on?

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Yeah. Yeah, that's one thing is like after I think I've seen and watched and observed like tens of thousands of reels at this point. What tends to perform the best is is the first is golden hour. So if you have anybody, a videographer, content creator, come out, uh, really try and emphasize golden hour. Hopefully the weather permits. That's number one, as well as Twilight. Twilight, where you have a focus on you know, lighting and everything being turned on on the property and not so dark that it's like, you know, pretty much midnight. And but yeah, those two things, I always put an emphasis on getting content that features that. Drone shots are an absolute must. We open with a drone shot in, I would say 90% of our videos because it's it's such an establishing shot. Like people, you know, they want clarity. Like you have two to three seconds to hook them in and show them what this video is gonna be about. And so it has to captivate them. So ideally, like sort of like beautiful golden hour sunset shot, zooming in, drone of the property, but it just makes sense. Like curb appeal and you know, drone view is just naturally like when you you know do that, people are just gonna understand what this video is gonna be about. It also helps to have a caption that calls out your target audience. So if you offer, you know, luxury couples retreat two hours or you know, 30 minutes from Grand Canyon, you want to explicitly put that in the intro. And that way, uh people who actually you know see that and respond well to it. So, like couples thinking they're they want to book a stay with their partner who live near that area and they recognize the city, they're gonna watch longer. And Meta is gonna pick up on that like a hawk and start showing it to more people like that. So you're targeting, and this the same thing applies to the the ad creatives as well. Your targeting is all done on the the creative, in basically calling out your audience and really, you know, having the experience like cater most mostly to them and showing what that experience would look like for that ideal guest avatar.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

And then Meta does the the rest with their their does that mean you have couples in that video or that image? Yeah okay. Rather than just saying in text, hey, cup, hey, couples, check out this romantic getaway, it actually shows couples interacting with the unit or the amenities.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Yeah. So we'll probably open up to a drone shot where the the caption calls out like couples luxury retreat two hours from you know major city. But then once you're showing like key selling points, amenities, you want to have especially like amenities and experiences, showing the target audience avatar in the content. So if it's an older demographic or a younger or group getaways, family focus, like you want to show that in the videos. Like one one, for example, like we have one client who's just been like ridiculously successful in social media, but it's they're a family-driven resort in most of the content, aside from you know, the initial drone shot really focuses on you know kids playing in the pools and you know, the farm and you know, hot tub, like looking over the view. And all of that just resonates so much with parents, like wanting to you know share that experience that uh it just converts so well. But yeah, really having your audience in the videos is is very important.

SPEAKER_02 31:25

What's this is a really great question. So, like our property Ponderosa, which is opening its 42 units, it's 42 units, it's 25 cabins, five airstreams, 12 simple glamping bell tents with 25 private hot subs, and then eventually there will be a hot springs pool, sauna, cold plunge. It's forested, it's by a highway, so it's not exactly quiet, and then it's outside Flagstaff, which is a little bit more of a college town. I I and I'd be curious of what your thoughts or your opinion would be if you were in charge of this property, but I wanted to I wanted to go big and say this is an adults only property, you know, 21 plus, no kids, no teenagers, and really showcase that and say, hey, we're we're going for people 21 to 45, really. Like we're and our biggest competition five minutes away is really it's a 40 million dollar resort with a resort-style pool, and it really focuses on kids and families and like empty nesters and RVers. And we wanted to differentiate. So I wanted to go more trendy, 21 to 45, and just like go hard at that, or solo travelers or dog owners, or road trippers, digital nomads, and like really lean into that hard. I lost that battle, so we we decided not to do 18 plus 21 plus. So we're gonna kind of when we use you, we're gonna test out all we're gonna lean a little bit more heavily with those demographics I mentioned from a marketing and advertising perspective, but we're not gonna rule anybody out and then we're gonna see how the property performs in ads. But my question for you is if you were in charge of this property, what would you do? And would you test in your ads and then maybe make a customer avatar decision after you'd already opened and done some testing?

SPEAKER_01 33:18

Yeah, I like that's a tough one because you really could go at it both ways. You could do a lot of research in the beginning and see general tourism data on who's traveling to the destination, and you'd also look at comparables and see if there's like a gap missing in either like family-friendly or couples or you know, adult, like something like that, and then really lean into that and just 100% commit on building the entire experience around that. Which, if you have that that vision and and you you're quite confident that this is exactly what the market is looking for just from you know research, then it can go quite well. But the alternative is if you, you know, maybe don't put as much restrictions on the audience and you essentially open it up and just market for the first couple of months. You can also end up seeing the people who come in and see, you know, what guests have the best experience and feel like this is actually catering to them. In some cases, it can surprise you, and usually the the audience is always right. And you know, marketing, especially when you're a marketer and you're thinking like, oh, I think this is what's gonna perform best, is rarely the case. So yeah, good old audience-driven data is is typically the best thing, but you could honestly go either way.

SPEAKER_02 34:33

Looking at your portfolio, do you notice any trends of properties that really you know clearly define their audience and you know, stick like go all in on that avatar versus folks that go more generalist? And have you do you think one if you if you were giving broad advice to someone and they're like and they're basically like, hey, should we keep it agnostic and who our customer is or really focus on one? Do you have a preference?

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Yeah, I would say out of the 50 resorts, I don't think we have a client right now that is fully or like mostly agnostic about who they serve. I think when you're launching, you can either, you know, do the research and then commit, or figure out you know, who actually responds the best and then commit. But the end result is always committing to one niche. Like never trying to be like the the broad, like, oh, we're good for families, but also couples can have a nice quiet time and you can also bring an entire group. And you know, that that could just be tricky, especially with like the messaging in in marketing. I would say at this point, almost all of our clients really lean into either being couples, you know, focused, family friendly, or group uh stays.

SPEAKER_02 35:53

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's yeah, we're kind of at a fascinating one with Ponderosa because it's a little bit larger, right? It's 42 keys. And also there's phase two expansion here. We've got utilities for 65 and then entitlements for 100. So, like, if you're doing a resort that's 10 to 20 keys, I think you can pretty comfortably say, hey, we're just gonna do one demographic. And you can you, you know, you can usually fill that up somewhat easily. You know, 10 to 20 keys, it's not that much. But when you start getting into like the 40, 60, 80, it does become a little bit of a different story of like how big is your audience and how big is the demand. But I like I like what you're saying about, you know, that's my opinion as well. It's like just just pick one and commit. You know, it's it's better to be the perfect solution for one group than to be just an okay solution for all the groups and no one's a hundred percent happy.

SPEAKER_01 36:51

Yeah, no, a hundred percent. It it makes a difference across everything, not just the the guest experience, but the the marketing as well. Is if if meta just keeps seeing your content respond well to you know, parents trying to have a family-friendly experience or couples looking to get away and like a peaceful retreat, then they'll it'll be so clear to Meta to just like keep expanding reach to that audience, as opposed to if your you know marketing message is like all over the place and different people are responding. So, yeah, it affects everything across the whole path.

SPEAKER_02 37:24

Yeah, love it.

Pick A Guest Niche And Commit

SPEAKER_02 37:26

So if going back to like if someone was trying to do this themselves, we kind of went over the the copy and testing, and that is calling out audience, showing a drone shot, maybe running a number of different ads with broad audiences. Like what happens next?

SPEAKER_01 37:40

Yeah, I would say some of the best like DIY tips is spend the money on a really talented content creator, capture leads and list a landing page instead of going straight to your website, the website being like what comes next after they put their email address in. And then the other thing I would say too that has been really helpful is if you're unsure of, for example, like copy for an email or you know, ads or anything to do with you know, marketing or promoting your business, creating a custom gem or GPT, depending on whether you like Gemini or ChatGPD, but essentially compiling together a large document that has all the information about your property. So you can put all your reviews in there, you can put all your property specs, your destination insight, you know, anything you can find that you know tells about why people book stays in your area in different seasons and anything you possibly compile into resources that train a custom gym. And then have that help you, you know, determine like what email should I send in April, depending on like, you know, what people are booking for, like how far they're booking out, what's going to resonate with my you know exact audience, do it in the voice of the branding that I'm looking to you know, really embody. And that can be a game changer when it comes to you know perfectly speaking to your audience with any messaging in your marketing.

SPEAKER_02 39:06

Yeah, love it. Love it. What what you were talking a little bit about landing pages earlier. And and and you mentioned, you know, landing pages basically like it's a bite size of a website with a very specific offer that's either trying to get a call to action, like a booking, or trying to get contact information like sign up for a newsletter. What is the big difference of why a land a very tailored landing page performs better than a really good website? You know, when you're driving people from social media to that link. What what's what's the reasoning there?

SPEAKER_01 39:43

Yeah, the big reason is just the the type of traffic. Like so this is discovery traffic that doesn't have any booking intent behind it. So say you do the the initial heavy lifting of creating the content that just absolutely hooks people, gets them to want to learn more. Typically they're gonna check out your profile and then maybe click the link in the bio, especially if you have all of your profile pointing them to the link in bio. The thing is, is after they've seen that really enticing video that they see is like two hours from them and they're like, oh, I might you know book that one day, they're browsing, like they're in a chill browsing state on social media on their phone. They are not gonna have a meaningful session on your website. So even if they do click in the link in your bio, they're gonna bounce so fast and you know, not actually check out different listings or stays. They're not gonna spend a lot of time because they're browsing, like they're just not in that kind of frame of mind. So if you just link your website and hope they're gonna, you know, do everything that you want them to do, it's just not gonna happen. So, what we find is because this is discovery traffic and you're trying to entice them forward, improving the offer by having like a core offer, like a get 10% off your first day or $50 off your first day. Something that, you know, when you've intrigued them and they're they're checking you out and they see, like, oh, like sign up in a link in bio and get 5% off your first day. It's a very easy justification to give you their email. And it's a very small micro ask, like it's a micro commitment that you're not saying go to the website and book. You're just saying, like, hey, leave your email and you know, we'll send you a nice promo code. And that way they could just put their email address in and then go back to browsing, which is what they're gonna do anyway. But now you have their contact info because they raise their hand like that they're interested. And now you can follow up with more information, you know, that they might open up on their computer. We also see like another you know clever hack is that if you actually give them the promo code on the next page, so they put their email address in and then they get this pop-up that's like copy code and then go to the website, they're actually they will spend more time browsing in that initial session because they have a code in hand. They kind of want to see like what they could do with it, which then if you have the the Metapixel like in integrated in your website, it'll track you know that session that the user did and then retarget them with more ads. So yeah, but basically the the core thing is like people aren't gonna do anything meaningful. This is definitely something where because the search intent isn't there, you need to have a way to get back in front of them and get more touch points in to have to build trust and kind of get them closer through that consideration phase. Yeah, that's basically why we see the landing page. It's also just like less daunting the amount of information. You're just focused, like, what do they need to know in that that you know quick little first session?

SPEAKER_02 42:28

Yeah. Yeah, super important to keep in mind that, like, hey, this person's probably like scrolling on their couch or like on the bus of, you know, on a plane or whatever, you know, and they're the the level of focus is low. And it's like, all right, bite-sized pieces of information. Once someone engages with the post, your branded post, then they're more likely to be retargeted in your funnel and see you again. And then if they put in their email, you'll be put on a nurture sequence. So they'll be getting emails at some semi-regularly regular interval with different offerings and things like that. And okay, that is super helpful. What is there any other pieces to it? Are there any other big pieces we haven't gone over?

Landing Pages Pixels And Proper Optimisation

SPEAKER_01 43:09

No, I would say the last thing too would just be make sure you have the Metapixel on your website if you don't already do and ideally set up conversion tracking so that Facebook or Meta can see, you know, if people are doing searches, viewing content, checking initiated. Even if you don't actually use that right out the gate, you don't have to necessarily set up the retargeting ads right away. But just having that information is like by the time you do set up retargeting ads, you've had months or you know, years worth of data to leverage.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

And why is that important, the pixel and the the conversion tracking?

SPEAKER_01 43:43

Yeah. So if you want to run ads, the reason why Meta is just so powerful, like when it comes to targeting, I guess not so much with retargeting because you're just, you know, sharing with meta who's your most interested customers or prospects and then get back in front of them. But any amount of data just really. Empowers them and they're targeting. For example, like if you have a retargeting budget and you don't just have the pixel on the header of the website tracking page views, which is not a lot of information from Meta, if you have like events like checkout initiated, they're gonna spend the majority of your retargeting budget on the checkout initiated, you know, people, the people who got that far, or the people who spent the longest on the website because they know that that's the closest low-hanging fruit to convert. And like, yeah, Facebook, Meta, like they have a ridiculous amount of data. I think I heard at one point it was like 55,000 data points on the average user, because the pixels like on most websites, and they have just a ridiculous amount of browsing, you know, data. So yeah, they have this ridiculous algorithm that just is able to leverage data so well, you know, with the the data that they already have. But then the more you feed it about your own audience, yeah, the better it does its magic.

SPEAKER_02 44:54

And the and the big thing is so like you or Dustin and his team would be running 10, 15 campaigns at a time with different offerings or focused on different audiences. And when you have the when you have the pixel tracking, it allows Meta to see some basically observe the whole customer journey. And ultimately you want to see who converts and how much they're spending. And that that makes a huge difference. Because if Meta's only learning based off of website clicks, you might have, for example, people age 15 to 25, you might get a shit ton of website clicks, people going to see your property because it looks cool. But 15 to 25 year olds might not have $300, $400 to spend on your unique cabin stay. So they might be clicking and looking, but they're not actually converting. And the same might be with, you know, a demographic that's like 55 to 65. They might just be consuming lots of content, but that demographic might not be the folks who actually will book online or like they're actually going to make a booking on their phone. So if you're only, if Facebook's only learning off clicks, it might be all this traffic, but this traffic isn't those who convert. And maybe it's the folks that are whatever, 35 to 45 who are actually willing to spend $400 and then Medic and see, all right, we spent $200 in ads in this group and we got $800 of conversions. So you've got a row as of you know four. And so then it starts to see, hey, this is the audience, and these are the people that are actually producing the income for this client and it learns and grows from that. And then, you know, Dustin or whoever's looking at it can say, oh, these other audiences, we might be getting a lot of activity, but we're not getting a lot of conversion. So let's scale this back.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

Yeah. No, honestly, it's it's that. And the the other thing that I see like a lot of people make the mistake of is what you tell Meta to optimize for. So for example, if you like the most common thing people do is set up a website traffic campaign that just drives clicks to their website because it's the easiest to set up and meta tries to make it really easy. But that is like they're gonna be a little like you know, cheesy in a sense that like if you're optimizing for website clicks, like that's exactly what you'll get. You'll get you'll get a ton of website clicks, and you will have little to no idea if it's actually driving any meaningful revenue. And so that's typically what I see a lot is people have dabbled with Facebook ads and spent a bit of money on you know website clicks and weren't quite sure of the results. And so they ended up pausing efforts and then yeah, not really giving it

Andromeda Update And Creative Volume

SPEAKER_01 47:36

another go.

SPEAKER_02 47:36

So Meta did the Andromeda update like a year ago or nine months ago or something, which basically just changed the way the platform algorithm works. Do I have that correct? Am I saying that? Is that accurate? How did that change your work and your strategy and what you have been doing?

SPEAKER_01 47:54

Yeah, so Andromeda essentially just allowed Meta to get better at serving the right ad creative to the right audience at the right time. And one of the things that they really promote with this update is creative volume. So if you've ever uploaded ads and you just had like one to three ads and you know, leave it at that, they want you to upload a lot more creatives and particularly a lot more ad angles and ads that speak to different stages of the buying journey. So, for example, ads that are more top of funnel, like just awareness driving, ads that are more, you know, considerable, like or consideration phase that you know might speak to a particular offer, and then ads that, you know, maybe a little bit more review-based or you know, ads that speak to the person who are like on the edge of booking. And they're good enough to now understand that this person has never heard of you before, they need a top-a-funnel ad to just, you know, get them some inspiration. This person has seen a few of your videos and they need to, you know, get a little bit more of your core offer and like become a lead. And then this person has been on the website, they should really, you know, get an ad, like a review that you know gets them over the edge. So they're able to take you know the different ads that speak to different stages and give it to people at the right time and move them through, as well as if you have different ad angles. So, say, you know, if you're a couple's luxury resort, you can speak to the peace and quiet of like a nature retreat, or you could speak to the romance and the connection that you make with your partner and how that's you know so important, or memories that last a lifetime. Like typically with your offering, you're gonna have a few different angles, and those angles are gonna resonate to different people at different times, and they're also gotten a lot better at matching the right angle with the right person. That, yeah, it's so it's so sophisticated. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 49:44

What what for your clients of the 50? What's like the average tenure of folks that you've been managing their ads? What does the typical journey look like in the first three, six, twelve months or beyond? You know, what do people expect to spend or like results? Like, if if people do use hidden gem, like what does that journey typically look like?

SPEAKER_01 50:08

Yeah. So in regards to the the ad spend, I would say top of funnel results start really strong. So you're gonna get a lot of views targeted to your your destination and your audience. You're getting a lot of follower growth, email list growth, like those things come pretty instant. Discovery traffic, the conversion is a little bit delayed. Sometimes, like I think with email, we saw like 1.8% conversion after 18 days with a few clients. And so, yeah, expect maybe not the first month to drive a ton of bookings the second you launch an ad campaign. But then it does compound in the sense that like you'll get more conversions the second month and the third month and the fourth month, because now leads that came in in the first month are you know starting to convert more. So, yeah, typically the ads perform better and better just naturally due to the buying stage or the path to purchase. But then also the ad account will get smarter. So the more ads spend, the more data, it'll typically be better and better. That will also help the organic side quite a lot. Like you'll see a noticeable boost in you know, just the reach that your organic media gets. And we like to consider that like a win from the ads. So, you know, a nice byproduct. But overall, what we're looking for is anything below 15% cost per booking, which you know the equivalent would be Airbnb Booking.com, is I would scale it because now you're also getting the growth, you know, the view count, like hundreds of thousands of views and followers. But a lot of our clients like we're trying to hover within like the five to 10% range and then just scale that steadily each month. Yeah. And then most of that's gonna go to Facebook and Instagram. We haven't tested TikTok ads yet, but there could be some opportunity there. But yeah. And then the experience with us in terms of like setting this up is there is a lot of like setup work. So to do it well, you need high quality content, you need the landing page, the email flows, you need the pixel setup, the ad campaign setup. So there is like a lot of front-end work, and we try and do that within the first month or so. But then after that, well, the second of the month is over, like you can launch everything at the same time and see like a noticeable uptick in you know, top of final results, which then typically translates a couple weeks later.

SPEAKER_02 52:19

What's like a typical performance that your clients are seeing across the portfolio for performance metrics and like cost per booking or roas?

SPEAKER_01 52:29

Yeah. Cost per booking, we're typically seeing anywhere between five to 15% for the average. There's some clients that are doing, you know, better than that, but that's typically what most of our clients are getting. Anytime we see performance like over that, so like say 20, 30% cost per booking, usually it's just like an ad creative refresh, and we just need to test more creatives and let the account, you know, build up more. And then in terms of ROAS, ROAS is a little bit more arbitrary. It's it's a staple in like e-commerce and other industries, but we don't use ROAS as much because I think the 15% is like a better benchmark. But we typically do see, I would say 5x on the low side, like the minimum, but mostly closer to 9 to 10x ROAS would be like average. And then clients were like, yeah, they've been running the ads for like six months or longer, and it's just had a lot of time to compound, then it'll jump up quite a bit.

SPEAKER_02 53:25

Hey, okay, random question.

Performance Benchmarks And Realistic Costs

SPEAKER_02 53:29

I think in your onboarding application, you asked about Stafy, and that prompted me to go look into Stafi, and we just signed up for them, actually. But maybe you could talk a little bit, you probably know a lot more about that than me, but like, how does that piece? Obviously, it's a piece of what you do. Maybe you could just talk a little bit more about that and how it fits into the overall strategy.

SPEAKER_01 53:51

Yeah. So I guess that's the one part of the compound that I haven't really addressed is the the repeat bookings from PassGuest. So we find the brand loyalty and the experience is like better from Discovery Traffic, just more touch points, more audience nurturing on the way to the direct booking. And then direct bookings in general have like a much higher repeat booking rate than OGA bookings. And so the combination of the two can typically, you know, that paired with, you know, if you offer an incredible experience, which is of course necessary, also having a repeat welcome flow or a repeat email flow for past guests. And if you throw like a loyalty program on top of that, so like, you know, a code that gets them 10% off their next day, especially when they get that like right after staying at the property, we see that is really effective. And so, you know, layering that on top of all this is just another way to build up like a customer base that compounds. Now, if you're currently getting a lot of your bookings from Airbnb or booking.com or just OTs in general and not getting the information, Stafi is the perfect tool for capturing that email address and contact info in a in a low-stakes way. And so that can really help get you that past guest database that you can start to re-market to. Otherwise, if you're already getting a decent amount of direct bookings or you're starting to get them more, then you're gonna get that contact info and then you know connect your PMS to your CRM and just you know start to send them emails as well. But yeah, to bridge the gap, StaFi is great if you're heavily dependent on OTAs.

SPEAKER_02 55:25

And that, yeah, that that's why we we just signed up for them at Outpost, basically. After the first call, it's just like a thousand percent. Because we're so heavy on the OTAs, we're really missing our upsell opportunity with our customers because they don't get any of our pre-communications. So we don't get romance packages, ex stay extensions, excursion bookings when they're on the property. So essentially what Stay Fi is, it's like if you ever go to Starbucks or an airport and you log into the Wi-Fi and then it takes you to like a Wi-Fi landing page where then you enter your information and then it takes you to like, oh, hey, like, or an airline is a good example. Like you're on a flight, and then you log in and then it takes you to that airline's homepage, and it's like, would you like to book your next day? Would you like to become a member? Would you like to sign up for our credit card? Basically allows you to create that landing page for your guests. So if they want to use the Wi-Fi, they put in their name, phone, email, and then it takes them to your property landing page and it says, Hey, would you like to book a smorts package? Would you like to book a helicopter tour with our affiliate link? And then also, you know, for us, if it's an OTA booking, we're collecting that customer information for the first time. And for any bookings, you know, most bookings are going to be at least two people, even though only one person made the booking. So it gives you a chance to collect the information of the second guest, and then maybe they're the repeat customer, not the person who made the initial booking. So you pretty much double your email list volume almost instantly, simply with the guests, you know, the the person who booked, and then the person they brought with them. And then you can upsell them on site. So that was a no-brainer for us. It cost us like I think 250 bucks for the hardware to link into our Starlinks. And then I can't remember what the monthly cost for the software was. I think it was like 50 bucks or something like that. Yeah. But thank you for that, by the way. So I signed up for that based off of your intake form.

StayFi Turns Wi-Fi Into Guest Data

SPEAKER_02 57:29

So if people do want to sign up for you, what does that look like in terms of cost for setup fee, monthly management, and ad spend? What they could expect.

SPEAKER_01 57:38

Yeah. So we have different packages. I would say the main thing is like either the the full hands-off done for you, like our team take care takes care of everything, or the build and release where we set it up and then teach you team how to do it. Both of which require a setup investment. So typically it's around like seven to eight K for the initial setup, and then anywhere from like two to three K. So like $2,500 to $3,500 ongoing management. So that's like just the retainer, which has a guarantee. And then the ad spend as well is basically going to be, you know, starting at like we recommend about $30 a day, $900 a month for the first month, get things off the ground, and then we'll get enough initial data from that and then scale accordingly. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02 58:23

What let's see, I totally didn't ask you about this, but is there any any pro offer or promotion? If people hear about you on the podcast and then come to you, is there any special offer or anything they can get? Not to put you on the spot.

SPEAKER_01 58:37

Not off the top of my head. If you're seeing this and and you mentioned that you came from the podcast, if by the time we talk in in however long from now, like I might come up with something, but yeah, enough to say.

SPEAKER_02 58:50

Not to put you on the spot. That's how we do things on this show on the fly. Okay. And then what what about contracts, commitments, things like that?

SPEAKER_01 59:00

Yeah, we set it up as a three-month minimum because we know we can set it up in a month, ramp it up in a month, and then show results in that third month with guaranteed results. After that three-month minimum, you can either let us continue to manage it, or we can move it in-house, teach anyone on your team to keep managing it. We try and set it up in a way that absolutely everything we produce. We know the system works. So as long as it's in your business, whether we're managing it or somebody on a team, like it'll perform. And then, yeah, the fallback is if you do go in-house, we give you course videos and support on how to keep it going. Because yeah, don't try and like lock anybody in.

SPEAKER_02 59:37

And that that was the big that was the big thing for me. I I was vetting trying to find who our paid social person was gonna be. I knew that was like the big thing. And I I've probably vetted four, four or five different agencies, some that were specialized in outdoor hospitality, some that were just really well known or very focused on paid ads in general. And what I found was that your offering was like you it checked every box compared to the competition. Like you were a very obvious choice for me. And that is because your contract was flexible. You have the the money back guarantee if you don't, if they don't get your fee and more direct bookings, and then you're specialized in this space, and then the monthly management fee and the setup fee were very reasonable compared to what I saw in the competition. Like I had other people that were basically, it was gonna cost more, and it was gonna be a longer and more rigid contract to and I would have I would have had to do I would have had to do stuff. But you do everything, you you handle and set up everything so it's like off my plate and out of my brain, so I can focus on other things. So it was a really obvious choice for me. And I don't know if you know this, but I called like I think three or four people in your customer list to find out how their experience had been working with you, and all the feedback was really positive. So that was what gave me the confidence to sign up. And I know we're just starting, so the audience can check back with me in three, six months to see see how it's going. But I did feel very confident in pulling trigger. And for us, at Clear Summit at least, this is our biggest bet that we're making. You know, we're probably putting 70 to 80 percent of our marketing and advertising ad spend or like budget towards Dustin and his team. And you know, we're doing a little bit in SEO, we're doing like a little bit in PR and paid so Google Pay-per-click and things like that, but this is kind of like our big bet. So yeah, encourage the rest of the users to put a lot of time into this strategy because I think it's the the most bang for your buck and the most scalable. And then obviously, you know, consider dusting for it.

Practical Uses Of AI For Resorts

SPEAKER_02 1:01:49

How about Dustin, like zooming out a little bit? What are you seeing in the industry as a whole right now in terms of, well, you know, maybe we could chat a bit about AI? You've mentioned it a little bit for creative and for strategies. How are you utilizing AI? And I guess that I have three questions within that. One is how's AI changing outdoor and unique hospitality from a macro perspective? How is it changing the way you do your media company and strategies? And then the third one is like, how is it you helping you in just your day-to-day, like in your day-to-day tasks? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:32

Yeah. No, the AI is becoming really exciting with the amount of use cases, especially for this industry. The easiest one is building that knowledge base and then having that custom AI expert who can, you know, support you and you know, having the perfect messaging and you know, marketing strategy based on your season and all that. And so, yeah, we leverage that to have our account managers become experts. The next thing I would say is you can also use that same AI as like a travel, like hotel concierge. So in the clients that are going like quite viral, and there's just you know a lot of inquiries, like we're able to have the chat widget on the website, the social media comments, DMs handled by that AI and the exact voice and knowledge, like in in real time and depending on the language and anything. So that could be really helpful. And then on the content creation side, so yeah, I feel like AI in content creation is starting, it's getting a little bit of a bad rep at the gate. You know, I think it's because there's a lot of like quality concerns from just random videos people have seen online. Yeah, luckily, like we found a way to have like 4K pixel perfect, 100% accurate uh video footage come from this process. So, yeah, we're that's probably been the biggest innovation that we've done because now we could just test so many different things, like different sunsets and angles and uh target audiences, and you know, even like people in the shots. So that's been really helpful. And then I would say like probably the biggest thing we're focusing on now is, you know, because a lot of pricing and revenue management is based off of you know, search demand and you know, market supply and demand, generating a surplus of demand from social media discovery, so organic and pay, can really throw off your pricing because it's you know more or less price sensitive, aspirational, you know, brand driven uh traffic. So we're trying to find a way to have booking lead time, so you know, your occupancy 30 days out, 60 days, 90 days, be more of a core metric in pricing. And then finding a way to take your knowledge base of your destination, property, audience, brand, your ad performance and organic social media performance, your booking lead time, and have AI be able to wrestle all of those variables together to make the best price suggestions so that you can increase your price accordingly as ads perform better and you scale up. Um so you don't run into you know, booking out too far or anything like that. But yeah, right now I'd say like that's gonna be the best uses of AI for marketing specifically. But then I'm sure on the operational side, there's like, you know, potentially guest messaging, depending on how you know, how well that goes. And I also think like on the investing side.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:18

Do you help clients set up a website chat bot that's AI to help with bookings or just guest inquiries like on the landing page or on the website? Is that part of your service?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:27

Yeah, so it depends. Like we do offer it. So the same AI that can respond to comments, DMs on social media can answer inquiries on your website. There are pros and cons. So the pro is that it's real time or even like slight delay to be more realistic. You can test it out so you can like hammer it with questions. And if you find it's not able to answer something or there's like a hole missing, you just add it to your FAQ and then it'll be able to answer that going forward. So that can be really helpful and really scalable, but it can't connect yet currently to your calendars or your pricing. So if a guest is asking more specific information about can we book this particular weekend, it's going to give it like a bit of a generic answer, like, oh yeah, just like, you know, check those dates on the website and see if they're available, which doesn't seem you know that helpful. So you can also set up that same chat widget to be an inquiry that you can get back to them. You could set it up as a real chat immediately that goes to the phone of somebody on your team to message, you know, hopefully they're available. Or you could do a combination of both. Whereas if the AI can't answer it, then it sends us a notification that, like, oh, we're just going to check with somebody on our team and get back to you. So yeah, it kind of depends on what you're looking for. Yeah, we need that.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:38

Super happy that you're diving into that because I need your help on it.

unknown 1:06:42

We need that.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:44

Awesome. And any other ways that you're just using it for your own like productivity in a day-to-day entrepreneur CEO?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:52

Yeah, I would say it could be pretty helpful to create like an AI board of directors of just people that you aspire to and you know like their philosophers or philosophy in business and get general advice. Yeah, I think it's very helpful for empowering your team to be more productive and be able to accomplish more. There's a lot of tools that you can build, like you know, these like price adjustment tools that can wrestle together more variables than the average person can typically look at and help determine like optimal adjustments and you know, ad strategy and and other things. So yeah, like we're honestly still scratching the surface of what I think is possible. Very cool.

Designing A Property For The Camera

SPEAKER_02 1:07:35

If you were if you were going to launch your own, you know, glantine or unique stay or outdoor hospitality property, and I gave you a you know, five million dollar budget, all in budget, what would that project look like? Where would it be? What type of units, what type of amenities, how would you operate it, you know, what kind of customer price point? Like, how would you be approaching this? You don't you don't own any current properties, do you?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:04

No. It is a dream. Like, I do definitely want to build one day, at least the one project. It's also hard not to when you see like all your clients doing it and you're just like, ugh, like I feel like I can. We're also in in Toronto, so there's there's much less competition where we are. So I feel like there's an opportunity there. But yeah, I've definitely dreamt about this a lot. I would say I would lean more toward the couple's audience myself and build nature experiences. The tough thing is, you know, this could be depending on like real estate and what's available, but the two biggest things that I see make the biggest difference in marketing is views. Number one, like any sort of view, whether it's like a lake view or you know, mountaintop view or you know, like like just any sort of scenic view, does the best. And then second to that is water features. So I would try and figure out like a really good way to you know build quality water features on the property that feels like it's part of the experience, whether that's like a small stream or a waterfall being probably one of the best things you do. And I know that can get pricey depending on how big you go, but that tends to just resonate so much along with that kind of nature experience. So, yeah, that's probably what I'd be doing is like modern cabins, some sort of like water feature views, tough to get a combination of both.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:24

But if you could would you be more focused on being within 90 minutes of a city, or would you be more focused on being next to a major demand driver like a national park or something like that?

SPEAKER_01 1:09:37

Both. Yeah. The the sweet spot is you could be 90 minutes from a major city or multiple major cities and next to a national park, 100%, all those things. I think luckily, because we're so focused on discovery marketing, my head doesn't immediately go there because you can generate a lot of demand for something, you know, a little bit more remote, but in a perfect hypothetical, you also have the search on there as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:05

Yeah, that is interesting because you probably have more experience in a build it and they will come. I'm sure you you probably have some clients that are kind of in the middle of nowhere, they're not like en route to something. How from your side of running their ads and conversions, how much how much harder is it to get strong results, strong booking results for a property that's like would you value more having a property that's in the middle of nowhere but it has a really nice mountaintop view or like a stream or a lake? Or would you rather have a property with no views but it's next to the Grand Canyon or you know, some type of big attraction?

SPEAKER_01 1:10:50

Yeah. Given the two, I would definitely go with the more remote, like scenic property. Just because by now, like the the reason why everybody talks about like oversaturation is we've identified like the high tourism destinations that are you know in the sweet spots. All the major companies, resorts, hotels have already, you know, flooded. So there's so much competition. So I would be focusing on something that's more marketable, but off the beaten path, and maybe spending less money on the initial like land cost because it's like prime real estate, and more on what you do to enhance it, like better units, better design, better amenities, better features.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:29

You probably don't come across this as much in your piece that you're you know an expert on, but like when you go in those remote locations, usually one of the biggest issues that you're gonna run into is food, like food options. And then it's does the guest need to handle their all of their food and cooking and they bring it and you provide a cooking space or have something on site, or you know, versus maybe they have to drive 20 to 30 minutes to get to a cafe or to get to a dinner spot. Like, do you have any thoughts there on the trade-offs?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:05

Yeah, I would say like that's kind of where the economies of scale can can help you or hurt you. So, like if you're like under 10 units, then adding any sort of you know, food like related things. So, for example, we have some clients that have like 30 units and adding like like what is it, like a shop kind of idea where they can get you know snacks on site as well as you know, people cook it out food. Yeah, like that's where like having a bigger resort where you can have like a dedicated staff and you know other things on site can be really helpful. But yeah, I think there's a lot of people who, you know, especially if you offer, you know, one of the best things I've seen is like ovens to make your own pizza like on site, like little things like that could be really, really nice. And yeah, I think people would figure it out.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:48

Well, how about for unit types? Is there any specific unit type or a feature of the unit type like floor-to-ceiling glass or you know, robes, or I don't know, like from a unit type perspective, what would you do? And what would, you know, is there anything that you're like, oh, this is a definite green flag for unit type or or floor plan? Or what are you thinking of?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:11

Yeah, there's definitely a few things that I've seen like do quite well. Like I always think about like what stands out in videos too. And this is uh the first one's like a tough one because it's expensive, but like glass, like the the more glass, like floor to ceiling windows, the more immersive into nature, like the better. Second thing is like I've seen like soaker tubs that are like very scenic and like well done next to the windows where it feels like you're again like next to the experience can be really good. Lighting. So like landscaping, I would never I would put almost more focus on the landscaping than the interior because I just see that being like more marketable. It stands out more in videos and it just resonates more with people. Is if it has like really good landscaping around the unit with like a lot of lights, like string lights, spotlights, like trail, you know, walkway lights, that could just really elevate the the design. Yeah, and then hot tubs are a big one for sure, too.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:08

Uh all right. You're you hot tub or sauna? You can only choose one. What are you going with? This is not not for your what you would choose to go in, but if you were gonna build it for you know, success.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:23

Yeah, for success, I think a hot tub would perform better. I think just more people would go for that. But sauna is like definitely with wellness getting like so popular, and you know, you're also like when you build a saunning, you're catering to a more health conscious and typically like higher priced guest as well. So it kind of like helps you target up market. But hot tubs, I think, are just more universal at this point.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:46

We usually go the strategy of adding as many private hot tubs as we can, and then we'll usually have communal saunas and cold plunges because they're a little people appreciate it, but not everybody. Yeah, I think that's perfect. We're in our Ponderosa property, we're gonna add, we're working on an outdoor gym, but like a lumberjack, like a lumberjack get swole kind of gym. So think like your dumbbells are gonna be metal with like wood on both sides, and that's gonna be your your weights, which I don't know if I've seen that anywhere else. So I'm it's it's a bit quirky, but I'm really curious to see how how that performs on the socials. Yeah. No, that could definitely be that'll be interesting to see. Yeah. And anything else, anything else that you'd be thinking about from like an operations or like positioning standpoint for your own property, whether it's anything else you'd be focusing on from a strategic positioning standpoint.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:47

Yeah. I would say like design everything with the like in mind of like how it's gonna photograph and you know come across in in videos. So, you know, as I'm designing, like I'm I'm thinking about like what that intro drone shot is gonna look like and how to make that scene like picture perfect, as well as like every you know, real is like when you feature the hot tub, like don't just plop a hot tub next to the deck and call it a day. Think about like how do you make that scene look so picturesque and just like enchanting calling somebody's name and do that with every amenity. If you can do that and just really think about everything like through the lens of, you know, like a content creator, that really helps. And then also just the the guest experience is if you're you know spending money on marketing and getting people in, having a leaky faucet, so not offering a great experience or re-marketing is you know, you're just gonna get so much more value and increase your LTV to be able to spend more if you're getting a lot more repeat bookings and people are you know raving about the experience. So I think you know, investing in like little details like the branded robes and and stuff, like all of that will be worth it. Love it.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:57

We got branded robes at the outpost. We're working on some for Ponderosa too. So yeah, I love it.

Hidden Gems Platform And Final Advice

SPEAKER_02 1:17:04

And what's next for you? Like what what what does the future hold for Dustin Baker for Hidden Gem? You know, what what's next in that one five-year time horizon?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:15

Yeah, actually, we're taking on a really cool project. So we're building a platform for experiential stays. So unique, experiential. Essentially, the platform is gonna be like hidden gems. So we're gonna feature all of our clients on there. We're gonna feature any other cool stays that you know we connect with and who apply to like, you know, work with us. It will be limited to like the experiential side, but the whole platform is going to essentially be to help more patronate travelers discover hidden gems. But each brand is gonna be able to actually brand their listing pages and their landing pages. So it won't be like you know, OTAs where you're not allowed to have your logo or anything or your colors. Like we're gonna give that flexibility. We're also gonna direct all the traffic to people's websites. So it'll think a bit more of like a discovery and wish list site where you can like wish list or like people could wish list their you know anniversary trips that they're dreaming about or you know, make group plans, things like that for hidden gems that they eventually want to book direct, like not book through OTAs like Airbnb and Booker.com. So yeah, wish list for direct booking stays. That when you go to book, it'll link to the website. So everybody who features will just benefit from the brand growth that we can you know generate by just helping more passionate travelers connect with brands directly and book direct.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:40

What a concept! An OTA that's actually focused on helping its customers. Yeah. I think you might have something there. Yeah. Um, it's a great name, too. I love it. I love it. Well, that's super exciting. I mean, I know you have like if you go to Dustin's website and look at his client list, he's helping some of the coolest projects in the country. A lot of friends of the show as well. And yeah, I'm super optimistic about what you guys are going to be able to accomplish. Any asks of the audience, ways for them to get in touch with you, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:15

Yeah, I mean, if you want to check out any of our work, you could follow our social media page, hidden gem.stays. You'll see a lot of our clients' content posting, and you can check out their, you know, everything they're doing, or you can learn more on our website, like just hidden gem.media, and apply to book a call if you're interested, or just you know, check out the clients and cherry pick strategies, things like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:37

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Dustin, well, you're a wealth of information, and I'm excited for our continued partnership. And maybe we'll have you back on in like nine months and we'll do a check in on how things are going with with our properties and do like a deep dive. Yeah, thank you so much.