[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you are 100% reliant on those OTAs, you don't really own a business. The OTA owns your business. Right. Like you might own a property or a contract with a property owner, but you don't actually own the business if you're completely reliant on them. And that can be scary for property owners and managers to recognize that they're completely reliant on these OTAs. And if something happens there, their business could be gone the next day.
And you don't have to live that way. You don't have to live in that fear. There are clues in your business that that can help us build something out so that you can have a little bit more security in what you're doing.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Hey, y'.
[00:00:45] Speaker C: All.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Welcome back to an episode of the Short Term Show. As always, I'm your host, Avery Carle, and today we have a very cool guest named Chantal Hammond. She is the founder of Strategy Square, which is a marketing company that helps small businesses. Particularly interesting to you guys, short term rental hosts who might want to do some marketing for your direct booking website. So we're going to have a conversation with her today.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: How's it going, Shantel?
[00:01:10] Speaker C: It's going good.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:13] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks so much for coming on. Let's start by just telling our audience a little bit about you, how you got into this and what you do.
[00:01:22] Speaker C: Yeah. So like you said, I'm the founder
[00:01:24] Speaker A: of Strategy Square and I help short term rental owners and property managers strategically grow their businesses.
So I get to help them uncover the strategy that's already like hiding in their business so that they can build towards their goals.
I do that by helping them read the clues that are already there and helping them see those things that I think are really easy for us to overlook because those tell them exactly what they need to be doing next to grow.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: Awesome. Love that. So how does that translate over to maybe a short term rental owner, host or property management company?
[00:02:05] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it really translates by
[00:02:10] Speaker A: showing people that success leaves clues.
And even if you've gotten started on
[00:02:16] Speaker C: an OTA and you're.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: You're having some success over there, as long as you're having any kind of success with your properties, with your portfolio,
[00:02:26] Speaker C: there's clues there that can help you
[00:02:28] Speaker A: build outside of those OTAs and help you understand what you can be doing so that you're not completely reliant on the OTAs for your business, which is really important because if you are 100% reliant on those OTAs, you don't really own a business. The OTA owns your business. Right. Like you might own a property or a, a contract with a property owner, but you don't actually own the business if you're completely reliant on them. And that can be scary for property owners and managers to recognize that they're completely reliant on these OTAs. And if something happens there, their business could be gone the next day.
And you don't have to live that way. You don't have to live in that fear. There are clues in your business that are, that can help us build something out so that you can have a little bit more security in what you're doing.
[00:03:18] Speaker B: Awesome. Love that. I think we all, all the listeners understand for sure the value of having a direct booking website and being able to get clients, customers to come directly to them. So what are some ways that you, your company can kind of help with getting some marketing done, driving some leads to those direct booking websites?
[00:03:40] Speaker C: Yeah, there's a lot of ways, there's
[00:03:43] Speaker A: a lot of tactics that we can leverage.
[00:03:45] Speaker C: Right.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: I like to talk about pulling different levers and helping people understand that there's, there's hundreds of levers out there that we can pull.
But in terms of which ones are the right ones for people to get more direct bookings, again, that's going to depend on the success clues that are already in your business, which is going to be different from one property owner to another, depending on the type of property, the market, the different locations and the type of guests that are staying at your property and what they're looking for.
[00:04:16] Speaker C: So I always struggle, I don't struggle.
[00:04:18] Speaker A: I always struggle knowing which ones to start with. When people ask me, well, what can we do? That's kind of a blanket statement. So I'm going to kind of, if it's okay, give you an example. Yeah, this is very specific from one specific direction.
Okay.
So what I'm seeing is a lot of owners are, are kind of seeing one property. For example, maybe somebody's got a property that they've set up that is getting 60% direct bookings.
And one of the levers that they're pulling is maybe social media marketing.
What happens frequently is I see a lot of property owners are thinking, oh, well, I have to get into social media. Social media is the secret to increasing my direct booking. So what, what happens in that case is we see a lot of property managers, property owners that are chasing the success that they're seeing other people achieve.
And when they're doing that, they're actually just chasing one tactic to another to another, and they're not even paying attention to their own business.
What we need to do is take a look at your own business. So if you're chasing tactics, it often looks like, oh, that didn't work.
Now I'm frustrated. That person must have been being dishonest with me.
[00:05:41] Speaker C: And social media is just a lie.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Or maybe they just wanted me to, to pay them to figure out how to do this. But it doesn't work. That all is avoidable if we start with our own business and start with our own property and our own portfolios and stop looking at what other people are doing.
[00:05:59] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. So they're ignoring their own clues, their own signals. Because. And I call that, I mean, everybody calls it, it's the shiny red ball syndrome, right? Like, we see something that's working and we think, oh, do it that way. And I see it with social media, I see it with paid ads, I see it with, right now, we're seeing it like crazy with switching tools and softwares and like, oh, if I can just implement the right software in my business, everything's going to change overnight. And that's not real life. That's, that's all shiny red ball syndrome, putting on different hats.
So sometimes, but, but here, even sometimes the shiny red ball kind of works.
[00:06:38] Speaker C: Like, they'll, they'll see it start working
[00:06:41] Speaker A: in their business and they're convinced.
For example, I see people that are like, oh, if I can get more followers on my social media page, then I'll get more bookings. And so they get really sidetracked with meth tactics and tools and methods that they can use to get more followers or more views. And they'll post content that's getting them a ton of views, but at the end of the day, they're not getting any more bookings, they're not getting any more, you know, occupancy rate. Their occupancy rate isn't going up. Their average nightly rates aren't going up. Things like their bottom line isn't changing. So sometimes even our metrics that we're chasing can be the shiny red ball. So we just have to be aware of that and be careful that we're not chasing a shiny red ball and instead turning to our avatars, our guest avatars, what is it that actually we're trying to achieve in our business? Are we trying to increase the average nightly rate? Are we trying to increase occupancy rates? What is the thing that we really want to improve and then dig in on our own business to find those clues.
One thing again that I'm seeing like crazy. I mentioned tools that people are chasing tools specifically with the advent of all the AI shifts, people are chasing AI tools like crazy. And I'm not saying they shouldn't, I think they should be.
But it can be really distracting and detrimental to us and waste a lot of time, energy, resources, money if we just get stuck in this loop of chasing tools or tactics or methods.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Yeah, totally agree with that.
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[00:09:05] Speaker B: so what are some things when they're digging into their business that might be those things that are jumping out that they should be focusing on rather than chasing? Oh, what are people doing with AI? I need to get more social media followers. I need to do all these craz things. So when they're looking in their business, what should they be looking for?
[00:09:22] Speaker C: Good question. I love that one because that's so so I find that the most traction can be gained from really digging in on your guest avatar. And if you're a property manager and you're managing different clients properties across different markets, you're going to have to know multiple guest avatars. But understanding and you hear this in like the design space as well, right? Like understanding what it is that is bringing people to your area, why they're coming, why they're staying, what they're passionate about, what matters to them, and then letting that influence your decisions. So again we see it in design where people take a look at what's bringing their guests to the area, what amenities they're going to, they're willing to pay extra for, what things might attract longer staying guests. And those are things that we implement in the design of a property. The same is true with marketing. Like all of the things that are attracting your guests to your area are important for you to understand so that you can communicate that you have what they are looking for.
So the most important place for us to dive in is that guest avatar in our marketing M for example, if I know that I have a guest that is coming to, let's say a mountain retreat area, it's off Season. Okay. Because I know that a lot of us, like, have guests that come to these mountain towns for skiing or winter recreation. But what, what do we do to get them there in the off season?
So if we know that they're coming to the mountains in the off season, but they're not going to be coming to play and recreate the same as they would in the winter months, what might they be looking for? Well, maybe that guest is looking to unplug and connect with nature and get away from the hustle and bustle of the crazy of summer. Right. Summer can be really intense and crazy for a lot of people. So that helps us understand. Okay, well, we need maybe to create our space in such a way that feels relaxing and cozy.
But what does that mean in our marketing? What does that mean for our messaging? That means that we need to make sure that we understand the emotion that they're coming for and that in those summer months, in those off season months, anything that we're putting out there is reflecting what they're coming for, what they're chasing.
So it could be something like you and me. You know, this is a really big trend that I see in the marketing space, especially the social media space for escapes is just simple hooks like you and me in the weekend, no WI fi, you know, stuff like that. Just like completely signaling, like, hey, you can come here and unplug and get away from it all. This is a place where you can really check off, get off the grid, check out, and not be pulled into whatever other tasks that you need to be doing.
You understand that that's the messaging angle you need to take. If you understand that that's why your guest is coming. Just like you understand, oh, I need to put in a hot tub or a sauna because these people are coming here for rejuvenation.
Well, yeah, that can tell you what amenities to pull, but it can also tell you what messaging to lean into.
So, and I know it's really easy for us to say messaging in the social media world, but messaging matters on your website. It matters in your listing descriptions, it matters in your places that you're choosing to list, your property, maybe, maybe local partners and events that you can get associated with for network marketing or collaborative marketing efforts, all of that matters. But it's all directed from that guest experience and understanding your avatar. Once we understand them, we start to understand what levers we need to start pulling for our business instead of looking at all the different levers that other people are pulling for theirs because they've done that work to understand what levers will work for them. And you need to do the same level of work.
[00:13:36] Speaker B: So run your race, stop looking at what everybody else is doing. And I totally agree too with the, who are people that, that want to come here and, and leaning on that with your content. So if you're trying to attract families, maybe post a video that says or that's, you know, depicting a family doing active, whatever activity is in your market. Let's say you're a beach market family running around on the beach or sitting on the porch overlooking the beach rather than leaning on 5 bedroom, 4 bath, perfect for families. Like people aren't going to click on that. They want to click on the thing that looks like the thing they want to do. They're not. When you're just say describing your property, that's boring. You have to put them in the property experience, give them the FOMO, make them want to stay there. Right?
[00:14:28] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, 100%. And when you the key with like the same with your guest day and designing a property. Remember people are coming to, they're chasing an emotion, they're chasing an experience, a feeling that they're trying to create in their lives. If that's unplugging, if that's family connection, whatever it is, these are all human emotions that we're chasing.
And at the end of the day, your marketing is rooted in human emotion. And so you have to understand the emotions and the feelings that they're looking for so that you can better communicate that you're creating those for them.
And your words and everything that you pick in your marketing matters because you need to give them a teaser of that feeling in your content or in your collaboration campaigns with other people. Everything needs to be hinting towards that feeling. Which is one of the reasons that AI can be a little bit of a hindrance because AI, as awesome as it is, doesn't understand and can't quite convey that human emotion the same way that we can. It can get the words and dial them in. But there's, there's other parts to it that I call it a trickle down effect. When we really understand an emotion and we understand our guests emotion, it trickles down through us. When we're communicating that emotion at multiple, through multiple senses like sight and, and sound and words. Right.
That trickles down through us, through our content and into the receiver of it. And when you do that really well, that's when you start to actually gain the leverage for, for connection which drives results in marketing.
[00:16:15] Speaker B: So we've talked a Little bit about social media and how they can leverage that and how to, how to market properly on social media rather than just describing the property.
[00:16:25] Speaker C: What else?
[00:16:26] Speaker B: When they're looking inside their business and they want to grow it to their, you know, grow their direct booking website, what else besides just social media posting? Can they, can what lever can they pull there?
[00:16:39] Speaker C: Yeah, so social media is the one that I lean to for helping people understand the concepts. It's actually a tool that I rarely recommend for property managers and, and even property owners. It's a really competitive space.
There are some properties that it can work well for, but most of them it's going to be a time, a waste of effort and resources.
So what actually tends to work better is anything that you can do to build a list.
So email marketing is really powerful if you can build the list, but the email marketing is okay. So you have to kind of picture your marketing for your direct bookings almost as a chess game. Right.
The goal is to be able to collect enough emails that then you can leverage email marketing to create direct bookings, rebookings, different things like that. And there's tools like StayFi that can really help you build that list.
[00:17:36] Speaker B: I was about to ask about that.
[00:17:38] Speaker C: Yeah, StayFi, I love StayFi. I recommend StayFi for anybody. Especially if you've got high volume properties that can host a lot of guests that's gonna, the more guests that your property can accommodate, the better. Statefi is as a tool for helping you build that email list because you can build a list quickly.
So let's just, let's stay on StayFi for just a second. Let's say you have a property that sleeps six. Okay.
That means that there's an opportunity, a potential opportunity to gather up to six email addresses from every guest that stays. If you're using Stay fi, where they have to drop their email address to get onto the WI fi for your property, obviously if you've got families, you're probably not going to collect so six email addresses. But like with young kids. But if you've got groups, like if you know again that your avatar is groups of friends that are coming for escapes and little friend getaways, then you have this opportunity to collect up to six email addresses. Well, we can take that email list and we can leverage that list with other things. For example, you can take an email list and you can upload it to meta and then create meta, can use that data to target more people like your guests. So that's one really valuable way that we can leverage an email list.
So now if you've got an email list, not only can you send rebooking invites and all of the traditional, you know, rebooking email structures that we've heard about again and again, but you can also take that list and you can build out look like audiences. You can build out, you can hand it to meta and it can just target more people that are like your guests.
And, and what I recommend for that isn't, I don't recommend that you would run ads and say something like book a stay. Okay.
The reason the OTAs work so well is because they own the search experience. Right? Like if I'm a traveler, if I'm a guest and I want to go visit Italy or something, one of the first things I do in that planning and booking experience is go search the OTAs for short term rentals that I can stay at.
That's just ingrained into the traveler experience.
You putting up ads doesn't so, so the OTAs meet the people in their actual booking process like their natural pathway. You putting up ads are very unlikely to meet people in their process when they're actually booking a trip. You can, and there are ways that we can dial it in, but that's a lot harder and more expensive. But if you create ads that are just meant to generate property awareness and, and they're meant to target people that are similar to the people that are already staying at your property, instead of trying to create ads that are tied directly to and booking in the moment, you can create a broader awareness where people are saving your property. And then when it's the time for them to actually book, they're going to pull from that and remember, and you can have some retargeting ads and things like that. So that's another way you can leverage it.
But how do we build the list in the first place besides stay fi. That's the real question. Yeah.
One thing that can really help is collaboration in your markets, like getting really creative with other businesses and other brands for you know, what events are happening in the area and how can you get your foot in the door with the event planners to become a preferred stay partner. Now that's going to be a little bit easier for people with multiple properties in the area. So boutique hotels or resorts or if you've, if you're a manager that has 30 properties in the market, like that's going to be appealing.
But coming up and creating campaigns and getting working together with them to say hey, book with our preferred partner and you'll get X, Y or Z benefit thrown in in addition to this come stay for this event.
The collaborative level is.
It's a lot more groundwork and it takes that networking effort, but it is worth so much more in the long run. Even if it's getting email addresses with the partners and being able to get on their email list for, hey, book here. And your link is dropped directly into their email blasts like, that is the most valuable thing that a lot of people in this space don't spend a lot of time doing collaboration. Guys, it's huge.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I totally agree with that because it is, you know, kind of a big bite or it feels like a big bite when people are like, oh, I really want to get booked for this event. But they are either too nervous to reach out to somebody. I think basically they are too nervous to reach out to somebody to try and partner with. And really, you don't. You can't get told no if you don't ask. The only failure is not asking the wor.
[00:22:39] Speaker C: If you're not asking, you're already getting a no. The worst thing that can happen if you don't ask or if you ask is that you get a no.
[00:22:45] Speaker B: And then you're in the same position you're already in.
[00:22:47] Speaker C: Yeah. You're no worse off by being told no. Well, just like our guests are trying to build trust with us. Right. They're trying to understand who we are. Guests that rebook with us and stay multiple times have built a high level of trust with. With property owners.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: Right.
[00:23:05] Speaker C: And managers.
And they already trust that property. They already trust that they're going to have a good experience. They already trust the locations in a good place that they're not going to get scammed. Like, there's so many levels of trust that they already have with you.
But what we frequently overlook, we get so fixated on that in the guest experience and the stay experience, which is correct. And we should. But we forget that we need to also remember that the level of trust that they maybe have with other brands and other events or people or organizations in the area is just as much of a trust signal. Hey, you should book with this person because they have an incredible property. Okay, well, I'm not even going to spend some time on the OTA looking for others because so and so said I should book here and I trust them. So I trust this.
So the network piece of this, I know it takes a lot of work and a lot of people are trying to simplify and make it as easy as possible, but in doing that, we're Missing out on some seriously lucrative opportunities for our business.
Are you familiar with costly signals?
[00:24:18] Speaker B: No.
[00:24:19] Speaker C: Okay, let's talk about costly signals for a second.
A costly signal. We're going to talk about a peacock. Okay, so like when you look at a peacock, it has this amazing, the male peacock has this amazing tail. But if you think about that tail from like the survival standpoint, it's really not very logical. Like, right, they can't navigate their environment very well. They can't get away. They, they have a harder time flying. Like, they can't fly very far anyway. They're very vulnerable. So they're, they're vulnerable to getting captured and eaten.
They can't hide all of these things like that. That tail costs them a lot. It's a very costly piece. So why do they have it?
[00:25:02] Speaker B: To attract.
[00:25:02] Speaker C: To signal. To attract mates. To attract mates. And in the evolutionary process of a peacock, the attraction of the mate was more important than the survival of the male. And so evolution has like provided these peacocks with these amazing tails, even if that means that the lifespan of a male peacock is way shorter. Because for the species as a whole, it's better for the male to have that super unlogical tail than not to.
So the reason how that ties into STRs is if you as a property manager are doing the hard work, getting out, working on the back end to strike up the relationships with the people that are creating the events that are driving people to the area. Yeah, it takes a lot of extra outside effort that maybe could be avoided by just focusing on the OTAs.
But if you're able to drum up partnerships and relationships with these people that are increasing your direct bookings by 20 or 30 or 40% because you're prioritizing that in your efforts, then what does that do to your bottom line?
The costly signal is, yeah, this takes more time to do this, but how does that extra time and effort pay off for my bottom line? And I think a lot of people don't understand that in the short term rental space we're all looking for. Like, I think a lot of people get into this space thinking, what's an easy, you know, that we fall for the lie that short term rentals are an easy, you know, passive income. And, and there's really no such thing. There's no such thing as passive income. No, there's no such thing as anything that you can do for marketing that is going to be high visibility, high engagement levels and low cost.
There's no such thing. It doesn't exist. And you can believe that that exists and try to chase that and. And want it to exist. But that's what's leading to so much Shiny Red Ball syndrome. Like we're chasing things that don't actually exist. Where the results are coming, there has to be some level of effort or cost. And that cost can be in time. It can be an energy, emotional effort and investment, or it can be in monetary means, financial cost. There's always going to be a cost.
There's no avoiding that.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: All of that makes perfect sense. And that is a great segue into the final few minutes of the show. So, Chantel, is there anything about marketing towards a direct booking website or marketing in general that you feel like our listeners could benefit from hearing that I have not asked about?
[00:27:58] Speaker C: Yeah, I think.
I think that there's an important opportunity for people to optimize their marketing now that they've never been able to experience before.
There's opportunities with AI agents and bots, but you have to do those right.
And there's an opportunity to invest extra time into your marketing efforts beyond what you ever could have before because of AI.
But you have to understand where you can hand your AI team or AI tools the mic and have them help you and what you need to be holding onto because that human emotional piece is not something that AI can replace. So I think there's a huge opportunity for that, as I know a lot of people are exploring the opportunity to optimize and make their businesses more efficient. And marketing is one of the most important levers that we can pull to do that.
[00:29:02] Speaker B: All right, and there you have it, guys. So, Chantal, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a really great show. If our listeners want to follow you on social media or learn more about your business, how can they do that?
[00:29:14] Speaker C: Yeah, I'm over on Instagram at Strategy Square.
My website, if you want to check that out, is Strategy Co.
And in both of those places, there's lots of conversation about how we can leverage and lift our marketing strategies and efforts right now.
[00:29:36] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, thank you again so much for coming on. And listeners, we'll see you next week.
