You're listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

Are you ready to master your marketing so you can ditch your reliance on the online agents and grow your direct bookings?

I'll be sharing with you exactly what it takes to grow your direct bookings and the simple marketing steps to get more profit in your pocket.

Hello, and a very warm welcome to the five final episode of this Get Fully Booked podcast, season six.

It has flown by and today to finish off, I have a real cracker of an episode for you.

I'm your host, Sarah Orchard, and I'm delighted to welcome a guest who is one of my marketing club members and has made massive strides with his marketing and direct bookings in the last two years, Joe Marshall.

Joe's results are impressive and I feel there is something fundamental at the heart of his success that I've asked him to share with us all today.

And it's all about marketing insights.

Welcome to the podcast, Jo.

Hello.

Yes, thank you for having me on.

Yeah, it's great to have you here today.

So let's start, I think, with a quick intro and really for the listeners, give them a little bit of background on your business and what you do.

Okay.

So we have a farm called Prospect House Farm.

I'm a heated engineer, so I know nothing about what we were getting ourselves into with marketing accommodation and stuff.

But, yeah, we bought the farm back then with the vision of living the good life and all that sort of stuff.

And probably, as with everybody, we have to keep a fair amount of money coming in to keep the place going.

So we opened up a small campsite in the first summer that we were here, which has gone from five pitches now up to 27 pitches with seven.

Well, five campervan pitches, four with electric hookup.

And we also started off with one sort of glamping cabin in that first winter, and it sort of just all grew from there, really.

And the more we did, the better we got doing it and.

And the more we sort of fell in love with doing it and we got another cabin.

And we've got two more cabins coming at the end of September.

Yeah, you're beating people off with a stick because your marketing is doing such a good job.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

And it's a great position to be in and to have that demand, but, you know, you have a lot keeping you busy because You've obviously got the campsite.

You've also.

Which you didn't talk about.

You've got a plant nursery, obviously you've got the farm and you've got a holiday let as well.

Yeah, so our house that we moved out of, we kept that as a holiday let.

So that's like a little three bedroom semi detached house down in the village that is not doing brilliantly but we keep it ticking over at the moment until we, we've got some more time to focus on it.

And yeah, we have like a plant nursery on site, sort of little garden center sort of thing that we open a couple of days a week.

We do a lot of bedding plants and hanging baskets for local businesses and things.

So we do have a lot going on.

My wife Kimberly runs a livery yard with all the horses and things and.

Yeah, so there's all sorts going on.

There's always something going on.

Very busy, super busy.

I mean I know obviously I'm an equestrian myself and I know how time consuming horses are.

So she's got a whole yard full of them so I can imag that very much keeps, keeps her busy.

So.

Yeah, so a couple of years.

Just over a couple years.

When did I.

When did I join the club?

I think you joined because I think you joined the club.

Did you join boot camp first?

I can't remember now.

I think it was possibly you joined bootcamp first and then you came into my marketing club.

But at the time you were really reliant on OTAs.

So you had a big percentage of your bookings coming from that platform rather than direct.

What percentages roughly were you at do you think?

From memory?

I couldn't remember the numbers.

Well, when, yeah, when we started out, things move so quick.

We're buying the farm.

There was like a year build up to buying the farm and all the, the, the carry on that went without financing it all and, and you know, mortgages and stuff that we just didn't know what we were getting ourselves into.

So we put the first cabin in and we had a, a little very basic website and then jumped into booking.com and Airbnb and some friends of ours showed us the sort of way with them online travel agent systems and we were.

It was more or less to start with it was 100% OTA bookings it moved off to like 80% within the first year, so we were like 20% direct bookings, but we just couldn't move that, that needle the other way.

It was so sort of difficult, but we had no background in it.

We knew nothing about, you know, anything really.

And a frantic search over the year on, you know, trying to find out things on the Internet about it all.

And I think, I think, I think you replied to one of my posts on one of the Facebook groups.

Yes.

And then, and then I think I downloaded some sort of free social media course that you did or something like that.

Yes, it was a two hour.

I've got a two hour social media master class, which I think you probably.

Yeah, downloaded that.

Yeah.

And then it was.

I'm sure I joined the club first and then did boot camp, I think, and.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we've, we've gone from like 80 OTAs, 20% direct and flipped it the other way, if not a bit more.

So as it stands today, 20, 26, we're like 80% plus direct bookings at 90 to 96% occupancy.

You know, like, and it's great when we do our little download onto Xero, you know, the accounting software every month, because some months you have to put in the Airbnb bookings.

I think for the last two months, I haven't planned.

Ian, that's fantastic.

That's a good feeling.

It is, yeah.

Yeah, it's a good feeling.

And I think we still, we use them, don't get me wrong, like we had.

We have a few gaps now and again that crop up due to cancellations and things, and they serve a purpose.

But the, the.

Yeah, we've ditched booking.com completely.

That's gone now.

And like, Airbnb switched off at the moment, it's just on hold until we need it.

So, yeah, and I think, you know, you know me, I'm not a complete OTA basher and I think, you know, there are people that sort of say, you know, you shouldn't be using the OTAs at all.

And I think the reality is that, particularly like what you've just described, when you start in the industry and you've got no background and you're trying to get, you know, we all invest a lot of time, money, you know, blood, sweat and tears into building our, you know, whether it's a glamping business or, you know, renovating a cottage or whatever it is, and you go live, you need it to start bringing in bookings quickly.

And that's what those platforms give you.

And I think what's been so impressive and why I asked you to come onto the podcast and chat with everyone today is because you have very much realized, you know, where you maybe had some weaknesses and you didn't have the knowledge, and you've gone and sought the knowledge out.

And then the thing for me is you've applied it and you've actually done the work and you have made.

I think that's why you've made these massive strides.

And I think also because we're going to come on to talk about the fact that you, you know, your numbers and you actually really understand your, you know, you've made a real effort to really understand your business and understand, like, where your guests come from.

And you focus your activity then on the things that have made a difference.

So you're making decisions based on, you know, information.

So that leads quite nicely onto my.

My next question, which is, you know, you have been working really hard on getting better marketing insights so that you could make the right marketing decisions.

And I know you love your metrics, so I think you're going to like this bit, but tell us about what metrics you monitor on a weekly monthly basis in the business and why.

Yeah, so I probably get a bit obsessed with it all, but I think it's sort of in relation to the stress of running a business, the stress of having such a massive overhead that we've got.

And I sort of really need to know sometimes day to day that, you know, money's coming in, bookings are still coming in, and it's sort of.

It's difficult to lose sight of a lot of stuff when, you know, you're busy all day long and you just want to put your finger on a piece of information.

Like, you know, particularly with a campsite, because there's so many bookings coming, you know, hundreds of bookings come in.

You know, are we ahead of last year?

You know, is August this year the same as August last year?

How long is it taking for people to book?

Because, like, we're camping, the weather has a lot of effect on it.

Each year is different.

So I monitor so much stuff.

But the difficulty with, like, our booking system and stuff, and I don't know how it is for other people, is there's loads of data in it, but it doesn't present it very well, and nor does it sort of let you make any decisions from it.

And you can go onto it and you can spend a lot of time downloading sort of like the raw data Processing it all into a way that makes sense to you.

And it was sort of born of that repeating, repeating, repeating the same thing over and over again, daily, weekly, or whenever I was doing it.

And I spent a lot of time building up sort of little dashboards on Excel and different programs to try and make my life easier.

And it one day just turned into a monster task.

And I ended up building this sort of massive live dashboard thing that imports data from everywhere.

And like from Google Analytics, from mailchimp, from our booking system, we run quite a lot of sort of other feedback forms for people who are camping to try and find out more and more information about the customer journey.

And it collates all that data and then just on one simple sheet gives me things like an average nightly rate or a year to year, month to month performance.

Which channels working better, whether or not it's social media or Google or, you know, on which social media channels working better?

Is it Tick Tock, Instagram, Facebook?

Is it a Facebook ad?

Is it an Instagram ad where all these bookings have come from?

And the sort of, the more you data you collect and the more you process it, the more gaps that you see.

So you try and then it's like a challenge to try and get that data off people or coming up with a bit of a novel way to find out, well, you know, how did you find us and where did that booking come from?

But and it's also getting that information quite quickly as well because, you know, if somebody books six months in advance, you may be waiting six months for that piece of information when you want it today, to sort of advise you on what decisions to make today or where to spend your money.

So yes, I spent a lot of time doing that and like one big, big one at the moment is just the average nightly rate is one, one that we're quite focused on because when you look at it across the year, it's easy to say peak sort of season that you're getting a high average night, average night for that month.

But across the year it might be quite low.

So knowing them figures, it's sort of also maximizing because we're thinking about expanding, but at the same time we should be expanding what we've already got or making it getting more profit out of what we've already got before, you know, putting in additional accommodation.

So having having them figures, I can, I can see that and, and make decisions quite quickly on, on sort of where to spend our marketing budget, really.

Yeah, I think that's an excellent point about you Know, you've got more demand now than you can sort of fulfill in terms of particularly obviously, the glamping, the two glamping cabins.

So I think, you know, you're so spot on about, you know, understanding your average nightly rate, because once you've sold it, you've sold it.

And if you get a month down the line and go, you know, a, we really could have put that price up or we should have put that price up, because actually, when I look at the average we needed to, it's, you know, it's.

You can't sell it again and, you know, you're running at such a high occupancy that you need to be able to, you know, leverage it.

So I think that's a really valid point.

And also, you know, not getting to the end of the year and going well, I spent all that money on that particular marketing activity, and actually, I don't know whether it worked or get to the end of the year and then think, actually it didn't work at all.

But I just still kept plowing the money into the meta ads or whatever it was for a listing.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, Facebook ads, you know, once upon a time, we were pumping loads of money into that and it wasn't working.

And then, like, through conversations with you about where my sort of bottlenecks were, particularly with my time, we, you know, we got a social media manager and suddenly, you know, that that's, you know, taken off massively.

But at the same time, you don't want all your eggs in one basket.

With Airbnb, if Airbnb, when we were 80% direct with Airbnb, if Airbnb crashed tomorrow, we wouldn't have had a business, would we?

So.

No.

Exactly.

And it's a very valid point about social media, a recognizing where you're spending a lot of your time.

But I know when we looked at our sources of business, so we looked back, we always look back at the sort of.

We do it quarterly, but we also look at the whole year.

And actually our biggest source of book at 37% is still Google.

So, you know, me as a business owner and us, maybe all of us behaving a bit more like CEOs in our business.

It's like, where are we spending our time?

And probably find most hosts are, apart from the operational tasks and having to do that, they're spending most of their marketing effort on social media.

And yet when you look at it and when I look at people's analytics, because obviously I look at a lot of different Businesses across hospitality and particularly obviously accommodation, short term rentals.

Most people get between 10 and 20% of their website traffic from social and that's not their bookings.

When I actually look at the percentage of my bookings, it's, you know, across Instagram, TikTok, it's probably about 7 to 9% for each one of the total.

So if you're spending 90% of your free time, like your marketing time, when you can invest your time in marketing on say Instagram but you're not getting the bookings, it, it just highlights that, doesn't it?

And I think you've been really savvy to sort of work out that actually your time is best spent being able to take that little step back and actually paying for someone else's expertise to do some of the social media, which we need to do, but not get sucked into spending hours on it and not being able to, you know, manage the business proactively, which is what you're doing.

And it was the same thing with a website when, you know, that's why I got you to project, manage it all and bring together them people, you know, a web developer, somebody do the copywriting, the photography and you know, bring it all together.

Anyway, I was on a call with somebody else earlier who'd been on our website and even they said it really shows the work that's gone into, you know, producing that very professional, slick website that gets across our brand to the.

And I think, you know, ultimately we shouldn't underestimate the, you know, I always drone on about it, but the impact of our websites and so many hosts I meet are trying to, you know, DIY it and do it themselves.

And you know, I've designed about 20 websites in my marketing career and I'm not a web developer and it shows.

I actually designed the first Hideout website for our, the Hudnall's Hideout.

And now I've got a new website which was done by a professional, same person who did your website.

And actually it's so much better.

So I think, you know, we have to know what we're good at.

And for me, I mean ours was like, when you look back, it was, it was, it was not good.

Yeah, I mean, and I don't think that's a criticism of people.

And I think, you know, it's always a hard conversation when I do like one to one sessions, like strategy sessions with a client and I have to sort of say, you know, the website's not up to scratch and you know, these are the areas that it needs to improve on.

And it's hard because you don't, you know, when people have done it themselves but you know, we're not web developers and you know, even when people say, well, I quite like doing it, and it's a bit like, yeah, you might quite like doing it, but actually it's probably going to take up three to five times the amount of time that a professional will do it.

Same with social media.

You know, someone who does it day in, day out, understands the platforms, likes it, likes doing it, is going to do a better job than us trying to be the master of everything.

And although I teach people to do that in my marketing club, if they want to learn it, obviously I'm going to help people do the best job they can.

But I think there are times when, as your business grows, which yours has and become more successful, that you can make decisions to refocus your energy and your time.

So we've talked a little bit about how these metrics have helped you make better marketing decisions.

But specifically, you know, what have the insights shown you?

What have been the biggest?

Maybe like the aha moments that made you go, I would never have thought that or why am I doing that?

Well, I think it, for me it takes out all the guesswork of it all and it seem where our bookings sort of actually come from and where the best channel is to focus on.

But yeah, I mean the biggest thing is it stops me stressing about how the business is performing all the time and yeah, just where to focus things really.

Yeah, because like you say, otherwise it's guesswork, isn't it?

And again, when I, when I did recently a podcast episode about sort of website traffic and again, whenever I have a conversation with a new client or even on our help desks in a club, it's a sort of, you know, how much website traffic do you get?

And people sort of go, I don't know.

And if we think about all the activities that we're putting in place, it's like, you know, it's, it would be good to know that and you know, that's just one, one of the metrics and like you say, it takes away all of the, all of the guesswork.

So if you had a top tip for someone who is listening today and they know that they don't know their numbers, they don't know their sort of marketing metrics and their insights, what maybe, what's your top tip for what they should focus on?

What would help another owner?

Well, you saw you do really need to spend Some time on it.

And I mean, I.

You've made me maybe sound out like I know what I'm doing, but there was a time that I didn't know what I was doing and looking on stuff like Google Analytics, you know, you go onto it and it's just, it's just a load of gobbledygook.

And I remember one thing, you know, Zoe saying to me that the web developer was, it might look like it at the moment, but just keep doing it, go on to it weekly, go onto it monthly, make a habit of doing it, and every time, you know, raise a question like, you know, how do I find out, you know, how many people came from Instagram or something and try to find just that one piece of information.

And then once you find that, it becomes easier to find other bits of information.

But it's, you know, one thing's like leveraging the tools that we have now and one of them is AI.

You know, if you don't know, ask AI and it magically will tell you.

And the amounts of times.

What to look at.

Yeah, the amounts of times I've got stuck on Google Analytics and just taking a screenshot of the, you know, your desktop screen, uploaded it onto AI and it can help explain it, but you've got to know them and like working out sort of certain things.

And it was, again, one thing you said very early on was one of them was your cost per stay, you know, really working out exactly how much your business costs to run, even like down to the cleaning products and the tea bags and all that sort of stuff that go in.

And it all makes a difference.

But once you know that, you know, you push forward and.

Yeah, which is why, you know, in the, in the.

Yeah, in the club, we've got a pricing strategy training because again, it's.

It's one of those things like you say that people do not sit.

And it's one of the first things I did actually, when we were sort of thinking, how are we going to price the hideout?

Yes.

We'd done research and looked at other tree houses of a similar sort of standard and looked at the market.

But we also had to understand our costs.

So it was like, let's write down, you know, the cleaning, laundry, all of the costs associated with every single stay.

So we know what that figure looks like.

And actually it's quite shocking when you do it and you start adding everything up.

And I think a lot of owners are doing it from gut feel.

And I did work with one client who, when she looked at her actual cost of a stay, she basically was pricing under what it was costing her.

So when she factored everything in, she was like, I'm not making any money.

And, you know, she was thinking, I need to discount to get bookings in.

And I'm like, well, if you do that, you're probably going to need to trim your changeover costs because otherwise you're, you know, you're not, maybe you can't move the price too far north, but actually you're not going to make any money.

And you're doing this as charity.

Yeah, no, that's what we did very early on when, you know, particularly with that OTA stuff.

And a lot of that stuff drives that discount buyer, last minute sort of price thing.

You know, Airbnb is full of tools to give you percent discounts and nightly discount rates and all that stuff.

Booking.com, i think, relies on it.

You have a one night price and then a seven night price and all that stuff.

And it's just reliant on volume, low price, high occupancy and it doesn't work.

And I remember, you know, saying to you, once upon a time was like sick to death of discounting to get bookings in.

And suddenly we've changed it the other way where we start saying, you know, no, no, the price is the price.

That's, that's.

Yeah.

And you're even putting the price up because you, because you've got people knocking down your door to come and stay.

So it's like you can actually then put the price up.

And that's sort of how we started.

Obviously we didn't start at the price point that we're at now.

We understood our costs, but then we also could see the demand.

So we put the price up and it's supply and demand, you know, And I think people and I, and I think another key thing that I come across very often is also your own perceptions of price.

And that's where data is actually so important.

Because if you've analyzed the market, you know your costs, you can make decisions that are good commercial decisions rather than, you know, we're not our ideal guests for our tree house.

We don't typically go and stay in places that are like 500 quid a night, but that we're not our ideal guest.

And we could think, well, I'm not pricing it.

I had a lady I was talking to, she was like, well, I can't price my shepherd's huts at that price.

And it's like, well, why not?

And she's like, well, I wouldn't pay that.

It's like, but you're not necessarily your ideal guest.

So all having all that insight, knowing where your customers are coming from, even just watching them turn up and see what cars they turn up in and you know, you see what shopping they've bought and you know, what clothing they wear, it's like you get a feel for, you know, it's all marketing insights, you know, and where they go and eat when they stay here tells us about how much disposable income they've got.

You know, and you start, along with the other data that you get from things like Google Analytics and your booking systems, you start to build that profile so you've got a much better idea of, you know, where your business is coming from and who the people are that are staying with you.

It's not a hobby, is it?

At the end of the day it is a business and you've got to sort of run it like that.

Yeah,.

Getting to know your numbers is, it's daunting and it can be flipping boring as well.

But if you don't know it, then you just don't know what your business is doing.

Yeah, you're sort of blowing in the wind, aren't you?

Success, isn't it?

Really?

But yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't have much more advice I don't think to give on that.

But no, yeah, no, it's been really helpful, Joe.

And I think, you know, that the.

AI thing is good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

A good tip.

Yeah.

Because Google, Google Analytics, GA4IS, is very complicated and we've got some trainings in the club that help with that.

But ultimately you're going to want different reports for your own business and you know, it's live data.

And also, you know, as business owners we probably don't want to become a complete data analyst.

And like you say, it can be a bit flipping boring.

You know, you don't necessarily.

So if you can use AI to sort of help you interrogate it or use resources like the marketing club and things like our help desk to, you know, to look at the numbers and give you insights and also to benchmark yourself against like other businesses because then you get the benefit of, you know, that knowledge and knowing like, is that a good figure?

So is that conversion rate on my website a good figure?

How does that, you know, do my email open rates compare favorably with other people's and my click through rates?

And.

That's why I ended up building that dashboard because it was, I got so sick to death of doing the same thing every time.

I wanted to know, you know, how many bookings have we got?

What's the average nightly rate?

It was just repeat, repeat at length.

Them tasks of sorting data out, collating it all, marrying it up to other systems.

So that's why I spent a lot of time, you know, building that little program that just took all that pain away.

And I can, I can do like a review whenever I want, download four pieces of data, press two buttons and it tells me everything.

You're gonna, you're gonna have people knocking on your door to ask you all about that.

Because we all want that in our business.

It's like, you know, I think that's the thing.

We have so many disparate systems which you touched on.

You know, we've got like, got email marketing software, so it might be Mailchimp.

You've got a booking system, you've got WordPress with your website, you've got Google Analytics 4, you know, GA4.

We've got so many disparate data sources that not everything is all in one place.

So I suppose it's understanding what data you need and then like you say, trying to get it all into, you.

Know, organized in different ways as well, isn't it?

One tells you one thing and one tells you another thing and trying to marry them up to each other.

Yeah, exactly.

And all these booking systems are all different as well.

So thank you for sharing those tips today.

And on a fun.

I've got a fun question for you at the end.

So, and we're asking all of my host, guests, guests on the podcast to give me this.

But if, if you had a famous guest or celebrity come to stay, who would it be?

It's a good one.

So our tagline or sort of branding line is the art of being lazy.

And I couldn't think of someone lazy enough to come and stay, but one person that I just, I've always loved since I watched all these movies when we were kids and that is Jim Carrey.

Yeah.

So like, like when he was Ace Venture Pet Detective.

I think that would make some of the best reels and things for social media, give you lots of social content.

So yeah, if Jim, if you're listening,.

Yeah, you'd be welcome to come and have a stay.

And he's not.

And Joe's not implying that you're lazy, but thank you for sharing that, that's been brilliant and thank you for being on the podcast today.

Yeah, thank you and thank you to everyone for listening in.

If you enjoyed this episode.

You know what I'd love you to do?

I'd love it if you could leave me a review, because you know how much us hosts love those five star reviews.

So that's a wrap on season six of the podcast.

I'll be back in the autumn with season seven.

And if you have a hot topic marketing topic, preferably that you'd like me to cover, do drop me a DM or head over to Instagram etfullybooked and let me know.

Until next time.

Bye for now.

Thank you for listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

If you want to see if you are ready to ditch the likes of Airbnb and grow your direct bookings, put your business to the test with my free Direct Booking Roadmap quiz.

Head to my website, get fully booked.com quiz and let's get you more direct bookings and more profits in your pocket.