Good Morning! Welcome back to another week taking a swim in the blue ocean of landscape hotels and unique stays.
I hope you forgot your life vest because we are diving deep this week, breaking down the EXACT strategy we used to grow a Unique Stay from:
-> 0 views to 1,000,000+ views
-> 14 followers to 22,200+ followers
-> $0 in direct bookings to $35,439.29+ in direct bookings
All in 50 days.
This is our step-by-step for how you can increase your social media presence and actually start driving direct bookings.
Social media is a HUGE lift. Stop wasting your time and money with a strategy that doesn’t convert.
Hold your breath, this one is good…
Our Exact Playbook for 1M+ views and $35k+ Direct Bookings
When we signed Elk Hollow in May of this year, they had just 14 followers on their account and were driving $0 in direct bookings. This was what our first 50 days looked like with them.
Step 1: High Quality Content
Our obvious first step is to send in the calvary, aka the Oasi videography team.
Without them, there’s no videos to create content, no posts to boost and no viewers to convert into guests. Their knowledge of exactly what shots and content will perform is our foundation.
Sure, I started the Onera account on my own, posting static photos like it was still 2010 and Instagram just launched. You might be in the same boat now.
BUT, as we grew, demands on my time increased. I couldn't keep handling our social media. Building a videography team to leverage across our properties (and others) became our clear path forward.
Step 2: Spin Up Instagram Content
With the raw content in hand, our content team spun up the first 3 reels to start getting traction to the account.
Leveraging the Oasi “secret sauce” and a pinch of luck, one of these posts went viral right out of the gate (now sitting at 1.6M views). This set us up perfectly for the next steps in our process.
The first 3 reels were just the beginning. As the rest of this process plays out, our content team is consistently posting more reels to keep the organic views rolling into the account.
If you are wondering what type of content we spun up, and what content works on social media, here is the link to last week’s newsletter where I go over just that.
Step 3: Influencer Outreach
While the Oasi content team was on the hamster wheel of spinning up future posts for the property, our social media team got to work on influencer outreach.
Finding, filtering and coordinating to make sure we got the influencers that would connect most with the target audience of the property.
Collab with the wrong influencers and you can wave goodbye to an ROI.
The goal of this first influencer push was to run giveaways for the property in order to get followers and scoop up as many views as possible.
Step 4: Boosting the Top Posts
Now that we had a gauge on the momentum of the first few posts, we were ready to strategically boost them. Key word, strategically (you’ll see why in the next section).
We were looking to boost the posts that already had outperforming organic views, with the goal being profile visibility, NOT conversions.
Why profile visibility? Two reasons:
- Credibility for influencer outreach. More followers help them see we are a real business.
- Credibility for other potential followers. A higher follower count serves as social proof, encouraging others to engage with the account.
We spent $600 on boosting their posts, resulting in well over 1k followers at roughly $0.25/ follower. Not bad.
All while waiting for the influencers to show up.
Pro Tip On Boosting
We try to discourage people from boosting who don’t have a track record of making viral organic content.
If your post isn’t getting organic traction, boosting is just going to waste your marketing dollars.
Sure, it may get more eyeballs and look good on paper, but you’ll become reliant on boosting. Having to boost every post to try and get traction. Traction that doesn't convert.
Step 5: Influencer Giveaways
This was when all of the work our social team put in came to fruition. It was time for our influencer army to roll in.
We had four collabs within the first month at Elk Hollow. All of which were carefully selected by the Oasi social team.
Their giveaways resulted in:
-> 358k views
-> 17.3k comments
-> 5,000 shares
This helped us surpass the 10,000 follower threshold in the first month. Starting from just 14 followers.
Influencer Bonus Perk
Followers and giveaways are nice and all, but there’s a little-talked-about perk of influencer stays– their content.
Hosting influencers provides a dual benefit: they create their planned content, while also generating extra material for your library, saving you the cost of hiring additional videographers.
(pro tip - negotiate upfront that you can use their content after the collab and have them send you their raw video as well as the reels).
The Results
Within the first 50 days of working with Elk Hollow, this strategy resulted in:
-> $35,439.29+ in direct bookings
-> 1,000,000+ views
-> 22,200+ followers
And here are their current results after 86 days:
-> $58,300+ in direct booking revenue
-> 3,200,000+ views
-> 27,200 followers
Unique stays are perfectly positioned to dominate on Instagram. Offering unique designs, amenities and experiences that help grab the attention of future guests.
And with the right strategy, you can funnel that attention into your direct booking engine. Releasing you from the grip of Airbnb and adding 14%+ to your bottom line.
__________________________
Discouraged by your social media efforts? Looking to be our next case study?
No problem, we can help you drive 80%+ direct bookings and maximize the best booking engine in the world– social media.
Fill out an inquiry here and let’s see how we can work together.
See you guys next week!
-Ben
📸 Looking to Learn More? Check Out My Daily Content on Instagram
🎥 Listen to My Podcast on Driving $1M in Bookings from IG With Techvestor’s Taylor Jones
Ben Wolff
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