Good Morning! We’re back, and I’m feeling like I finally have a chance to breathe after working out the post-launch kinks at Onera Wimberley.
But before we fully unwind, I'm excited to dive into the Wimberley launch once more this week, sharing one final takeaway from this whirlwind experience:
Our full Onera Wimberley launch guide.
It helped us generate millions of social media views and drive so much traffic to our booking site that we crashed it. All before we even welcomed our first guests.
And in just a few minutes, you'll be able to recreate that for yourself— hopefully without crashing your booking site!
Are you ready?
I’m not going to lie to you guys and claim that I know the PERFECT pre-launch strategy for your property.
But I can show you what worked for us. Starting with why you should care.
The Onera Wimberley pre-launch campaign on our new Instagram page delivered remarkable results: over 2.8 million views, 27,700+ new followers and 26,000+ link taps.
All within the 1.5 months leading up to welcoming our first guests.
But how did we do it?
The question lingering in the back of everyone’s mind and the whole reason you’re still reading.
And I’m here to show you. With one caveat…
This stays between us. The team was hesitant to share this, but it was too good not to.
Phase 1: The Property Journey
I might even consider this “pre-pre-launch” since it technically isn’t during the actual launch of the property.
This is countless months, or even a year, before actually launching your property.
This phase was all about teasing the property on our @stayonera IG account, Onera Fredericksburg’s newsletter and even on my personal social accounts.
We posted behind the scenes reels, sent out emails to showcase the resort’s progress and I even shared founder stories throughout the build on my X, LinkedIn, podcasts and IG.
People love property journey posts and connecting with the founder of a property. For anyone new around here, I talk about this pretty religiously.
This was me putting actions behind my words.
Phase 1.5: Optimizing Our Booking Funnel
Before we could start pushing out our launch posts, we had to get our ducks in a row.
And by ducks, I mean our booking funnel.
We couldn't have posts generating millions of views without a strong booking funnel to drive that traffic to.
This actually wasn't even part of our launch plan until we were adding Wimberley to the Onera website and noticed a few bottlenecks that could be improved.
So, we went to the drawing board and rethought our guest booking journey. Fewer clicks required to book, more engaging pages, and most importantly better conversion rates.
Well, at least that was the idea…
Turns out it wasn't perfect. Our first viral collab (which I'll get to in a second) actually crashed our booking site before we could work through all the issues.
Phase 2: Two Months Prior to Launch
The end of construction was in sight and we could finally start trickling more content onto the Onera Wimberley page.
As the units neared completion, the Oasi video team hit the road to capture some content.
For the first time, potential guests could start picturing what their future stay could look like: the units, the views and the amenities were all coming together for their Instagram debut.
But it was our first post on the account and we had to get people to care.
So, we ran a giveaway.
Why? This gave people both a debut of the property as well as a reason to follow, engage and start getting excited about what was to come.
We collabed with the Onera Fredericksburg page, posted two reels highlighting the giveaway and generated over 120,000 views on the brand new account.
We decided to make this a new account to simplify the guest journey. They see a Wimberley post, click the link in our bio and get taken directly to the Wimberley booking page.
As opposed to combining the accounts and the guest having to determine which property to book after clicking the link. This would’ve dramatically reduced conversion rates.
The important aspects of these first reels:
✅ Minimal onscreen text
✅ Giveaway details had to be in the caption
✅ IG reel, not a static post
✅ Called out the location in relation to a major metro
We tweaked our usual post format to highlight the giveaway and pique potential guests' interest, minimizing on-screen text to avoid distraction.
And before these posts had even gone up, the team was putting together a list of people who would be key to our launch– influencers.
Phase 3: Welcoming the Influencers
The behind the scenes work of securing the perfect influencers might have been one of the most important steps in Onera Wimberley’s pre-launch success.
We carefully selected influencers based on two factors: their audience's alignment with our target demographic and their ability to generate meaningful engagement for Onera Wimberley.
We could have cut corners and went with the cheapest influencers, or any “easy to get” influencer. But when does cutting corners ever work out?
It doesn't. Not in development and definitely not on social media.
Once we had the perfect list of influencers, we had to do the most important task– coordinating them.
The first few accounts we worked with would set the tone of Onera Wimberley.
If they crushed, that would act as social proof to other guests and followers that this was something to pay attention to. If not, we’d be fighting for traction.
We couldn’t flop out of the gate, they had to crush.
With that, we landed on @texas.explorer and @texaseatsfirst to be our first two collabs. These are two of the best influencers in central Texas who we’ve had repeat successes and longstanding relationships with.
Keyword there being “collabs.”
Through our past experience, we found that strategic collabs (with some influencers, not all) gave a better follower bump than just tagging us in a post.
On top of that, we chose to make these posts giveaways to incentivize engagement with their audiences and exponentially increase initial traction.
The posts went live and they crushed– getting 1.2m+ and 650k+ views respectively.
And got us over the 10,000 follower hurdle in a matter of days for our brand new @onerawimberley account.
All while funneling people directly to our direct booking site.
Funny side story– @texas.explorer almost didn’t collab with us as we had many loose ends to tie up on the construction side of things.
But once golden hour hit and she saw the sunsets, she knew she could get viral content. Plus, she wanted to be the first to collab with Wimberley, just like she did for Onera Fredericksburg.
(She was our first ever influencer and had two posts generate over $30k in direct bookings at Onera Fredericksburg)
Phase 3.5: Non-Influencer Content
While the influencer team was busy planning and scheduling our pre-launch influencer collabs, we had the content team working around the clock to get out organic content.
With the follower bump from the influencers, we had a following starting to take shape and didn’t want to lose the momentum.
We created numerous organic reels, utilizing our proven content structure, to be posted between influencer collaborations as we ramped up to launch.
This kept the audience engaged, excited and talking about Onera Wimberley.
And maybe more importantly… booking their future stays!
All in all, we ended up posting 13 influencer collabs, with seven of them being giveaways, and 10 organic reels before launching Onera Wimberley.
And there was one more thing…
Not at all social media related, but definitely worth mentioning as a pre-launch tactic.
In the two weeks leading up to launch, we hosted countless friends and family, some of the GC team, and even the first Unique Stays Summit at the property.
This proved invaluable in ironing out the kinks.
While soft openings are common, I was particularly proud of our execution. Two weeks of stays provided the perfect time frame to address major issues.
Working out these kinks with people we know and trust was far preferable to troubleshooting with our first paying guests.
The Onera Wimberley launch was vastly different from Onera Fredericksburg. Heck, we didn’t even have an IG page live before we opened Fredericksburg.
While I wouldn’t say it was “easier” this time around, I do feel like we had a solid game plan going into the launch of Onera Wimberley and it seems to have worked out.
Oh, and our post-launch strategy is nothing to skip over either. But that is a story for another day…
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See you guys next week!
-Ben Wolff
📸 Looking to Learn More? Check Out My Daily Content on Instagram
🎥 Check Out My Debate of Hands-on vs Hands-off Stays with Irene Wood and Nick Purslow
Ben Wolff
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