It's the KasaCast, created by KasaGo.
It's time for the show, let's go!
Pamela Thanks for jumping on today.
I'm excited to be here.
I've been listening and it's wonderful to hear the insights of everyone.
\ , . Um, today we're going to be talking a little bit about something
I saw on Facebook that you're doing and was highly successful.
Which was a contest you did, but before we get into that I wanted everybody
to meet you and know a little bit about you and Pamela, you're in the
lake of the Ozarks with your husband, Michael, who's a, an avid pilot.
He's very passionate about it.
Love talking, with him on avionics and airplanes . This isn't your first
business you guys have done together.
You've had a couple of.
You've never had businesses together before, right?
That's interesting you mention that.
We have had businesses, but we've never had them before together.
And that is a new dynamic here with what we're doing in vacation rental
space Because our independent businesses in the past were very different.
He was technology.
technology products.
And I was always people facing and relationship facing.
And so bringing those together has been definitely very interesting.
So you guys have had businesses before, just not together.
And now you've got somebody who's a technician and somebody who's front of
the house a dynamic duo going on, huh?
Yes.
Very much very different personalities, too.
And we've both always been in charge of our own companies.
And coming together and finding out how to understand and respect what
each brings to the table and let each of us I guess thrive in that space
has been an interesting dynamic.
as a marriage not just as a business.
So it's been a good journey.
That's really great.
You guys are such a fun couple and obviously good partners.
You can really tell that you guys are partners in life and
business and, there's a good vibe when you're together.
. So another quick story is that you and Mike are both divers and Mike has to make
sure you know which direction you're going because compasses are not your thing.
That is exactly right.
And he has been very diligent in trying to help me understand how to read a compass.
And he even got me a couple different styles of compass.
And just the bottom line is when we leave the boat, it is his responsibility
to make sure I get back to the boat.
And that's the agreement that we have at this point, then and he's
accepted that responsibility.
You both have made it back to the boat so far so far so good, right?
We have.
Yes, we have.
Caroline I met her on a dive trip in Cuba.
I was by myself and she was with a friend and it was a night dive and I said,
Hey, can I partner up with you guys?
I have no, no dive buddy tonight.
And it's pitch black.
And they said, sure.
I jumped in the water with them and they swam off together
and I'm alone at nighttime.
I give her grief about this all the time.
And I have equipment failure and I'm flashing my lights at them trying
to get their attention and they're just swimming off having a good time.
. First time I've ever had an equipment failure in a scuba
scenario . Mike sounds like he's a much better dive buddy than Caroline.
Maybe after that experience she has become a better dive buddy, . Let's just say
that Mike knows from experience that he needs to make sure I get back to the boat
because he does get a little far away.
And assumes that I'm following and that's not necessarily the case.
I don't know that I've ever had an equipment failure situation,
but it has come from experience that is his responsibility.
so I was so impressed with the contest you were doing that I reached out
to you and I think that it benefits
. Our partners to understand what you were doing and how you did it and, be able
to replicate the success you had there.
Can you tell me a little bit about the contest you were
doing when I reached out to you?
. Our goal was to gain Facebook interaction, and then also to gain more of a long
term relationship through our email list.
And so the intent was that they would like the Facebook page and then the link
for our email list, join the email list.
And accept, as a recipient email materials was required for them to
be included in the contest drawing.
What a great way to get that email list going.
And I'm finding our email lists in Rocky Point are turning in tens of thousands
of dollars of reservations for us each month and some months are better
than others, but email marketing for reservations works surprisingly well.
Yeah.
Yeah, it does.
And I know, today we're going to be talking a lot about social media and
that aspect of the contest, and that has incredible value as well, because
your presence is really dominant when people are looking in new
markets, they look to social media.
And so your presence being significant is important, but the email list, the
dollar return on the email list is huge.
So your contest, not only got people tied into you on social media, got tied
into you on engagement and referrals.
Also, you got to build an email list that helps generate revenue.
So what a win.
It was.
And we did actually track the number of people that withdrew from the subscription
of the email list after the contest, and there was only 13 in the first two weeks.
We really expected quite a turn there, but there was only 13 individuals in the
first couple of weeks that pulled out.
That contest was a thousand dollar giveaway toward a lake
stay at one of our properties.
And we set a timeline for the contest and we did a Facebook
live announcing the contest.
And then one on the interim Giving it a little bit more pump up and then we
promoted it and then we had the drawing live as well And so that was the process
that we went through And the goal was to get as many people to like and engage
with our page as possible And then of course have them watching because
they were interested in winning that thousand dollars You know you mentioned
in the pre show notes how a lot of people are looking to have followers,
but the real goal is to have fans.
And I think that means people who are actually engaging with you,
but what does that mean to you?
So a fan is somebody that talks about you to others.
That's what our hope was.
We wanted to be a part of the conversation.
Not just a click, not just to share, but we wanted to be
a part of the conversation.
And by putting our 1, 000 out there and, instead of saying, Oh, here's
100 or we wanted it to make it so that you can come during peak season
and have at least half your trip paid for at one of our properties.
And , so we want to make it big.
And so by doing that, we wanted to be a conversation outside of Facebook.
at the break room, in work, at the dinner table.
We want to be the conversation.
That's a fan.
That's somebody that's talking about you.
And that's what our goal is.
And of course, talking about you positively.
Our intent in the contest was to up level everybody that already liked
our page and become part of their conversation, and then draw in new
people that would like our page and bring us into the conversation.
And you found a lot of success in that, right?
Can you tell me a little bit about the results or maybe the
ongoing momentum you've gained
we were right at 1, 400 and , by the end of the contest we were over 1, 800 we
wanted to gain total likes and that, that was a big part of what we did.
But the other thing that's really cool, and it literally just happened
yesterday, is we gained fans.
And so . When somebody asks, where should we stay at the lake?
I'm coming and I have 13 people, my grandparents, my kids.
People that were in that contest, even people that didn't win tag us because
they had a positive, exciting interaction with us on social media and it got
them involved in what we were doing.
And so that has been really.
More than the numbers, that has been a huge gain.
And of course, the winner, she tags us all the time.
And she won't even experience her stay until I think she's
coming in June, I believe.
But she tags us all the time, both for vacations and for property
management, vacation rental management.
That interaction has been huge.
20 percent gain in followers, but the followers were really
the less important part of it, you got brand name recognition.
You have people you're part of the conversation.
People are tagging you, recommending you and just brought a lot
of visibility to you, right?
Yes.
And that part, like I said, that was the goal.
We had numbers I'm a comparative person.
So I look at other vacation rental managers here at DeLake and how
many, likes followers do they have?
And there's one that was higher than us and we definitely want to
continue to grow to their numbers.
They've been around for 19 years.
And so we want to grow to their numbers.
But we also wanted to have the engagement and that's the piece
that I think had the greatest value of anything is the engagement.
So Pamela, you gave us five points to talk through when somebody's doing a contest
on Facebook or social media, and we're just gonna go through them one by one.
The very first thing you said was, Yes.
And different means to stand out.
And I, what I put in there is I like the ST approach.
And this is just something that I strongly believe in, whether it's
marketing or launching a business or Making it, making an impression.
So you want to be the first, you want to be the best, or you want to be last.
And I even use that in real estate transactions as a big part of
what Mike and I have done together personally for a long time.
And that's, I always tell that to my realtor when we're making an offer.
If we're not the first, then we need to be the best.
And if we're not one of those two, then I want to be the last one
that comes in on their deadline.
And it was the same with the Facebook.
We couldn't be the first doing a contest necessarily.
And the last is yet to be seen, but we could be the best.
And the best was in that dollar amount.
And it was a conversation for Mike and I to hit, are we really going to do 1, 000?
That's a pretty big number to put out there.
And so being the best contest as far as reward of what we had
seen here at Lake the Ozarks, that's really where our mark was.
And That was our goal is to, how are we going to stand out?
We want to be the best offer in an online contest that we had seen and deliver that.
And for number two, you said go live and be bold.
Can you tell me what that means?
So it means that Transparency.
Facebook live is really that ultimate, I'm going to click go and record.
And you're right there.
And we really had not used live much here at the lake.
As much as I have in other companies, because we don't have the comparables.
that we see in other videographers and other real estate fields.
And the videography work here in marketing is just beyond anything I've ever seen.
And so I just haven't done the lives because what I have for equipment
and what I could deliver doesn't.
And so I looked at what can I deliver that would be unique.
And in all honesty, putting my phone up in front of my face, in my backyard with the
lake behind me and hitting go was unique.
It didn't have the special lighting.
It didn't have the drone.
It didn't have all the special stuff, but it was just me.
It was me personally talking to our audience and that was unique.
And by bold, anything, anytime you're willing to hit go or hit start when
you're doing a Facebook live, that's bold because Once you do that, it's live.
It's out there on Facebook.
Granted, you can choose whether to post it and whether to leave it out there
for future people to see, but for that three minutes, that 10 minutes, that,
however long you're there facing your audience on Facebook, there's no edit.
It's right there and it's real and it's live and you're interacting with people.
So that's really bold to do the Facebook Live.
Algorithm wise, It also gains the most traction in perspective of how Facebook
promotes the interaction of people at the time in which they're engaging.
So it definitely gives you a push there too.
I think one thing that you can't buy is authenticity.
When you hit that go live button if you're an authentic person,
people can't buy that, right?
No camera in the world will make you quote unquote more authentic,
and so I think playing to your strength of being authentic can.
And personable obviously is working on that go live.
So for number three, you said don't overthink it.
And this is hard when you're, especially when you're going to
go live or, you can put yourself out there . How did you do that?
How did you not overthink it?
Or did you overthink it?
So originally we , had talked about doing this like it's a Black
Friday ended up not doing it then.
It's really what I was waiting for is I was trying to
create some preemptive posts.
I was trying to create some additional traction.
I was trying to create something in in advance of launching.
And time wise, we're property managers, vacation rental managers,
and it was the holiday season.
. I was just missing it . . I was delaying it because I didn't do the things
that I thought would make it perfect.
And I think perfect is a huge barrier.
So when we did choose to launch, we were about 10 days off of our launch date.
And if you think about it, 10 days at a thousand dollar contest,
that's definitely a deterrent.
So lesson forward definitely would be to start when we say we're going
to start regardless of how prepared we believe we are and just jump
in and gain from being present.
, it's so hard.
When you're getting ready to do something and the fear of it not being right, I
think people are much more forgiving if you'll just go forward and do it.
And I think we're our own worst critics when it comes to
what we're putting out there.
I don't think other people are so hypercritical that are, at
least the kind of people that we want to be part of anyways.
I would agree.
I think no one looks at the end result the same way that I do, and their
receipt of my intention is always more positive than The things that I left
out they, they don't know the gaps.
They don't know what it was missing.
They only know what was delivered.
And so , I'm the only one whose mind is there saying this wasn't there.
It's not anyone else.
That's actually really good advice.
So for number four, you said plan for your budget.
How do you plan for your budget?
So this was a contest.
Husband wife conversation, like I said, husband wife business, honey, I think
we should give away a thousand dollars.
And he's the tech person, and the conservative, might, he's no, I
don't think that's a good idea.
And so we had to look at it from a budget perspective.
This was a marketing expense.
And so what would we normally spend our commission here in our market is 20%.
And so our cost in this situation is 800 so huge and what would
we normally spend that money on?
For us, that's about a couple months of a billboard.
That's a full page ad, and when we spend that money.
What do we expect in return?
And so that's how we had to shift that because in the beginning,
I'm like, let's have a contest.
We're doing a giveaway and a giveaway sounds like literally a giveaway.
You're not getting anything in return.
But when we had to shift our mindsets, okay, this is an investment.
This is marketing expense, and this is a marketing budget item.
How does it compare to the return that we get?
And is it measurable?
And so we had to look at that.
And make sure, okay, at this dollar amount, are we going to get back in
return what we believe to be of value?
The same return we get from that full page ad the same return we get
from two months of the billboard and I would definitely say yes because
while we get brand recognition from the billboard we get brand awareness
we get validation we don't get fans Billboards aren't going to create fans.
And that was our goal was to create a different type of engagement
with the people who are aware.
Yeah.
So for number five, you had have a plan for social media posting and engagement
before launching the promotion.
Tell me what that plan looks like.
What should we be thinking about when we're saying, what is
our social media posting plan?
? So when when the contest caught your attention and you reached out to me,
this was part of it that I really felt was important to share because leading
up to the contest and all of the thought that went into that was great.
But then if we forget to post or if we don't post or if we
don't share, if we aren't engaged after we get all of those people.
To our site, then really that thousand dollars was a poor spent.
And so looking at what type of posts are we going to make and having
a calendar of what type of posts you're going to make is always a good
action plan in full transparency.
This is not my strength.
I am a more spontaneous share person on media.
And it is beneficial for someone like me.
I think you need to know your strengths.
It's beneficial for someone like me that at those times when I'm feeling
spontaneous to put in five or six posts and Post date them like you can do on
Facebook Instagram and post bait post date them so that they launch accordingly
Or to have somebody else that has the content for you Again, this is speaking
to me and my nature but just knowing that you're going to have a deliverable
there to validate that their decision to like and engage with your page
was good, that, that is their intent.
, so Pamela, you something you said that you had to be comfortable with posting
About where you were in your journey.
I think that's, that sort of ties into another part of this, where
you're discussing that a lot of other companies or, companies in
your market are putting on this.
High production video and, and media going out and you had to
get real comfortable with that.
Was there something that you may have came to realize or was there something that
helped you just get past it and get on with it and produce and put it out there?
I was gaining nothing by waiting until I had what they had.
There was no gain during that time frame whatsoever.
And I despise stagnant times.
So that really was the inspiration.
There was not time to bring in a videographer.
There was not time.
Our resources, we're an incredibly quickly growing company, our
resources are going elsewhere.
To invest in the budgets, I talked to them, what's your budget?
How does this work?
And it just, it's not reachable for us.
And so what we delivered is where we are at.
And once I was comfortable with that, then the gain was there too.
Be comfortable with where you're at.
I think that's really good advice, not just in business, but also in life maybe.
Yeah, and those companies that use all of the fancy videography,
they refer to us all the time..
So apparently we're good enough for them.
. Apparently the authenticity paid off.
, Pamela, what's your favorite line Credo?
. So owning the relationship I will build a professional relationship
that transcends business that has been who I am and what I do how I
define myself probably for decades.
And when people say, gosh, how did You know how did you do this business?
How did you achieve, when they're looking at the positives and they said, how did
you, that would be the core of it is that while the business was the fruit,
the relationships were the foundation.
And sometimes I think we think of it the other way around and the business
is the foundation and the relationships are the fruit and you gain the
relationships through the business.
But I really feel that the relationships are the foundation and the business
blooms because of the relationships.
So I really love that.
I'm writing that down.
I'm writing that down as we're doing this podcast.
Relationships are the foundation and the business is the fruits.
Did I say that right?
Yes.
The business grows.
That's what blossoms.
I think we put so much time into building the business and then as the
relationships form, we see those as oh, that's the benefit, that's the
fruit, that's the but I think those that focus on the relationships first
can build any business they want.
It's so inspirational and I think I'm going to end with that what a
great way to end a podcast . Thank you so much for coming on Pamela.
I so appreciate you.
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