The Marketing Playbook Every Small Hotel Owner Needs | Steph Weber E44

Think great marketing is only for big hotels with big budgets? Think again.

In this episode, we talk with Steph Weber, a marketing and branding expert who helps boutique hotel and STR owners drive direct bookings. She breaks down how she finds her audience, tells a compelling brand story, and uses limited resources to drive big results.

You’ll learn:

• How to identify your property’s unique selling points
• Simple marketing strategies that work for small hotels and inns
• Why guest experience is your most powerful marketing tool

The mindset shift from “just filling rooms” to building a brand
If you want your property to stand out in a crowded market, this conversation will show you how to do it without wasting money.

Follow and share the Hotel Investor Playbook so more people can learn how to invest in hospitality assets the right way.

About Steph

Steph Weber is a branding strategist, marketing expert, and founder of The Weber Co., where she helps short-term rental owners, boutique hotels, and micro-resorts build memorable brands that drive direct bookings. With over a decade of experience and a track record of helping 100+ businesses scale to six and seven figures, Steph blends creative storytelling with data-driven strategies to increase guest loyalty and revenue. She also owns Cabins on the Cumberland, a 12-cabin, 9-acre riverfront micro-resort in Kentucky, giving her a unique, real-world perspective on what it takes to stand out in a competitive hospitality market. Through her agency, podcast, and own hosting experience, Steph empowers property owners to position their brands for higher rates, repeat guests, and long-term success.

Connect with Steph

Instagram: @stephnweber, @cabinsonthecumberland & @theweberco

Websites: www.theweberco.com and www.cabinsonthecumberland.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephweberbrandcoach

Connect with Michael on Instagram or LinkedIn.

Email Us at info@hotelinvestorplaybook.com

Visit the Hotel Investor Playbook Instagram

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Transcript

Michael Russell 0:00

Most hotel owners talk about knowing their guest. Steph Weber can describe hers like she's known them for years, right down to their kids' ages and what they do on vacation. In this episode, Steph shows us how that level of clarity can transform your marketing, your bookings, and even the way you design your property. We unpack the exact process she used to define her ideal guest for her own 12-cabin resort and how she applies it to help other boutique hotels win direct bookings without relying on OTAs. If you want your marketing to actually resonate and your property to stand out in a crowded market, you'll want to hear this. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Hotel Investor Playbook, your guide to building wealth and freedom through boutique hotel ownership, hosted by Mike and Nate.

Nathan St Cyr 0:56

Get in the game.

Michael Russell 1:10

On this podcast, we talk story about everything you need to know to make money investing in hotels and in hospitality assets. So, hey, quick moment here before we get into this episode, quick shout out to Fawn B for this killer review that she gave us. I'm going to read it to you. It says, best podcast for anyone looking to get into hotel investing. I love that you guys don't just drink the Kool-Aid and accept statements at face value, but rather question them from your context. Thanks for all the hard work. Fawn, we see you. Awesome. We appreciate you. Reviews like this, seriously, this keeps us going. This gets us out of bed in the morning. This is awesome. So if you're listening to this right now and you're getting some value out of this, even if you just got one little nugget from this show, an idea, a mindset shift, a tactic, do us a solid, go leave us a review. Take 30 seconds. It helps us continue to bring on high-quality guests and keep sharing everything that we're learning and growing. So you win, we win, hit those stars, write a sentence. Let's keep this thing going. All right, let's dive into the show. On today's episode, we're joined by Steph Weber, a branding and marketing expert who helps STR hosts and boutique hotel owners drive more direct bookings. She's also the owner and visionary behind a 12-cabin micro resort in Kentucky called Cabins on the Cumberland. Steph, welcome to the show.

Steph Weber 2:40

Thank you guys so much for having me. I'm stoked to be here with you today.

Nathan St Cyr 2:43

Yeah, Steph. Let's go.

Michael Russell 2:47

Let's do it. Let's dive right into this. So you build a nine-acre micro resort while running a seven-figure branding agency. You're raising kids, you're moving. That's not a small feat. Take us back to the moment when you said to yourself, hey, I want to start, I want to build a resort. What sparked that idea?

Steph Weber 3:05

Yeah, great question, Michael. My husband and I have wanted to get into the world of short-term rentals really since we graduated college and decided to move in together. And I remember making breakfast together in the kitchen one morning. And I was like, how cool would it be for us to have a B and you can make breakfast and I'll handle all the hosting stuff? And he was like, that does not sound like fun to me, but I love that idea for you. But we knew that real estate was an important piece for us from a wealth perspective and just from a how can we at some point be able to pass something on to our children in some capacity, right? I mean, again, we're here to like live our lives. It's not all just for the kids. We love them, but we also want to enjoy life while we're here too, right? So in 2023, I was eight months pregnant with our second baby boy, and we decided that that was the opportune time to go all in on short-term rentals. So we purchased our first property in May of 2023. We had a 20-day old. So literally it had him 20 days before, which was crazy. We started our co-hosting business at the same time. And I posted on Instagram and kind of shared, this is what we want to do with this. We want to have multiple properties. We want to have this co-hosting business, but our big dream is to have this piece of land somewhere where we can have multiple different kinds of structures. We can have events, retreats, weddings, et cetera. And I'm over here thinking, like, this is a great 10-year goal. Well, seven weeks later, that opportunity presented itself in the form of a Facebook post. I was connected by my esthetician of all of all people here in Indianapolis to one of her other clients who had this piece of land in Kentucky. They were planning to build cabins and essentially sell them off as individual vacation rentals. So I went to her and I said, Hey, I have a different idea for how this could be used or what we could do with this land. Shared that vision with them, started talking about that on my social media platforms, found the partners, looked at the property in August of 2023, and we signed on the jotted line in December that year. Everything happened very quickly with a toddler and a newborn at the same time starting a new business. There were a lot of moving parts. That's the short version of the story, but here we are.

Michael Russell 5:07

Well done. No, that's that's terrific. How you just kind of encapsulated that. In my mind, I caught on to a couple things. I'm like, wait a second, okay. You said Kentucky. You got that's where the opportunity to purchase was. But you were in Indianapolis. And all of a sudden I'm like, panic, dun, dun, dun, dun, my heart starts going. Cause I'm like, oh my gosh, like, how in the world are you going? Well, number one, like, why Kentucky? And then number two, like, that's nowhere where you live. Most people think, like, if I'm gonna jump into something, I want it in my backyard, but you took the bold step and said, no, I'm gonna do this remotely. Like, what was it that made you confident that this micro resort in Kentucky could work?

Steph Weber 5:43

Yeah. So this nine-acre piece of property is riverfront. So it's right on the Cumberland River. We have a private boat ramp to get you out onto the river. It's one of the best spots for trout fishing. But aside from just the river, we're about 25 minutes away from Lake Cumberland. For those of you that aren't familiar with Lake Cumberland, it actually spans across Kentucky and Tennessee. So it's this massive lake. It's very well known for houseboats and just like boating in general. So very much that lake culture feel. Four million people a year actually visit Lake Cumberland. So it's it's got a good, it's got a good tourism industry. And it's only continuing to increase. And there's nothing like this down there. A lot of the cabins and the vacation rentals are like your grandma's cabin from the 1960s that's never been touched since that period of time, which is great. There's something like sentimental about that. I totally get it. But we also knew who our target audience was. We also knew that people travel in groups to Lake Cumberland. And there are multiple different events that happen on the lake throughout throughout that season that bring people that way. So we knew, of course, this was going to be seasonal. And we did have some cabins live this year in January and February, and they were okay. We didn't have zero bookings. So that was good. But again, because this was raw land, I mean it we we went down there in August of 2023 to just see the land and check it out and kind of walk it and feel it out. And there's nothing, right? There was just nothing on the land. So we're like, okay, we can build the vision. We can create a reason for people to want to come here. And of course, for us, one of the big plays is like, okay, well, we can do full buyouts, family reunions, church retreats, weddings. So all of those pieces were things that we were thinking about as we were kind of going into development. We've had a lot of learning lessons along the way.

Nathan St Cyr 7:25

Can I call a timeout though? Can I call a time? Yeah, please, Nice. You said something that that I picked up on, and it was also something that I have read that you've talked about. So I just want to I want to make sure that we capture the the moment because you said we we we already knew who we were going to be marketing to, essentially. You said you we already knew who our clients were gonna be. So I I read something about that before you even bought the land. You were thinking about this ideal avatar. Can you walk us through the process for identifying the avatar before acquisition?

Steph Weber 8:00

Yeah, that was an interesting part of the process, Nate. And again, like I have a background in branding and marketing. I've been doing this now for over a decade for a lot of different business types. And so I brought that knowledge into this. And I knew that in order for us to get buy-in from a bank to fund the project, in order for us to get buy-in from other partners to help be a part of the project, and in order for us to be able to drive direct bookings, which was a big goal for us from the beginning, we needed a strong brand foundation. And one of the first pieces of that is developing that ideal target audience, right? So for us, that involves a couple of different things. Number one is market research. Okay, yes, there's data out there that supports families or kind of like the number one group, so to speak, of people traveling to Lake Cumberland every year. Okay, well, what do those family structures look like? Who are those people? Where are they traveling from? Why are they choosing Lake Cumberland? And more importantly, why are they going on vacation and what's important to them in that experience, right? And it's so much further beyond just like they want a clean, cozy cabin, right? Like that's not, we're really trying to dive into the like, what is it that they actually want to experience on their trip? So we knew that for us, we actually have our avatarist named the McCarthy family. So it's a family of four. The kids are in elementary school, middle school ages. So they're busy. Their friends are starting to become cooler than their parents, and parents are craving on to that any like last little bit of, oh, you're still like my little one. And we want to have this connected family time together. Parents are also both working. Again, the kids are involved in a million different activities. So when they're at home, everyone's all over the place and they're just feeling this sense of kind of disconnect. So for us, we wanted to create Cabins on the Cumberland as this space where like the adults get to come and feel like kids again. The kids get to come and have their sort of choose their own adventure on vacation while also still having a good time with mom and dad and feeling like, oh man, why look at mom and dad having a great time? Like they're playing with us, they're involved with us. It's so fun, right? So that was sort of the feeling.

Michael Russell 9:55

And again, like I want to go, man. That's what you're saying. It's like I'm like, that's exactly what I want to do with my kids.

Nathan St Cyr 10:04

Yeah, well, wait, and look, this is like, I just hope that everybody pauses, rewinds, and goes back to this. This is like the golden freaking nugget of nuggets, like, oh, you created the McCarthy family. This is like this is so freaking cool to experience somebody go through their avatar and not define their avatar by demographics, but like to actually look into that human being and what their life looks like and what it feels like, and like to actually name them the McCarthy family. This was what a freaking cool exercise to go through when you're developing that initial brand strategy to really now you're speaking to like you just brought life to this family to me. I'm like, oh my gosh, I I was picturing them doing their stuff, and I've got a 12-year-old and a 16-year-old. So I'm like, oh, I you're like, oh, and the friends are cooler than it. I'm like, oh so anyway, that was awesome.

Steph Weber 11:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael Russell 11:08

I just listen to all this jargon sometimes about like marketing stuff, right? And it's like, I'm not I don't have a marketing background. So people are like, build your avatar and build like you really understand who your target audience is, and just you're like, yeah, okay, but you just painted the picture in such a good way that like now I can see very clearly how you will develop marketing based on who you're trying to reach. And it's like we've had interior designers that give us these storyboards, right? There's some designers that will give you like I don't know, they'll show you pictures of like tile and fabrics and stuff, and you're like, oh, I guess that looks nice. But then when they give a storyboard of like photos of the people that are staying there and the smiles on their face, all of a sudden, like you overlook the fabric, you look at the experience they're having, and I just think that that's such an important critical aspect of what you're describing is to get away from the jargon, get away from the marketing speak, really drill down so that people have a clear picture. Like, what am I trying to accomplish? What's the outcome that I really want to have? So that was beneficial to me.

Nathan St Cyr 12:13

Well, and I want to rewind to where this part of the conversation started. That it the steps were okay, here's this piece of land. Then it was, okay, here's the market research that you did to find out who is going to this area, right? And then you went and defined in a very clear way who they were and what their life was, so much that you created a name of the family and what they do and what they're going through in life. And now I'm assuming, now that I have this extremely clear picture, I'm like, oh, but now we got this piece of land, I can go develop their land for them and think about how they're gonna be pumped. And if the if I develop to what they want, and then I use that within marketing, I'm gonna be showing everybody like them, the perfect client and avatar for that region, what it's gonna be like and feel like to go here, and it's gonna align with them. You've got this massive alignment from moment one through what you ultimately said you wanted to accomplish was direct bookings and growth and all of the things through marketing. So I'm I'm fired up. I just saw I had the matrix moment where everything slowed down for me, and I'm like, dot, dot, dot, dot, connected.

Michael Russell 13:31

It's almost like it's almost like Steph is a marketing expert for a living, right? Like it's almost like it's doing marketing, yeah. Jeez, this is so weird. But look, I I gotta go back because Nathan will be like, dude, you're so process oriented. I'm having like the short circuit syndrome. I'm like, I'm short circuiting because I'm like, okay, okay, but wait a second. You're in Indianapolis, this property's in Kentucky. What the heck is the connection with Kentucky? And how in the world were you able to be confident doing it when you're not there?

Steph Weber 14:05

Yeah, okay. So this is a good question, Mike. So one of our partners actually became our builder. Well, he, I mean, he was planning to build the cabins anyway. And then when we went down to look at the land, we had two other partners that are uh two other couples that were like, Yeah, we want to buy some land and build some cabins. And then our builder and his wife took us out to dinner that night and they were like, So we want to be a part of this too. So he's definitely been obviously down there, I don't know, three to four days a week for the last two years that we've been doing this. So he's very much been boots on the ground. We have a great cleaning team, and like I could we couldn't be doing this without them. Our connection to Lake Cumberland, we've actually previously been to Lake Cumberland. We were invited down there to go visit and stay on a houseboat for several days. And so we had that connection and I was familiar with the area, familiar with kind of where we were going and what we were getting into. It's only a four and a half hour drive, so it's not that bad. But having our cleaning team down there has been tremendously beneficial and obviously necessary. And then our builder being Barry Boots on the ground and just also good people, like great maintenance team members, people who have helped us assemble furniture, et cetera. So definitely the team side of things has been supportive in that.

Michael Russell 15:17

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. So you've got a builder that's on site. You build this partnership. Yeah, and clearly, I think that what you bring to the table, amongst a lot of other things, I'm sure we're gonna develop here, but you you have the marketing side. So it doesn't matter how great your product is. If you can have the best product in the world, if you don't have sales and marketing, no one's gonna buy it. So what you bring to the table is expert marketing, but having someone who's experienced that a builder is involved. Well, who else was involved? It's the it's you, your husband, the builder. Who else is involved in this deal?

Steph Weber 15:44

Yep, builder, his wife, actually, my CPA and her husband. So my CPA who's done our businesses and our personal taxes forever, she's the best. And then another couple that we found inside of a mastermind, actually. So we joined when we decided to get into short-term rentals, we joined a mastermind. And so when this opportunity for the cabins came about, I started posting in Facebook groups. And I was like, I, you guys again, like that we were seven weeks into the world of short-term rentals. I'm like, talk to me about partnerships. Like, how can we do this? We just used our cash to buy another property. So what do we do? And we did figure out the financing on our end so we could be an even equity partner, but that's a kind of an overview. But Kate and Cam, they're just there, they live in Atlanta. They are like, we'll do whatever you want us to do whenever you want us to do it.

Michael Russell 16:27

Well, I want to press into that though, because look, this is where it gets a little messy, right? Sometimes. But you know, maybe you guys could all figure out. But so here's a good thing: partnership. Wait, that's a valuable lesson. You don't have to have everything figured out. You bring something to the table, you can collaborate with others that have complementary skill sets, but I want to jump into the financing part, the money. Because how did you fund this? Like you said, okay, we wanted to be on an even level playing. What was the structure of funding this acquisition?

Steph Weber 16:53

Yep. So every couple is a 25% equity partner. So each of us individually is like 12.5% ownership. And for my husband and I, we actually decided to take a HELOC on our primary residence so that we could be an equity partner in the deal. And then we also took a personal loan from one of the partners to help us be a part of the deal. They kind of came to us and they were like, listen, we know you just bought your own property. You have a newborn and a toddler, and we can't do this without you, and we want to do it. So we are gonna help you with that. And then the bank financed 75% of the deal. So we brought a 25% down payment, and the total purchase price was 2.3 million.

Michael Russell 17:29

Okay, so 2.3 million, 75% loan to value. The rest of you guys split the down payment. How much did you have to pay at like renovations and CapEx expenses?

Steph Weber 17:38

Yeah, so the 2.3 million covered the land and all of our buildings, right? So that was the entirety of the build. That included our pickleball court, our playground, our event venue. That was the entirety of all of that. What that 2.3 million did not include was our furnishing for every single cabin. So all of the partners have fronted our portion of that when we've had to do that. It also did not include initially our arcade game center. And before we decided to go in on this deal, the couple who owned the land and was building the cabins had sold off one of the lots because they had it kind of individually parceled so that they could sell it, obviously, individually. And that guy came back to us and he was like, I don't want this anymore. Will you buy it back from me? So that's how we got the 12th cabin as well. So we were 18 months in. We went back to the bank and we said, Hey, we want to build another structure and we also want to build another cabin. So they re-appraised the property. It appraised for 500,000 more than we bought it for. And then now our now we're in it was like 2.7.

Michael Russell 18:39

You went with a local lender, then I take it.

Steph Weber 18:41

Yeah, local lender. Yeah, local lender, local bank.

Michael Russell 18:43

Because financing is tough, right? That's a lot to go through, especially when there's four different couples and you've got proof of income statements and then the whole deal, you guys got to collaborate. I mean, navigating that process, I imagine that was a little bit messy. Any major takeaways or lessons learned that you would want to share from that experience?

Steph Weber 19:00

Gosh, Mike, to be honest with you, I feel like that process was really pretty seamless for us because all of the couples had kind of talked about it. We knew what we were getting into, we knew what the process was going to be. The process of actually closing took about five months. It was just like slow moving. We had to get our operating agreement in place. We had to have some hard conversations around, okay, like who's in charge of what? What happens if one of us is no longer here? Like, what happens if somebody gets divorced? All of those different things that we had to kind of evaluate and discuss. And then we were finally able to close. And then when we had the property reappraised, that process took like 10 weeks. So I would just say, like, I'm a really fast mover. I like to do things quickly. And that was not 100% to my timeline, but it was okay. We're okay. We're fine. It's all good. I think the biggest thing in just partnership structure in general and things that we didn't anticipate. One, if I were to ever do another deal like this, including the furnishings as part of the initial purchase, would probably be a non-profit. Negotiable for me. This local bank was like, oh, well, like that's too big of a risk for us, basically. We can't do that initially. When we went back to ask them for additional funding, we asked them actually for the rest of the cabins we had to furnish and they did include it at that point. They were like, oh, we see what you guys are doing. There was a level of trust there. And they were like, okay, we're on board for this, right? But fronting capital every month after you've already made a massive down payment is it's a lot. So it just feels like it's like never ending. And I'm like, when are we going to make money? So that that can feel heavy. I also think for us too, and for anyone who would be doing any kind of development project, there's always something new, some new idea that you could create, something else that you could add on. I still go down there and I'm like, we should add domes. Like we should build decks and add domes as like a nice stargazing area. And my partners are like, you need to pump the brakes. Let's just get through. Let's just get through the first 12 months of being fully live. And I would say too, just partnerships in general, understanding what everyone's roles are going to be. At the beginning, everyone is like, yeah, we'll put in sweat equity. And now we're to the end. And everyone's like, I'm really tired of putting in sweat equity to get this done. So that's been a lot.

Nathan St Cyr 21:08

Yeah. So when you say this sweat equity, like like I'm picturing the four of you, and you've described people in different areas and different regions. Sweat equity to me is going to be different from sweat equity to another person, but what does that mean? Like, what is the sweat equity that the each individual couple is putting in? Is a sweat equity the same thing, or is it there's specific things? Because I think when people are creating partnerships, especially in the beginning, where they're like, look, we need to, this is a really important piece to talk about. Like, what is the sweat equity? Because that can be very unbalanced. Yeah, it is.

Steph Weber 21:45

It can be, Nate, for sure. And something, this was also something that we did not anticipate, but there were several things we didn't anticipate. But the cabins are on a new road. They're also brand new cabins. So we cannot successfully ship items there confidently and know that they are going to get to the cabins. So for every cabin that we've had to furnish, we ship to our homes here in Indiana. So three of the partners, three of the couples live in Indiana. So we ship here, we load up trailers and we drive the four and a half hours to Kentucky. We're assembling, we're furnishing, doing all of that again, like that piece of sweat equity. That's probably been the biggest thing that all of the partners have had to kind of take on. Our CPA, though, she's great, but she's like, she has to file a tax return for every single cabin every single month. And she has yet to charge the cabins for that. So she's like, this is my volunteer as tribute moment for right now until we get to a place where we're like, okay, we're stabilized, we're good, and we're fine. So I think every couple's kind of taken their skill set or their strength and gone, how can I contribute or how can I help us so that we can get across the finish line of this place being done? And every couple has also had their fair share of like, all right, I'm going to do the install this time.

Michael Russell 22:59

Hey guys, quick heads up. Malama Capital, our investment arm, is full steam ahead on finding our next hotel acquisition this quarter. If you know of a deal or you're working on something yourself and want to partner up, we'd love to hear about it. We offer a generous finders fee. Or if it's a fit, we can bring you into the deal for a slice of the equity and give you a front row seat to the whole process from A to Z. There's a short form linked in the show notes. Just drop your name and a few quick details. And if it looks like a fit, we'll be in touch. Now, back to the show. Can I ask, what kind of like, I don't know, systems do you have? You got like EOS or do you have any software stuff that that helps keep all this aligned so that people know what they should be doing? If you've got four different couples and everyone's trying to figure out the roles and responsibilities, responsibilities, like EOS is the entrepreneurial operating system. But we use things like Asana and we have Slack and we have all these different channels for communication and just for project management. I'm just curious like, is anything working for you specifically? Like anything that you think is noteworthy?

Steph Weber 24:03

I think for us, we had to determine first like what are the specific roles that we need. And so my husband and I are the ones who are managing it. So we manage the cabins through our co-hosting business. So in our co-hosting business, we are using Slack, we're using ClickUp, we're using Breezeway, we're using Hospitable as our property management software. So we are using like that price labs, of course. We're using that tech stack there. And that again is all run through our co-hosting business internally as a partnership team. Uh, we really haven't had a need for that just because of all of our different roles. Like our builder has his own systems and processes of whatever he's doing. We text and we talk a lot, but it just that just stays between the two of us because we're managing partner, he's building partner. If our CPA partner needs anything financial-wise from me or has questions about something, she just reaches out to me directly. So we haven't had a need for that within the partnership, but more so on the like day-to-day operations side of things.

Michael Russell 24:57

Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I want to shift gears here a little bit because I want to hop into marketing. You are not just marketing for your own project, you're also a professional marketer by trade and you have a lot of experience in not just what works for you, but what's working for other people. So I want to talk about this. Like you've said that relying on Airbnb is not a marketing strategy. So for listeners who haven't built a direct booking funnel before, where, I mean, where should they start?

Steph Weber 25:28

Start first with your brand and understanding that your brand is not Airbnb. I hear so often from short-term rental owners, like, oh, I own an Airbnb. I'm like, you don't own an Airbnb. Oh, you have a vacation rental and it is a business and take ownership of that asset and of what you're truly building, right? And the hospitality business that you are running, especially in the boutique hotel industry, right? Like very, very obviously need brand ownership. The brand, I talk so much about that because it is your foundation. I use the analogy if you were to start trying to build a structure, right? We were starting to try to start building our cabins. And we just started trying to put up walls. This is what I see people do with marketing. Let's go have the Instagram account. Let's like throw money at ads, let's build the email list. And you don't have a foundation first, the walls are going to fall down around you. So if you don't first understand your brand, target audience, brand core messaging, et cetera, marketing's not going to be effective. From a marketing perspective, where I typically encourage boutique hotels, short-term rental owners, et cetera, to start A, having a great website that has an SEO strategy in place is an important component. And also email and SMS marketing and making sure you have those two foundational pieces. When we start to talk about social media, it's the like sexy side of marketing that everyone's like, oh yeah, like let me get the likes, like the vanity metrics from Instagram or whatever. And for me, from a marketing perspective, the constant question I get is, what's my ROI? When am I going to see an ROI? So I can't measure your ROI on Instagram if our post is leading to Airbnb. I can't track that. There's no data around that, right? So from an Instagram perspective, I'm taking a look at how effective is Instagram based on website traffic, based on email opt-ins, based on SMS subscribers, right? And of course, based on bookings. We look at follower count, but I'm like, a follower is only a number if it's not translating to your bottom line. So that's in a nutshell, like kind of where I would start. And again, like social media is important, but have your foundations in place first.

Nathan St Cyr 27:27

And from that tracking standpoint, you said that you can't track it through Airbnb. They, if they're if they see you on social media, they go to Airbnb, they book that what is that? The attribution model does not allow the Hey, look at Nathan.

Michael Russell 27:44

Attribution model. He's learning the jargon.

Nathan St Cyr 27:47

Shit, dude. I'm trying, yeah. Thank you, thank you. Thank God for our podcast that we had like professionals on. But this is really important because we talk about this on a daily basis with our House at Hostels brand. Is okay, so where do they go from social media and then how do we track? But you just what when I was first the way I perceived what you just said is that when they do go to your direct booking site, now you have the ability to understand that process better. Did I understand that correctly?

Steph Weber 28:20

Yep, you're correct. You're correct. I did you, you're, you're great, Nate. So what I would tell you is that let's say, for example, let's say, for example, we have an influencer come stay at a property, right? Because we do leverage influencer marketing as part of our overall social media strategy. We have an influencer come stay at a property. So the next question that the brand is going to ask me is, okay, how are we tracking the effectiveness of that influencer's post, right? So when that influencer posts, I'm taking a look at website traffic over roughly the next week. I'm taking a look at did we see spikes in website traffic? When did we see spikes? Was it within the first 24 hours, 48 hours of their post going live? And then we're also taking a look at how many email subscribers did we see this week versus last week when we didn't have that influencer come stay as an example. And you can do the same thing with content you're creating yourself. You post a reel, all of a sudden you're seeing your website traffic increase, you're seeing email subscribers, you're seeing bookings from that. Okay, we need to create more of this kind of content. So those are some different things that we're kind of taking a look at in terms of what's working and what's not.

Michael Russell 29:20

I mean, that sounds that sounds really simple and straightforward. Let's jump into tactics though. So you mentioned influencers, that's one of them. But like what specific Instagram or email or SEO or even paid paid search? What tactics have worked best for you?

Steph Weber 29:35

Yeah. So let's start, let's start first with email marketing. I SEO, I have basic knowledge around SEO, and I will always take ownership for where my zone of expertise does not lie. My zone of expertise does not lie with SEO. My zone of expertise does not lie with paid ads. So I am very much organic marketing from the perspective of email, social, and influencers. So from an email marketing perspective, there are a few different automated funnels that we put in place for most of our clients. Number one is a website opt-in. If I land on your website, I need to have at least one spot where I can opt in and it's something that I actually want. So for Cabins on the Cumberland, as an example, when you go to our website, you're going to see like enter to win a free stay with us. And you, we walk you through a couple of questions, you give us your name, your email, your phone number. And now you're entered to win a free stay. We draw a winner quarterly to come and stay with us. So I've now gained your information that way. You go through a series of five emails. In those five emails, you're also getting a promo code. So you win no matter what. And you can now take that promo code and book a stay with us. So you're still feeling like you're getting something. In addition to that, it's just that's a pop-up on our website. We've also created that in the form of a landing page. So again, not to try to get really complicated here, but we've created this landing page so that we can run ads directly to that piece of content, like win a free stay. We're trying to list build. We've also created it so I can have a mini chat funnel that allows our organic content to go to that giveaway page. So I can say comment the word giveaway below to enter to win a stay with us, or DM us the word giveaway to enter to win a stay with us, which boosts our engagement on social, right? So that's kind of like website opt-in. You've got to have at least, at least one place where I can opt into something. The second piece is we can't neglect our guests who have already stayed with us. And whether you're using something like some kind of captive Wi-Fi, like if you're using Stay Fi or something of that kind, engage with those past guests, send them through an automated funnel, keep your brand top of mind. I hear so often from owners, like, yeah, we've had past guests stay with us, and they go back to Airbnb. And I'm like, cool. How often have they heard from you since their last day? They're like, never. I'm like, oh, that's why they went back to Airbnb. Kudos to Airbnb. They've done a great job building their brand and they have pretty good marketing. So we have to make sure that we're staying like ahead of whatever the OTAs are trying to do, right? So that's from an email marketing perspective, engaging our past guests and then website opt-in. We can get really complex with email funnels, but to keep it so streamlined, that's what I would tell you to do.

Michael Russell 32:01

Well, I want to pause right there because you breezed through it, but it's a really important point. It surprised me that many people know this, but there are still a lot of folks that aren't aware of this. So for very it's at a very affordable price, whether it's a STR or if it's a boutique hotel or even branded hotels. But the the reality is the software that captures emails, there's a whole bunch of them, and maybe you can list out some names. But basically, what they do is when someone logs into your Wi-Fi, they give their email address and then you capture it. And then from there, you can send them emails directly. And the important part is even if you get emails currently from, let's say, VRBO, I think Airbnb does their best to like prevent people from providing their emails to you directly. You're only getting the email address for whoever booked the reservation. So if you have a hotel and someone books a reservation and there's two to four people staying in the hotel room, you're only getting the email for that one person that booked. You can 4X potentially your emails that you collect by having software in place that everyone that logs in has it, they're prompted by putting in their email address. We've done that with very like a lot of success for our hostels, and it's really easy to implement. If you have a Wi-Fi router, it's as simple as attaching some software to it and it automatically prompts them. And and people do it and it doesn't bother them and they get added to our email list and they can always opt out.

Steph Weber 33:18

Yep, 100%. Yeah. Safeye is the one that I'm most familiar with, and I know that there's a version of that for like larger hotels. I know Tremont Lodge, who's actually one of our clients, is using that too, but it it is very much worth the investment. I think we're so we're like, oh, I don't want another software. I don't want to have to pay for another thing. And I'm like, okay, but like that $15 a month or $30 a month thing could contribute to thousands of dollars in bookings. That feels like a no-brainer to me, as long as you're using it, right? I've had plenty of clients that come to me and they're like, I have an email list of a thousand. And I'm like, awesome. Like, what are you doing with it? They're like, nothing. And I'm like, okay, great, we're gonna fix that today.

Nathan St Cyr 33:55

Okay, so did you say you do the marketing for Tremont Lodge?

Steph Weber 33:58

We do, yeah, we do their socials.

Nathan St Cyr 34:00

And that is Blake's property?

Steph Weber 34:03

It is, yep.

Nathan St Cyr 34:04

So that's for anybody that's listening that doesn't know Blake daily, he's awesome in the in this space. But I would make this assumption now that you've just said that, that if Blake is using you for his marketing, that you're probably quite effective.

Steph Weber 34:20

Yes, I would think so, Nate. I would think so. Yeah, no, Blake had a different marketing company doing stuff for him previously. And unfortunately, from an Instagram perspective, and again, I think this comes down to like understanding who you're hiring and what you're hiring for. It's very easy in marketing for whatever reason. I have a hard time wrapping my brain around this, but it's like, oh, I'll just hand that task off to a VA or oh, we'll just like use some stock images for our Instagram. And I'm like, what's the point of even doing it then? Because you're A, wasting dollars and B wasting your time, energy, and effort. And that kind of content just doesn't convert. And what I often find is that companies who have hired task-based VAs, which I love my VAs, we have many of them that we work with and they're amazing, but they have to be supported by strategy. And if they're not supported by strategy and they're not supported by great content, they're not going to be able to do their job well for you. So investing in your marketing is a requirement and it is something that is incredibly important.

Nathan St Cyr 35:16

Okay. And when somebody comes to you, and this is the big challenge with marketing from my perspective as someone that's not an expert, is really quantifying how do we really know and understand over what amount of time the impact that you are having on our business. And before we get started, can you give us an anticipated impact that you're gonna have from a return on investment standpoint? This is the question that is just like so obscure. And I'd like to understand a little bit. Don't say three to one. We always hear that. Oh, yeah, three to one and one. Like what I love this.

Steph Weber 35:56

Yeah. So I'll give you my answer from a marketing perspective and kind of what I share with clients as well. We take a look first at what are you doing currently and how can we make it better? And what results are you getting currently? And what can we do that's going to help you reach your goals? And what are your goals? Like, if someone's coming to me and they're like, I expect that we are going to see $20,000 in direct bookings next month and we have no Instagram account and no following, I'm gonna say, that's not probably a realistic goal unless you're gonna dump some serious money into ads. Maybe, but I'm super realistic with our clients and what it looks like. And we kind of take a look at each piece of the puzzle. When we're taking a look at email marketing and you're coming to me with a list, you're going to see an ROI in 30 days. What that ROI looks like is different based on each client, because if I have an email list of 10,000, I have a lot more people to work with and a lot more opportunity for bookings than I do with a list of 750 people. But we've certainly converted lists of 750 people to $5,000 in direct bookings in 30 days. That has happened. Really, just again, it's like dependent upon how engaged your list is. And do you have a website that it I can actually work with? Because I've also seen, oh, I want you to do my marketing stuff. But I go to your website and it's really difficult for me to book with you. You've made it very complicated. So all of those factors matter. Email marketing is usually lowest hanging fruit. It's usually where we start because you're going to see a quick ROI. The social media side of things, I ask for 90 days of give me 90 days of implementing strategy in its entirety. We use the three C's: content, conversations, and collaborations. So if we can execute all of those pieces within 90 days, there's some sort of ROI or bookings generated. So, for example, using Tremont Lodge as an example, Blake's like, I can see that you're running this mini chat funnel, and this is the only place where we're sharing this code, and it is directly leading to 10K plus indirect bookings.

Michael Russell 37:50

Wait, is that true? Is that true? Are you just making like a hype?

Steph Weber 37:53

No, I mean that's true. Those are true, those are true numbers.

Nathan St Cyr 37:55

That was a good little sale hook to get us to lead in. You're like, oh, I'm gonna drop this. Oh, I'm gonna just oh 10k. There's well done, Steph.

Steph Weber 38:05

Thank you. Thank you. It's like I'm in marketing. No, are you in marketing? It's so weird.

Michael Russell 38:11

It's effective. I okay. So look, we we were covering this. I I think I led with the question of like, all right, what are the tactics that are working? You've said, okay, email, influencers work. You're not doing paid search, which by the way, I love because I as a owner, I don't want to spend money if I on additional stuff if I can avoid it, right? Organic sounds better because to me, organic means free. So I like that. Okay, so it's email, social media, influencers. What else? Am I missing anything?

Steph Weber 38:39

Nope. Those are that that we do the website and we do SEO. I have an amazing partner that I work with on that side of things, but I will never take ownership for SEO because I know the basics. I know enough to be like dangerous with it, but but not enough to like be successful with it.

Michael Russell 38:54

So now here's what I want to know. And this is relatively new. So I'm putting you on your heels, I guess. AI, right? Like, I don't even use Google very much anymore. I mean, it surprises me when I do. I'm not searching online. I am searching with Chat GPT or I start using perplexity. The point being is we're seeing this huge shift. And from a marketer's perspective, how is this affecting you in terms of positioning your clients so that they can be found on the platforms where people are trending, it's trending more and more that people are using these AI platforms now more than just general search.

Steph Weber 39:29

Yeah. So let's just take a look at Instagram as an example, right? It used to be way back when, when you were leveraging Instagram to really drive your marketing, you were really focused on hashtags. You were focused on your posting time, and you were like, I have to have this very beautiful, visually appealing photo. Hit post at my specific 8 p.m. time, and I'm gonna see all the likes come through, whatever. And use the hashtags so that I can be found. Now we're looking at keywords. Now we're looking at this is where my like bit of SEO knowledge comes into play. Now We're going, okay, what are people using on Instagram or Chat GPT or whatever AI tool you're using? Even if you do go do a Google search now, right? It's like, here's the AI overview. Yeah. So now we're going, all right, what keywords do we need to have in posts so that that's being picked up potentially? Or if you're searching on Instagram and someone's like, where to stay in the smoky mountains? Okay, well, we know that that's a key word. So we need to make sure that that's incorporated in our captions. We need to make sure that we're taking a look at what we're posting in the actual reel itself or the carousel itself, location and using location in those posts is important as well. So it's shifted in that it's there's a heavier weight to that piece, specifically on social media. I think the other way that AI impacts us is like my amazing web developer sent me a commercial that she created the other day. And she's like, look at this commercial I just created for a client using AI. And I was like, this isn't real. You didn't go film this, you didn't go shoot this. And then she did one for our cabins using a hot tub video that I have. And I'm like, this is crazy. Like this, this is going to change what it looks like to create some of these assets for marketing. I still very much feel that AI is not doing it's like still very obvious. If you have an AI-generated photo that you're using and posting on Instagram, that's still very clear and obvious.

Michael Russell 41:17

Yeah, but listen, what I'm drilling down to is like, do we know how AI is finding people? Like I hired a landscape architecture company, like the people that come in and like do the hardscape, plant the trees, like not just like someone that's like mowing and blowing, but like like a contractor. And I used ChatGPT to find this contractor because I said, like, hey, find me a quality person with whatever the prompts are. You can actually like prompt ChatGPT to give you the prompt, which is really cool. And ultimately I gave me a list of like five people and it said, hey, these are highly reviewed, yada yada. And so, from a marketer's perspective, okay, well, if I want to go on a vacation now and book a hotel, I might just go on ChatGPT agent mode and give it the prompt and say, find me the hotel. That's very different than like having pretty photos on Instagram. Like that stuff is still important. I'm not saying that that's going away, but if AI now is the future for finding people, the hotels that are gonna fit what they're looking for, how do you have to adapt as a marketer to be able to be found on AI by that technology?

Steph Weber 42:25

Yeah, great. Okay, thank you for clarifying, Mike. I appreciate that. Number one is an SEO strategy on your website, SEO in your content as well. And then I also would say Google business profile and encouraging get past guests to leave those reviews. And again, this is all part of like your marketing funnel, too, right? Instead of just saying, oh, well, they book direct and we're not gonna go ask them to do anything, set up that Google business profile, get those reviews. Because in our reviews, our guests are going, we had a great time at Cabins on the Cumberland, and they're using our brand name. So they're like helping to boost us, and they don't even know that, right? So those are important pieces. I'm sure that that will continue to grow and evolve. And that comes down to like SEO is also not just like the word, like the words that you're seeing on your screen, right? It's also in the metadata of your photos and in the descriptions that you're writing for each piece of your website. So that is probably the most important piece that I see from my perspective with AI right now.

Michael Russell 43:23

Yeah, I think the reviews really resonate with me. I don't totally understand how AI works with all the other aspects of social media and stuff, but it seems pretty obvious. Like one of the things that we've done, it seems like really low-hanging fruit is focus on reviews by incentivizing our staff. Like if they're aligned, where if we get good reviews, we have higher occupancy, then we have more money to be able to share with our staff. So we offer a compensation based on review quantity. The more reviews we get, the team gets a bonus. And it's actually like individualized to people, like if they mention someone's name, they get like a little extra cherry on top. So now we're finding that people are happy to go and write a review because they had such a great time. They want the person that helped them to be recognized for that. So, I mean, these are real reviews, they're authentic. We're not buying reviews, but what's happening is the people recognize oh, if Sarah was super nice to me, gosh, I wish there was a way for me to be able to help her. Well, all I gotta do is write a review. That that little tactic we found, I mean, we've just accelerated our review count, and now we have like 4.9 stars on Google with, I don't know, we're trending. We're what are we doing, like 80 to 100 reviews a week, something like that? Like, oh no, no, no, no. That's probably a month.

Nathan St Cyr 44:37

But either way, we're doing about we're doing close to 40 a week, so it's about 160 reviews for what we're doing here in our our little sites on Maui and the Big Island. That's yeah, worth pumping them in. Yeah, that's and to be a host, and to be a host, you know, to yes, we're the number one ranked hostel in North America, but still to be a 4.9 on Google stacking that many reviews, 4.9 on Maui and 4.8 on on the big island, it it has a it has an impact.

Michael Russell 45:08

Yep, 100%. I like the direction where we've gone. I I wanna, as we go and kind of wrap this podcast up, though, I can't help but want to just understand briefly your kind of your mindset. I think that this is a big part of people's success. And in preparing for this episode, doing a little bit of research on you, this really struck me as that your willpower and your background and some of the things that like the details of like how you self-funded yourself in college, and then you went and you built this like seven-figure marketing company, and now you're building this micro resort. I just I'd like to know, like, okay, where does this drive come from? What is driving you for this success?

Steph Weber 45:47

Mike, you really did your research. You like, you don't, you dove deep in. I love it. Yeah. And that's such it's a great question. I think part of it is like in my DNA, my dad was an entrepreneur, and I he unfortunately had a really rough experience in losing a company and losing a business. And my boyfriend at the time, but my husband now remembers with us being 18, and I was like, I'm never gonna be an entrepreneur. I don't want to put my family through this. I'm not gonna go through this, etc. And now here we are running three different businesses with two kids, and it is what it is. I think my biggest motivator is that I want to be able to live life in the way that I want to be able to live it and not have someone else tell me that I have to be at this specific place from this specific time to this specific time. And if my kids need me, like, sorry, you got to be here for work. You don't have the vacation days, you don't have the sick days. That is that's not how I want to live and not how I want to experience life. I also right now have this North Star of being able to leave our home a year from now and hit the road in a camper for a year with our boys and live life in national parks and on the road with them and just experiencing all that our country has to offer from that like nature adventure piece. And that would not be possible if I wasn't grinding right now in every possible capacity. So I think it comes down to like, how do I want to experience life and how do I want my boys to experience life and to see what's possible for them? So, especially here in the Midwest for us, we grew up in a very specific way. It was like parents were working, you go to school, you come home, you go to your activities. I'm like, well, when did we ever spend time together as a family? Maybe on Sundays. Otherwise, we were a million different directions. That wasn't, that's not necessarily how I want us to experience our family together. And I want our boys to be able to go, look at what they're doing. They decided that they were gonna do this whole short-term rental thing. Then they build a micro resort. What can I do? And I think that's really powerful for them to see too. Yeah.

Nathan St Cyr 47:46

I I love that. I want to like when I think about children growing up in this environment. Like, I I know Mike's story, and I'm like, I'll I'll hear him talk and he'll bring up his mom a lot about like he was impacted by his mom being an entrepreneur that was there for him that wanted that exact same freedom that you're talking about, to be there for those kids to raise them. And and now I'm starting to see like this is not intentional, but I'm starting to see in my daughters these crazy things that I never would have even thought to have done. I mean, we have they've been going around the islands, they're passionate about searching for these shells because they're making jewelry from them and they are selling them and making money. Their grandmother's a jeweler and they found this little niche, and then they're asking me if they can invest the money that they're making there into different land investments and different things that I have going, and they're like thinking, and then I'll see their post-it notes that are like, you're strong, you're beautiful, like all of these things that I've, you know, as an entrepreneur that we do, that we don't really understand, like, holy crap, we're impacting. I'm starting to see that impact. So just the fact that your boys are getting to see a strong woman as a mother that's out there, like shaping life. That's I don't know, it inspires me. So freaking awesome job.

Steph Weber 49:14

That's awesome, Nate. Thank you. I appreciate that. One of the most rewarding things happened the other day. Our four-year-old was like, we were talking about Christmas, and I was like, maybe we should go somewhere for Christmas. And he said, Mama, we should go to the cabins for Christmas. And I was like, Man, that was cool. Like, you've been down to the cabins, you know what it's like down there. You were like one of the reasons that we created what we've created down there. So that was like, ooh, I just got goosebumps. So that was a really cool.

Nathan St Cyr 49:39

Oh, so did I. Just got um, you said that I did too. Heck yeah.

Michael Russell 49:43

Awesome. All right. Well, look, this has been awesome, Steph. So if our listeners they want to, let's say they want to connect with you and learn more about the Weber Company, which is your marketing business, or if they just want to follow your journey of the Cabins on Cumberland, where should they go?

Steph Weber 49:59

Yeah, come hang out with me on Instagram at the Weber Co. That is the best spot to hang out. You also can, of course, follow along with Cabins on the Cumberland. We would love to see you there. We would love to host you there. But for from a marketing perspective, branding perspective, if you're thinking about getting into the boutique hotel space, this podcast is an amazing resource, but I'm always happy to chat. I was chatting with a couple the other day and they're like, We're thinking about doing this. And I'm like, just do it. You just have to do it. So be prepared for that advice. Like, you'll figure it out. Find find the vision and then go.

Michael Russell 50:27

All right. Well, listener, so hip listeners, get it, get it, hip. I just thought of that, like hotel investor playbook. Yeah. Okay, hip listeners. Wow. Before you go. Oh, I know, cheesy. Hey, dad, dad joke, whatever. Look, rate and review the show seriously right now, not later. You've got your phone in your hand, your apps open. We've put in the work here, so just go and give us a review. We appreciate you. We're gonna keep pumping out great content. So, this has been another great episode of the Hotel Investor Playbook. We are Mike and Nate. She is Steph Weber, and we are checking out. We'll catch you again next week. Aloha, we're gonna be able to