Influencers? TikTok? Instagram Ads? The Future of Tourism Marketing or Just Another Fad?

Andy: 0:00

Because you're not going to get everything that you need to know from your accountant. It's kind of like how you learned sex when you were a child. It's from the guys on the street, you know,

Steve: 0:08

I did not learn sex from the guys on the street, Andy.

Steve: 0:13

When you're a child, you learn sex in some guys on the streets?

Steve: 0:17

What's going on San Diego?

Andy: 0:22

Okay.

Andy: 0:35

Andy: 0:57

Wonderful.

Steve: 1:31

It's a wonderful Tuesday got a lot of shit going on. Awesome!

Kevin: 1:34

Is it Tuesdays or Monday?

Steve: 1:36

It's a Tuesday. I got a cancellation email today; cancellation of service. You gotta like that right?

Andy: 1:41

Oh shit. I meant to send that after this.

Steve: 1:43

You guys should all send it at the same time. That'd be awesome. Why'd you three today? That'd be awesome, too.

Kevin: 1:53

Killer man. Yeah, I was I went back and listened to the first stuff first two. So this is episode three for those of our two or three fans that we have which I'm imagining are three downloads are Andy, Steve, Jared and myself.

Steve: 2:07

Maybe some loved ones in there. Oh my god, you're on a podcast. That's so exciting.

Kevin: 2:11

I don't think one of them.

Andy: 2:12

I made 20 employees listen to so there should be we should be getting them up their numbers. So

Jared: 2:18

these employees are all listening. What do we do How to Get a raise episode so that they can all ask him for a race? Oh, let's not do that one.

Kevin: 2:28

I had a kid work for me and hit me up the other night even hit me up. He hit my partner up because he's fucking because everyone's terrified of me. And he was like, he just sent like a screenshot of it. And he was like, I've worked for you guys for like three years, and I haven't got a raise. And I was like, Oh, shit, man. He should have said somebody. You're a good employee. Here you go.

Steve: 2:44

I mean, you saying that? Like we can touch on that. I was like, that's funny, too. I'm the worst at it. Like, do any of you guys do like annual raises? Or do you just like, somebody's got to ask for it.

Andy: 2:54

I wait until they quit. And then I try and buy him back.

Steve: 2:58

I give everybody raises like I've done I've gotten to in a season that people don't ask for it. Just if I see people hustling, they get raises. And if you're not a hustler, you're getting fired.

Andy: 3:08

So if that's the minimum wage in Florida?

Steve: 3:11

Four bucks an hour.

Kevin: 3:12

Yeah, it's fucking 10 bucks an hour. And now it's 11 and then we're going up to 15 It'll be $1 a year.

Andy: 3:18

Yeah, well, we're at 15 right now and it's going up they're not doing anything more $15 Now right now than they were $10 An hour two years ago, so they don't get any raises and they don't even get to ask

Steve: 3:30

Jared I know you got a couple exact level or like higher up level like what do you do with them?

Jared: 3:34

Yeah, I mean, you know I like I tend to try to do annual raises for the core group but it's you know, it's tough to remember like you know, I'm not a guy that like remembers like dates or anything like that. So it's like unless the system reminds me I'm like I've shit man I don't know but I can tell you that we'd like we just switch to you know a PEO or you know, professional employment organization. So like we have so we're technically like we employ everybody but it's through this other like third party to like kind of take some liability and stuff off of us but their system now this thing is pretty slick to where it's like now it's got annual performance reviews it's got raises it's got like you know like now we in December through January we can do everybody's like raises in performance decided to either goose egg them or you know, give them 10% or 50% Depends what they're worth but Andy there's no freaking way at 15 bucks an hour in California. You can even hire anybody by the way because like I can't like I would have an ad out there and like in California wouldn't like nobody touch it because McDonald's is paying 15 bucks an hour.

Andy: 4:30

No, it's very difficult. It is very difficult. Fortunately, it's way more exciting and fun to work for us and it is for McDonald's. So you get people that really just want to kind of a lifestyle job now that we get it we hired a bunch of j one visa kids from Ireland this year. So there we do it, but it is it's tough. And that is our starting.

Steve: 4:49

Andy: 5:37

It is. And then if you have people that were at 50, and the minimum wage goes to 50, and they're like, Oh, I'm not working for minimum wage. I'm like, No, you're working for the same thing you worked at yesterday. It's just that that's the minimum wage, but they don't get it. They don't give a shit.

Jared: 5:50

Yeah, yeah.

Kevin: 5:51

You have the right to work. And if you don't want to work for what I'm paying for, you can get the fuck out.

Steve: 5:57

Jared: 6:15

Shut off.

Andy: 6:19

How long ago did you apply? Did that take a long time to get the money?

Steve: 6:22

Andy: 6:40

Yeah, I just applied but my accountant did it. And he takes a 20% cut.

Steve: 6:44

Really,

Andy: 6:45

But he did all the paperwork.

Steve: 6:47

employer.

Kevin: 6:48

Yeah, but you had to go Didn't you have to show a loss of wages like in the first quarter now?

Andy: 6:54

They took that away. They had to show that you were affected by COVID. Yeah, so I might my alcohol consumption went way up definitely affected by CO qualified you.

Steve: 7:05

You and I have talked about it Kevin, you got to look into this. I mean-

Kevin: 7:07

I did. I talked all talk. I talked to my CPA and when I talked

Andy: 7:11

Oh, talk to your CPA, talk to one of the shysters that's on TV all the time all these

Steve: 7:15

guys search just ERC credit and like and there's somebody will do it for 20% of your

Andy: 7:19

and right they'll do it on a contingency. It doesn't cost you anything out of pocket, but it's legit. You guys

Jared: 7:25

You guys are insane. This is like your payroll provider. It's free to do and it's a form like it takes 10 seconds. What are you doing given 20%? away? I'm gonna tell you

Steve: 7:33

guys, I mean, I've gotten like Jared and I have talked about it enough times. I've gotten good mid six figures.

Jared: 7:39

Yeah.

Kevin: 7:41

Well, I don't know, man. I bought it up to my accountant. And they said we wouldn't qualify.

Steve: 7:45

No, it's that that guy in India on QuickBooks?

Jared: 7:49

Yeah, it was like gonna have any QuickBooks. Talk to him on Fiverr I put an ad out on Craigslist about the employee retention credit and then I fucking probably where it went wrong, and then I just fucking like walked headfirst into a door and fucking forgot how to put my shoes on. Well, Kevin, you're the only one of us who hasn't got it. So I'm a fucking bumbling fucking idiot. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm stupid. What can I say? I'm just dumb. You know,

Steve: 8:19

admitting it as the first step of the problem.

Kevin: 8:22

Fucking Christ, man. You know if anybody is still on eight minutes and 45 646 seconds, man, like fucking salute to you, man. I really appreciate

Steve: 8:34

yours. He is. I mean, if you want we can dig into why fareharbor and picqer. Super awesome. I mean, I think this is interesting. Like a lot of people have payroll. ERC was amazing. I think if you haven't figured it out yet, or you haven't dug into it, you should have because we're missing a lot of extra money that will come straight back to your checkbook. Yeah, yeah, I think

Jared: 8:51

it's definitely shyster on TV.

Kevin: 8:53

I didn't realize that there was some other there was more than my accountant telling me no, I didn't know that there are some shots TV shots. I don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean TV shyster at the head? Tell me send me your guy.

Steve: 9:05

I got it right here.

Jared: 9:06

If you Google ERC you'll you'll see like error you would see ads and like we'll do this you know like you don't pay unless we get paid that's what he's talking about the you know the the hammer.

Kevin: 9:17

Is it still going on? I want it-

Jared: 9:19

I think it's over?

Andy: 9:20

No, it is still going if you

Steve: 9:21

go to employee retention credits.com He'll take care of it for you at no cost.

Andy: 9:26

There you go man, man out.

Kevin: 9:27

Well, I'm gonna look it up already. The show is fucking delivering value in like a spiky, jaded, fucking jolted way it's delivering value. Here you go. Here's value and you're an idiot. So any of you guys if your accountants out there told you that ERC didn't reach out to Steve Edwards that Steve on the amp agency and he'll reach out until

Steve: 9:48

the morning percent. Absolutely. You gotta send it over. I'll fill out the form. Yeah,

Andy: 9:53

I think a good point though. So yeah, we're talking about ERC, which may not be really the topic for today, but I think what it goes to show is that you need to have a circle of people that you listen to and that you can get info from. Because you're not going to get everything that you need to know from your accountant. It's kind of like how you learned sex when you were a child. It's from the guys on the street, you know,

Either sex from the guys on the street and

when you're a child, you wouldn't set some guys at what's going on in

Sandy Okay, okay. Jesus Christ I keep the San

Diego man

I think er C stands for something completely different and

was it this something for erectile dysfunction?

Why don't we use the pills my daughter's

circle? Fucking reality.

So yeah, thank you.

Today's talk to you know, guys, like we want to like sort of have like, like an idea about what we're going to talk about. So we're not just like fucking rambling. And you guys like get something out of it. So I mean, to their point, like you just like, pretty interesting about this ERC thing. And I didn't know that there was like guys on like Google ads that were fucking just given it out. So Andy's point is like, absolutely right, that most of this shit, or you do have to have a good circle of bodies who have maybe a little bit more experience in business than you do. Or you know what I mean, your CPA tells you something and you're just like, Yeah, you know, it's the gospel truth. And you go home and forget about it. And maybe a little bit of this. I don't know if you're like in the world of tourism or marketing, this might be but it's an evolving topic. Right? follows, right pals and its social media, and where it's, where it's going, where it's at, and maybe a little bit about where it's been. And probably the expert out of the three of us is the residential marketer, just slightly what he says because you got to deconstruct it, because there might be some pitch or something at the end of it, you know what I mean? He's like, That's why Steve's social network services.

For you. You already heard him, he's trying to pitch me on his ERC like King affiliate program.

I absolutely, if they had an affiliate program for it, I'd take it. But I mean, I think that there's a lot of this stuff where a bear people get in their holes, and they don't look at anything else. Like just to the point of like, you send it to your accountant and you just think your accountant has your best interest and you're not just a number.

Well, Steve, I want to pull you back in the world. You're me and you are both sometimes a little bearish on on social media, we don't get all like butterflies in our stomachs when we talk about it. Like, especially in Facebook. I mean, obviously, social is a big conversation.

You know, I am so I'm gonna be totally talking out of both sides of my mouth in this conversation, because the struggle with owning an agency is people get so romantical about their social and seeing these people, I know romantically is not a word. Word that oh, they get so wrapped around this idea of that's what they see. They go to their Facebook and they see this Facebook post and they're like, Well, I don't know, we posted that we're giving 10% off. I don't know why we're not swamped. I mean, it got saw by 11 people and it's tough because especially a tourism a lot or the bulk of people's businesses driven by Google and as much as people hate it, you know, they want to crush social we want to crush social we want to figure out this magic secret one to make Facebook and Instagram ads make people want to do top of funnel fun things to do when they visit your town but they don't convert the same way even close

to this. They used to then they used to be pretty fucking good. Oh, hell yeah. Dude. I mean, that's how we're getting in the tracking were incredible on Facebook, pre fucking Apple privacy network bullshit. I mean, I could I could track somebody because so for us in my market because it's a drive in market and a lot of tourists for a large percentage of our market share is driving I mean, depending on what what part of the country you're in, but we could dial in what was it 100 And what was it 150 miles or something like that of the area coming from the area and then you could exclude people that lived in the area so you could literally target tourists coming to your area and I think for a top of funnel campaign that's super valuable, you know, especially if people you know are still trying to figure out what the fuck they're going to do and then they're getting served you know, they're getting served ads and then they're getting served remarketing ads and if you're, you know sectioning those two things off into some solid good creative and you know and and then they got rid of all that and now it's like you know, backend of Facebook is terrible.

I mean, some of it they haven't gotten they've gotten rid of. So for people wondering top of funnel we mean people discovering your business that have no real understanding of what they're looking for meaning you arrive in Orlando and the local alligator go pet the alligator shows up or shoot a machine gun shows up when you come to Vegas. You weren't searching for it on it's showing up. Up is something you could go do. Some of that is still there. I've just I mean, I'm I will probably always be bearish on this. I don't think people make their discovery of cool things to do or the things they want to do by just seeing a Facebook ad or seeing an Instagram ad. I think it takes a lot more to sperm over there.

Can I play devil's advocate just a little bit I'm sorry. I hate to I hate no joy over this, but it's like something I always love my Facebook ads. Like when you brought me when you brought me on the amp, I loved them, dude. Like I love the fucking the marketing shoot the get rich quick shit. Like I fucking really I really loved it. And I felt like my ads were tailored to me. And it wasn't just that it was shirts. I was interested in a bunch of like E commerce and Shopify shit like, don't you feel like that has has gone away a little bit.

I think you can love anything. But I think actually turning into conversions is a totally different story. I mean, you can love your Facebook ads are beautiful, awesome. But if people don't click on my book with you, what does that I mean, you've completely

missed my fucking point. There I mean,

I mean I met my ads I was being served and your ads to don't edit. Don't all of you guys.

Let me rewind so I can understand what you meant. Yeah. What do you don't notice like that

the marketing that you're seeing in your Facebook feed hasn't drastically changed since the opt in happened? You don't notice?

Absolutely. But that doesn't I mean, you know, to that point it Yeah, it's changed. But it still doesn't mean your Facebook ads converted or that the ads that you're seeing are converting. I think it's people are just going down the road further. I think now they're doing tick tock ads. I think now, tick tock is going to be the new platform that that spurs e commerce. But we're in tourism, I don't know that tick tock ads are gonna spur renting upon tune in in San Diego or going on a ghost tour in you know, in anywhere else in Denver. I mean, I I'm happy to be wrong. But you know, Analytics doesn't lie.

I think if you have a product that if you have a new product that you're bringing to market, I think it becomes super fucking challenging if you don't have any search volume. And if you don't have solid, detailed, targeted demographics and tracking or with those things, definitely going to I mean, you're gonna get with with a better detailed targeting, you're gonna get more conversions. No,

yes, yeah. 100%. But, so let's go do like a product that we're like a new product coming to market. Okay. I like we've all looked at and gotten to restaurants because you've seen them on Instagram, or you see them on Tik Tok, and they seem pretty awesome. But that hasn't translated over to tourism yet. I mean, I agree. I think like Jared, Jared is a perfect example of this because he offers the right product for this where some of these tick tock or Instagram reels should drive traffic for Ghost Tour should drive traffic for some of his food tours that he's doing in certain markets should be a home run. But the reality is, is that they aren't converting even still to the even close to the fraction as close as well as Google ads are converting. Yeah,

but you guys are you guys are talking about like ads. And I mean, that's that is one thing, like, for Facebook, I think you can only drive so much. Like that's a top of funnel thing nowadays, right? But it's not that you don't like we're I assume Andy and Kevin, you just keep running rows of social pages, like the posts and stuff like that. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So we all do this. So we're paying seed like a fee. Right? And he's got you know, created content and there'll be an posted but none of that shit goes viral. It's like It's like it's it doesn't it just stays like okay, they're posting again and you get the same seven people liking it and then you're

like, you're right, they can't because we're not giving them the content. Right but

I mean, so I gotta play the I gotta play Steve's angle here then. But how many conversions that lead to?

Dude I like I mean sales were probably a $75,000

Well no no no no for

$1,000 commitment

75,000 Did it $75,000 More because of it?

Yeah, it's still up, like, I mean, my fucking sales have been like just like 47% Like every day since that that video ran. And it's also like, you know, we targeted a demographic that we don't usually get in front of. And we can I can also tell us the names and email addresses start coming in. Like, there's no way to, like physically track them 100% Unless you're going to have the influence or get like a vote out but like we can kind of see like, hey, we never had this demographic booking now this is like making up 20 to 30% of my my jewelers, right? So I mean, it's kind of like you can kind of see it. And I mean people like we also had a tattoo a restaurant, and this restaurant is like people are ordering that item that he came in today. You know, it's like, so it does, like I'm telling you it it's crazy. Like, let me put this in perspective. We were on you know Real Housewives of Beverly Hills Like last year, right? Like we had like the entire first like five minutes of this episode with everybody on our tour and the website traffic and everything from that was almost it was almost in line with this one influencer like it was like like this influencer outperformed Real Housewives. Like as far as traffic

i It's funny because it's like the there's like the right and left side of my brain that like there's the right side of my brain, or the left sides are creative. So like I'm over there with you, right Jared like so I'll say the same thing about Google Ads Google ad on a new product that I ran when I first came to Destin, and I wasn't running any paid Google search traffic for day of play, because there was nothing there. And we needed video to convert we ran remarketing and YouTube. Now I couldn't say for certain, you know, because I know Steve would say like, well fucking go down is like, Oh, well, you know that, you know, go prove it. Show me the conversion. No, because you weren't tracking it a little. And so like, you know, again, so it's just sort of like you did this thing. And then this thing happened, and then you're gone, like, and then there's a right side of my brain that's that agrees with Steve that says like, Okay, well, you know what I mean? Like, you're just seeing all this, like, is there just like, Alright, so this person that ordered the same thing as the influence, like, and the Steve was epic? Did they did it really? You know, did it really? Was there five people that ordered? Or was it $10,000 worth of that play? And I'm not saying one way or the other that I that I you know what I mean? That again? So it's like, is it part of you saying like that you saw this? And like you're 100%? Certain is, are you in like an echo chamber? Or did this actually,

I'll comment on it because Jared isn't incorrect, his traffic has gone up exponentially. He's having a very good month as far as conversions go. And the whole problem with it is is like, Can lightning strike twice? Okay, so we're like, you found a good influencer, that drove traffic we've done I've done a couple of them here in Las Vegas. And I, and and to touch back a little bit, because jerris point about like, organic social, I agree more than anybody, I agree more than any single customer I have about organic social being boring as fuck. Because truthfully, it is, I mean, it's the lowest amount that people pay for. And what a lot of times it is, is to make sure that you have content on your Facebook and Instagram. So it looks like you're open and at least somebody's managing your Instagram and social, anything I'm posting to your Facebook, if anybody's sitting around thinking that that organic post is going to fucking spur up all of your customers get your cash registers ringing. I mean, they probably didn't sit through a sales pitch because we would just never saw it. That's just it's unrealistic.

I think that the due diligence the customer does, whether it be on your social pages, or your Google My Business, which is always overlooked. And we get I get a ton of traffic on every single post that we make on Google My Business Daily, I make a daily post on Google My Business, we do a daily post in conjunction with Steve, my girl runs our runs our social, and I think when you have a customer, they might not be engaging with it. They might not be liking it, they might not be doing fuck all with it. What are they putting eyes on it? And then are you telling a story with your brand? Are you telling a story with your with your tours with your activities? And at the end of the day, if I'm doing any kind of due diligence, and I'm looking at content, regardless of whether or not I interact with it, and it's fire content, and it's fucking and I don't mean like, whatever, you know what I mean? I mean, bright, vibrant colors. I'm speaking to my demographic, I know who's running my shit. I know who I fucking want to talk to. And I'm doing this over and over and over again and consistently across every single platform. Does that line up with what my customers are saying? And where do they enter into the funnel and did they enter into From an ad they enter in from their fucking friend who told them about it. However they got there, if they're doing any, they're doing their vacation planning, which I can tell you in our market, it's real heavy man, people from the South, they plan the fucking vacation. It's everybody, you know, they got one week that they're going to spend a year and they fucking probably obsess on it for fucking months on end, man. And if they're if they're looking across your platforms, and there's a bunch of great content on the fucking regular, and there's a ton of it to fucking look at, bet your ass they're gonna sit there scrolling through it, they might not click on it, but they're looking at it, man.

And that I agree 100% So I think I don't click

on any links on my my friends. They the hot girls. Big sneak concrete phenomena man,

they're I think this gets way more challenging is it's really easy to have this conversation. Like, you know, we're I don't want to say we're old. But we're not the target market for some of this stuff. And when you see like, Jared, Jared is talking about the guy that did the TIC tock and the Instagram rails, that's where this is moving. And as an agency, it's terrifying because the hardest piece we have with any of our clients is collection of content, you know, you bring on a new guy doing ATV rentals in Tennessee or guy you know, not even giving you shit Kevin but doing pontoon rentals in Destin or something like that? How much content do a lot of these operators have? And a lot of them just don't have it? You know, it's just not top of mind to collect this content? And to think to, hey, how am I going to go make a tic tock that somebody's gonna want to look at to make them rent a pontoon boat, right? That's the challenge. And yeah, content is going to be so challenging in the next couple of years.

Here's my question. So we all have limited bandwidth. There's only so much you can do you know, from the marketing professional, how much of that bandwidth do you need to devote to your social? Like, let's let's parse it down a little bit. Like we don't do much. I mean, I bought a drone, like I thought I was going to do all that much. I had a girl that was going to do some stuff for us. We don't do much. So how important is it? And how much bandwidth as an owner as a manager, do you need to spend to make this worthwhile endeavor?

bandwidth? I mean, I think the reality is, is like all of us are going to be the worst at this where you know, the person you need is like, I love when a lot of my operators have a Yeah, we have a girl in the office, Kevin, you have a girl in your front area that's been making tic TOCs you know, making tic TOCs managing a Snapchat handling some of that stuff. I think us as an agency, I think we can handle some of the heavy lifting on the back that requires a real skill set, I guess if you want to call it Google AdWords, management management of a website. And I don't want to discredit you know, the idea that we're posting to social, but it's monotonous and it's sometimes boring, and it's not sexy, but it needs to get done. Where I think it makes sense where you have this, you know, 20 year old girl in her office, who you know, she helps customers, but in her spare time she's making tic TOCs and Instagram reels and she gets it because she's in that demo. I think that's a perfect solution for all these operators.

So to that point, we had a we had a local she's an influencer and content creator and she came out and there was some rain and then I don't know what happened I mean, we just got swept up and she didn't get the content she was supposed to come back out she never reach back out to me. But she did go and take our man Bella does everything for us she answers phones, like I wouldn't even know I like HR manager of tech, you know, social she does everything. Regardless, you know, she pulled her aside for a few minutes and shot her some tips. So like this is sort of this is sort of the rub on the whole influencer to so these people that you pay. It's not just like an intellect if you get anything out of this show, I hope you get this much because it's a conversation I have with people about marketing ad nauseam, and it fucking drives me crazy. You treat marketers or influencers or whatever it is that they're that you're paying someone to do for you. You got it fucking twisted, man, because this is not done for you. It has got to be done with you. If you don't have a finger on the pulse of your marketing and your fucking brand. Get the fuck out of business. I hear it well a cool man. That's what I pay them for. Fuck no, it's actually not. I'm sorry. If you are not like, got your hands in the dirt with them and learning about some of this shit. And having somebody on your team like there's only so much that somebody can do from X amount of miles away. And then if you hire somebody local, they could be a shit marketer. Now granted, they can get you fucking whatever, but they're not you know, they're white labeling all of your shit or farming it out to fuckin India or whatever. And you're getting crappy content from the ad copy side. But it's cool because they're local. So you're getting good content from a photo or video from a video side. So if you don't have at least an understanding of how all this stuff works, and somebody on your team If that's not you digging down with your marketing professional working together, like you're you're getting it all fucked up. And I'd like to circle back and and also answer your question, Andy that I think it's super important because what happens is is I think you rest on your laurels and then you're that fucking Joker like you're not that type of dude, you're pretty involved in your business and your marketing but I'm sure we know the guys that have been fucking like, Well yeah, I'm just running rat cards and running radio ads and that's fucking good enough for me and my, my client list is whatever X amount since I've been in business, so that's fine. The point is, if you're not if you don't devote some type of bandwidth to the changing to the changing trends and social media marketing and advertising, you're always going to be a step behind. And I think that's any fucking business tourism, selling fucking toothpicks. You know, I agree. I mean, I think, you know, everybody,

Let me ask you this, Steve, like on the influencer marketing side, like it's personally like, what if, like, if I'm like, Hey, man, I believe in this this is I'm going to be all in. And I mean, will your will an agency like yours even go out and find all these influencers? Or is it just, I gotta go do this anyway, like, it's I gotta go, like, I gotta go look through LA and be like, alright, this dude's a foodie, he, you know, he tends to have this much engagement looks good? Or do you find just go with like an influencing marketing agency, because I know, there's tons of those. But I mean, some of those are like minimum spends, like 15 25,000 a month, like it's not, but then there's others that are like white label it to like guys like you to where you essentially could be using them. And just like shuffling the cost

us there? Well, there's three different things. So there's software, I mean, there's software so that you can go run the scans and go find these influencers, and then send them out an email, there's, like you said, the agencies that already have a lot of the relationships, and the agencies matter when you want to start dealing with heavy hitting influence or client, like, I'm not going to be able to just hit up. And obviously she's ridiculously big, but none of us are going to be able to send a message to Kim Kay and say, Hey, we would like you to support our you know, the influencer for our product because she would never see it. So you're gonna have to go to an influencer or go to an influencer marketing agency that has some access to her. And basically, you're just buying talent, and, you know, you're paying their 10% 20% commission fee to book a heavy hitting talent. But I mean, the reality to your question is, is like, you know, it becomes that slippery slope of like services, like we've discussed it internally of doing influence or resource research and outreach and putting this stuff together. But we're in the business of time. So if you want me to reach out to, you know, 50 influencers to the messages, carry on conversations, and welcome to do yourself that comes at a cost.

So I mean, if you're doing like retail or something like this shit becomes evergreen, then no, and it's like, it's forever, you know what I mean? Like, if you do, but what's the tour? You're like, we're working season to season, you know? So an influencer is going to come out and put something out and say something on their, their, whatever. It's like, I mean, how much can you squeeze out of that? And for how long? Well,

so we're only Well, you could squeeze out or you could squeeze 75,000 out of $100,000 invest. So that would work.

I do that. That's 75 grand up? Yeah, I hear you. 75 grand to that. $1,000

It is literally it's crazy. I'm telling you. It is crazy. Like we I told Steve this the other day. I mean, we sold literally in like a week fucking what we would do in almost in like a month tip. It was just like, boom,

where'd you find this person?

It was somebody I follow on Tik Tok. Like, I was like, He's bigger than LA. You know, he's big in the food scene. And I'm like, I shot him a message and he was like, you know, don't get me wrong. I do have an experience that people can see that particular ones in a driving market they can be like I saw this booklet Right? Like it's almost the equivalent in tourism of like you having a product you see on Tik Tok? Like, oh, scratch removal. I should go buy this thing. It looks great. You know, took all the scratches on the right, you can buy that and you can instantly do that. This was you know, we specifically picked that tour because we knew it was like you could be like, I'm gonna go do that this weekend. You know, kind of like it falls in the restaurant. And we went with a demographic that we you know, we don't really hit with we don't have ads running towards and I think it's great like I'm literally like I'm I'm not 100% convinced but I'm like I'm convinced that I want to do it again and see if it can be repeatable but I also think guys like Steve instead of me having to waste you know, spent my time Steve to get like he's got I don't know how many fucking boat people down in Florida, right? You can have an influencer that literally, then they're in your pocket. You're just like you have a I got five clients go to Dustin as we go to, you know, just different I

just I don't have 75 I don't have 10k left on the fucking bone. You know what I mean? Like that? And I'm not in July, not in June not in August. You know what I mean? Like,

Kevin, don't you? Don't you think this is like, you do that and it's popular, right? And then they were like shit, it's so popular. I could do book anything like you're doing it's the same reason you just run advertising all the time, right? It's like sometimes when people can't book things. They're like, Ah, man, it's like I guess I'll do it on a Tuesday or a Monday night because I can't get a weekend for the next three.

I mean, I think we're a little commodity a little more commoditized and that it's not like you know you go to like fucking have a stew and then you get there and you're like, shocked that you need like a watercraft get on Lake you know what I mean? You gotta go there with that with that understanding that that's like, you know what I mean, you know, we're like fucking Lake Havasu like who would have thought nobody could get a boat

boys. I'm gonna get the island boys to do my island jetski tour.

I have done this for Vegas Jeep and on my slingshot side. So I did it with five or six different, like micro influencers to like Garrett's point, people with 100 to 250,000 followers that had some Vegas cloud, you know, showing like, what's cool about Vegas, I gave them some of them, I just was able to give them a jeep and they went out for the day and they had fun. Some of them I haven't like the most expensive one, I think cost me 500 bucks in all of it because I even tried one of them with giving them a code to save 10% on a booking like, you know, somebody had a decent amount of followers. And at the end of their Tiktok they're like, and use code, whatever to save 10% On your next booking. I think in all what I ended up putting out I barely like broke even I never had the giant rush that Jared had. But again, I am selling a Jeep rental a slingshot rental. Not a fun experience wind tour in the same capacity.

Yeah. So do you think Jared on the next one, Jared, if you're if there's something you're like a rabbit hole you plan on going down like is probably a good idea would be to create an affiliate link then for that influencer to be able to further monetize and then for you to be able to track yeah, there's their sales.

No, you can do that. But I do feel like that then is like people are gonna look at that as an ad. I almost like, yeah, and how we did this. We didn't do affiliate link, you know, like we did it so that we could kind of track it in a way. But I think you can do it to where it's like they they request something like, like it's not 10% off because then it's like, oh, this dude's just doing a paid promotion. Right. But it's

I agree I wouldn't do the promo code. I think that totally changed his experience. That's not what you

right but so this this particular thing, we had him we made him an off the menu lunch like it was not available, right. And so then what happened was we were able to be like in his video, he's like, man, you gotta try this food like this is like it's off menu. It's this order this so when people are coming in asking for a sandwich that we don't typically have that's how we're able to like really track it that from that video, because that's the only place we ever put that thing.

So I'm sharing my just, you know, you won't see this on video. But here's the couple. I mean, this one had 182,000 views, you would think that that's a pretty good amount but I mean it's you know, and they do they live ever you know they live evergreen they stay out there. So if anybody searches anything Vegas anything, you know, they're out there for the long haul. I mean, are yours

Jared? So Instagram, I don't know, which hits better but I like what, because they're always like, you want a real or a story? And I'm like, Now What the shit that doesn't go down after 24 hours. Not a

story. Yeah,

yeah, I mean, I can't like attest to the dilution of recommendation due to an affiliate link. I mean, I think there's plenty of affiliate marketers out there that serve up a ton of content like for example, YouTube that have millions of views, and they monetize their their product reviews. And I mean, I don't think that that's as big of a deal maybe it's a little bit to you guys because your fucking old heads, but I mean, that's like somebody being like, oh, man, you know, I'm not going to click on that fucking ad. I'm gonna go to the organic I don't think really anybody gives us

a swipe right past all the ads on on tick tock. Yeah, well, yeah.

100% So why, but if you're talking about an affiliate link on Instagram, that's a much different thing.

If you're like, hey, this isn't gonna work that way. Kevin, you can you can just put an affiliate link in there. Why not? Because go do to tick tock you can click on anybody's like comments and actually like put a link in can't do it. It doesn't work that

well, I mean, the whole thing with with influencers is supposed to be genuine, supposed to be what they really think about this shit. And when they're getting paid clearly, even though we all know that they are, it sort of takes away something. So I think it's got to be the product. Have you guys ever followed

Napa Valley Wine train or ever heard of it?

I've looked at it because we've talked

Yeah, I've been on your show you've been on and so if go look, look at their social I think they are like world class in our industry. For social media to make you want to go do it. I know some of its paid. And I know they run like some ads. But in general, their stuff is so clean look so fun. Everybody I know is like oh, I want to go do this. And I don't know I've actually never done it. I want to but then I get there and I'm like, this seems a little like cheesy. Like, I feel like I'm gonna be on one of those like murder mystery trains.

super cheesy. Yeah, they sold my wife and her friend super cheese. Yeah, but they sold her Yep,

at $600 a ticket or some shit. It's like it's really expensive. But it's like their social media just makes me want to be there. Like it just their pictures. They're like, they're the entire thing is built for social media. It's unreal.

But what, but who among us is has a company that's not built for social media? We're not selling? You know, depends. We're selling fun outside fun experiences, which is perfect for that. I think sort of where we started with the question is, you know, social media is valuable. Is it important? I think the answer clearly is yes. And there's a lot of different ways to skin that cat but it's got to be it's got to be done.

Well guys, I think that brings it to a close man. As always, we're all fucking divided. And no, no real. Good consensus has been made because, you know, we're all the smartest guy in the room except for me, because I'm the idiot who has yet to get his employee credit tax attention.

The hard takeaway for the show is you gotta get your employee retention credit.

No, listen to me. And as always, guys, thanks for tuning into Tourism Titan