Marketing With Purpose Kit: Turning Marketing Into a Revenue Engine

SPEAKER_1 (0:04)

The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

Tullio Siragusa (0:16)

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Marketing With Purpose, a segment of the Bliss Business Podcast, where we explore what it really takes for marketing leaders to create impact that goes beyond the numbers.

I'm Tullio, and in each episode, we sit down with a marketing expert to explore their leadership approach and strategies that drive performance and resonate with their audience. Together, we'll dive into what's working, what's not, and how purpose and empathy can transform the way brands connect with people. Let's get started. Today, I'm excited to welcome Conrad O'Connell. He's the founder of BuildUp Bookings. Conrad has been a thought leader in the vacation and short-term rental marketing space for more than a decade. Since founding BuildUp Bookings in 2016, he and his team of 20-plus marketers have worked with more than 300 vacation rental brands and clients. He is also the co-host of the Heads in Beds Show podcast, and author of Mastering Vacation Rental Marketing, bringing a wealth of hands-on experience in turning industry-specific marketing strategies into real business results. We're going to explore turning marketing into a revenue engine. I'm excited to dive into how focused marketing can help businesses generate growth, build strong brands and ultimately drive revenue.

Conrad, before we dive in, welcome by the way. I'd love to hear why was turning marketing into a revenue engine, the topic you chose to explore with us today, and why is that more important now than ever?

Conrad O'Connell (1:49)

Yeah. Thanks for having me. First of all, appreciate that. I think that for the type of clients that we work with, we're in a very unique space where the clients that we work with have alternatives. They don't have to do their own marketing in a way. They can delegate their marketing to some degree to these big platforms like Airbnb and Verbo and some of these large OTA platforms. Very different than maybe some people listening. If you have a restaurant, there's no easy way for you to get orders to that restaurant without actually getting people to come in the door. Or if you sell cars, there's no easy button solution to get people to come into your car dealership. You have to figure it out yourself. I think the reason for us that we talk about the idea of building revenue engines or systems or those concepts, it's all for me about building more control in your business. The types of clients we work with, unfortunately, will have situations or setups in their business where they aren't really in as much control as they think they are. They're one algorithm change or one update away from their business being in very poor shape. A lot of the work that we do working with our clients is trying to figure out how to get better and better results with their marketing that they control, that they're in the driver's seat of, and they're not relying on some other company, platform, etc. to treat them as they should. Treat them in a way that makes sense.

Tullio Siragusa (2:54)

Very nice. Now, marketers are often pulled between near-term campaign results and long-term brand building. That's the dance we live in every day.

There's always the, I need the immediate results, but if you don't feed the funnel with the long-term play, you end up having problems later. How do you ensure your marketing strategy stay aligned with growth goals that your clients or company has, and where do you find the biggest friction points in making that happen?

Conrad O'Connell (3:25)

I think it evolves depending on the size of the company and their ability to think of the long-term. I think when you're small, you can't think of the long-term that much. You have to figure out things that get you to the next month and to the next quarter, and get your next few guests in the door, and get your next few homeowners in the door. So it's almost a luxury maybe to think a little bit more long-term. When I'm talking about a small business, I'm thinking of a micro business, and sometimes we do get people that are in that vein, or they're very small and they got to figure out how to get to the next month. So I think thinking more long-term is a bit of a privilege that you earn over time once your business grows and as things become a little bit more stable. I think when you're new and you're starting out and your business is doing, in our space, maybe less than two, three million a year in gross booking revenue, you've just got to do whatever you can short-term wise to get to that next quarter, like I said, next month and continue to get the results that you're after. But once you have reached maybe a little bit further down that journey or down that path, and you are driving more consistent results, and you have the moment to breathe and think about your marketing strategy that you want to enable, I think you still need to anchor it in things that are measurable, or things that you can have some metrics around.