(Q2 2025 Recap) 90 Days Inside Lodge Social

Every quarter I do a Lodge Social internal update.

Said less fancy, I document:

• Our failures / wins.

• The lessons we should have learned.

• The goals for next quarter.

Then share them here. This is worth the read. Welcome to my brain.

#1 ) Voiceover Ads Work

I paid $4,000 in March for coaching. One of my takeaways from that was to try this format.

So I did.

I call them "voiceover ads." Because there's a voice over the ad. Creative, I know.

How it works:

1. Show clips from a stay.

2. Don't place text on-screen to explain the experience.

3. Instead, have a real (or AI) voice explain the experience.

Results were hit or miss.

Stays that are $450+ / night saw a 10-25% decrease in the cost to acquire a booking.

That's amazing.

Stays less than that price point got a booking for about the same cost as any other ad.

Still great.

Before I move on, here are some detailed things I noticed:

• If the captions were large and yellow, the ad did better.

• The voiceover should be written in first person (POV)

• Ai voiceovers did better than human (I was shocked)

• I think Descript has the best Ai voices

#2 ) Meta Ads Hacks

We're always trying to improve our core offer. Ads. Here are some hacks that saved me thousands in wasted ad spend.

Warning: Understanding these hacks requires a basic understanding of Meta ads. Learn more here.

Hack #1: 5 ads per campaign works great. 3 is better.

Hack #2: If an ad gets bookings but then suddenly doesn't, turn it off and back on again.

Hack #3: Run a traffic campaign in tandem to a purchase campaign. This trains the pixel faster. Our cost to acquire a booking dropped instantly after making this change.

Hack #4: If summer, then use summer listing photos on your website. We changed listing photos a little late (May). Afterwards, 5% more people started the booking process.

#3 ) Don't Launch Without Pre-Bookings

Last quarter we dabbled in running a pre-booking strategy for a couple clients.

Pre-bookings: Vouchers people purchase for a stay that's being built. The idea is to make money while building a waitlist.

Here's how it works:

1. Create a pre-booking offer for $20-$40.

2. Let people know how much they will save on a future booking by buying this. (I.e. spend $20 now, save $220 when we open).

3. Run Meta Ads at $600 per month to sell the $20-$40 offer.

4. Use renderings or early videos as the ads.

In a perfect world, you want to break even.

Example: $600 / month in ad spend should get you $600 / month in pre-booking voucher sales.

Luckily, we've been profitable.

We're making ~$1,000 for every $600 we spend.

In that case, our ads budget is essentially unlimited. Only until we break even.

Running a pre-booking strategy is a great way to build a valuable waitlist for a new stay.

Shoutout Nick Purslow for introducing me to this concept.

Hello, Q3

I can't believe we're almost halfway through summer.

Last quarter our main objectives we're this:

• Make better ads (this will always be a goal)

• Make our stays more irresistible

We accomplished #1. Still working on #2.

Next quarter, we have one main objective:

Objective: Find the offseason secrets

Booking the offseason is a challenge for 99% of rental operators. We're working hard now to solve that challenge.

That's it!

That's all for today. I'll see you in the next article.

P.S. Writing this horizontal on the couch post triathlon. Got 2nd place (age group). Swim was great. Bike was hard. Run sucked. Pleased overall.

Before you go

I spend about 10 hours writing this newsletter each week. The rest of my time is spent running Lodge Social.

Our marketing team will help you get more guests to like, share and book.

Work with me and my team here.

Links you might like:

1. Read last quarters update (The Lodge Social)

2. Listing descriptions that sell (Tremento)

3. 11 rules for making money on Instagram (Newsletter)

4. This is the right way to use influencers (YouTube)

5. Love this newsletter? Ask me anything (SURVEY)