(Q3 2025 Recap) I dressed up as Santa for an ad

Every quarter I do a Lodge Social internal update. These are my favorite articles to write.

Said less professionally, I share what:

• We've learned

• We're trying

• What's next →

This is worth the read. Welcome to my brain. Are you excited? I'm excited.

P.S. You can read last quarters update HERE

1) In-season vs. Off-season marketing

Every rental operator experiences an in-season and off-season. We do marketing a little different for each.

Let me explain:

When we're in-season, we sell nights with:

• Ads

• Email

• Social posts

During the off-season, we sell nights only using:

• Email

• Social posts

The difference:

We don't use ads to sell nights during the off-season.

Instead, we use ads to make the number of people that see our:

• Emails

• Social posts

Larger.

Here's why:

• Ad costs are high with low demand.

• Most of our off-season bookings come from those two channels anyway.

2) Work leads

This is for all my hustlers out there.

First, what is a lead?

• Comments on social

• Messeges on social

• Emails from your website

• Phone calls from your website

If you post on social, you will get leads.

Talk to them. You may only be one conversation away from a booking that costs nothing to get.

3) Send more d*mn emails

In Q3, we sent more emails for clients than any other quarter.

Because most emails got bookings.

This is the most transactional marketing channel to exist.

Want bookings? Send emails.

Side note: I'm making it a goal to write more newsletters about email because of how powerful it is. Stay tuned.

4) How to work with influencers

At the start of 2025, we were new to the influencer game.

In Q3 2025, we've found our mojo:

1. Partner with one in your niche. (Example: If you're targeting couples near Atlanta, work with a couple from Atlanta).

2. Collaborate with them on 1-3 Instagram posts.

3. While they visit, ask for them to share highlights on their Instagram Story.

Make sure the visiting influencer agrees to point #2 and #3. They might charge a fee. That's okay.

Hello, Q4

In Q4 2025, we have two primary goals:

1) Make ads better by taking greater creative risk.

People share cool content they've never seen before.

Creating content people have never seen before requires taking creative risk.

Example: I dressed up as Santa a couple weeks ago for an Airbnb content shoot.

We're calling it our season of "getting weird."

2) Work with more rental operators in different ways.

I want to build the best d*mn short term rental marketing ecosystem.

I think the route to get there is by serving the most rental operators possible.

Right now, our core offer is agency services. Agency services are very labor intensive.

There are 5M+ airbnb hosts and hoteliers in the US. I don't want to build an agency that big (lol).

So I've been thinking about adding a live group coaching program. Would you enroll?

I'd probably call it something creative like "Lodge Social Live."

You'll learn exactly how we get bookings from social media. The cost would be half of what you'd pay for one month of our services.

Maybe less than half.

If this sounds like something you'd actually join, hit reply and let me know.

If I get enough people to want it, I'll do it.

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

P.S. Here’s the photo of me dressed up as Santa. Don’t I look holly & jolly?

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. How to use email to get bookings (Instagram)

2. Direct booking amenities that guests will pay 40% more for (The Booked Solid Show)

3. (Q2 2025 Recap) 90 Days Inside Lodge Social (The Lodge Social)

4. How to fund a glamping resort (The Glamping Insider)