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all right so uh well hi susan welcome to the nsync show i am super excited about having you on can you tell us a little bit about yourself and uh where you're from absolutely corey thank you for having me we always have great interesting conversations i am susan barry my company is hive marketing i am president in queen bee and then i also host a show called top floor which is a hospitality marketing and future thinking uh podcast so i have basically two jobs i guess i live in atlanta georgia where we're having a freaking heat wave right now atlanta right i turned off my ceiling fan so you wouldn't get a bunch of sound in the uh recording here but lordy it's getting warm yeah it's funny it's unusually cool here in san diego uh so um hey i'm all for the heat i know sometimes it gets a little a little uh extreme there with the with the humidity but uh hey i might try to have it that way then the parkas and us just chattering and and uh freezing on uh daily so i'm down with that for sure makes sense i get it yeah well hey i appreciate you spending a few minutes we uh we wanted to touch on the topic of hospitality b2b marketing and some hot takes is uh i've described the title so what are some of the biggest challenges that you see right uh today so i think i need to back up and explain a little bit of a distinction because well that was odd little audio my mic i unplugged my microphone oh i like to fill the sentence here and there you know after the experience that's right exactly it's unscripted here um hi so anyway you know there's a lot of things in our business that mean two different things at the same time and i think b2b marketing is one of those so when i refer to b2b marketing which is what my company hive marketing specializes in i'm referring to one hospitality company selling to another hospitality company so i'm not referring to hotels selling to business travelers or hotels selling to business conferences that's not the type of b2b marketing that i special specialize in it tends to be around uh third-party management companies owners brands and vendors who are all trying to sell things to each other so i do a commercial strategy with a heavy emphasis on marketing for that kind of work versus to the sort of general business world um i think that there are marketers and marketing companies who specialize in helping individual hotels sell to businesses and that is a very valuable and important type of marketing which is not what i do yes well think about that clarification because i yes it does get a little wonky and uh in in those segments and b2b can go so that that was very well uh defined thank you thanks thanks so when it comes to challenges i think that the challenges in b2b marketing and hospitality are very similar to the challenges in b2b marketing anywhere and they tend to center around the attribution and roi mindset so the idea that every move must have a 10x counter move or a 10x result um i think there is a somewhat of an obsession with measuring b2b the way that one would measure b to c so if i put out this much effort i should expect this many sales or this many leads or whatever it is right and i just don't think that b2b works like that like i'm going to ask you a question let's flip the script when you hired your last professional maybe an accountant or an insurance broker or something like that what was your process how did you go about doing that yeah this is this is a beautifully uh timed uh segment because i've just gone through this and this is uh is so on point i am naturally would ask for referrals that's and then and social building social proof referrals and what i love to share with old in the whole hospitality world of word of mouth yes direct referrals is the i was looking for a bookkeeper just recently naturally i asked a group of people that i i trust and respect first and then i went to reviews to look at the reviews so to speak that's it yes and when you were asking those people were you like walking up to them on the street and saying like hey susan who do you recommend for a bookkeeper were you calling on the phone or were you using some other type of channel it was it was what we refer to as dark social as a channel that we can't measure and i dm'd a few people i picked up the phone called them and that is not attributable i what what my i well i'm sure somebody somewhere was listening to my actions but the software that we would use as attribution could not measure how i was finding my bookkeeper right so the point being you didn't execute a google search that then landed you on a landing page where you filled out a form and said i'm looking for a bookkeeper please call me you asked some friends got some suggestions did a little behind the scenes research and then reached out to the person to hire them does that sound about right that that is correct however i have i have done the third and in the past that would be kind of my third go-to uh if i couldn't if i didn't have a reputable uh referral as my go-to i would do some some searches but ultimately i would go back and i would look at the reviews try to find some additional um you know verification before i made that commitment to form fill gotcha i always have had people try to sell me so seo services for my own website and i do it makes me laugh because i'm like nobody finds me via search like nobody's like who is a b2b hospitality marketing consultant they very rarely even know that the category exists right so why i have to execute in different ways most specifically by publicly demonstrating the way that i think and then the people who like the way that i think when they have a need realize that i'm the person for them so you know i'm maybe going down too far of a rabbit hole here but so that's a big challenge i think another big challenge is wanting to run plays that have already been run before so you know rather than having a brilliant brainstorm and saying like hey let's try this and see what will happen it's very hard to do anything and i think this is also true in just in our industry in general um that hasn't been done successfully before now you know of course that makes sense like you want to do a best practice you want to do something that's proven sure but you there's no leading edge on that so once everybody knows that it works everybody does it whereas exactly come up with something that has never been done before and it works then you've got a leading edge their last a couple last things i think you're gonna agree with me about this you'll have to tell me people think that organic content is free so like they understand that paid content or sponsored content on social networks you have to throw some money at it but they erroneously believe that organic content is free whereas you have hours of writing and designing and maybe videoing or recording audio or whatever the case may be so organic content is not free but everyone is a marketing expert because they have experienced marketing so they think if they see marketing happen that it must be successful not based on the results but based on what they see in the world like i had a potential client talk to me about a suggested campaign that absolutely made no sense at all i mean it i can't get into the details because it would give it away but utterly ludicrous right it denied sure and i'm like well tell me about why you feel like this would work and the answer was well so and so did it and i see their stuff on instagram all the time and i'm like just because you see it doesn't mean it's working did you buy their product or give them some money no well then it's not working like that's not okay anyway so those are some challenges i think with b2b marketing yes and that's very uh very well put those are and those are certainly uh if you want at the top of my list absolutely um just to get a little quick comment on the organic part um i also try to define it as you know once the paid channel once you start cutting that check to google your visibility stops with organic you know when you bit when you create content that's video in you know even if i went to this is where i like to use organic content as almost a verification channel as well they may not find you by doing a search for hive marketing or susan barry but when they put in susan barry hive marketing and suddenly they see you your youtube videos and maybe some reviews from google people go oh my gosh she's everywhere or she's an expert or she's a it i think it even if they if they're not necessarily looking to to to make that selection be a search organic being there when people do search your name adds that other layer of credibility for sure absolutely i mean it sort of serves as a brochure and social proof versus it's like the end of the sales journey versus the beginning exactly nobody's kept searching for me when they're like gosh what do i need let me find out instead they're searching for me after they've heard of my company and are considering you know biting the bullet and sending me uh millions and millions of dollars thank you very much yes hey ultimately that's the that's that that's just that's the objective right indeed indeed and not to be helpful resource and just helpful uh uh person to others i might add yes for sure so those are that those are definitely some great uh some challenges that outline what are some great solutions that people should really focus and use some of the resources time and money um i think they're two i think one is specific to um all b2b marketing and so one is general to all b2b marketing and then one is specific to our industry to hospitality so in b to b i think it's super interesting to track all types of data and watch different metrics and follow the numbers and benchmark and memorialize them on a regular basis and all that good stuff but i think that you can allow yourself to get a forest for the trees type of mentality where you know for example say you're able to push a vanity metric like a number of followers on a social account and you can push it every single month but the business is losing money who cares who cares if you have more followers if the business is losing money so i guess what i mean by here by this here is measuring the overall health of the business versus specific numbers or particular things that people have gotten obsessed with within the company is a lot better way to tell if your marketing is working because you just never know you never know the path people take absolutely and then in for our industry in hospitality i would say the a solution that i would love to see and that i'm trying to advocate for on top floor is to stop letting other industries take the lead in innovation and experimentation i think we talked about that a little bit already but stop waiting for ideas technologies etc to be proven out by other industries and start taking the lead on things that actually impact us and that we can make a difference with very good well and and to to kind of expand on that a little bit as well um i think we're we're headed into a very interesting time uh as i'm sure none of us want to look at the stock market recently but you're so right on um you know we work in other industries and it's it's always been amazing to me that this the industrial hospitality is is it's definitely a sheep mentality people are afraid to dip their toe try different things we all and we use this mantra all the time in our conversations is there's no there are no expert marketers only expert testers because variables change all the time we don't have control over things things that work literally two months ago are complete flop you've got to keep trying keep experimenting and this industry has always been very very resistant to just trying different things finding out if it's working there's so many ways that you can just test things without spending a ton of money and resources oh my gosh you have to let me give you this example i mean and this is baked in from the top to the bottom from the bottom to the top so at the in the early days of the coven 19 pandemic like early lockdown days nobody's traveling there's hardly any throughputs at tsa checkpoints all that stuff um i was working with a portfolio of hotels and i had to shift gears really quickly from sort of big picture oversight to granular what are some ideas that i can come up with like what are some things we can do to create demand and get people into these hotels so i had an idea and it was to do some advertising on nextdoor i don't know if you're not familiar with nextdoor but micro yeah they have local deals and so i had this portfolio of hotels place local deals in their neighborhoods on next door for come use our pool for the day or come use the guest room as an office get away from the family get some peace and quiet i need a great zoom background for an important meeting you know all of the kind of things i mean listen it's not anything ground breaking now but no one was doing that stuff yet at the time we were the first and one of those hotels man no matter i could have said well i did end up saying i'll pay for it i paid for it out of my pocket because she's like well you know who's done this before and what results and what kind of roi can i expect corey falter when i tell you that it cost 64. to run this campaign and yet it you would have thought i was asking for 64 million it was insane so you know it's just a good example of this like anti-innovation moving from a place of scarcity and fear mindset that our business sometimes finds itself in and you know in that hotel's defense it was a scary time i mean i get absolutely that they didn't want to approve even one penny to be spent the wrong way but you know that nextdoor now offers those programs nationwide as a huge part of their revenue generation campaign and i just made it up sitting here in my home office that's awesome i love that that is very cool we did something similar for the bowden in texas not quite as i love the gorilla gorilla-ness of the uh of your thinking because that's why i love it talking about you and i come from i think a very similar break down the walls hey that's traditions are great but uh i i think i i love exploring completely thing things that have not been true i have been vetted so you know that same time we were looking at when b2b business or corporate business dried up entirely we did tap into end celebration of life and also church ceremonies they'd never thought about and it it filled some big holes for them that's a really smart way to go now what's going to be interesting to see is you know these hotels that have opened their doors to non-traditional segments of business for example fancier hotels who have like thrown the door open to construction crews or whatever the case may be what happens now when demand is beginning to eat its way back and do they kick these people to the curb or have people learn their lesson i'm i'm interested to see but i have a feeling i already know the answer yeah i and i have a feeling i know what you're thinking so you're absolutely so right and i it all gets goes back to the the overarching theory of short-term thinking right you know but on both lines even including the roi on you know social selling and things that can't be measured on i'm putting five bucks here i want 10x on the other side right kind of the same same mentality is you got to pull out the blinders a little bit and uh and and look beyond just what's right in front of you or what's easily exposed because there's some there's some amazing opportunities if you just peel back the onion just a little bit right it's absolutely true absolutely it's i you know here's the thing that i i'm learning from my guests that i talk to on my show you know about 70 of the guest rooms in the united states are branded meaning they come they are part of a big brand hotel and about 30 percent are independent and i i probably incorrectly because i grew up in branded hotels as a as a we director of sales and marketing back in the day i always thought that the brands were like the smartest the most innovative had the best ideas but what i'm learning from my guests that i'm interviewing on the show is that the independents have such a bigger playground to play in and so much more not only opportunity for innovation but need for innovation because they're fighting a battle against people who are a lot more powerful it's very david and goliath situation so that's been a kind of a powerful lesson that may sound backward to you but i mean i worked for starwood for 10 years and it was like the most innovative company at the time right so i'm like well brands are amazing i wonder now and what made me think of this and why i went on this tangent is you talking about the short-term thinking and you know publicly traded companies can't help but think short-term because that's their job that's the business they're in whereas these independent hoteliers are actually in the hotel business so it it benefits them to invest in a long-term strategy that will pay dividends over time yeah absolutely and getting you know back to the you one of the things admittedly i've never worked at a hotel so i'm always look looking at uh some of these uh topics and in situations from an outsider's perspective and one of the things that always and i know we're getting off a little bit but this is kind of fun because it's morphing into what i really love about these conversations the otas right and understanding from from an agency standpoint the the value of lifetime customer value right you've spent money on getting that one particular guest to your front door it's a lot easier to get that that return guest back through your doors had you fulfilled your promise as a hotelier of providing an exceptional service and experience so they come back to you and become to erode the price as an issue it always blew me away and it validated through the covet is when i saw these horrific posts from people by saying i was trying to get my money back from x y and z property i called them and they said well you booked through expedia sorry we can't help you and they can't they're not allowed exactly but the customer doesn't understand that you think corey falter is going to go back to your hotel re next time regardless of whose fault it was yeah it's totally your fault right the relationship has been rested out of the hands of the hotel and placed in the hands of a of a third party that has a difference they're in a different business and they don't that's the thing i think is the most interesting about our industry is that no one is in the business that that you think they are that's a real no one's brought that up before that's a that's a beautiful it's almost like a a cloud of mystery and as i mentioned for some an outsider's perspective that pert it's mysterious it's mysterious is it supposed to be that mysterious i don't know so i i'm continuing to think and write and talk about this because i want to figure it out like what who benefits from this sort of behind the curtain facts and and situation of who's in what business i don't know stay tuned more to come on that yeah i think being mysterious is is awesome if you're a speakeasy bargain with san diego yes when it comes to the guest hotel relationship i'm all for full transparency so absolutely absolutely yes so um those are some fantastic uh suggestions by the way so what are some some shining examples that do you think of those that are doing it doing well either obviously yourself or from others that you see in the market [Music] i could give tons and tons of examples from my own clients because they're doing everything right but i will i'm beautiful skip over being that self-serving i'm going to give you a weird example well just it's sort of not i think what you would expect me to say but um rand fishkin who was the founder of seomoz and now he's got a new company called spark toro i read this blog post that he wrote and i i cannot stop thinking about it and one of the quotes was something forgive me if i misquote you ran fishkin but it's something like the um highest value actions are the most difficult to measure highest value actions are the most difficult to measure or highest roi actions or the most difficult to measure something like that i cannot stop thinking about it because i think it's true when you talk about like sort of the dark social funnel word of mouth word of mouth proxies all that um but i also think that it's really hard to think of hard to measure activities so i'm going to give you an example of a hard to measure activity that i think is making a tremendous difference for this particular company so remington hotels is a third party hotel management company they're uh on the larger size definitely in the top 20 and their ceo is sloan dean so sloan dean does several things that i think are hard to measure and very high value he does speaking engagements he talks about his point of view and writes about his point of view in a way that is a little bit edgier relative to other ceos in our business and then another thing he does and you know it may not personally be him but it's very clear that he is guiding these actions is he comments on every single post on linkedin that mentions his company and nine times out of ten quite honestly 99 out of 100 he's dropping the hashtag room to thrive now the fact that i know the in-house hashtag for a third party management company for whom i do not even work never have and probably never will should tell you that he does it often enough that it is impactful and the reason i'm mentioning this is because i will guarantee you that no hotel owner in the history of time has ever called sloan dean up and said hey buddy really appreciate you dropping that room to thrive hashtag on 572 posts this week so i'd like to offer you our contract of course not right but it keeps him in front of top of mind demonstrates the way that he thinks and demonstrates the fact that this company is not just stodgy old dudes sitting in a boardroom but actively participating in an important social channel so that is a very long-winded explanation but i hope it answers the question of what i think is a good example or solution this sort of hard to value hard to get the roi for but very powerful actions i love that i love that example um and in fact i'm reading that book for the fourth time uh marketing uh rebellion and it's the most human company wins oh that's interesting i don't know that book it's incredible and it's it's that that stark illustration i'm sure i'm sure you've seen a meme of the the amount of if we look at vanity metrics everybody can understand is that you that you look at the following uh of elon musk like versus tesla people want to engage with elon purse personally versus the brand and when you position yourself first and foremost inside the culture people they naturally gravitate to a brand that they can that there's a relatability to to that makes a lot of sense i like it and then one last thing about the the roi on if you ask any any person in sales they would say is are building relationships important to your to to your business of sales and because of course they would be well how can you accurately measure a networking event that one handshake now one conversation some of the and it's it's to support your comment earlier of some of the most impactful tactics can never be measured absolutely yeah for sure 100 or you wouldn't even ever see them on a list like i have a friend who is um one of the things that he sells per se in his consulting business is his very strong relationships with a specific target group of people and one of the things is their mutual love of ramen and how he takes them out to ramen every possible chance he gets like ramen is not on the list dude you don't see that on anybody's monthly marketing report but it's a meaningful gesture high value hard to measure yes and by gosh who can resist a good bowl of ramen yes that's awesome well hey susan as always i love our time together our great conversations it's been a pleasure can't wait to have you again here soon excellent thanks for having me it's been fun you bet have a great rest of the week you too thanks [Music]