Day in the life of
Chief Marketing Officer – Richard Olivarez
A typical workday for my role starts early and ends late. I usually work around 12 hours a day. It seems like a long day, but it’s easy to accomplish if it’s your passion. My responsibilities are split between driving/leading our marketing team and helping all departments strive towards long-term improvements. A holistic marketing approach allows you effectively build a brand and create a well-crafted experience for travelers. This is imperative to differentiate your company in a market that is exploding. Vacation rentals are the number one segment in travel, and our market is one of the top areas in that segment. It’s hyper-competitive, and lots of money is moving into our industry. However, as a student looking to come into vacation rentals, the opportunities are limitless. Consolidation is beginning to happen, but for the most part, vacation rentals are highly fragmented and, most of the time ran by owner-operators. This means a student of marketing can come into the sphere and have some pretty big wins fairly easily.
I start my day early before anyone gets to the office. I read a chapter or so in a book to get motivated, and then I dive into emails. Right now, I am reading three books, all on leadership and business strategy. Many of my emails are from internal team members and contractors we utilize around the country. The rest are from a massive amount of salespeople, important relationships we are nurturing in the community, and the company’s stakeholders.
Then I track our revenue from the previous day. I pay close attention to our online sales and individual agent sales. I then send out a company snapshot highlighting our top performers. I briefly meet with our revenue manager and discuss a course of action for the day. We are very hands-on in dynamically pricing our properties based on booking velocity and a number of internal and external market factors.
Following this, typically, I dedicate an hour or so to a piece of content marketing. Today specifically, it’s an article about a well-connected local photographer who just won artist of the year. This article benefits us in several ways. It’s relevant content for our social media and email marketing efforts, a valuable strategy for SEO, and it’s building a relationship with an expert in one of the communities we are heavily invested in. We hope he will become a brand advocate for us. Prior to today, I submitted an outline to one of our writers, and they connected with the photographer directly – who I met with at his gallery a few weeks back. Often we would send our own photographer and/or videographer, but in this instance, they will provide their own images.
From there, I will move into building automations and triggers. We are leveraging technology to streamline our business processes – companywide. Automation is a big part of the future of our business, and I am very excited about what we are accomplishing. Basically, we have a platform that each part of our business is operating on, and it’s all connected. So now, if a guest checks out, a text message is sent to the cleaner. When the cleaner is complete, a message is sent to an inspector. Once the inspector is complete, we notify the guest that they can check-in. This is one simple example, but the possibilities are endless.
After that, today we have a department head meeting. This includes our CEO, CTO, Director of Housekeeping, Director of Maintenance, General Manager, and Accounting. We will discuss cross-department matters, and I attend to help provide overall direction and assistance where marketing can. This includes crafting messaging, videos, design, signage, packaging, presentations, and overall all guidance.
Next, we will work on email marketing. We are currently working on two messages. The first is our monthly e-newsletter. This highlights the most engaging content that we published for the month. The other message is a homeowner communication, something we also send monthly to educate the owners of rental properties on our program.
This will be followed by a quick lunch. I purchase recordings of conventions and watch them at twice the normal speeds while I eat. This is part of the ongoing education I mentioned in my first message.
After that, I am working with a copywriter to craft standard responses for our Guest Services team to use via email. These are frequently asked questions and troubleshooting issues. We intend to make videos for many of these in the near future as well.
From there, I am working with my team to improve some of the search functionality of our vacation rentals website. The same team will help with a design project for a direct mail map piece focused on promoting real estate.
Then, I have a coaching meeting with our Maintenance Department. We are introducing a new manager in this part of the business who will help us continue to standardize our processes. He is new to the business and brings years of big-box retail management experience. My role will be to help craft his strategy to align with our company goals and aid him in implementing changes.
After this, we have an interview scheduled for an applicant looking to join our team in the field. I am active in recruitment, hiring, and coaching in all aspects of our business.
Then, I am working with a couple of team members on two upcoming sponsorships. One is a large outdoor concert, and the other is our Annual Fishing Rodeo. We will create assets to promote these events to our guests and content to provide for the festival organizers as well for them to promote us to their festival-goers.
I will close out my day, continuing to work on automations and triggers. One that I am excited to develop is a workflow for unreserved single nights in between reservations. Our software will look for these nights and send messaging with details on a reduced cost for these nights to the guests who have reservations prior to or after these single nights.
How did you become a CMO?
Before I rose to the C-level suite, I focused on all things digital – driving sales and conversions. This includes SEO, website development, e-commerce optimization, copy-writing, content marketing, photography, and effectively utilizing distribution channels. I now have team members who help with much of this, but understanding our goals and effectively leading an organization would not be possible without actually getting hands-on first.
