€0 to €100M: How WeRoad Built a Travel Empire with CMO Fabio Bin

This is the Travel Marketing Podcast, brought to you by Propellek, bringing you the news and insights and what's working and not working in today's competitive transportation and tourism landscape. From emerging brands to the most established professionals, these lessons of intelligent marketing will help your marketing plan travel further. Hey, Fabio, thank you so much for joining me today. Hi, Brandon. Thank you for inviting me. I'm very happy to join these today podcasts. I'm going to do my best to pivot. You were telling me right before we got started, you just come back from a conference where all they talked about was AI. So today we're going to talk about marketing and maybe they'll layer some AI, but that won't be the focus, I promise. I really appreciate that. Sometimes there's a little bit of fatigue from the AI conversations. So in the last three or four episodes, I've not gotten right into it and I've gone over by like 20 minutes. So today I'm going to try to get right into it and we're going to just go. So I've already done the intro, everybody already knows who we're talking to. I want to start with WeRoad and why you were on the founding team, correct? Yep. So why did you start it? Simply because I went on a tour with an international big company a few years ago doing tours for small group of people that don't know each other. And my co-founder, Paolo, did the same with another tour operator. And when we came back, it was like in a span of a couple of months of distance. And when we came back, it came to me because he's a serial entrepreneur, so why I wasn't at that time? I wasn't an entrepreneur at that time and it came to me and say, "Oh, look, I tried in these guys, they were very good, but I felt it missed something in terms of the bonding of the group or on the leading of the group. So we have an amazing travel guide, but it was just a travel guide. I felt the need to have someone more into the group, more belonging to the group. What do you think about?" And we stopped discussing about that and about the fact that we went on these tours because we didn't have any friends to travel with at that point. And why? Because modern life is complicated and it's difficult to match your schedules with the other. So maybe your friends got engaged, some of them are kids, you know, life. And so we put together these two conversations, like improving a product that already existing and the need for someone to travel with. And so since he's an entrepreneur, I was like, "Okay, let's do it." And we tried to do it. Okay, so you tried to do it. You've gone through an incredible season of growth. What year did you start the business again? We started in 2017, actually, we started Boost Rapid because we had the first conversation among Gaza at our Christmas party in December 2016 and we went live on March 2017. Okay, so it was like, "Let's get this done." Okay, so March 2017, just high level, walk me through some growth numbers, whether it's passengers or whatever, every year since then and now. Yeah, first of all, again, the model is about putting together people that don't know each other and they want to travel to far away destinations. That was the idea and at the same time, putting along with them a travel coordinator who is kind of a travel buddy, a bigger brother that is part of the group and at the same time leading the group, fixing problems, taking care of organizational matters, but most of all keeping the group together because the point is not about the tourist self, it's about the group dynamics, that's the most important thing. So Boost Rapid, the idea, we started with 80 itineraries, our first booking after one month, after a few weeks, we launched the website and after a couple of months, we had our first tour and the coordinators at the time were all friends and family, just the life and people, something like that. So that year, we did like 250k, more or less, 250 customers and then the year after, we did 2.5 million in revenues and the year after again, we did 10 million and then the pandemic came along, we resisted, we adjusted, not a bit, we adjusted in a different way the company and we stayed on the same level for a couple of years and then after the pandemic, we exploded because we did 30 million, then 60 and then we are approaching now to close the 2035 with about 100 million in revenues. Okay, so just a little bit of growth. I think, yes it is. Okay, so did you start in the CMO role or where did you start? I started since it was a Boost Rapid project doing basically everything, so Paolo Microfonder was on the travel design and the sourcing and I was on the both marketing and digital products since I used to say that I'm like a one-third, a digital product person, one-third content, one-third marketing because I like the, let's say, the multi-potentialized kind of persons, so I designed since the beginning, the logo, the identity, I crafted it on a voice at the same time, I developed the website, the MVP, which wasn't actually an MVP, it was a real fully functional product and I started doing marketing. So at the beginning, I was looking after both the technology, which at that time was just the consumer website and the marketing, and then I would say over the years I transitioned to a fully fledged CMO role because we started doing just digital ads and then after a couple of years we started introducing offline, it was like to call in real life marketing and campaigns. Yeah, exactly. So I want to talk a little bit about that in a second, but just to kind of craft out this, walk me through how your team developed and changed through 250,000 to 100 million over a six or seven-year period, what did it look like then, what did it look like in the middle and what is it like now? Yeah, yeah. I started myself and another guy, we were doing both content. When I say content, I refer to social media content actually and I have to say shame on me, I neglected CEO at the beginning because I was thinking about spread the word out about we wrote as a brand, as a way of traveling, because the idea of traveling with strangers at least in our core market at the time was kind of, we say not that cool, okay? Like, yes, we started in Italy, it wasn't that cool, it was like, oh, what's this tools for people that don't know each other and don't they are friends or something like that, you know? So it wasn't that cool, it was very, very obsessed with telling the story about what this type of tool can be. So we started building content on social media, we started on Facebook, but in a very short time we moved to Instagram, it was the right Instagram momentum. We understood how the algo worked there, we understood how to create content resonating with people and we grew a lot organically and so the idea was like not to do regeneration or something like that, but just having people, followers, really engaged followers to sell the product too. But on the content part, we always treated the social media as a kind of a magazine or a publisher, but not for just for brand purposes, it was just completely integrated in the marketing funnel and the idea is you're following we wrote these guys are proposing interesting content even if they didn't know that we were like selling tools, we were proposing content in the trouble space on one end and on the other end, we are proposing content resonating with people like how it is living in your 30 being a single in your 30, how do you cope with the work, how do you save money for your next trip, something like that, very, very relatable content that that was the idea and we pair that with meta companies of course, more commercial but pretty soon we inserted the social proof to show people that this guy are not just doing content and they are even selling trips. So it was like a smooth process and we were two of them doing at the same time content and performance. That I think that's being paramount in the first stage not to put all the money on ads to sell, not just to kind of call selling and even not doing PPC or search because probably there wasn't a demand for the specific kind of probably we were offering. And so we started like that and then over the years I vote just a quick follow up question to that. So you said you didn't think there was demand for what you're selling at the time for your specific travel product, right? Queries. I will say queries, explicit queries about what the product, so the people were where it wasn't something long tail enough that describes you down, had enough volume for it to be interesting. My point was to get people acquainted to the idea that you can travel with strangers but you're not looking at leaving on Google like a tour with strangers or something like that or group tours because group and group tours, they were associated to like older audiences, older targets. So that's the point. That's why we were more on to make people understanding that the trip can be an experiential and transformational way of spending your time. So that's why we have to build on the needs that probably they weren't aware of at that time. And there was a time in which dating app was on the rise, you know? So everyone was about dating, not connecting with other people for friendship purposes. So we had to get them in the known of this. What is the structure of your marketing team in November 2024? What does it look like today? Now I have three sub teams. So one is digital marketing that's basically meta, PPC, retargeting, all the usual digital stuff, SEO for sure. Then I have another team. This is about content. And again, content for us is 99% about social media, Instagram and TikTok. We have handles, Instagram and TikTok handles for each market in each language we are present at the moment. And then there's another team that I call the rest of the world, actually they are called brand activation marketing, but they are not only brand activation marketing because they do ATL, sponsorship, they do partnerships, they do also creative operations or all the material, all the assets that we need to follow to run campaigns or do marketing, not just run campaigns. And the NPR, that's very important to us, honestly. So if you were to describe, you were talking about how to promote advertising brand activations. I'm really curious to hear, this is a little bit off my plant agenda, but it's an interesting thought. Why you see like, if you had a budget, how you would allocate at your current size in a hundred million dollar company and a percentage towards brand versus performance? I would say 65, 35, 65 performance, 35 brand. I think I would agree with that. And I want to say the caveat for all of the junior marketers at smaller companies and the senior marketers at smaller companies, that the answer is going to be different for you. And then at bigger companies, the answer is going to be different for you too. That's probably. When you were smaller, was it the same split? No, absolutely. At the beginning, we were on the personal digital. And after a couple of years, we step into the out of home, which is for us, I would say the preferred channel when it comes to the real world. But again, when we do out of home campaigns, that's very important for me. When we do out of home campaign, first of all, we negotiate. We negotiate as well. That's a very important thing is not like in digital. You can speak with actual people. If you know when the salesman, the salespeople in the companies, they are eating quarterly targets or they are late, you can get better deals. Or if you sit at the table with a sales house and say, "Guys, we want to buy empty spaces because we will be always ready to put in our matter hours a creative for you." So you don't have any anti-spaces out is something that can be very important. So my first advice is negotiating, understanding the dynamics of salespeople and sales houses because this can be very game-changing in the way you spend and look at money. Secondly, I wouldn't do just out of home for the sake of doing out of home. In our case, at least, out of home is always paired with our city domination strategy. So we pick up a city or more than one city, it depends. When we start doing a user activity in the city, my point is, your customer, my customer, they are moving in real life beyond the screen. So these people, they commute, they go to the office, maybe not every day anymore, but still a large majority, they still go to the office. And then they have lunch, so they use delivery services and food delivery services. So I can maybe put some flyer, and then that's a matter about how you execute this flyer. You put the flyer in the food that has been delivered, and then these guys, maybe they go to the gym, and maybe you put, I don't know, a flyer, another flyer, different one in the locker of the gym. And then they use mobility sharing tools, bicycle, mopeds, whatever, and you have a partnership maybe with these guys, and you put, again, flyers or other, insane flyers back to me messages. It's kind of like the ubiquity. Yes. Periods. I take it when you say you have a destination, or when you have a city domination strategy, you're talking about the source market, correct? Yes, exactly. Are you advertising multiple destinations, is even about the destination? What does the creative look like? It's never about the destination, it's always about the experience. Actually we have two, I would say two big streams of campaigns, two main streams of campaigns. Look, we are not that into the typical flights. We are more into kind of a, I would say, platform. The platform is content, is a message, and then the flights in case can be a way to execute these messages. So, for example, we have to show which kind of experience we are going to offer. So the idea is showing people, real people, real destination, doing real experiences. So, for example, all our campaigns are UGC, in the sense that we source all the materials that our customers send us and our telecommunications services send us. And we use this material to showcase what the experience is and showcase real people and real experiences. So, it's kind of also important because people can recognize themselves and we are putting the same people as you in that specific situation. This is kind of a, I would say, I don't like the terms, but the idea is this one, institutional campaign, just to showcase the product, what we are doing. Again, we have another line, which is, I think, very, very important for, it does be, it still is very important for our positioning and for our success. This is more about the tone of voice and content relatable with the target, with the audience. Since I didn't mention before, but we started with a clear audience in my millennial, so 25 to 35 years old, now we also have 35 to 49, but let's say that the people that we are targeting is people in their 30s, is our core target. These people have the same cultural background, the same issue, I don't know, recently we ran a campaign in all the European capitals about the cost of living and the cost of rent. And the copy said something like, it's easier to organize a travel with your friends than finding an affordable flat in London. Okay, so the idea is, we didn't mention at all the destination, the fact that we are selling trips, whatever. We are simply stating a sentence that is very relatable for the target. And so, using this campaign, we tend to use it, especially not to go on a copy art, very easy to produce, just a line of copy, very ironic, very resonating with the target. And doing in a consistent way, that's another point, I used to say that we have to drop a bomb, load a new one, drop it again and repeat and be consistent in doing this. So the point is, on one end, have to tell you what we are doing. We are organizing trips that are changing your life because you're gonna meet new people, you're gonna have fun and enjoy your time, and this is what we are doing. On the other hand, I have to say that I'm a different brand. I'm not a trouperator, I'm not an e-commerce, I'm not an ATA, I'm someone that is solving a specific problem for people your age. And so, I want to be, always stop on mind, and I always want you to be reminded by you as this. Since we are speaking, I think, to a US listener base, I have to say, okay, international, let's say, one of the brands that I think, a couple of brands that are very similar to what we are doing, as for sure, Altree, the Altree Milk, Liquid Death, so they are not talking about the product itself, they are always engaging people, even doing like kind of meta marketing, because Altree is a lot about that, a lot about having fun or their hearts. Still, the point is, they have personality. They did that campaign where they compared drinking Liquid Death to drinking the most expensive foods in the world, and they were like blending up sushi and blending up wagyu burgers. Exactly. That's amazing. Exactly. Exactly. And of course, you asked me if I'm promoting destination, now I'm not completely stupid. When it comes to digital marketing, when it comes to retargeting to catalogs, of course we use destination, but this is another way to use it. It's another stage of the funnel, it's a completely different situation. So my point is when it comes to upper funnel, and even people that are not necessarily our customer, or they are not necessarily becoming our customers, they still know about Twitter, they are like brand with a personality. I always tend to make a smile, 90% we can make it, and yes, that's it. So we are pairing the experience, suggesting that I'm solving a problem, and the fact that I'm speaking your language. I'm going to start skipping questions, because we're having surrogates. Sorry. No, don't be sorry, this is exactly what I think is, we're going to have to do a part two, I'm already looking at this and saying, wow, there's so much here, and so many things to cover. So you mentioned a retargeting, so you were talking about retargeting is really effective as you know, when you have first party data, and you can actually get back very visibly in front of those people, and you have a lot more of it than a lot of companies that we talked to. You've built a community, I'm curious how that community works, and do you have a specific platform that you continue to stay in touch with your travelers on, and how does that community affect rebookings and lifetime value? Just tell me everything. Yeah, that's a very, very good question, because I had to deep dive in what we wrote actually is. First of all, I have to say that I, generally speaking, I don't like the world community, because everyone is speaking about community, and I think the community is something that should be about a passion, or a sense of belonging, etc. So if I'm using community we wrote, I'm using it because I believe it. We have our real community, not just an audience, or not just a bunch of customers that had the same experience. I have to say in advance to try to explain what is community for we wrote. First of all, as we wrote there, as a person that again has to solve a problem, find someone to travel with, and establish a new connection. So we pair, we started in Europe market by market, language by language, even because this is in a way making easier people to reconnect after the trip. So we wrote the experience doesn't end with the trip. The point is that it's pretty easy. When you come back, you live so, and after a few days, you bond with these people, and you become friends. And then you finish the trip, you get home, you go back to home. And at that point, what's happened? People start to keep to get in touch, and they self-organize like the nurse or the union, even they are living in a different part of the country, the source market that they are living in. This is the first bit. On this layer, we added many other events in each source market. For example, in the most mature market that we have, we have up to 40 events per month nationwide. These events can be social drinks or can be yoga session, can be just hiking party, whatever that's okay. And this is a way, we could see these events at the beginning just to make, when we started to attract new customers as an occasion to explain about the product. But they quickly develop themselves in reunion parties, okay. And so people were bringing along new customers, new friends that didn't travel with us. So basically now, they are just an occasion to reunion and an occasion to introduce new people to the format, to the concept. And the basic concept, again, is not about the travel, it's about connecting with people, making new friendships, so that's very important. So the events are a permanent part of the strategy because it is a way to reinforce this community distance of belonging. And then there are also something that started as a gimmick that it turned to be a real powerful tool for community building. For example, we gave to each we rode there, like a bag in the trip with a wheeled logo in it. And this bag, we went through it out at the beginning, it was a mark to recognition of the group while in destination. But when they came back, they started using the bag again. And so they recognize each other at events. I went to a festival recently, I found three people with a bag and it's easy to connect the world. You did that we rode or, I don't know, at the last gay pride, I saw that we are here in the land. So many, many bags from we rode just there without pouring money in sponsoring the manifestation, for example, the event. And we get people to send us a picture of spotting other people. I don't know if you know this guy, he's very famous, a disartorialist. And it took a picture of a girl with a wheeled bag and he posted that he got viral as well. So it's a mark, but this mark became a way to recognize another we rode there and to start chat with him with her. That's another point. Then there's another layer, which is the community of travel coordinators. We are 3,000 of them across Europe, not even someone outside Europe. And they are based on national community, social market based community. So we are the Spanish with Spanish, German with German and so on. But they start develop spontaneously local chapters. So they started to create a chapter, I don't know, in London, in Manchester, in Berlin, in Munich. And they started, since basically the beginning, it wasn't just in Italy, Spain at the beginning, but to self name like, we something, I know, we Manchester, we London, or even we crazy name, for example, there's a group in Italy that is called, we Pope, because from Apulia is not linked to the other inner jokes about that. And they self created the brand of each local group. Even distorting and manipulating the logo. But I'm very happy about that. I'm not just the logo because this way the brand is a living thing. They feel the sense of belonging and they self organize again events among travel coordinator. So we have a local presence with local chapters and then local chapters speak with other local chapters in other markets. And they do stuff together. They organize even three day long events in another country. So when I say that there's a kind of living thing, it's actually a living thing. And they also have relationships with the boxer, with the customers, because they stay in touch with the customers. For example, the event for travel coordinator, we invest a lot of effort and money, not only sustaining these bottom up initiatives, but also in creating national events, even international events. We just done one with 2000 travel coordinators, so all together for three days to be a huge effort, which is basically our internal festival is the fourth year in a row that they are doing that. And yes, it's a way to keep people engaged and connected. And there are people that are living and breaking the brand and being spontaneous ambassador of the brand. What do you think created that? Why did this happen with Reroad and not another company? Like, why have you all created a community? I guess that if you look at our specific industry, multi-day tours for a small group of people, I think the big players out there, they have a long story, so they have even a legacy. And probably the model that they are looking at the market is kind of product of the legacy. Why we started completely fresh, like a maverick in the market. We weren't coming from this specific industry. And the idea that we want to solve at the beginning, again, was about the social part, making the connection among people the most important part. If you remember when I started, when Paolo Micro founder said the two guys, there was a nice guy, there was a professional when he started with some other company. And you can say that because it's a person that is doing that as a job. Why we wanted people doing this, not as a job, is a side gig is the way you invest your free time because all our tour continuators, sorry, I forgot to mention, they have a regular job in life. They are teachers, doctors, developers, marketers, whatever, and they choose to spend their free time to lead a real group because they like it. In fact, they also have like the free, the tour for free, they have a small conversation, but the driver is not money. The driver is being part of this, is connecting with people, is traveling. That's why I think we made it and we are probably the only one in the market doing this. Even because it's operationally it's pretty complicated because it's about managing people. Mending people don't work for you. Exactly. And that's why you have to create the sense of belonging or to foster the sense of belonging or, for example, I was speaking with another company, they were surprised about the degree of freedom that we gave to these people to set for organized events. But the point is, if it's the way to create the sense of belonging, I can not- Do you fund, do you provide stipends, funding for those events? Yes, just speaking, they are not so costly because they are small events, it's a frequent story. Right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Okay. I want to talk about performance marketing. Oh, sorry. You also asked me about the- sorry, I'm chatting, I love- I love to speak about what we wrote. No, because you asked me about, I guess, the repetition and the community. So I spoke with a travel coordinator, but I have to say we have a very, very impressive level loyalty because we are people that are doing even three tours per year, we are people that done, I think our record is like 26 tours in total, even more than one, honestly. There are people that then, they apply to become travel coordinators as well. That's another point. And the repetition rate is very, very high. And now with the course that we have, we can project the LTV about our, we're talking about marketing, we can project it in the LTV. We know exactly what we are acquiring in terms of customer, but we know at the same time that we have to keep working on the quality of the product service that we offer. And the level of quality of travel coordinators, that's why they're, for example, for us are very important metric, the product quality and the score that the coordinator get from each tour. Plus, a travel coordinator is not said to stay travel coordinator forever, though based also on his performance, but also on his involvement in the community, maybe he's a stage of life in which you want to do the travel coordinator and then you have to put him closer and then do it again after a few years. And the same goes for the customers. Maybe people, they start as a single, then they do a couple of tours, they get engaged, and then after a couple of years, they come back again because they break up. So that's it. Yeah. Not bad. Not bad for the person that's, okay, now I really do, I want to get into performance marketing and digital just because that's my world. That's the stuff that I love. Yeah. I'm curious to hear how you're doing it. So I'm going to do this more as rapid fire. So I'm going to give you a question and then give me an answer and I'm going to give a follow up. Okay. Okay. So new campaigns. Are you generally evergreen based or are you more campaign based in your marketing? I've been with some seasonal dedicated campaigns, but in a context of, in a frame of evergreen campaigns. Do you have any seasonal campaigns running right now? Yeah. For example, for Northern Lights. So it's based on destination in this case or... Yeah. Right. Exactly. Very... It's not just Lachman. It's the whole world of Northern Lights. Okay. Just as an example. Perfect. Yeah. Okay. So it's a lot of destination based. We're coming up on holiday season in the U.S. Time travel from early mid-December to through the end. I'm curious how far in advance you plan for these and what type of booking windows you're seeing generally for your audience. I'd like to ask you what you guess, but I'll tell you or you can tell me. I'm just going to make myself sound like a fool. Okay. No, no, no. Okay. I'll tell you. It's about 60, 70 days. The booking window for let's say the first touch point with another and the director booking. So we plan pretty much in advance in let's say in September, I start with New York City Tour. Like for example, Sakura Japan is in March, April. So we start in November, December. You've got like a general expectation your luncheon campaign is far enough in advance to capitalize on the opportunity. So you've got a couple of different channels. You've got this community side, which sounds like in large part runs itself just because you've got a really strong brand image and a really strong level of involvement from your guides or your coordinators. So social media performance, you've been talking about social and I haven't asked, but it sounds like there's a lot of organic social in there. Yeah. Absolutely. We have about two million followers on Instagram worldwide because we're just one million either, which is the main market, but the point is I'm not talking about followers because there's so many metrics, but yeah, because the point is when I heard about followers, okay, oh, these guys are going to talk about followers, what are we in to tie in year 2000, no. The point is that followers for us are not only followers, are engaged followers. So that's very important. This is very, very important to understand which role the organic social plays out in your mobility panel. The point is that we have sales conversation out there about organic posts that are not meant to sell. You can find a post, even a meme from the meme, you can find the comment, people asking, asking us directly on social, do you have departure for Mexico, whatever dates? And then we reply to this person with a tone of voice, which is really relatable again. And the point is social media are fully integrated in the marketing funnel. It's not like a brand thing. That's something that I eat, honestly. If something doesn't make sense in the marketing funnel, it shouldn't happen. Even if there's something that's not that measurable, like the ATL, but I know they're playing a role to mail because maybe I am similar brand queries on Google or I'm seeing most spontaneous dimension in the social channels, by the way, we are paying the social organic with the social paid. We always been paying that so social organic is meant to tell about the experiences, showcase the real experiences. We have stories every day life from destination managed by Java continental. We give them the full ownership of the channel. There's a process pretty structured about how to give to five people in five different parts of the world. The assets are to an instant account and doing stories and not overlapping in Hindu stories. But still we are showcasing what is happening in our tour. And then there's a degree that feed the part which is about content curiosity is always to keep people engaged. And we have our own framework for each content that has a specific objective and a specific metric, which is not the standards in social metrics. We create our own framework, basically a social post that should basically work on retaining people or keep your certain level of engagement, acquiring new people, new followers or drive to action. So for example, we have many posts that we click to link in bio, where the link in bio needs to be set for specific activity that we are doing. So every post is conceived is designed in order to serve one of these three objective and we have several metrics, several KPIs to monitor that. What did the digital campaign, of course, so we are working on meta on mainly on the upper funnel, not only upper funnel honestly, but mainly on the upper funnel. And of course, we are spending, we shifted over the years, more and more budget to the PPC, to the search, because at the beginning we were like, the majority was on meta. And now they are pretty balanced, I would say, and Google is Google, you know. So basically it's driven by queries while on meta and TikTok, we can play more with the branding part or get people to know which kind of experience we are offering. So you've transitioned significantly from meta and social and added a lot of paid search, it sounds like. Let's talk a little bit about the search experience, right, and integrated search as a whole. There's been a lot of change going on in search, a lot. How do the SEO and paid media roles play together in your organization, specifically on paid search and SEO and your philosophy around the two of those? Yeah. First of all, I would say that it is completely my fault, maybe I said before, we neglected the SEO at the beginning. I wanted to scale fast, it was at that time, social probably has been the right choice. It's been very wrong, is neglecting the SEO for a few years before start working on it. Now how I'm saying we are trying to go back on track about that, I think we are kind of doing it. We started with the easy part, which was blog content, at the beginning the blog content was supposed to be something different, not SEO driven, but much more inspirational. And then I gave up and I understood that I have to do that. So basically it's driving, it's having quite a good part of the organic traffic now. What I'm foreseeing, what I want and what I'm also internally fostering, not only with my department, not also with the tech department for the future, is try to have portion of the server, not only direct to traffic, that's the obsession. Everyone wants to get direct traffic and work in the direct traffic, sorry, direct from Google to your website. I'm much more into getting portion of the server, so I don't care if I'm driving traffic to YouTube and then after YouTube to my website. I like to be more feature with YouTube video snippets, image snippets, rich box. I like to get real estate room on server with weird brand more than just getting a link in the first position for a specific destination. That's my personal view, honestly, I wish to do. I have to say that we are pretty far from that at the moment, but again, is that being my mistake? So my advice is think about SEO as soon as you start, honestly, try to develop the digital marketing model yourself to a larger, expanded to the, let's say, capital M marketing model. That's why I'm investing in social, even just for social or offline, but I neglected the fundamentals of the digital marketing. So that's what I regress upon. Got it. Okay. So integration for sure. I want to pivot with the time we've got left, we're almost out of it. We are going to have to do a part two. So you're entering new markets, right? You started in Italy, you're expanding. How are you approaching marketing strategy in a market you've never been in? You talked a little bit earlier about city domination. Is that how you look at it? Is it just let's do a lot of out of home in this place and get brand recognition? Okay. The playbook is pretty straightforward. So basically we start in advance building the social media audience and building the before start selling, let's say for three months, we start working just on social media in order to get a decent amount of follower, engaged follower. And at the same time, we pair it with a scouting of the early community of travel coordinators in the social market. As you can see, I put together digital and offline because it's pretty important. And then at the beginning, of course, we have campaigns to recruit, this campaign to recruit travel coordinators. And then we start with digital, mostly meta, but immediately also on Google and targeting the queries, the most generic queries like group tours, this kind of queries. Because the problem, you know, pretty well that this industry is pretty packed when it comes to arts because we are the OTA, we are the OTA, we are the hotels, we are the people selling experiences. That's still, I have to be super precise and the way to be not to waste the money is going after people looking for group tours. So I know that I'm not doing kind of prospecting in a way, but for Google, I have to go to reach out to these people. So the few months that are about digital, about make the word out and NPR as well. That's another important bit, I didn't mention before, but we work a lot on PR. Not necessarily digital PR, but PR at large that includes also digital. But the idea is spread out in the name and the concept of the tour. So I have to tell stories about people that transform their life with travel and also about travel coordinators that are doing like a side gig as an employee. So it's about speaking about we wrote. And then we start the activity in real life, which is city domination. Then I do city domination only when we have the capability to run not only the auto phone campaign, but also all the other activities that I mentioned before. We pick up the, just speaking the most important sticky in the market, usually the capital. And then we move to second tier cities. That's the approach. Then of course, it varies market to market. For example, in Germany, the situation is well spread. We have bookings across all the country, while in, I don't know, in France, the majority of bookings from Paris, and this is common from the other countries as well. So we have to adjust the strategy, understand if we are capable of managing a city domination strategy on multiple cities at the same time. Of course, the digital go nationwide and the partnerships, and we do a lot of partnerships. It's very important. And we tend to do global partnerships or multi-country partnerships, and they deserve the nationwide coverage that we need. So basically, we want to have a coverage, which is about the whole market, the all source market. This is more digital and partnership, and make us stand in a specific city. And then once we concurred the city, because we saw also booking wise, the number of bookings coming from the city, we moved to the second tier or third tier city. This is more or less the playbook. So it's core and then expand and then core and expand. Yes. Yes. And then expand and recognition and capture with digital. That's amazing. You have a playbook. You've been scaling really quickly. There's so much more I want to know, but we're already sorry. I talked too much. Honestly, it's amazing. You've done what I think a dream of a lot of marketers is you've gone from the bootstrapped, you have zero, and you've scaled in a million dollar company in seven years with a pandemic in the middle. That's pretty freaking amazing. Without spending too much time on that, I just wanted to point it out and then ask you the same thing. I'll ask everybody else. First off, thank you for joining. It was amazing talking to you today. Thank you. Any trips planned for you coming up? Not yet, because I do mystery tours two or three times per year. Just at my last one in Sri Lanka, I didn't plan the next time, honestly, but probably for you. Do you use your own name when you go on these tours? Yeah, I use my name, but since they are Facebook, I was a group in which everyone is introducing themselves. I used to say that I work in marketing for an agency. I'm not saying that's machine. Then the last day of the tour, I say who I am, but this is very, I can tell you, it's the best part of my job because you can listen to real feedback, unbiased feedback, unfiltered feedback from the people, can be about an accommodation, can be about a long transfer, can be about competition, but the best part for me is understanding the customer journey. That's the best part when they tell how they decide to join the trip and why did they book with all the other competitors. Founders have to be on the front line. It's amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining me today again. Thank you, Brandon. For more empowering ideas, visit propellant.com. We're on a mission to create more diversity and thought for the planet and dedicated to helping brands both large and small increase their reach through intelligent travel, transportation and tourism marketing, P-R-O-P-E-L-L-I-C dot com.