If I were VP Marketing at a €30M+ ARR SaaS… Oh wait, I know someone who actually is. Joining me on the latest episode of the Masters of Search is Volodymyr Korol, VP of Marketing at Lodgify.
Lodgify is a $30M+ ARR vacation rental management platform that empowers thousands of independent hosts to compete against Airbnb through direct bookings. And over the years they have built a significant SEO and organic footprint contributing that growth.
Volodymyr joined in 2024 to restructure the entire 30+ person marketing organization across eight functions to drive sustainable ARR growth.
I was curious to learn more about how he leads such a big marketing org, how we thinks about SEO fitting into the bigger picture, and where he sees organic growth, SEO, and AI Search heading.
This episode is packed with insights and practicable advice for marketing leaders. Let me know how you like it!
Full interview with Volodymyr Korol, VP Marketing @ Lodgify
Check out the episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
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Niklas (00:00.428)
Lodgify is a 50 million plus ARR vacation rental management platform that empowers thousands of independent hosts to compete against Airbnb through direct bookings. And over the years, they have built a significant SEO and organic footprint contributing to that growth. Joining me on the podcast today is Volodymyr Kroll, VP of Marketing at Lodgify in Barcelona.
He joined in 2024 to restructure the entire 30 plus person marketing organization across eight functions to drive sustainable AR growth. I’m curious to learn more about how he leads such a big marketing org, how he thinks about SEO fitting into the bigger picture and where he sees organic growth, SEO and AI search heading. So welcome to the podcast Volodomir.
Volodymyr Korol (00:50.187)
Thank very much, Nicholas. Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.
Niklas (00:54.742)
Nice. so much for coming on, especially in a busy week. Let’s start. Maybe give me a quick rundown of Lodgify, your product and the target groups.
Volodymyr Korol (01:04.875)
Yeah, of course, with all of the pleasure. So very briefly, Lodgify is the all-in-one vacation rental software designed for hosts, primarily for hosts, meaning that anyone who has an Airbnb apartment or an apartment that they’re renting out with booking com, they can use Lodgify to first of all, scale their business to generate more revenue to ensure that they put out the best prices for their rental.
Then secondly, to unify all of the communications with all of the guests across different platforms. So for example, if you use just Airbnb, you can easily connect to Airbnb. And then if you would like to get your listing published across different platforms, you can do it like in a few clicks. So basically, this is like a distribution platform as well.
You can unify all of the messages across different platforms. So you have one unified inbox. You can automate workflows. can automate messaging, check-ins, checkouts. And thirdly, I would say you can arrange all of the compliance and accounting and finance aspects. So you have reporting, you have all of the accounting, basically everything that you need to run your vacation rental.
meaning that hosts can use it as a one-stop shop to automate, basically, automate, streamline any workflow, any process related to their vacation rentals, regardless of where they’re being published.
Niklas (02:45.006)
And what attracted you to Join Lodgify? Just your passion for travel and…
Volodymyr Korol (02:47.627)
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. I think the product, the team and the challenge, you know, so that’s like a trio that I’ve been assessing. I spent many years in CRM, but before I’ve been working in property management software field as well. So I thought, you know, this is something similar, a little bit more fun than CRM and enterprise.
code platforms. So I thought this is like this is a good challenge and also the like the organization has a good challenge to scale to scale much faster while sustaining the specific efficiency metrics. So I think it’s a good challenge for me. So yeah.
Niklas (03:33.44)
Speaking of, yeah, speaking of challenge, I also said it in the introduction. You have a big marketing org and you had to like restructure, reorganize to maybe give listeners or viewers a first introduction into that. Can you give us a rundown of like how is the org structured? Because you have eight functions, you have 30 plus marketers like
This is quite a big org, so what are the different functions you have?
Volodymyr Korol (04:02.227)
It is. Yeah, yeah, good question. It is a big team. I would to keep it not like very detailed. High level, I would say that we’re focused on life cycle marketing. We’re focused on acquisition, and then we’re focused on brand and community. So this is how we try to split the core areas separately apart from these like
core tribes as we can call them. We have the customer led growth which is also known as product led growth. So this is the function that is very in between product marketing, sales, customer success and other teams. Overall all of the functions this year and next year we’re trying to embed them much deeper into the product. So this is the goal for us to make sure that all of the initiatives are
customer-backed, focused on the customer value. So that’s why the restructures, the changes that I’ve been making on the team, with the team have been focused specifically on this customer value as the core driver of all of the movement. So that’s how would high-level describe it.
Niklas (05:21.952)
And can you give us a little bit of a better understanding? So if somebody, for example, wants to make customer value a priority in their marketing or like how, just maybe from one or two examples, how does it look like in practice?
Volodymyr Korol (05:37.995)
Yeah, like as a good example would be conversion rate optimization, you know, so customer value, this is something that has to be perceived right away. Depending on the traffic source, you are like less or more aware of where was the product, you know, so if you have been generated through organic or any other LLM, you potentially you have to go through the nurturing cycle. If you’re generated through bait, you know, you have a very short life cycle.
Basically, you need to understand what’s the value of the product immediately. So that’s why now we’re building a lot of new good stuff to ensure that all of that traffic is going to be able to understand the customer value immediately. Like how we’re addressing their jobs to be done, how we’re addressing their challenges. Maybe to erase this boundary between the marketing website and the product, you know, so we’re
This is not live yet, everything that I’m talking about, but we have a lot of good stuff coming in now with the transformation that we’re undergoing now as the organization. Overall, the team, as the business, we’re undergoing a transformation with the new CEO joining this year as well. So we have a lot of new people.
coming in and joining Lodgify. So there’s a lot, a lot happening. But I think that would be a good example, you know, how we can communicate and translate the value of a product earlier in the buying cycle, earlier in the customer journey.
Niklas (07:16.748)
And what would you say from your perspective, also from your very personal role, what is like very key to lead such a marketing org and to also lead it through change? Because I can imagine that there are also marketing leaders out there that are also going through phases of transformation with a lot of things happening with AI, but also like changes just in markets. So what’s like your, what is like your playbook on how to navigate this?
Volodymyr Korol (07:47.113)
Yeah, it’s a tough one, I think. I don’t think there is one playbook in the end, you know, so I would love to have one playbook that is going to be applicable to every use case and every situation or challenge that we are undergoing, but there is not. So I would say, first of all, prioritization matters, you know, so to make sure that everything is assessed in terms of how much we believe in it.
What is the effort required and what’s the outcome of every activity and initiative? There is a part of this transformation, though prioritization is the first one. And secondly, we just have to understand that change is the new norm, you know? So I think the mindset has to transform. It’s not about my team only, it’s about all of us. We can see how much the environment changed now every month, you know? There is something new.
So there is, there’s like, think those days where we had like, uh, this is transformation we have, uh, under, uh, undergone the transformation. This is the end. Now we can calm down. This is, this is over. Uh, I don’t believe this is going to be happening, you know? So we just need to change our mindset and I’m trying to work with myself as well. You know, personally with all of the.
teams I’m working with, with my direct reports overall with other peers that this is like, this is okay. We’re going to be going, other going a lot of changes and multi transformations as we, as we grow. That’s, that’s how we need to embrace the reality.
Niklas (09:27.116)
Makes a whole lot of sense. now obviously the headline for this podcast is masters of search. And already introduced it in the introduction that SEO, but also like organic in general, now, maybe also LLMs, are important to Lodgify. Can you give us a little bit of your assessment, how important you feel SEO or like search, no matter, maybe also the platform is in your overall marketing stack.
Volodymyr Korol (09:53.163)
Yes, of course. I would even say the channel mix. So in the channel mix, this is one of the big drivers of acquisition. Lodgify, before I joined, they had like the best inbound machine in this segment, you know, so Alberto and Carla, they have been like, investing a lot of resource and time to build out that machine. And now…
We have a good foundation for everything that is coming with GEO and the new LLMs. So it is a big part of the acquisition and it should remain a big one as we transform. We just have to build up on that foundation.
Niklas (10:38.294)
And what are things maybe that from the foundation you saw that are good and help you also for the future? And are there maybe also things where you felt like, okay, we have to maybe rethink that or maybe like question the relevance of this for the future and this new AI search reality.
Volodymyr Korol (10:53.695)
Mm-hmm.
Volodymyr Korol (11:00.261)
yeah, the question we have to question a lot now, you know, so I think as the foundation for a classical inbound model, it’s been brilliant, you know, but obviously now with all of the challenges we have with LLMs, with CPCs, with the traffic going down because, you know, the AI summaries of all of the, I think the biggest problem is the way
Niklas (11:04.366)
You
Volodymyr Korol (11:27.685)
consumption module is built, know, so now LLMs are going to just consume the content that produce, not giving you this first touch point with the user, meaning that before you would be able to build subconsciously the first, like subconsciously be a part of this, I’m trying to figure out what’s the best way to put it,
To have this kind of touch point that is not necessarily product driven, thought leadership driven, now you don’t have this ability, now you don’t have this opportunity, you so you’re just being used, all of your effort you’re putting into that inbound or all of the content that you develop is being used just to generate immediate value to the user. So in the end, this is good for users, but for brands, this is an additional layer of challenge because…
You cannot hook them in the very beginning of their customer journey, you know So now you generate more high quality traffic more purchase ready traffic, but you cannot hook them and Build some kind of trust in the very very beginning of the customer lifecycle. So that’s why that’s the part where We need to challenge a lot, you know, we need to challenge how we Like okay now we’re not able to do it. So what do we want to do?
differently, you know, so how do we build that kind of early stage trust with the users, given that we don’t have that opportunity and capability as we used to have before. So I think that’s the core part.
Niklas (13:05.12)
And can you give us a little bit of a behind the scenes how that looked like for you?
Volodymyr Korol (13:08.874)
Yes, I now, I think we will be investing much more in geo overall, specifically thinking about how we generate contacts, how we generate those early stages and how we untap the temp potential, the total addressable, total serviceable market potential by investing, first of all, in community and brand, you know, so
long term, like short term investment is pretty much clear, you know, so you still need to invest in SEO, you still need to invest in geo. Same in the end is very similar, you know, so it’s some, some, some kind of difference there is, we know there is there. But ultimately, you know, just geo is the new CEO, and there are rules on how you need to optimize towards that.
So I wouldn’t say it’s a short term investment compared to paid or performance marketing, which is like a very short way on acquiring the value and fulfilling the funnel. So GEO would be the midterm, but long term you need to invest in brand and community. You need to build trust, you need to generate and provide real value to users instead of just asking for the contact data randomly in every touch point. You know, let’s give me, give us a phone number to…
to view this picture or slide, you know, I think this is we’re done with that finally. So you need to generate some real trust, you know, so we’re going to be investing more into Academy and projects like that, how we can actually give back to the community as the organization. We have a lot of knowledge and we would love to share this knowledge with the community.
with the new hosts who are there starting their journeys, are there to trying to understand how to navigate in this environment with all of the regulations and compliance that you have to live with, which is a huge challenge for them. We would love to help. So I think it’s a mutually beneficial journey for us as a brand and for hosts to whom we can actually educate and help them.
Volodymyr Korol (15:25.587)
navigating this quite challenging journey.
Niklas (15:29.378)
You mentioned Academy. Can you give us a little bit of an idea what this is about?
Volodymyr Korol (15:35.371)
Yes and no, think because this one we have an academy which is a pretty classical academy on like how you start, how do you start your Airbnb business, how do you start with the PMS, like some basics of the compliance, laws, regulations, but we’re going to be doing something bigger in the coming months so I cannot disclose what specifically.
but we have lot of ideas on how to actually transform this into something more meaningful and long term.
Niklas (16:11.918)
Hmm. Okay. Then maybe let’s put it that way. I also talked to a lot of marketing leaders who get the idea of investing into these long-term assets and something like building a community, maybe also building a course. And then there are like role models, like for example, Lodgify, but also other companies like, for example, Surfer, they have invested into courses and education material for quite some time already. And although marketing leaders get it.
then some of them are still too much drawn to short-term ROI. So what is different for you? Like why are you having this long-term thinking and others are maybe too short-term focused?
Volodymyr Korol (16:56.945)
I think it’s…
Pretty simple, you you have to deliver results now. like business is not gonna wait, you have to pay salaries in the end. So you need to understand what’s your short term versus long term game. Obviously, we’re gonna be investing in paid acquisition and paid marketing as well. We’re not gonna stop that. But long term, speaking about paid marketing, it’s not a sustainable growth model, you know? So you have to invest in community, you have to invest in brand.
You have to invest in customer-led growth, in retention, in understanding how do you activate the users, how users are being happy or unhappy across their customer journey, why they need to stay with you. Because marketing, now we think about marketing as a life cycle. So it’s not just we have top of funnel, let’s own top of funnel and forget about the rest. I think this is the wrong approach from the very beginning. So for me, it’s clear we have to invest there.
we’re going to need to strike the good balance between short-term and long-term and we will be doing short-term investment as well. I think everyone, all of the marketeers, now my suggestion to them would be please allocate at least some time to think what’s going to happen tomorrow, you know, what’s going to happen in two years with this organization. If you want to exit in one year, maybe it’s a good strategy for you to borrow, you know, because I call it
It’s not a gross model. You borrow traffic from Google, the traffic that they’re buying for you and that’s it. So if you want to exit and sell your company in a couple of years, that makes sense. But if you want to build a long lasting brand, I mean, have bad news for them.
Niklas (18:45.87)
And what you’re feeling about the right to balance also over time in a company’s life. So I can imagine some people thinking if you are at, I don’t know, double digit million ARR, it’s easier to say, yeah, I have to. So maybe they are wrong, but I can imagine them saying it’s easier to justify the investment. What would you say, like, if you think about a smaller company that is
Volodymyr Korol (18:57.631)
Mm-hmm.
Niklas (19:14.03)
maybe still at startup stage, but they’re growing and they are obviously investing in paid because that’s just what you do. When would you say is the right time to start investing into community brand and all of that and what percentage? So should you allocate 50-50 the budgets? Is it 80-20? What’s your thinking about it?
Volodymyr Korol (19:33.427)
Yeah, I’ve personally investigating this a lot in my career, you know, how much you should invest in brand and I haven’t heard like a single answer. Some would tell you it should be 50-50, you know, so you should 50-50 invest in brand. But ultimately, if you’re an early stage startup, you cannot invest 50 % in something that could potentially deliver some results in two years, you know. So obviously you have to deliver results much faster.
My suggestion obviously is to just think what is your goal. If you need to generate a specific revenue now, you cannot afford to invest 50 % of your budget just in brand. But I would do it from the very beginning. You have to think about what is my brand? What is the value of this brand? How do I communicate to users? How do I communicate the value of a product to users? Spending money on Google is the easiest way to spend money. Earn any investment, any cash on Google.
Like in one day, you know, you have two million if you want, you can spend them today on Google. Obviously there is a search volume limitation, but ultimately for pretty much all of the sectors and niche in the market, the search volume is sufficient to birth any amount of cash immediately. So that’s why my suggestion is invest in that as fast as you can, small steps, know, so it doesn’t have to be something big, like big project, but small steps.
So yeah, as simple as that.
Niklas (21:07.468)
Makes sense. Let’s look into one of the topics you already mentioned earlier, which is GEO or AI search. And you’re also investing into that. What’s something that you’re currently doing already? So are you already measuring your visibility in the different models? Are you tracking the traffic? What’s something like that is a starting point for you currently?
Volodymyr Korol (21:35.145)
Yeah, we’re doing a lot. Like we have revamped.
already our inbound strategy this year with the regional marketing director who’s responsible for this area. are tracking, we have been testing a lot of tools, know, so starting with the basics like SEMrush, AI Visibility Toolkit to some peak AI, utterly AI, prompt monitor and many other stuff to better understand, you know, because now, finally, I think there is a lot of visibility, much more
visibility. I don’t know how much of it we can trust. I don’t know, it would be maybe it would be a good question to you by the way. But there is you know there is a lot of information like prompt level, brand mentions, ability to track citations, sentiment analysis, like summaries of negative versus positive sentiment, referrals tracking,
like visibility across different LLMs, which also like questionable because you know, in many tools I’ve been seeing random spikes of LLM visibility without any kind of reason and any kind of explanation, you know, so it’s the biggest problem for me, I think is you don’t have visibility what’s happening behind, know, so on backend behind all of that information you’re being provided. So yes, we’re tracking a lot. We are investing a lot in optimizing content for
for LLMs as well. We understand that now we need to invest more in brand because ultimately brand this is what is going to help you to gain more trusted visibility. We have been testing like with different items like Reddit at some point everyone has been started talking that Reddit is like 80 % of the LLM volume, you know.
Volodymyr Korol (23:32.235)
which is not the case anymore. So I think we’re in the position like any other organization, trying to be on top of everything, but there is so much unknown and so much unclear behind the scenes. Like Google algorithm has always been a mystery, even for Google employees, you know? So now you have even less visibility into what’s happening, I think, and how you
can actually win long term, I don’t think anyone knows. You just need to keep investing, keep investing time, staying on top of everything. Yeah, but a good question is actually how much you can trust all of the information that is being provided now.
Niklas (24:20.942)
So I’m hearing that you’re a little bit skeptical about it. Yeah. Okay. Get it. Um, so I think, um, all the prompt research, et cetera, you have to treat it more like just, um, an idea of topical coverage. So you shouldn’t think about it that users are actually entering these exact words. we previously thought with keywords, but it’s more of.
Volodymyr Korol (24:23.541)
Girl, this skeptical, yes indeed. What do you think?
Niklas (24:49.526)
Understanding what an LLM surfaces for different topics and how are the answers structured? So will it give you, a step-by-step, a checklist for something? So if you think about, I want to start ranking, renting out my apartment on Airbnb. What will be the type of answer you get if you’re thinking more about, who can help me manage, rental bookings across different platforms? Will it immediately, suggest providers and the better you understand.
And how an LLM treats different types of prompts, no matter the exact words, the better, you know, how to structure your content, where to engage. Then obviously if you get a better idea of the type of citations that are used. So is it primarily a brand owned content from you, preferably, or from your competitors, unfortunately, or is it more, like third party sites? So for example, for a medical client we’re working with, like in the medical space, it’s a lot of.
Volodymyr Korol (25:47.627)
Okay.
Niklas (25:48.936)
like high, trust publications in this space and rather less. So if you’re thinking about chat, you’ll be rather less like own content. but still there are some competitors and then you can try to reverse engineer what they’re doing differently, maybe to yourself. So I would try to, always come up with like a thing that’s easy to explain for the team. because if you.
start to fumble around and like tokens and probabilistic answers, et cetera. It doesn’t help anyone to come up with actionable steps on how to improve visibility and get more mentions of your brand.
Volodymyr Korol (26:30.485)
Yeah, yeah, I 100 % agree. I think there is like at least a basic playbook, you know, that you have to apply now to make sure that you understand where the traffic is coming from, what is being fed to the LLM and what is being favored by the LLM when it comes to that sentiment that you get as an output.
Which is actually super interesting in the end. There is a lot, like it’s still some kind of a black box ultimately. But sometimes I even feel that there is more sense than we used to have with Google in the classical way of SEO, know, where it’s been like very, you can super easily manipulate it and…
ultimately you can get a like a completely bullshit result number one versus like really meaningful valuable information being de-prioritized and positioned lower because you know the backlink doesn’t have enough trust or anything else. yeah I think this transformation is
ultimately for better, you know, so it’s designed to help us and it’s helping us in the end, you know, so we just need to learn how to navigate with it.
Niklas (27:53.844)
Agree. Speaking of navigating. So, you are obviously very progressively minded about embracing the unknown and like the change is the new normal, but still you also have to, steer a marketing or orc through like some planning cycles. I don’t know if your planning cycle is maybe a month or a quarter, but in some way you have to balance like stability and clarity of direction with embracing the unknown and
Seemingly everything changes every week. So how do you balance that? And also how do you enable the team to not get lost in all the new AI news, et cetera?
Volodymyr Korol (28:35.399)
Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t think I’m doing my best with this one, you know, so to be very fair. Yeah, I mean, I’m trying to be honest with myself. We the planning cycle is high level is more than even a quarter. So we’re trying to plan at least for six months. What’s what we’re trying to invest in what we need to what are the key
Niklas (28:43.713)
Appreciate the honesty.
Volodymyr Korol (29:02.451)
challenges versus opportunities we have where we have to invest because if you want to achieve something in six months you have to do it now so that’s why one month I think it’s it would be very short. So I think we have a direction what we are doing much better now having a one unified direction for the organization so it’s not my team only.
Before, when I joined, think the big issue was like marketing has been driving in one direction, sales has been driving in a similar, but sometimes pretty different direction and product has been left elsewhere. Now it’s completely different. So as the organization, we have our set of key indicators that we have to focus on and then we cascade our planning based on these indicators.
Meaning that if we know that we need to achieve these growth targets or we need to reduce, like increase the conversion rate by this number, we work together. You know, so we work together now with the team, with the product team to work on the life cycle enhancements from starting from acquisition, obviously, to then retention or retention prevention, I would say.
children prevention, but retention increase. so that’s how we approach planning. still, I do believe, there is a lot like this kind of unknown doesn’t help much, you know, so overall where the industry is, where the market is, where the economy is at the same time, you know, so this does not help to get this kind of sense of stability that we had before COVID.
because it was different but we’re trying to navigate. I can do better when it comes to trying to address all of the concerns and the challenges but I think we’re trying to do our best as much as possible in these conditions.
Niklas (31:10.368)
Okay. Got it. As I said, appreciate the honesty. I think that’s not, that’s really rare for, for leaders at your level. speaking of concerns, I, recently spoke to, the managing director of a big agency actually in the, in the search space. and he told me that although at like leadership level, they are very progressively minded about AI one as a channel, but also AI as a tool.
Volodymyr Korol (31:36.629)
Mm-hmm.
Niklas (31:39.838)
he often sees his teams, for example, the editors, like the content editors, being concerned, concerned about, will this work out for us? What about my job? Blah, blah, blah. I can imagine that also. Like this is something that with an org you have in the size, it’s just something that you probably have to deal with. So do you have any suggestions for people on how to embrace your people, empower your people to also.
like see this change as something that you can also create and design and rather like it’s this wave that just comes above you.
Volodymyr Korol (32:19.429)
Yeah, yeah, have so much I’ve been thinking about that so much, you know, I’m the person who’s watching all of the YouTube videos about how AI is going to take over all of our jobs and what’s coming for us. But ultimately, I don’t think we have to be concerned about replacing being replaced by AI at this like
this year or next year, I would say. The horizon of planning and understanding what’s gonna come with AI, I think it’s no more than a year and a half for now, because we don’t know what’s gonna happen in two years. But ultimately, we even see a lot of organizations have been investing in replacing humans with AI, and now they’re reversing back. So there is some kind of a bubble effect that we observe in the industry. All of the companies like Oracle invest in
back and forth with meta, know, trying to increase the value of each other. I think it’s pretty interesting to observe, but ultimately I don’t think we need to be concerned about being replaced. Potentially some of the roles are going to be redundant, you know, so content role probably is going to be one of the first ones who’s going to be redundant as the concept. As a concept in the way it has been designed,
by legacy means, you know, so in the same time as a content specialist, now you can be so much more productive. You can deliver like 10 times more. You know, you can deliver 10 times more. You can put effort of manually typing content of shaping angles and ensuring, you know, that the critical thinking and unique angle and point of view is applied to that copy, which
Any LLM cannot do, know, so LLM is the LLM generated content is the result of is the average is the average of what you are trained on But you cannot apply critical thinking to that. you know with chadgpd or any other, gen ai So that’s why I do believe ai now is the massive augmentation of our capability massive augmentation of everything that we do every day, you know, we have got so much redundant work already and i’m like
Volodymyr Korol (34:37.931)
the potential is limitless, you know, on how much more we can deliver with the same team, with the same time we spent at work compared to where we were three years or four years ago. It’s like massively. So that’s why I’m not concerned that, you know, we need to replace the team. We need to keep investing in automation. We need to keep investing in AI, but thinking about how it help us with the productivity and the…
amount of output that we produce rather than thinking, okay, I’m going to replace this person now with, I don’t know, the agent or the workflow. And yeah, I’m going to be publishing 20 times more content, but everyone is going to be doing that, you know? So this technology is available to everyone now. So everyone can publish 1,000 pages online. know, even Semrash, you can do it. can like just, it’s going to get you the research of the keywords.
You can do like the full-blown blog in one day with the AI generated pictures, AI generated authors or whatever But like you know, like now you have to get creative you have to understand, you know how do you actually How do you actually put human touch and On top of that and to make it unique So it’s a it’s a journey what happens in two three years
I guess no one knows, maybe we’re going to have the super AI, know, the super intelligence that that will probably cause some effects on the economy. But if you’re smart and you know how to put AI to your use, you should be good. You know, you should be safe for now.
Niklas (36:25.663)
Do you already have like AI ambassadors or like people on the team that are particularly interested and also like making progress with AI and then maybe also enabling the team as a whole to move into that direction?
Volodymyr Korol (36:36.265)
Hmm.
Volodymyr Korol (36:42.411)
I would say yes. The biggest problem with marketing is there is no one solution for the marketing team because the use cases are very scattered, you know, so everything boils down to the data accessibility and cross-unification of data. So we do have people who are like much more willing and up to using AI, you know, so the creative team.
The community team, I think they’re very, very much on top of that. Obviously the content, the SEO teams. Some teams, we need to invest more into that areas. So yeah, for sure we have the ambassadors, we have people like trying to push it across all of the possible use cases. Yeah, but the biggest problem, there is no one off solution for that. If you think about the marketing team generally.
You know, so starting from email to image generation and then to content development and then maybe to, I don’t know, automate automated bidding in paid campaigns. This is so far from each other. You know, the data sets are different. The tools are different. And it’s, I think this is, this is actually a big opportunity for someone who’s going to create a tool like that, you know, which is going to be able to
connect with all of these tools and unify all of the data points, but it’s not there yet.
Niklas (38:10.337)
Okay. But if other marketing leaders are thinking about standardization and like enabling the team basically on one AI platform, ideally to also like be very clear about how they’re using it and having maybe brand guidelines already baked in your response would be, if I understand it correctly, this is not possible yet. So rather embrace the scatteredness.
Volodymyr Korol (38:20.491)
You
Volodymyr Korol (38:32.875)
No, I mean, other when you say other marketing leaders are trying to unify it, like, what would be the use case of that unification? answer, my question would be, you know, if content development or creative development, yes, for sure. But if you’re talking about the marketing team overall, the use cases are very scattered still, you know, so I’ve been I’ve been researching for a tool that could could do
as much as unified as possible, but I’ve been struggling to find one. Either I found, I don’t remember what was the name of it, the one solution that was like enterprise-grade, I think we were too small for them, that has been some kind of similar to what I would envision, but if you think about everything at once, I don’t think it exists, to be honest.
Niklas (39:29.923)
Yeah, I get it. I, what I’m-
Volodymyr Korol (39:30.857)
I don’t know, maybe I don’t know about it, you tell me.
Niklas (39:34.179)
No, no, no, probably there isn’t one yet. What I’m just hearing is that people are saying, yeah, you know, now we have this specialized AI tool for content workflows. Then the graphic team or the creative team wants to have this other special specialized tool for this use case. Then the video team wants to have this specialized tool for video editing. And then I feel like some people draw back to, can’t we just use chat GPT for all of that? mean, chat GPT can write stuff and.
Volodymyr Korol (39:41.131)
And.
Niklas (40:03.641)
generate images and then there’s Sora so this is what I’m hearing.
Volodymyr Korol (40:07.135)
Yeah, I don’t think we can use ChaiJPT for everything. You know, like, think about email creation or email template generation. You know, you cannot, I mean, you can do the HTML for that, but basically it boils down to the code generation. I think ChaiJPT is pretty limited.
when you think about all of the possible use cases. I mean, even Sora, yes, it works, it works okay, but it works much better when you use multiple tools, even for one video creation. Same with image generation. So, yeah, I would love to have one unified tool, but I don’t think we’re there yet.
Niklas (40:52.063)
If a smart founder is listening to this and feels the same, then go pursue the idea and maybe get Lodgify as a pilot client or like MVP client.
Volodymyr Korol (41:00.491)
Yeah, I’m happy. I’m happy to be the first client. Yes.
Niklas (41:06.031)
Nice. And how about yourself? Like personally, because I feel like there’s a lot of talk also about how, like a content marketing manager, et cetera, can use AI. But what about like a VP of marketing? What are your favorite use cases of AI?
Volodymyr Korol (41:19.947)
I think I’m trying to automate as much as possible. I’ve been actually enjoying the ChaiGPD agent a lot, the one that interacts with the interfaces, you know, so…
not necessarily building just the workflow because, know, we also have to distinguish the classical workflows with agents who actually can navigate through the context and make decisions in real time, which was, I mean, it’s been with Comet from Perplexity and then ChaiJPT introduced this like three months ago, I guess, and then introduced a new browser where you can actually do it. I love it. I think
you can, you you just give a prompt and respond to all of the LinkedIn messages and it’s gonna respond to you on behalf of you or work with emails. So I think I’m using it primarily for like productivity items, you know, we do have as a team, it’s not only myself, we do use different LLM for analytics, you know, to generate reports, maybe generate graphs instead of just using
school reports in Tableau. So I think it’s more about productivity, everyday productivity. But basically that’s 50 % of my work. My work is 80 % of meetings and conversations and then 20 % of some actually productivity and strategic work.
Niklas (42:59.425)
Makes sense. So is Chachapiti Atlas already your standard browser?
Volodymyr Korol (43:04.209)
No, no, think from the UX perspective it’s not still there. What about you?
Niklas (43:10.447)
Okay, got it. I know I tried it for 72 hours. Also did a LinkedIn post about it, found it interesting, felt some things are not natural. So if I say to the assistant, so on the sidebar, if I say, please go to XYZ website and do this and that, I have to manually select the agent mode. So it actually switches to the agent mode where I feel like if my prompt and my indication is very clear that I want,
it to act, should naturally do it. And this is something where I feel like this, this still involves too much active decision-making from my side to make it really this like extra layer of convenience. so this is one idea. I had something else, but you know, it’s like, there’s so much going on. just, I just lost the other things, but that felt most unnatural to me.
Volodymyr Korol (43:53.609)
Right.
Volodymyr Korol (44:02.259)
Yeah, it makes sense. I think for me the biggest struggle with productivity now is the presentations. I didn’t find the tool who could do a decent presentation for me. There are so many tools just designed for generating presentations, but I’ve never found one that would actually listen to me and do what I ask you to do. So if you know something, I would love any recommendation.
Niklas (44:28.131)
Did you try gamma?
Volodymyr Korol (44:30.501)
I tried so many to be honest at some point
Niklas (44:32.055)
It’s like G-A-double-M-A. It seemed to be super solid and the founder was on Lenny’s podcast a week or two ago. So, and it seemed intriguing. I haven’t looked into it more deeply yet, but let me know if you tried, if you haven’t tried it yet, how it’s going for you.
Volodymyr Korol (44:35.368)
I will.
Volodymyr Korol (44:45.301)
Alright.
Niklas (45:00.975)
Okay. Happy, happy to hear how it’s going. I’d to focus on one other aspect, but also obviously connected to the AI search, or like the AI space, because, when I talk to people, it’s a little bit connected also to the whole prompt monitoring thing. they struggle to, get a grasp on how their prospects or customers are using AI for research.
Volodymyr Korol (45:28.843)
Mm-hmm.
Niklas (45:28.907)
So have you done anything particular to understand how your future users or prospects are using AI? So you better understand where to focus your marketing efforts on.
Volodymyr Korol (45:41.739)
You mean in terms of our product because there is a separate conversation of research and product usage, you know, so
Niklas (45:50.519)
Yep. I’m thinking about, how a potential future logifer user is using AI. So you better understand what they’re doing with chat GPT and what they’re researching about the space. And if they’re researching about the best solutions for this and that, so you better know where to focus your efforts with like AI search marketing. Yep.
Volodymyr Korol (46:13.111)
Marketing efforts. Yeah. Yeah, because okay make sense. There’s a whole separate conversation how hosts use AI for their Yeah, that’s a long one. Yeah When it comes to like marketing part, I yeah, we have been we have been doing the research on Like the prompt analysis overall That’s that’s where that’s where I said, you know, I was not sure if we
Niklas (46:21.677)
We save this for the next, for the update episode.
Volodymyr Korol (46:41.221)
much we could trust the information but it seems that one that part not the sentiment analysis necessarily seems solid it makes sense you know so we have been trying to cluster different types of prompts to understand you know where to focus and I don’t think we have honestly we have seen any surprises you know so yes it’s easier to work with prompts instead of keywords as we used to do now you understand some context and maybe you can better understand the potential
cycle and journey of that specific cohort of users. But it’s nothing like comprehensively new, you know. So instead of best PMS for vacation rentals, you know, it would be what is the best property management software or system for vacation rental hosts, as an example. So it’s just the expanded version of the clusters you had in search. Maybe some insights we did have, you know, so we have
not been optimizing to some specific clusters that much. Now we are, but yeah, we have been doing that research. That’s where we have been testing all of the tools.
Niklas (47:52.153)
So basically most of the prompts users are typing into Chatchabit are more or less a little bit longer long tail search queries.
Volodymyr Korol (48:02.187)
Yeah, I think when it comes to our ICP, the profile of users, it’s more long tail, Not only all of the LLMs, they’re pretty similar in the end.
Niklas (48:09.561)
Got it, nice. Do you have a preferred LLM or a preferred AI tool? Yes.
Volodymyr Korol (48:20.235)
Myself. Yes, it’s Chai GPT for sure.
Niklas (48:23.887)
Okay, just because it’s the Swiss Army knife.
Volodymyr Korol (48:26.495)
Yes, I think so. And it’s trained, you know, it knows what to expect from me. We have a very… I’m very demanding out of it, you know. So it knows that it can not give me any kind of bullshit.
Niklas (48:28.163)
Have you tried?
Niklas (48:44.983)
Nice. I always like to, make this podcast way very, a very authentic, but B also very practical and actionable. and you already like delivered a lot, in that sense, but I’d like to ask you, if you think about, fellow marketing leaders, also maybe, in, the sauce and the tech space. and if you would have to give them like two to three practical pieces of advice.
Also, maybe with teams of your size, especially connected to search, AI search, the whole AI shift. What would it be?
Volodymyr Korol (49:17.791)
Thank you.
Volodymyr Korol (49:26.153)
Yeah, it’s a good question. think naturally, naturally you would have an answer probably based on this conversation. But to summarize, keep investing into brand activities, starting small, first of all, you know, so don’t think about AI searches as just a technical SEO or geo, where you just optimize a specific piece of content or it’s the LLM. But think about who who’s going to be
who’s going to be publishing content about you if you invest in some kind of long-term relationship with your influencers, brand ambassadors, if you don’t have any start small, think about who are the people who can promote you, do you have any kind of referral program that you can build? Like everything, all of that investment is going to be reflected in GEO and search ultimately. So simultaneously, obviously invest in
Old school, you so you need to still generate content to appear anywhere, you know, so without content you’re you’re not going to magically appear if you invest in brand, you know, brand is a very broad concept also. People like a lot of the marketing leaders keep repeating that, but brand ultimately, you know, it has to be decomposed into specific areas and actionable items.
So that’s the first one and the second one invest in automation, know, so invest now more is the message to myself as well, you know, keep investing automation. This is the foundation of you being happier and more successful, more proficient in six months or in one year from now. If you, if you’re not doing that now, you’re gonna, you’re gonna be either left behind or regret it a lot, you know, so automate as much as possible, map out the use cases that you can automate.
with AI across different teams and then try to automate, try to unify where possible as we discussed. If it’s not possible, at least try to empower the teams with the tools that they need. If you calculate the investment in the tool versus the operational efficiency gains, this is very helpful in the end, know, so there is a lot of benefit towards that kind of investment. Yeah, and third is super basic, I think, know, that talk…
Volodymyr Korol (51:47.717)
talk style, just prioritize, know, prioritize, have a couple of priorities for at least some kind of measurable part of the future and just do something good, you know, if you cannot do anything good, you’re gonna fail. So at least some areas you have to, you have to do better other than your competitors or you have to do better than you have been doing that before. So I think it’s, that said, super simple, probably.
I probably would have more, but if summarizing something more practical, I would stick to these.
Niklas (52:26.187)
Awesome. Very nice. I have one last surprise question. I always start. So I started asking this and it was always very insightful when I did. So if you think about our conversation now, today, what is something that we haven’t talked about? We should have talked about.
Volodymyr Korol (52:30.515)
Of course.
Volodymyr Korol (52:47.243)
I mean we haven’t talked about so much, you know, so I think we could be talking for hours probably today if there’s one specific area
Niklas (52:53.967)
Something that’s important to you where you feel like, we missed that.
Volodymyr Korol (53:01.067)
I don’t think we missed that much. First of all, thank you so much for the conversation. I really love the way you structured the follow-up questions and the overall the question structure. Maybe one area that it’s not I would be, you know, the
best expert in that, but the technical part of GEO, I think this is something that is very interesting for users and probably would be a nice follow-up conversation maybe. So how do you build out your tech stack specifically to make sure that you first, like you automate as much as possible and second, you understand how to track your results. So tech stack wise.
For me, every time, every podcast that I watch, I try to get something from it in terms of what I can either test. And typically the most useful part is the tools, you know? So the tools and real feedback from users about specific tools. So I think it could be a good part for a follow-up conversation for you or for your next guest.
Niklas (54:13.527)
Awesome. Thanks so much. I really enjoyed the conversation and really appreciate also your feedback on it. If people felt like it was very interesting to follow you and they want to learn more about what you’re doing, what Lodgify is doing, what’s best to follow you around?
Volodymyr Korol (54:32.499)
I think LinkedIn. I wouldn’t say I’m the most public person on LinkedIn. I just don’t have time to properly think about myself and the person who’s sharing anything. But I would suggest follow Lodgify if you’re anyone planning to have a vacation rental or you’re having one follow Lodgify. And in the meantime, I’m going to try to be more active on LinkedIn sharing some real life knowledge.
Niklas (55:02.711)
Awesome. think it’s, still helpful for people to know if you think about, like, a fellow marketing leader from, from an organization that feels like it would be nice to exchange just to know where to connect.
Volodymyr Korol (55:14.889)
Yeah, feel free. Anyone feel free to connect on LinkedIn if there are any questions. I’m going to be happy to personally address them.
Niklas (55:23.681)
Awesome. Volodymyr, thanks so much for taking the time. Really appreciate it. And also for sharing so much insights. I wish you personally all the best and also Lodgify. I feel like you guys are pretty well equipped for the future. Although there’s a lot of unknown, but since you embraced the unknown, it seems you’re very well prepped. So thanks so much for coming on today.
Volodymyr Korol (55:46.407)
Of course, thank you for the conversation. Enjoy the conversation and have a nice week. Thank you. See you. Take care. Bye.
Niklas (55:52.887)
You too, see you around!
