Hunting vs. Farming: Why Farming Pays Off in the Long Run

Adam Stoker recently broke down a problem every DMO faces: hunting vs. farming.

• Hunting: Paid ads that work for two weeks, then disappear.
• Farming: Infrastructure that compounds over time.

"If all you do is hunt, the house of cards will collapse at some point." — Adam Stoker

The Stat That Should Reframe Your Strategy

Adam pointed out that 50–55% of visitation is VFR — Visiting Friends & Relatives. Residents are actually your biggest marketing channel.

But most DMOs can't market directly to them. So how do you give residents the tools to be better ambassadors?

This Is Exactly Why We Built What's Good

We started as frustrated locals in Wilmington who couldn't find what was happening in our own city. We built AI to solve it — for ourselves, not tourists.

We hit 30M impressions because locals used it every weekend and shared it with visiting friends and family.

When your event calendar serves both locals and visitors, you:

• Build civic pride
• Arm resident ambassadors
• Create SEO infrastructure
• Improve destination experience

Visit Myrtle Beach went from 107 to 172 events per month (+60%) while saving 55+ hours monthly.

The Takeaway

You need both hunting and farming. But event automation is farming — it keeps working when ad budgets get cut. It serves your biggest marketing channel (residents) while improving the product itself (destination experience).

Ads stop the moment you stop paying. Infrastructure keeps compounding.