Part 5: Marketing & Getting to Mexico

During this past month, I’ve been in full creation mode to have the necessary content in place to begin promoting the first season of Baja Good expeditions. I’m pretty stoked with the progress I’ve made, and I’ll get into all the details below.

But first… I’m currently in Mexico. Paquito (my dog) and I made it all the way from South America to North America! If you’ve ever flown internationally with a dog, you know how crazy it is to get all your ducks in a row for a smooth process. I dealt with export requirements from the Brazilian government, import requirements from the Mexican side, and specific documentation required by Copa, the airline we flew with.

While land border crossings tend to be less organized as far as pet entries go, they’re generally less detail-oriented than flying. Of the many borders I crossed with Paquito on the Panamerican van trip, I’d say only 4 or so were properly difficult and very strict. Everything else was easy enough with a little bit of planning. Worst case, you get to the border and turn around if you don’t have all your documents correctly sorted… trying again another day.

Traveling by plane is a whole different story.

To make things complicated from the start, I refuse to fly Paquito in the hold of the plane. He’s either with me in the cabin, or we aren’t flying.

I know many dogs fly every single day in the hold without issues, but it’s a risk I’m not willing to take after hearing some horror stories. That — and Paquito is a pretty anxious dog with a lot of trauma from his past. I take being his guardian very seriously, so I choose to look after him the best that I can. For us, that means flying together in the cabin.

Now, to fly a dog in a cabin, the rules change depending on which type of dog your dog qualifies as - Service Animal, Emotional Support Animal (ESA), or a “regular” pet.

According to almost all airlines, regular pets must travel in a crate or bag. There is usually a size limit to this, and Paquito is a bit too large to fit comfortably.

While flying as a service animal is easy to do in the US, other countries have stricter rules and require detailed certification.

This is the third time Paquito has flown internationally, and every time has been done as an ESA.

ESAs are rarely accepted nowadays. It doesn’t exist in the US anymore. Most of the airlines that accept ESAs in other countries still require them to be in bags or to fly in the hold.

There are only a few companies that allow ESAs to be out of a bag in the cabin… Copa and Latam are the two main ones here in South America. However, they only allow this on flights to or from Mexico or Colombia. This used to include Brazil less than 2 years ago. The rules are constantly changing. Lucky for us, Mexico was our destination.

With the flight booked and Paquito’s reservation made, I started the export documents for him required by Brazil to leave the country. This required multiple vet visits, confirmation of vaccines and parasite treatments done during a specific window before the flight, and lots of digital signatures.

The most annoying part of this was that I then had to take the export document to get a physical stamp before my flight… The office is located at the airport (5 hours from Paraty, where I was staying in Brazil during my last month there) and is only open on weekdays from 2-4 pm. Lovely!

After lots of driving around the week prior, we eventually boarded our flight.

We made it to Mexico, spent another hour at the Mexican agricultural office to legally import Paquito, and then we were off! Unfortunately, Paquito was extremely nervous this time flying. The past two times were a piece of cake for him. I’m not sure what was different this time, but I didn’t sleep for an hour as I was super worried about him.

We spent the next few days in Mexico City decompressing before I took him to a dog hotel and took a flight to the bleh port city of Veracruz to prepare for getting the van.

That’s where I am now… in this hot town with an Airbnb booked until Saturday, hoping I can get my van before then.

The boat arrived on Monday, but only last night (Wednesday) were the vehicles delivered to the port. Now, I have to wait for customs to receive my documents, set up an inspection to go through the van, and then approve the van to be picked up. 1-2 days can pass before each step.

Meanwhile, I got absolutely wrecked by food poisoning and have been in bed the past 2 days. I’m still a bit groggy and weak, so apologies if this update is hard to follow.

But enough about this… bureaucracy is part of the process, and the van will be released when it’s released. Nothing else I can do! Soon enough, I’ll be making my way to Baja to prepare for the expeditions. 😎

As I thought more about the experience a potential client would have after finding out about Baja Good, I realized I needed a bit more social proof that I’m a real person, fun to travel with, and not some random internet scammer.

I applied for a Google Business account to have a place for people to leave reviews.

I wanted to reach out to all the people I actually caravanned with over the past few years to see if they wouldn’t mind writing a little blurb about what it was like to travel with me, what I’m like, the kind of vibe people going on a Baja Good trip could expect from me, etc.

Reviews of me as a person and travel companion.

I reached out to less than 10 people, and 8 immediately got back to me and wrote some absolutely beautiful remarks. I got a bit emotional after reading these comments and thinking about how all these friends of mine are so ready to help me and want to see me succeed.

I added these reviews to my website and Instagram.

Alright, this is where I made the most real progress these past few weeks.

I created 3 short videos that talk about what Baja Good is all about and how to get more info.

I made sure to include verbal and written calls-to-action (CTA) to encourage engagement, ideally in the form of a message or website sign-up. I posted these videos on all the social media accounts for Baja Good, but Instagram is where I am focusing.

Knowing that many people don’t leave social media when they find a business, I wanted Baja Good’s IG presence to be a slightly watered-down version of the website… like a business landing page of sorts.

I created story “highlights” with the following titles: Start Here, Reviews, Trip Details, FAQ, and Giving Back.

I also pinned my three introductory videos to the top.

I used Canva to take information from my PDF to create animated stories for each highlight on Instagram. I'm pretty excited with how professionally they turned out, especially since I’m learning all of this as I go.

As I’m writing this newsletter, I get the feeling that I didn’t accomplish enough this month. However, I haven’t created or edited a video in a long time… it took me an entire week to brainstorm, create the scripts, and edit these 3 videos. It took me another 2-3 days to create everything in Canva for the story highlights.

After creating this content, I went ahead and set up a Meta Pixel on my website. Essentially, this is a bit of code that Meta uses to track activity on my website so that I can use Meta ads and promote Baja Good all over Instagram, Facebook, and other platforms that Meta owns.

The main metric I want to track is sign-ups for the 21-day caravans. To do this, I created a “thank you” page that potential clients are redirected to after filling out the form successfully. Anytime that specific URL is reached, that action is tagged as a lead. The pixel tracks this event.

Since I had no idea what the best practices were for creating a Meta ad, I found a reputable guy on YouTube called Ben Heath and watched an hour-long video titled The BEST Facebook Ads Tutorial for Beginners 2025 (Full Guide). It was exactly what I needed!

I ended up using my initial three videos to test out as the first three ads. Instead of just promoting the videos to people to get likes, views, or Instagram followers, I specifically told Meta to find me a specific demographic of people who are most likely to convert to leads. In other words, find me people who are most likely to see this video, click “Learn More”, be redirected to bajagood.com, scroll down the website, decide they want to join, and fill out the sign-up form.

I have budgeted $10/day for ads as I test out various methods. Honestly, I didn’t factor this cost into the price for the trip… but I need to promote my business, or there won’t be any trips. 😅

Over a week and a half, I’ve had 5 sign-ups for the 21-day trips, in addition to more than double that filling out the form for the 10-day trips to be launched sometime in the future. It might not seem like many, but for someone to click a video, scroll down the website, and then fill out a somewhat detailed form for more info means that they are really interested. I have nothing to compare these results to, but they don’t seem too bad for a bit over $100. If just one person closes on a trip from this, that would be $100 to get one client. Not super cheap… but worth it for this first season.

These next few weeks, I will be doubling down on creating and testing other Meta ads, learning more about the Google ad space, and trying other promotion methods through forums, WhatsApp groups, and Facebook groups. I also need to directly reach out to vanlifers who have a decent following on Instagram and see how I can get them to promote Baja Good in a way that benefits them as well.

It’s been fun to step into this world, but it’s also been overwhelming. The ad ecosystem just within Meta is HUGE. I haven’t even stepped foot into Google’s, TikTok’s, or others’. With all of my other entrepreneurial endeavors, the selling part has been the part I enjoy least. I’m trying to keep a positive outlook this time around to enjoy the process more.

Probably the coolest bonus consequence of promoting my content to thousands of people is that I received a message from a yoga instructor.

Her friend had sent her one of my videos as she is preparing her campervan to explore Baja this winter for the first time. She told me she’d love to go on the trip, but the cost isn’t in the cards right now. She was curious if I’d be willing to trade a space on the trip for daily yoga classes and other help, an idea I am super open to.

After all, I originally wanted sunrise yoga/breathwork sessions to be a big selling point of this trip, helping attract like-minded people who want to share these experiences together.

We plan to talk soon - maybe something great comes of it!

After over a month of Stripe constantly deactivating and reactivating my account, I have finally shown them enough proof that I am a US-based company operating legally in the US. Because the trips take place in Mexico, their system kept flagging Baja Good as having an account in the wrong country. After 10+ emails, the problem has been sorted. Fingers crossed it’s for good this time.

I also updated meta-data-type-stuff for sharing bajagood.com as a link, as well as many other tiny details that you only notice when they aren’t done well. If you share the site as a link through WhatsApp, Messenger, etc., it should load a nice branded photo and meaningful text descriptions. I’ve been extremely focused on keeping the branding consistent and professional. For me, these little things make a huge difference when I’m considering paying thousands of dollars for a product, service, or adventure.

Alright, that’s the update for this past month.

I keep pushing along, but it’s definitely not a linear process. Some days I’m extremely stuck, and other days everything flows.

Balance.

But the stress level is getting higher. I have several people interested in the trip, but not a single confirmed sign-up yet.

Time to change that.

See you in the next update,
Alex