Do Ads Work? by Marc Saxe I see you found me here. Thanks to all of you who have written me this week about my article a few weeks ago, An Open Mind. I appreciate the comments, and you will find more on the topic as we go along. Although this week's article is more marketing related, there are a few things that salespeople will like, too… some new ways to make money… in the copy. So you'll want to read it anyway, and make up your mind later. With the world watching our business in a much more accepting light than during the early days (The Dark Ages) of the 1970's and 1980's, companies moving to more mainstream marketing methods are being rewarded. Based on your locale, you do want to venture further into the using print advertising. It has been the source of successes, both large and small. It's hard spreading your wings out of the OPC, telemarketing and direct mail lockstep that 90% plus of the business follows. In this week's text stream, you're going to read about two or three specific ad programs that work well. How well they work depends on your location, the market universe you target, and the type of programs you are using to attract your guests. Before we begin, you will want ask yourself a few things to see how well it will work for you. You will want to use independent data wherever possible (Your own information is already skewed to show you the market you already targeted). You'll want to start with these, and come up with some of your own. What tier of resort area is your project? International destination, (fly-in world wide) National destination, (fly or drive in) Regional destination/ (drive up- 500 miles or less, typically 250 or less) Local drive up (drive up almost exclusively - 120 miles or less) What percentage of your business comes from: Day tours Minivacation Tours Walk-ins What types of print media are available in your resort area? Daily local paper - consumer pays Daily local paper - free giveaway Tourist weeklies Tourist monthlies What types of print media are available in your primary marketing universe? Local dailies Local weeklies Monthly area magazines Monthly specialty magazines What are the types of escapes that your primary market currently uses to go to your destination area Day drives - no overnite One night Two to four nights Full Week Multi-week As an example, let's look at a national destination with an exceptionally strong local region following, with a smattering of international guests. Over 80% of the guests drive in from the primary local/regional market, with 25% driving in for the day, 25% coming in for a one night, 25% for 2 to 3 nights, and 5% of the primary market visitors coming in for a week or more. The rest of the visitors are coming in mostly nationally, with a few international guests showing up. This is relatively typical of the drive up ski escapes near the front range of Colorado, or the desert regions of southern California. It may be similar to your area. Start based on the types of tour programs you can handle. Do you do mini-vacations, or just day tours? If you do mini-vacations, you can start the process with a few well-placed small "getaway ads" in your regional daily newspapers special travel editions, to test the waters. As in the majority of our programs, you are looking for a responder…that is, someone who will "take you up on an offer". So package a good mini-vacation offer, that you put in a 3 or 4 column inch ad. Start small. Test. If you need help designing them or figuring out where to put them, you'll want to drop me a note at msaxe@resortopportunities.com. As a note, only do this if you have the back of house in place to handle response and the make the program work. If you don't, you will get chewed up and spit out by the public and consumer watchdogs for good reason. Make sure that the copy is legal in your area, and all necessary disclosures are present. You will find that as soon as the ad hits, if it's the right ad and location, the phone will ring. Be ready. You need to start small, but gradually work your ad buys up in size as your response grows, and your sales team learns how to sell these guests. These guests are a bit different, and your sales team needs a bit of time to adapt to them. But, they are smart, and will figure out what they need to do to sell them relatively quickly. If the ad doesn't pull, you need to look at the copy, the location and the timing. Dedicate some budget to this and soon you will be running full-page offer driven, direct response information, public awareness ads that soften your marketplace and generate real traffic. Once this happens, everyone in your market knows you, your sales velocity and efficiencies will rise as your credibility grows. (For Sales people only: This little program above is perfect for entrepreneurial sales people. The cost of entry is relatively low compared to OPC, T/M and direct mail. Your developer may be willing to cut a "sales and marketing" deal with you based on this program. You could make some real money, and cut the cord a bit from line tours. I can't tell you in public what this might be worth, or how to handle putting the deal together. Drop me an email, at msaxe@resortopportunities.com if you're interested. I might be able to help you package it. The only danger is that once you go this route, you can't complain about the tours. They're your tours. It's a real eye-opener. You want to have your eyes open…don't you?) Next Let's say you're in a market that is a bit more on the national/international destination side of the business. You have a lot of competition in the OPC marketplace, or a limited number of workable locations. If you are lucky enough to have specialty daily newspapers in your resort area catering to visitors. You better be in that paper. Day tour offers are the easiest, and can be relatively small. These are typically hooked, gifted offers. But, now for something completely different…. One of the most profitable projects I am aware of sold out at under 20% net marketing and sales, including G&A. They did this using a constant, almost daily, full page, four color, tabloid-sized newspaper inserts, pitching the desirability of the product, with a small gift hook (only after the non-gift ads played out), in the local tourist daily newspaper. Everyone who entered the area picked one up. You couldn't help but notice. Visitors responded, and wanted to find out more. They weren't intimidated by a "90 minute tour", because it wasn't required. Few premiums over the project's life cycle left more room for profits. No pressure led to higher sales and happy owners. These ads positioned this product directly against homes starting in the $350,000 to $1,000,000 range. The ads looked the same. Those who came to look had a real interest in finding out more, and at the very least, An Open Mind. The gift was secondary - a thank you at most. Now don't get me wrong, this won't work everywhere. But it did work here. They were stiff competition in an area where I was working mostly mini-vacation guests. Some variation might work for you. Very Important: If you are in this type of market, and have the product to match, you need to identify it as early in the planning stages as possible. Your project could be a candidate for a launch campaign that has the ability to set new records. You will have to shift strategies away from the conventional and do some lateral thinking. If you are reading my column, and have read An Open Mind , then you are ready for the real juice. There are synergies available with other programs that can blast you into the world of ultra high velocity at the same time. More on those in future articles. More I had a conversation this week with a good friend and periodic associate who I greatly respect. We were talking about a local, tourist magazine ad he ran recently. The media is a bit different than the above free daily. It's a high profile free monthly tourist guide. The copy is more offer-based, but the resort is well positioned. I didn't ask him about the response. I'm sure that with an efficiency of over $4000 per preview guest, he doesn't need a whole lot of response to make the program work. You couldn't use some of those…could you? Ads Work. The few of us who were there in 1996 at the earliest stages of The Manhattan Club know what can happen when a great ad hits. I had been there about a month. We were still grappling with the logo design, the final meaning of "club", and the myriad of details in the mountains of pre-opening activity when our first Endless Vacation ad hit the streets. It was purely, a "development" office at the time. Nothing operational was in place yet, as the sales team wasn't expected to arrive for another month. There was so much pent-up demand for a mid-town Manhattan mini-vacation offer, that a bazillion and a half calls came in during the first two weeks the ad was on the street. We had to create systems, and recruit staff just to handle the response. If you were one of the first responders, I owe you an apology for not having everything completely ready when you called. That ad worked. It worked so well that some variation of it has run in Endless Vacation every issue since. You have to be careful with these national/international ads. Endless Vacation is highly targeted, but you have to watch your target, and your costs. Ad size and position in the magazine matter, too. Ads Work, but Not Every Ad Works. You do need to do your homework before entering any ad campaign. Some ads pull and pull. Some die quickly. You need to allocate enough budget to carry your campaign through a test period to find which ones work well on the pull side, and which ones work well on the sell-through side. You need some staying power. You do have to be smart enough, and adaptable enough to be able to sell someone other than an OPC, outbound T/M or direct mail guest. Once you're there, you have the potential of mixing in less labor intensive programs that can same you money, and make you money. The Trick The biggest trick to making these programs work is not getting the creative right, the offer right, the legal right, the hospitality systems right, or the media right. Don't get me wrong, those are tricks. But, the biggest trick is getting your advertising MIX to work. Matching your tour flow needs, by type, time of day and particular source, the offer, the cost per insertion, response and sale. Ads can help to level out your marketing and sales operations. They can fill in tour gaps, or position your property in the marketplace for high dollar and high velocity sales. You won't know enough about them without trying. You're a dinosaur if you don't. It's up to you. You're smart enough. You're savvy enough. Make it happen. If you have any questions about your advertising campaigns, or other marketing and sales issues, feel free to drop me a note at msaxe@resortopportunities.com or call me at resort opportunities, (760)773-2631. Next week we'll dive into some more possibilities in the world of resort sales and marketing. You'll want to stop back and check it out. Maybe it'll be something completely different. Happy trails, Marc Saxe

More Saxe | Home Marc Saxe is the owner of Resort Opportunities, a sales and marketing services and consulting firm specializing in resort properties, vacation ownership, fractionals and club memberships. Marc has been in the industry since 1979 and has worked with Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Intrawest and more. Recently Resort Opportunities has provided marketing and sales consulting or services for the start-ups of The Manhattan Club, The Hyatt Mountain Lodge in Beaver Creek (for Integrated Marketing), Intrawest Resort Ownership in Palm Desert, California, The Grand Timber Lodge in Breckenridge, Colorado, and Cimarron Resort in Palm Springs, California. Email: msaxe@resortopportunities.com

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