NONE: ONLINE-ADS>> Need your help!
ONLINE-ADS>> Need your help!
Art Millman (artmill_at_digital.net)
Wed, 12 Mar 1997 18:22:20 -0500
Hi Fellow Marketers,
I've been reading some terrific posts and advice on this list for a while
now, and I have quite a challenging marketing problem which I would like to
submit for your opinions. I work through the St. Petersburg, Florida
Chamber of Commerce. Our members include luxurious beach resorts, hotels,
motels, area attractions and restaurants. They are all cooperating together
to encourage tourists to come to our beaches with the fine white sand and
blue waters on the Gulf of Mexico and our ideal weather conditions.
We have miles of beaches and hundreds of resorts and attractions extending
from Clearwater Beach all the way down to St. Pete Beach, and yet much of
America don't know our huge tourist area even exists. I put together a
contest offering prizes of gratis nights at our resorts, free dinners at
our restaurants and free admission to our attractions. In addition they're
offering discount coupons to different recreation activities such as
golfing, fishing boats, gambling cruises, tennis and offers from retail
shops.
We have several major problems with this campaign. First, the resorts want
to appeal to tourists at income levels to afford their rates. That is, our
world class and mid range resorts do not want to reach the bargain motel
crowd and vise versa. The $40 per night traveler would be uncomfortable in
our luxurious resorts. We are trying to match the resort to their desired
level. If we have many mismatches, the resorts will certainly cancel their
participation. This nullifies all the search engines which of course does
not differentiate people by income.
The search engines gives us a second problem. If most people do not know of
our tourist areas, how could they enter the names of our beaches? Unless
they know they want to go to Clearwater Beach, they would never ask the
search engines about us. If they entered "Florida" into the search engines,
we would be one of hundreds of destinations including our huge competitor,
Disney World!
This is the same problem with other Internet features such as City Net,
which segregates cities by states. We want the tourists to come here, and
then the contests will bring them to each specific participating resort.
By the way, if the tourists does happen to enter "St. Petersburg," they
could also be sent to Russia as well as here! They would also have to
specify Florida.
I have one other crazy problem with a few of our resorts (thank goodness
it's only a few!) Some want to direct their promotions to definite areas
like a specific state or a portion of the country like the Northeast or mid
south, etc. Any ideas along these lines? I would certainly appreciate any
suggestions you might come up with!
Thanking you all in advance, I look forward to your comments.
Art Millman
Internet Broadcasting Company
artmill_at_digital.net
Art Millman
___________________________________________________________________
World Wide Syndications phone 813-867-5845
artmill_at_digital.net fax 813-866-2743
