Geoff Dillon - Marketing, PR, Strategy Blog

The Tourist Trap Paradox

The only way to succeed as a merchant in a tourist destination is to have more and more people wanting to visit the destination. More foot traffic = more opportunities to make sales.

This is why most tourist destinations have tourism boards – to attract foot traffic.

Curious then, that individual merchants often treat tourists as targets to be gouged for maximum short term profit at the expense of longer term benefit.

Case in point - I visited Niagara Falls recently, and was struck by the very overpriced attractions that seemed intent on grabbing whatever money they can from the tourist crowd.

Although I pride myself on being immune to such things, I’ll admit to falling victim to a 15 minute “Spongebob 4-D movie” that cost me almost $60 for two adults and one child. My soon to be brother-in-law had the line of the night when he said "the 4^th D is for disappointment." It didn’t help that the lady selling tickets was dishonest about the quality and length of the show.

And that’s how it is in that town. Each attraction seems hell bent on emptying your wallet.

• - Most of the chain restaurants post menus without prices, knowing that once you’re seated and you see the higher-than-usual prices, it’s less likely you’ll get up and walk out.

- When you ride up the Skylon tower at a cost of about $10 a person, the first question they ask you before you get on the elevator is “how many for lunch” – the assumptive close here refers to making a reservation for you at the top of the tower for lunch, whether you wanted it or not.

The paradox: as a merchant, you spend money to be part of a tourism board to help draw people to town, and then treat them in a manner that encourages them to avoid repeat visits, and tell others about their negative experience, which of course reflects on the town.

You then spend more for your tourism board dues because tourism is down and your revenues are hurting. You charge more to recoup the higher tourism board fees. And so on.

How do you think this cycle ends? What if you and your fellow merchants realized that the person in front you could be a lifetime revenue stream if you all played your cards right?

Tourism a zero sum game. People will spend their money with you, or elsewhere, but they generally have a budget for the year. I’m not arguing for lower prices here. I’m suggesting that treating tourists as clients instead of disposable sources of short term profit would ultimately bring in higher and more sustainable revenues … (and lower tourism board fees).

Repackaging Common Sense for Fun and Profit

There’s money to be made in repackaging common sense and reselling it to the market as wisdom. 

This happens all the time, everyday. For example, a training course is often a repackaging of some common sense information about a topic, which is fed back to participants in the form of a “model” or “approach” to help the topic make sense. But within the model, there’s no single component that is anything but common sense. 

I should be clear that I am not being negative here. Packaging information up so that it can be delivered to people in a format that they will welcome, understand, and even seek out is hugely valuable.

Example - one of the most influential business books of our time could be viewed through this lens. Stephen Covey’s 7 habits series focuses on key areas for self improvement. As a reminder, the 7 habits are:

-    Be Proactive

-    Begin with the End in Mind

-    Put First Things First

-    Think Win-Win

-    Seek First to Understand, then to be understood

-    Synergize

-    Sharpening the Saw

When you look at the concepts presented above in isolation, don’t you think you could have come up with some of these over a coffee? Being proactive, and beginning with a defined goal in mind certainly seem like very common sense tips for making yourself a more effective person. Yet, millions upon millions of people bought the book, making Covey a recognized expert in his field. 

It’s the packaging that makes it work. It’s the relationship between the 7 habits, and Covey’s way of delivering them that create the package that people buy into. When it’s packaged this way, it makes sense to people and gives them a framework to work within, even if there are really no components within the framework that are lightning bolts of insight. 

This has implications for how you approach communicating. It’s not always about inventing a new message. Many times, it’s about making sense of the world around you and giving people a new way to look at what they already know. 

Need a New Product? Simple...

 

Looking for new product ideas is really an exercise in simplification, not complication.

Take OxiClean for example. Brought to fame by the late Billy Mays, OxiClean is billed as a breakthrough cleaner that can get out any stain through the "power of oxygen”.

So how complicated is the formula for OxiClean? Well, it contains sodium percarbonate, soda ash, and a few other common ingredients. That’s it. Nothing was invented to create this breakthrough cleaner. Sodium Percarbonate has been used for cleaning for many, many years, so it’s not like they even discovered a new use for something in creating this product. It was just a simple formula, well marketed, and marked up quite heavily I’m sure, that drove the phenomenon. Simple.

3M is still making a fortune on Post-It notes, created when a 3M employee needed a glue that was “less sticky” to use on the pages of his church hymn book. A piece of paper and a less sticky glue. Simple.

It’s tempting in the age of gadgets to look to complexities to drive product innovation, but there’s a huge opportunity for people who can think simple thoughts and make connections that aren’t obvious to others.

Treat Referrals like Word of Mouth Marketing

..because that's what they are.

I'm often amazed when I get a card or small gift from a salesperson I've done business with asking me to make referrals to friends and family.

When you look at referrals as word of mouth marketing, you start to see the things you can and can't do with them. 

You can't ask for referrals and expect to get any just by asking. 

Nobody passes along a mediocre idea or a forgettable product through word of mouth. So why would you ever expect them to do that with your product or service...because you asked them for referrals?

It doesn't - and has never - worked that way. 

A good idea gets passed along. Great service, products that meet the needs a specific niche, a remarkable brand - these things generate referrals naturally. 

Asking doesn't.

Convincing or Conversing?

Look at your marketing and PR efforts and ask yourself - do you spend most of your time trying to convince people that they need what you are selling, or do you spend your time conversing with people who already know they need the type of product/service you offer and positioning yours as the best choice. 

The former is a lot harder and much more expensive to pull off. 

Of the many things I like about Seth Godin's views on marketing, one of the most relevant for marketers and PR folks is the concept of a "worldview". Everyone has a view of the world. It's really, really hard to change it through marketing and PR (not impossible - just hard). You are far better off trying to market your product to these people whose view of the world is favourable to your offer in the market.  

Some people believe having a smartphone is a time saver that makes your day better through it's variety of apps and functions. Others believe the cost of these types of phones is way too high and that anyone foolish enough to buy one is just falling prey to the latest fad in gadgetry. 

The most fertile ground is in the first group. Sure, some of the doubters in the second group will come around eventually, but only after they get sick of hearing from people in the first group about how cool their latest app is. 

This is fairly intuitive, and yet everyday you see ads that have that "did you know" flavour to them, where the advertiser tries to educate and convince the prospect that:

1 - a problem/need exists

2 - the prospect might have that problem/need

3 - the advertiser has a solution to that problem/need

Wouldn't your marketing be much more effective if you could just skip the first two steps and talk to people who "get it"? And if there aren't very many people who "get it", what are you selling, and why?

 

Opt-in, eh?

Overstock.com is a great site -- with some mediocre email marketing – if you happen to be Canadian.

Having found a great suit on the site a few months ago at a steep discount (even with duty and taxes at the border), I decided to keep checking back regularly to see what else might become available.

I signed up for the “O-mail” service to keep on top of the latest sales and discounts through the site. Almost immediately I was besieged with daily emails from overstock offering further discounts on purchases. Great...but there's a catch.

Read the fine print and you get a let down – “Not applicable to international orders."

And yes, like our marginalized friends in Alaska and Hawaii, Canada isn’t part of the continental US, so the offers are not valid.

Why am I getting these emails? I had already made a purchase and clearly established that I live in Canada. I then signed up for the email service. So why bombard me with offers that you know from the start I can’t take advantage of?

It’s a small thing, but it’s an example of bad email marketing. Pay attention to the details. When someone opts-in, take a look at their preferences and target your content. The days of email blasting and one-size-fits-all communication are over.  

Lessons from Local Businesses

Larger companies spend an incredible amount of time and money on training for their frontline employees, in an attempt to standardize the customer service experience and maintain a consistent level of quality when it comes to customer interactions.

But sometimes the simplest, unexpected gesture seals the deal.

I went to a new dry cleaner the other day - it's owned by a family who's been running the business for quite a few years. The owner did the usual dry cleaner stuff - took down my name and number, told me when the stuff would be ready, etc. When he realized I wasn't in his computer system (since I'd never been there before) he did something suprising.

He shook my hand and introduced himself by name, and thanked me for coming in. He was sincere.

Now you tell me - how am I supposed to take my drycleaning anywhere else? That single, memorable, unexpected gesture gave him a chance to get all of my drycleaning business.

Don't you wish you could teach your customer facing employees how to do the unexpected? 

Wrestling and Branding?

You wouldn't think there was a real connection here between the world of pro wrestling and branding, but you'd be suprised.

I stumbled across a quote from a pro wrestler describing how you survive in the business. His simple message was this:

- if they love you, you're ok

- If they hate you, you're ok

- If they are indifferent to you, your career is over

When you reflect on that, it makes some sense.

Fans come out and pay money to see the "good guys" beat up on the "bad guys". But they don't pay to see two wrestlers they are indifferent to fight it out.

So even if they hate you when you walk through the curtain on the way to ring, it's good news for a wrestler. It means you've connected with the audience and hold a clear position in the mind - albeit a negative one in this example - but at least you matter to the audience. They know who you are and they know why they don't like you.

It's similar with branding.

If they love you, great. If they don't love you, well at least they know enough about you to make that decision. It means that your brand message is getting out, and while this crowd may not like you, you can bet there will be pockets that do.And with a clear position in the market - even one that doesn't please the massess - you have a shot.

But like the wrestler who walks through the curtain to a muted reaction, a brand that has staked out a middle of the road position in the market and generates neither love nor hate might well be on the slow road to oblivion.

Paying Someone to Hurt your Brand

You can advertise all you want and send the craftiest press releases to help further your brand in the market, but the customer experience is where the rubber meets the road.

 

Recently my wife and I visited a local Lexus dealership to look at a pre owned Lexus SUV. Having not been to a Lexus dealer before, I expected a somewhat higher level of service – after all, even the pre-owned Lexus SUVs aren’t exactly cheap.

 

What I got was the stereotypical used car experience - a salesperson who pulled out all of the tricks from the 80s to try to sell me a car (think “Larry” from Three’s Company):

 

- he told us that we could have $1000 off the price of the car, but only if we bought by 5pm that day

- during the test drive, he invested considerable energy in putting down other cars and dealers

- when we arrived back from the test drive, he checked his pocket and conveniently found he was out of business cards, so we had to walk to his desk inside to get one

- once there, he naturally gets us to sit down and starts writing up an offer sheet (unsolicited, of course)

- on our way out, he diligently pursued us to get our name and phone number so he could call us later that day

 

 

I could go on, but you get the idea.

 

In about 15 minutes, this salesperson had managed to change my perception of Lexus from a favourable one to “just like everyone else” or maybe worse. And nobody pays a premium for that.

 

The irony here is that this guy is on the payroll. This Lexus dealer is paying him a small salary plus commission for delivering a customer experience that clearly doesn’t jive with their marketing message. He’s getting paid to hurt the brand.

 

So here’s the question:

 

If you’re the owner of the Lexus dealership, are you paying him to sell cars his way, or your way?

 

If you’re the head of Lexus corporate, same question.

 

If the answers are different, I’d say you’re wasting a LOT of marketing dollars.

 

Green Marketing Fatigue

Green Marketing is still in its infancy, and yet we’re already seeing headlines citing “green marketing fatigue” among consumers.

The allure of green marketing has proven so powerful that too many companies are making dubious claims about their environmental commitment – and the entire green marketing movement is now met with considerable skepticism as a result.

So what’s a company to do?

In my view there are two green marketing avenues available to marketers:

• The "corporate initiative approach", which usually sees a company promoting the fact that they use 5% less paper at head office or have reduced air conditioning usage

• The "customer experience approach", which enables clients to participate in some way in reducing materials, recycling packaging, and so on

The customer approach is by far the more effective of the two, and much less likely to be viewed suspiciously by your customers. Green marketing initiatives that your customers actually participate in combine a positive customer experience with your green marketing efforts, making both feel more genuine at the end of the day.

For example, would you rather hear that the grocery store you shop at has reduced their lighting by 10% to conserve energy, or that you can now choose recycled paper bags instead of plastic?

Would you rather hear that Toyota has cut emissions from their factories by 10% on average, or that they are offering special lease rates on their most fuel efficient cars to make them even more affordable?

In both cases, the latter option allows customers to make a deliberate decision to do something that’s better for the environment, be it choosing a reusable shopping bag or a more fuel efficient car. The result is a more genuine "green" experience.

Enabling clients to do something green through your company is far more effective than doing something at head office and then telling the world you did it.