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Marketing Basics for Interpretive & Heritage Sites and Attractions
Part 1 - Its all about the visitors.
By: John A. Veverka (http://www.heritageinterp.com)
Without a doubt marketing is one of the most critical aspects of any heritage or interpretive attraction operations. Marketing brings in visitors and gets them to come back for return visits. Successful marketing efforts equal staying in business for most heritage attractions, particularly those not totally supported by local governments or other governmental agencies. But one of the most surprising things to me is, given how critical a “professional” understanding of basic marketing principals are for any heritage attraction, is the lack of understanding of what marketing actually is and “how to do it” that exists through out the heritage tourism industry. One example of this that I see often involves marketing brochures. Heritage Attractions have probably spent thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in the design, production and distribution of marketing brochures (the kind you see at every tourist information center), and yet they have no proof that they work! How do you know that these pieces have made any money for you that they actually brought in enough new visitors to “pay for the printing and distribution costs of the piece themselves”? Most heritage attractions dont have a clue if their marketing materials and efforts actually work, no tracking or evaluation process. This is particularly common with medium and smaller sized heritage attractions.
What is “marketing” anyway?
We spend our lives seeing so much of it, television, radio, web sites, etc. We are surrounded by it. Marketing is like the word “ecology”, a nice word, but most people have never seen an “ecology”. So lets use a working definition of “marketing”.
Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that will satisfy individual and organizational objectives. (From “Introduction to Marketing by M. Cooper and C. Madden).
In simple terms, heritage tourism related marketing is “successfully” communicating with and convincing potential visitors that you have something that they need or will benefit from, and that you can provide a service or fill that need better than anyone else.
And Where Is the Visitor in all of this EVERYWHERE!
Another aspect of marketing problems is that many heritage organizations and attractions have little or no visitor-based information to work from. They dont know who their markets are! Marketing is ALL about completely understanding your audience (current, or intended). So in reality, many marketing pieces, from brochures to advertisements in magazines, fail due to a general lack of understanding about their intended visitors and the psychology of the visitors. Brochures often simply illustrate or promote the wrong things. For example, a hotel or motel brochure may show nice photos of the bedrooms or dining area, but what a visitor may really want to know is if that hotel or motel is “near” any attractions or other services. Developing a marketing plan followed by marketing materials such as brochures or print advertisements, requires that we know the answers to some (all?) of the following questions about our visitors:
Existing Markets to our site or attraction
Where are our visitors coming from?
What are their age groups and other socio-economic backgrounds?
How long does the average visit last?
Is there a visitor perception that the admission fee was good value for the experience paid for, or do they think they paid to much for to little?
What did they spend money on and how much?
What were the attraction visit components (shopping, food service, interpretive experiences, social interactions, recreation opportunities, etc.) of most importance to the visitor?
What were / are the seasonal visitation patterns and influences?
Why did they decide to visit the site or attraction in the first place?
What experiences or recreational learning opportunities were they looking for?
Did the site / attraction meet or exceed their expectations of what they would see, do and experience here or did it fall short of the visitors expectations (from marketing brochures, websites and related advertising and promotion)?
What were their best or most powerful memories of their visit?
What reason did we give them to return again to this attraction?
What is the attractions physical and psychological carrying capacity and did we exceed it? Were we too successful in attracting visitors and couldn’t give visitors a quality experience because of too many visitors?
Could our support services handle our visitor load?
Was our on-site experience (the visit) as good in reality as our marketing pieces made it look?
Did our customer care plan / training pay off, did the visitor feel welcome?
So these are some of the questions that need to be asked and answered in developing a marketing plan, and marketing materials for current visitors or market groups.
Next week I will add information on Market Creation Generating New Market Groups