Making Marketing Happen

Advice for making marketing plans that actually get implemented

Have you ever devised a marketing plan that never quite materialized?

Ideas left dormant due to implementation challenges or uncertainties about their effectiveness?

This common scenario can be particularly daunting for individual resorts or small-to-medium businesses lacking a dedicated marketing department. However, with strategic planning and thoughtful execution, realizing your marketing initiatives is entirely feasible, regardless of your business’s scale or resources.

Lessons Learned: Failure is success in progress.” – Albert Einstein

There are no guarantees, perfect formulas or exact results that any marketing can provide. Every business and resort is unique and so are the ways customers find them. So, don’t be afraid to try things, just establish a baseline for expected results and plan out how to measure those results. Whatever your results show you, there will be a lesson to learn. A marketing effort may be a flop at driving new leads, but it’s still a success if you know when to end something and what lessons you can learn from the effort.

In short, give your ideas a try, just be prepared to fail and learn. Trying and layering different marketing strategies is the best way to guarantee success.

Prioritize By Goals, Not Ideas

In many organizations, marketing responsibilities often extend to various team members, regardless of their official titles. Amidst a flurry of ideas and requests—from printed materials to digital campaigns—designating a point person to oversee and prioritize marketing efforts is essential. Whether it’s the General Manager or another multitasking individual, clarity in decision-making and execution is crucial.

The best way for a marketing point person to make their marketing happen efficiently is to prioritize efforts by the goal, not by the idea.

It’s not what all CAN we do, it’s what all SHOULD we do.

A marketing point person should determine:

• What marketing opportunities should you pursue?
  Examples: should we use Facebook ads or Google ads? Is this review management software worth the price?
• Why these efforts?
  Examples: why are we using Facebook ads, why did we choose to renew our billboard contract?
• How will we know if this makes sense to keep doing?
  Examples: should we renew that sponsorship, should we pause those ads, is there a point to sending these emails?
• What resources do we need to use marketing to meet our goals?
  Examples: if our goal is to increase rental revenue, would Facebook ads help? Would Google ads help? How much would those ads cost and how would we start them? Who would be responsible for analyzing the results and determining if it makes sense to keep doing?

Related: How to Prioritize Your Marketing

Strategic Hiring

Much like employing an accountant on an as-needed basis, hiring marketing expertise can follow a similar model. By strategizing marketing efforts, implementing systems, and training internal staff members to manage day-to-day tasks, resorts can benefit from periodic audits and expert guidance without the burden of a full-time marketing team.

Thanks to the growth of online platforms for connecting with professional services consultants and contractors, it’s easier than ever for any size or industry business anywhere to find the flexible marketing help they need to suit their budget.

Some platforms include:

• Upwork
• HireMarketer
• Breef
• Industry Publications (like Resort Trades! Remember your trade publications know vendors in almost every professional service category and can typically offer recommendations or introductions.)

The hardest thing about hiring outside help is managing that help and making sure it’s aligned with your overall goals.

Related: Three Key Steps to Find the Right Employees Online

Some tips for hiring outside help you actually feel is helping:

• Make sure expectations are clearly defined and understood by both parties.
  Most agency/contract/freelance/consultant arrangements end poorly because there are no clear expectations or deliverables. Not only do these need to be defined, but it must be communicated that there is a mutual understanding. Often agencies or marketers think they promised one thing, and to their understanding and scope they are doing their job, but if the business believes it was getting something else – this disconnect is likely to end things poorly.
• Make sure you define what success looks like.
  Your overall goal of marketing a business is obviously to make money. But not every time a customer or potential customer interacts with your business is a guaranteed money maker. There’s an unlimited number of touchpoints it can take for a person to become a customer.

Many Search Engine Optimization companies will claim to be able to make someone #1 on Google. However if you don’t define #1 on Google for what search terms, then success can look differently from your expectations.

Technology Is Your Friend

Companies can try more marketing strategies than ever before thanks to innovations in Marketing Technology (or MarTech). From bulk creating and automating emails and customer journeys to social media scheduling and paid ads automating – there’s tech solutions to simply, automate and scale some piece of most processes.

Depending on what your goals are, there might be ways technology can make them easier than ever to implement. For example, if you want to capture guest emails while also minimizing the amount of questions your check-in staff has to ask so you can shorten and streamline the process, technology is available to capture their email when letting them on your WiFi.

Related: Trending Changes in Timeshare Technology

That’s just one of limitless examples. If you’re able to identify an opportunity, there’s likely a tech solution to help.

Overall, navigating marketing challenges in resort management, especially for smaller businesses without dedicated marketing teams, requires strategic planning and goal-oriented approaches. By prioritizing goals over individual ideas and fostering collaborative partnerships, resorts can turn aspirations into tangible results.

Kelley Ellert is the owner of Waterwheel Marketing, a marketing consultancy that develops and implements marketing solutions for hospitality businesses of all sizes. Find her on LinkedIn or at WaterwheelMarketing.com.