Marketing: Are we ok, or do we need help?

[Insta-Gator]

[h=1]In 2010, 123.3 million people, or 39 percent of the nation’s population lived in counties directly on the shoreline.[/h]

In 2010, 123.3 million people, or 39 percent of the nation's population lived in counties directly on the shoreline. This population is expected to increase by 8% from 2010 to 2020.

In the United States, counties directly on the shoreline constitute less than 10 percent of the total land area (not including Alaska), but account for 39 percent of the total population. From 1970 to 2010, the population of these counties increased by almost 40% and are projected to increase by an additional 10 million people or 8% by 2020. Coastal areas are substantially more crowded than the U.S. as a whole, and population density in coastal areas will continue to increase in the future. In fact, the population density of coastal shoreline counties is over six times greater than the corresponding inland counties.
For more information:
National Coastal Population Report: Population Trends from 1970 to 2020

 

[RJP]

In 2010, 123.3 million people, or 39 percent of the nation’s population lived in counties directly on the shoreline.

In 2010, 123.3 million people, or 39 percent of the nation's population lived in counties directly on the shoreline. This population is expected to increase by 8% from 2010 to 2020.

In the United States, counties directly on the shoreline constitute less than 10 percent of the total land area (not including Alaska), but account for 39 percent of the total population. From 1970 to 2010, the population of these counties increased by almost 40% and are projected to increase by an additional 10 million people or 8% by 2020. Coastal areas are substantially more crowded than the U.S. as a whole, and population density in coastal areas will continue to increase in the future. In fact, the population density of coastal shoreline counties is over six times greater than the corresponding inland counties.
For more information:
National Coastal Population Report: Population Trends from 1970 to 2020

And even that underestimates the number of people who live "near the shoreline" when you consider ALL of NJ lives is within 60-90min of the shore, irrespective of county. Most of Florida is within 60-90min of the shore, as is 90% of California's population. The Philly area lives within an hour of the NJ shore. NYC is not "on the shore" but within an hour of Long Island and NJ beaches

 

[Mike]

Jacques-Yves Cousteau specials on TV will generate demand. Saw my first one in the early 60's. Took a long time to get there, but I finally became a diver.

Yeah baby!

I was glued to the TV as a kid watching those on Sundays. Never dreamed I could do what they were doing, as a kid scuba diving seemed as possible to do as my chances of going to the moon... but here we are!

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Most women I talk to just don't do anything that involves getting in swimwear, period. They're reluctant even to don swimwear so that they can get into the pool at their local health club. And this isn't just the overweight women I work with; the ones of normal or only minor overweight aren't much better. It gets a little better if they anticipate being seen only by other women (less fear of being judged); if they anticipate being seen by men, game over.

Obviously, there are exceptions to both of these observations but they do hold up for an unfortunate majority, in my experience.

My girlfriend is a professional figure skater with an amazing physique and barely enough body fat to sustain health. A friend of mine who is an Olympic judo instructor and a great judge of athleticism complimented her a couple months ago saying she had the best arms and abs on a woman he had ever seen. Yet, she is incredibly self-conscious about being seen in a swimsuit because she has pale skin and isn't as well-endowed as Katarina Witt. So, yes, it's many women who shy away from swimwear. The women at Marywood (we asked girls in class to ask their friends about their biggest fears when it came to scuba) reported wearing bathing suits in front of others - both women and men was what most of them mentioned as being a factor in our unscientific survey.

But I think a number of females get into scuba because it's something their boyfriends or husbands are doing (granted, occasionally the reverse happens).

I wonder what percentage of female divers got into the sport of their own initiative?

Richard.

And to illustrate Richard's point, my girlfriend just read these posts and agreed that the sharks don't scare her since she grew up swimming in California, nor does any thought of hard training since she's used to being picked apart and criticized for every spin and jump. Her biggest fear is that she might look out of place on a boat because she isn't blonde, tan, or well-endowed. She is a great swimmer and can already frog kick, backward frog kick, and helicopter turn while snorkeling. She knows she will learn to scuba easily, she just doesn't want to be seen without the wetsuit and wants to wear one in the pool. She keeps asking me when am I going to teach her to dive, but then doesn't read her manual.

Even though she grew up in Los Angeles she never thought to try diving until she met an instructor from Pennsylvania.

Then, again, I don't ski or skate and I'm living in the winter wonderland of the Pocono Mountains.

 

[SeaHorse81]

The women at Marywood (we asked girls in class to ask their friends about their biggest fears when it came to scuba) reported wearing bathing suits in front of others - both women and men was what most of them mentioned as being a factor in our unscientific survey.

If you get a chance to do further surveys of this type, I think that asking about biggest fears won't get you to what you're looking for. I don't think aversion to being seen in swimwear is what keeps most women away from scuba; it's clearly a concern, but I doubt it's a primary obstacle. By asking specifically about fears, you automatically narrow your subjects' thinking, and therefore the answers you get.

If you ask what worries women most about considering scuba, you're likely to hear about the swimwear thing. That doesn't mean that's what's keeping them away, however. It would be interesting to hear what their answers would be to a more neutral question, like, "What are the biggest reasons you haven't tried scuba diving?" Then see where the swimwear thing turns up but more importantly, see what outranks it.

My guess is that what keeps most women away from scuba is more along the lines of not being that interested in sporting activity, not being curious enough to go through a class and buy stuff in order to see if they like it, and already being busy enough that taking hours/days at a time out of their schedules is not seen as attractive. I think the swimwear concern is more a last straw kind of issue than a primary deal breaker, but I don't have the research to back that up.

 

[sffrenchman]

I'm sure we need to do something to make scuba more visible and more appealing across the board.

But the last question from the OP, about what she could do to help individual dive shops, pushed a button for me. We work with what is really (or at least used to be) an excellent dive shop, in terms of the things I think a shop ought to be and do, although with some notable exceptions. For a long time, we really wanted to do what we could to help the shop, and made lots of suggestions, some of them essentially cost-free and simple, and others requiring more effort or some money. Not one of the suggestions we've made has ever been implemented. I offered to go to the seminars PADI was running on how to use their EVE software, while I was at DEMA, because the software is set up to do some of the things I think the shop ought to be doing (for a simple example, sending out reminders to people that their gear service is due) and I was not only turned down, but it was done with irritation.

I've seen multiple shops rude to customers. I've seen owners whose personal opinions simply won't allow them to deal with customers who are different. I've seen a shop absolutely refuse to pump or bank Nitrox on a regular basis, even though a great many divers around here use it, and even though the shop has lost customers who have gone elsewhere just to get gas, but never come back as buyers. We have a charter boat in our area that serves some beautiful diving, but many of us won't go out on the boat because the owner has made the process so unpleasant and difficult.

No matter how good a national or international marketing campaign for diving is, it will founder if the experience the customer has with shops and charters is negative.

Nailed it!

From my short experience as a diver, the quality of the customer service offered by many in the US is simply subpar. The businesses that are successful and that have survived are the ones that have made the conscious decision to put the diver at the center of their business focus.

 

[Trace Malinowski]

My guess is that what keeps most women away from scuba is more along the lines of not being that interested in sporting activity, not being curious enough to go through a class and buy stuff in order to see if they like it, and already being busy enough that taking hours/days at a time out of their schedules is not seen as attractive. I think the swimwear concern is more a last straw kind of issue than a primary deal breaker, but I don't have the research to back that up.

I agree with you. Of course, the "diving industry" would try to market more to women rather than getting more men involved who will bring the women. For example, Evie Dudas is a diving legend and the first woman to dive the Andrea Doria. She reportedly started diving because she wanted to capture the attention of her late husband, John, who was an avid wreck diver. To compete with the cheerleader types she had to outwit their pom-poms.

 

[RJP]

Her biggest fear is that she might look out of place on a boat because she isn't blonde, tan, or well-endowed.

Click on the link in my sig and show her some of the pics from our charters. The only person at risk of looking out of place would be someone who was blonde, tan, and well-endowed.

 

[Julieofthesea]

Hi Julie, your statement above has me curious. True enough that DEMA isn't popular here, and for reasons that lots of people are happy to share in great detail. I don't have any connection to or dealings with DEMA other than to hear what other people say about it, so I am curious about what you believe -- specifically, please -- that DEMA is doing well, and what, if anything, you believe they could be doing differently that would improve their support of diving and add to its stability as a sport and industry?

Oh Boy. I would like to answer this. I'll try to write about it in the next few weeks and let you know.

---------- Post added December 25th, 2013 at 08:36 PM ----------

Gee, thanks for explaining SEO to me. I'll let the folks back at the ranch know that I've got a handle on it now.

:d

You've reiterated the point I was making. You began this thread asking what "the industry needs" and the consensus seems to be the industry needs someone driving demand for more divers. SEO, will not help the industry do that. SEO will help small businesses fight like a bunch of squawking seagulls wrestling over a single french fry on the boardwalk. It will allow an LDS in California to compete with an LDS in Florida as they endeavor to attract a smaller and smaller group of orice-driven customers to their websites instead of LeisurePro so they can further erode their own business. Suggesting that SEO is the "foundation of marketing" these days is like suggesting that vinyl siding is the foundation of any house these days. Unless your talking about a purely/predominantly web-based retail business who's model is comprised of high-volume, low-margin transactions.

Do note that Ted Levitt's "Marketing Myopia" is reprinted every few years - unchanged - in Harvard Business Review. It is also required reading for all students taking marketing at the Harvard Business School. But what do they know? (Hint: they know that while SEO is an interesting tool in the marketers armamentarium, that understanding your customers' needs and then developing compelling positioning, branding, and messaging are still the foundation of marketing. As much these days as they were in 1960.)

PS - did you know that there's a standing inside joke in the ad industry about SEO? Two actually. The first one: "An SEO expert walks into a bar, bars, bar and grill, lounge, restaurant, tavern, public house, pub, gastropub, Irish bar, beer garden, night club, beer, wine, liquor, drinks, barstools, bartender, live music, dance floor, bouncer, closing time."

The second joke I heard was from the CMO of a fortune 50 company at the beginning of the pitch process for an upcoming agency consolidation for this clients' $2.5BILLION ad budget. They had four incumbent agency holding companies; WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, and us. They wanted to consolidate within three. I asked the client how they could possibly make such an important decision based on a single 2-hr presentation by each agency. His response was "Easy, I will time them all... and the first one that mentions that 'SEO is the future' is fired." Oh wait, that wasn't a joke. (And then there were three...)

It's interesting that you reference Marketing Myopia, and then offer a myopic view of SEO. The article references industries that went under because they refused to change with the times. I'm wondering about your client who made the SEO jokes. Was it by chance Blockbuster? Or Borders?

I agree with the article when it says companies need to avoid pushing products and instead focus on solving your customer's problems. This holds true today, just as you said. What's great is that the internet has leveled the playing field. A giant ad budget can now be outdone by cleverness creativity. I'd like to solve scuba businesses problems. That's the reason I'm here.

Maybe this will help you.

Google does this cool thing. If you answer your customer's questions on your website, you will be rewarded with traffic. If a diver wants to know about wreck diving off the coast of New Jersey what will they search? Maybe "Wreck diving in New Jersey." When the search results come up, will your website be there? Is your competition there? If they click on your competition's website and like what they see, they will book with them and you've lost business. How much business over a year will you have lost because you didn't take the time to optimize your website for search engines? Enough to put you out of business? I hope not. People use the internet to do research before they spend money. Small businesses have to embrace this. Of course messaging, branding and relationship building are extremely important... but none of it will matter if you can't be found on the internet.

In the original post, I didn't really ask what does the industry need. I meant to ask a question to the people who work in the industry. As in, hey dive shop owners and liveaboard operators... do you need help with marketing? Do you have a good handle on email newsletters? Is social media bringing in business? That's what I meant to ask. Not that this matters at this point, but I thought I'd clarify.

Everyone's posts here have given me insight on your feelings about the industry. That certainly helps my cause too. Thanks for that.

I know one thing. I'll encourage my customers not to wait around for DEMA, a TV show or a celebrity to generate more business. I want to help my clients save themselves with smart online marketing. I'll post when the website it up in running.

MERRY CHRISTMAS and Happy New Year you wonderful crazy scuba divers!

 

[RJP]

It's interesting that you reference Marketing Myopia, and then offer a myopic view of SEO. The article references industries that went under because they refused to change with the times. I'm wondering about your client who made the SEO jokes. Was it by chance Blockbuster? Or Borders?

Nope, not either of them. (Neither of those two spend $2.5B annually on advertising.) And their demise had nothing to do with lack of an SEO approach, but rather both had business models that fundamentally made no sense in today's marketplace.

The client company who's CMO made the SEO comment is generally regarded as one of the best marketing machine's in the world. And, in fact they probably spend more in on-line and SEO marketing than the rest of the other fortune 50 companies combined. Their CMO's comment was made to underscore the point that SEO is great, in as far as far as it goes. However, it's worth very little absent a cogent underlying marketing strategy.

I'll stand by my statement that SEO will not benefit "the industry" a single whit. Will it help XYZscuba.com gain some marketshare/sales from ABCdivers.com? Absolutely. Will that help "the industry" overall? No. The more interesting question is whether such an approach will actually hurt "the industry" overall. The answer to that is probably "yes" to some degree. But so be it, if I've got a business that I need to run I can't worry about "the industry" in general. All the more reason "the industry" needs someone marketing scuba diving overall. An expanding market is the best way to prevent individual businesses from engaging in activities that inadvertently hurt the industry - people who are backed into a corner do dumb things.

It seems this thread went completely off track from the get-go, as your original post title "Marketing: Are we doing ok, or do we need help?" confused people:

1.) The use of "we" caused people to think you were wanting to help "the industry" overall, rather than individual businesses
2.) The use of the term "marketing" caused people to think you were taking a broad, holistic view rather than a focus on one particular tactic

Apparently, what you meant was "SEO: Are you ok, or do you need help?"

This would have more clearly indicated the exceedingly narrow focus of your question, and proposed service offering. There's nothing wrong with that question and approach, I think people just went the wrong way with the topic as worded.

A question for you relative to the business model of your proposed agency: If I'm XYZscuba.com, and I engage you to do SEO for me... what do you do when ABCdivers.com calls you and asks if you can help them? Will you tell them "Sorry, I have a conflict of interest and cannot take you on as a client?" Or will you take their money and then offer ABCdivers.com a SEO solution that negatively impacts my business without telling either company that you're playing both ends against the middle? To use real-life names as an example you cannot take on both Aggressor Fleet and Explorer Ventures as clients. Nor can you take on both Sunset House (Cayman) and Buddy Dive (Bonaire). So, as near as I can tell you've got a shot at about 5-6 clients max.

1 Liveaboard op
1 On-line dive shop
1 Dive resort or tourism board
1 Full-line gear manufacturer
1-2 Ancillary products manufacturers

If you didn't track down "Blue Ocean Strategy" I suggest that as your next read; might help you understand whether you want to help your potential clients fight for a piece of a shrinking pie, or if there is a way for you to help them out of the bloodied, zero-sum-gain waters that even advanced SEO strategies are certain to keep them in. (Will also help you figure out how to avoid your own business model being self-limiting.)

---------- Post added December 26th, 2013 at 05:02 PM ----------

If a diver wants to know about wreck diving off the coast of New Jersey what will they search? Maybe "Wreck diving in New Jersey." When the search results come up, will your website be there? Is your competition there? If they click on your competition's website and like what they see, they will book with them and you've lost business. How much business over a year will you have lost because you didn't take the time to optimize your website for search engines?

Interesting question. While my day job is in the ad agency world, I do spend some of my free time crewing on a NJ dive boat, as referenced in my sig line. I did just google "Wreck Diving New Jersey" and found that...

1.) Our boat's website doesn't show up until the fourth page of results
2.) Two of our "competitors" show up above us in google results

However, our boat is booked full almost every time we go out... and the two boats listed above us in the google results tend to cancel many charters because they don't have enough passengers. So, strategically, for us there would probably not be any benefit to paying someone to assist us in SEO because...

A.) It is unlikely that we are currently losing any business to competitors due to poor SEO
B.) The likelihood of increasing our number of passengers per trip/month/year via enhance search performance is exquisitely low
C.) It is unlikely that we would recoup the cost of paying someone to assist us in SEO

Again, I'm not saying that SEO is not a valuable tool in a marketers tool box, but it is just that. As the old adage says "If all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail." Before a business decides to jump into SEO as the solution to their problems, they ought to think about whether that makes strategically.

Help me understand the business case for SEO as the savior of the small business: Suppose I'm trying to break into the online gear sales space... how much can I expect my bottom-line to increase if I improve my search result performance? (Knowing that "search results" don't appear anywhere on a balance sheet.)

Will I get on the first page, above the fold? If so, how much more valuable is that compared to wherever I am currently? Is showing up high in organic search results better or worse than LeisurePro or Scuba.com's paid position at the top of the page? Is that better or worse than the sponsored links on the right? What mix of SEO vs paid search vs online media purchase do you recommend? Or are you advocating a SEO as an "all-my-online eggs in one basket" approach?

However I might get my name in front of online customers, what is the psychographic makeup of the online gear purchaser? What is their likelihood of making a purchase overall? What are their key drivers/motivators/barriers to making a purchase in general? How do they choose among different online merchants specifically? How much of a factor is low price in their decision making process? If - as I think we'd all agree - low price is a key driver, can I even compete with LP or Scuba.com prices? Even if I can, do I want to?

Again, not saying SEO isn't a valuable tool, but that it is just one of many tools. And, as with the hammer referenced above, indiscriminately swinging it at screws and bolts and nuts is unlikely to yield satisfactory results.

I hope you don't feel that I'm picking on you; I genuinely love kicking this kind of stuff around. I'm mostly asking you - and the industry - to take a more circumspect view as to what is the problem that you're trying to solve, and what are the appropriate strategies and tactics that will best solve them.