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

[Doppler]

I believe most folks are too USA centric.

The scuba industry globally is more than you give it credit for... But I believe you are spot-on about the North American Market. And DEMA is an old-fashioned trade-show concept that is well past its best before date. It's an exercise in self-congratulations, ego and vanity. It's purpose is dated and the basic premise flawed... FOUR DAYS FOR A TRADE SHOW AND NO CONSUMERS... is not market savvy.

However, my suggestion for Julie, or anyone else interested in doing primary research into the industry and what it needs, is to attend a couple of dive events in Asia and Europe and then "do" a few of the regional shows here in North America... BTS, BSR, OWU are all coming soon; Paris and Dusseldorf are next month... Take a look at the NEC show paradigm... people can buy **** at the show... wow there's a concept. Generally speaking the yanks have been convinced by some idiot that if they sell at shows it "opens them up to liability... " now does that make sense to you? Why have a show.

MARKETING is about a lot of things... but in the end it's about asking for the money in the most effective way. Terrible generalization but many of the "professionals" in the scuba industry don't ask for a sale before apologizing and offering a discount... that's silly and degrades products, service and makes the whole experience like a spin around Walmart.

When I am not diving and teaching, I work as a marketing/product/training consultant for a couple of clients in the industry and I'd say we need to drop most of what is currently done and rethink entirely...

For example, in survey I conducted for a client several years ago we asked why people attended dive shows just to see how their expectations aligned with ours. We got a shock.

Customer expectations are not what DEMA says they are... Christ, how would they know? WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME DEMA ASKED A DIVER WHAT THEY WANTED?

Trace... low blow man! True but ouch! LOL

 

[Trace Malinowski]

Steve, what do you expect from Yanks? We dumped East India Company tea into the Boston Harbor to protest high taxes when the British Parliament provided a corporate bailout for the East India Company by allowing it to deal directly with the colonists without paying duties and taxes to Britain thereby lowering the cost of tea. But, we dressed up as Mohawks and the rest is history.

Anyway, you are right. DEMA seems to think the diving industry is always in the execution phase of business management like the industry is a juggernaut extension of PADI. When in reality, many businesses exist in the industry from start-ups to staples. Customer search, discovery, validation, and creation for new markets and new businesses is left out. DEMA has a "one size fits all" plan for success. Very few plans survive the first contact with customers. I attended a DEMA focus group at BTS in which groups of industry professionals from manufacturing to education to store owners to resorts all told DEMA what it is we thought would improve the industry from our perspectives. The information was twisted to reflect what DEMA was saying we wanted. What would happen in a company if your marketing people discovered that customers didn't want ABC, but wanted XYZ and instead of telling the engineers to make XYZ they still made ABC?

I guess that is the model for, "If you like your business plan you get to keep your business plan," rather than develop a working plan based upon the wants and needs of the consumer?

 

[Wookie]

I guess that is the model for, "If you like your business plan you get to keep your business plan," rather than develop a working plan based upon the wants and needs of the consumer?

Therein lies the rub. What does the consumer want? If you ask, they want underwater unicorns and rainbows all for about half of what it costs to provide a pony that bites and a gay pride flag, and they want it in Indonesia. They want a rock bottom price, and they want the feeling you get when they paid less than the next guy. They want a deal, and they don't care what happens to the long term health of the LDS, operator, or manufacturer. They will trade safety to save a buck, and when you ask them about it, they will gleefully tell you that they are doing so.

Because of this, and for the reasons RJP stated, there is no scuba industry in the United States. We are pitted against each other to kill ourselves and break our backs to provide as much for as little price as possible. Instead of touting our wares and services, we knock down the other guys'. Go to any Key Largo dive shop and ask them about the dive shop down the street. Instead of telling you why they are better, they will belittle the other guy, then tell you that you can have their 2 tank for $20 less. Go into the dive shop in Bigtown, USA and ask why their class is better than the LDS down the road. They won't tell you why theirs is better, they'll tell you why the other guys suck.

Somehow, we've developed the mentality in the USA that we're not in competition with other distractions, we're in competition with each other. Those dive operators who have survived the purge of 2008 try to get an ever dwindling supply of divers from their competition, which is to say other dive operators instead of getting them from surfing, 4-wheeling, and off the freaking couch. Any number of studies will tell you that the number of couch potatoes has increased, while the number of those who participate in outdoor sports has sharply dropped. Add to that the fact that the people who train the couch potatoes have a vested interest in selling a $2,000 set of gear and we price ourselves out of the market in short order.

When I was a young man, I thought nothing of putting $40 worth of gas in the 4 wheel drive, camping gear and a .30-.30 and heading for the hills of Idaho. My theory was, if I locked in the hubs, I'd spend $100 every time I twisted them in. More often than not, I'd have to hike 20 miles to the nearest phone to get someone to tow me home after I'd busted an axle or drive shaft or transfer case. I'd replace the offending parts, upgrading them if I'd replaced them too many times before (locker differentials, Spicer 60 for 44, 460 for 351, etc.) and learn how a truck worked. I learned how to install lift hits, engine mounts, how a differential/transmission/transfer case worked, and I took the whole Frankenstein mess out on the road with other drivers at 60-120 MPH and thought nothing of it. We tell divers that they will explode and die if they open their regulators and peer in. We tell them it's "life support equipment" and that they will surely die if they handle it poorly. We should be selling them 2 sets and teaching them about redundant gas supplies.

This "Industry" doesn't need marketing, it needs someone to slap about 3/4 of us across the face and tell us how to get our collective heads out of our asses. We need to change the model so that we are creating divers instead of teaching someone to dive. If you only teach them to dive, yo lose them when another shiny thing comes along. If you create divers, you have life long spenders.

 

[Edward3c]

One aspect that has always eluded me is the distinction or difference between marketing and advertising.

Its quite difficult to get one voice for an industry in competition with its self. In the UK, BSAC is the National Governing Body (some disagree). It is difficult to represent recreational diving interests when commercial bodies that teach recreational diving seek to contradict or oppose Government lobbying campaigns (for clarity PADI are very supportive of BSAC in this aspect).

 

[ianr33]

There are no heroes in posters in dive shops like you will find in sports like mountain climbing.

I have a poster of this above my bed. Is that unusual ?

 

[Doppler]

One aspect that has always eluded me is the distinction or difference between marketing and advertising.

Well, you asked for it...

Traditionally, the responsibilities of a company's head of marketing is to draw up half the business plan and certainly to direct the selection of and cultivation of the business model. In a simplified form, when I started work in a London Ad Agency (when Christ was a child) I was told about the five Ps. These are:

Product: what are you selling and what "problem" does it solve. How will it be distributed, supported etc.
People: Who is your target market and how will you and your team interact with them... a whole bunch of touch-point inventory stuff here which is made way more interesting by modern/new media mix
Price: What are your costs, what will the market bear as a selling price and what is your value proposition to account for the difference between cost and selling price
Position: Some say this is your actual bricks and mortar establishment but I was taught that this is a SWOT analysis positioning you and your brand against the competition's.
PROMOTION: how are you going to get your message and value proposition in front of your customers? This includes sales strategies and street-level tactics... and more stuff too.

Nowadays, the five Ps have expanded to about 15. When I did my MBA -- long after I left ad agency work -- it was up to about 12

 

[redacted]

I have a poster of this above my bed. Is that unusual ?View attachment 173869

I bet he has cold feet.:tmi2:

 

[RJP]

The further problem that "the industry" has in being centered around a common customer is that there are many customer segments, and accordingly there is no single message that will appeal to "the diver" overall. Dive boats here in NJ - and anywhere - are a good example. Let's take a saturday trip on Gypsy Blood for example. Assume there are 10 divers. The casual, marketing-naive, observer would assume that ten NJ divers are a fairly homogenous bunch. But let's look a little closer at who these ten are.

Diver 1 - is actually an underwater hunter; diving is not his hobby... shooting fish and grabbing lobster is. Diving is merely a means to an end
Diver 2 - is really into the history of world-war two wrecks... diving is a way to get down to the wreck
Diver 3 - is a highly-trained wreck/cave diver who's really into technique, penetration, etc. Every dive is a training dive
Diver 4 - is a quarry diver who occasionally comes out on a boat; he never travels to dive.
Diver 5 - is a vacation diver who travels once/twice a year to a warm water spot... but enjoys an occasional trip off NJ
Diver 6 - sees diving as an adventure, he dives largely to go deep, dark, etc so all his friends will think he's an adventurer
Diver 7 - is a fairly new diver who always wanted to try diving; mountain climbing is next on his bucket list
Diver 8 - sees diving as a way to get away from his wife and kids for a few hours once or twice a month
Diver 9 and 10 - are married couple who who see diving as something they both enjoy that they can do together.

One of them is a cardiac surgeon
One of them is a school teacher
The hunter is a plumber who dives a rebreather
The couple is in their late 20s... she'll be pregnant this time next year
The cave/wreck guy eats/sleeps/breathes diving 24/7/365
The vacation diver is single and 42 and really into photography
The WWII history buff is 55 and married
The new diver is a real outdoor type who also enjoys camping, skiing, kayaking.

One of them drives a $65,000 Mercedes, but rents his gear from the shop because he sees buying gear as a waste of money.
The guy with the beat up truck with 250,000mi on it has $10,000 worth of gear with him on today's trip.
The rebreather guy spent every last penny he had on the unit and training.
The range of annual income of the divers on the boat runs from $25,000/yr to $500,000yr (and that's not even the cardiac surgeon)
Etc
Etc

To think that a "marketer" could speak to these people with a single message or strategy is ludicrous, much less the idea than "an industry" could do so.

 

[Doppler]

...

To think that a "marketer" could speak to these people with a single message or strategy is ludicrous, much less the idea than "an industry" could do so.

Bloody brilliant summary of the demographic cocktail facing the "Marketing Department." However, that's simply a challenge that any professional is going to relish... and it is not an insurmountable one... in part because of the number of ways we can get a message across and the relatively inexpensive cost of "space and time."

The real issue is that few companies... actually three that I know of and perhaps a handful more... 1) have marketing professionals on staff 2) communicate with their customers (there's a huge ****ing hole in this one) 3) have the focus to concentrate on what they do well, stick to it, not try to deliver everything from soup to nuts; and not worry about and get pulled off task by the competition... which they have not fully defined by the way.

---------- Post added December 22nd, 2013 at 10:49 AM ----------

i have a poster of this above my bed. Is that unusual ?

you are a sick, sick puppy! Lol

 

[DiveNav]

...... What would happen in a company if your marketing people discovered that customers didn't want ABC, but wanted XYZ and instead of telling the engineers to make XYZ they still made ABC? .....

The marketing people would be fired on the spot.

BTW, I haven't been fired (yet) .....

Alberto (aka eDiver)