The Perfect Holiday Gift For Your Resort And Your Customers

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Looking for a way to boost occupancy and improve revenue? Try gift cards. Many resort properties are capitalizing on the holiday season by offering gift cards redeemable for room nights, spa services, special packages, dining options, and more.

Pheasant Run Resort in the western suburbs of Chicago has taken to advertising its gift card program across all mediums—signage, radio tags, print ads, eblasts, and the property’s website all promote gift card sales. The resort is banking on the fact that people are looking for easy and affordable stocking stuffers for family and friends. Gift cards can be purchased in denominations of $20. To encourage repeat customers, Pheasant Run Resort also is offering a limited-time special where customers receive and extra $50 for every $200 in gift cards they buy. Read more

Attraction Marketing II: The Marketing March

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Attraction Marketing is the process of making your company, its products, services and culture more attractive to prospects by driving marketing initiatives with the people you already employ. How to process this activity to steadily move your marketing forward, using data to guide you, is called “The Marketing March.”

The strategies outlined in Attraction Marketing are numerous and interdependent. Keeping each strategy moving forward is critical. Getting things all moving in the same direction has been referred to as herding cats and making decisions on where to focus resources and where to cut is the key to success. Read more

Attraction Marketing I: Drawing Prospects To You

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Often marketing is something only focused on once or twice a year. You may be buying media today, running online listings on Web sites your prospects frequent. You may even be using Google AdWords and some limited print.

But so is your competition.

How are you going to stand apart? Increasing your spending may not be an option with tightening margins and flat or lower sales. So how can you get prospects to notice you? Here is where Attraction Marketing comes in.
Read more

Resort Email Subject Lines of the Month For September

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Below are some of the top email subject lines from resort/hotel email marketing campaigns that we saw during the month of September.

Getaway this Month with our NEW Hot August Nights Package

Wake Up to the Beauty of Eagle Ridge

Make some memories at The Lake before the end of Summer

Your Labors Deserve A Getaway to The Abbey Resort

Labor Day and Fall Fun at The Abbey Resort

Celebrate Labor Day at The Abbey Resort

Live Entertainment at The Abbey Resort

August Beach Blast Cookout & Fireworks Show in Lake Lure……

Fall Events…Delaware Wine & Beer Festival

Ends Thursday! Sale starting at $49* one-way

Escape to Kohler this Summer for $148

Your August Pure Michigan Featured Deals

Luxury Escapes – August

Help Shanty Creek Name a Ski Run and WIN!

Snap up these great deals by Thursday!

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Attraction Marketing: How Can You Do More Within Your Organization To Draw Business To You?

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Over the past two years we have been asked by many companies what they can be doing themselves to improve their result in marketing. Budgets are tight and often people have time on their hands due to decrease workloads or seasonality. In June 2009 we began work on strategies that companies can implement with their team to build their business. During the process it became clear that, in order to control spending the focus would need to be on non-media strategies. Further discussion led us to the term “Attraction Marketing.” In short, Attraction Marketing improving your attractiveness to your prospects, to the marketplace.

We all personally want to be seen as attractive, be respected, admired, relevant. Similarly, Attraction Marketing addresses topics that can help create these perceptions for businesses.

Some of the strategies we will cover will be familiar to you, though we hope to get you to think about it a little differently. Some of the tactics you may already be doing, and that’s great. Hopefully we can show you how these things as connected and building on each other.

Stevens & Tate Marketing have been the test group for Attraction Marketing for 12 months now. In the postings I will tell you what worked for us and speak to our results. I will offer suggestions on how to lead the process through developing management and tracking. So join me is as I cover topics like All Dressed Up, Show Up In Style, Be Impressive, Become A Socialite, Lend A Hand, Stay Top Of Mind over the next few months.

Pandering Your Way To Profits? Most Likely Not.

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Everyone in business today feels the need to do more with less; fewer people and smaller budgets. Sure, it’s 2010 and things were supposed to be better by now, but many marketing professionals are still adjusting and cutting advertising spending.

Many of the prospects we speak with are dealing with this by cutting across the board. All channels are reduced to get to the “new budget number.” It seems fair to your advertising partners. All your reps — the radio lady, your trade publication guy and the direct mail house — understand that you’re doing what you have to do. And they feel they are getting their share of your budget. “We’ll get through this together.” Read more

Staying Forever Young In Senior Living Advertising

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Think seniors aren’t online? Think again. A recent Nielson report shows that the number of adults 65 years old or older actively using the Internet has increased by more than 55 percent in the last five years. That’s more than 17 million people who you can reach online. Senior living marketing has become very popular.

What does that mean for you when marketing a senior living community? It means you must have a strong online presence.  More importantly, your website must be easy to find, easy to read and easy to navigate. Read more

Crossing the Generation Gap in Real Estate Marketing

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Real estate is any industry where buying decisions truly are made across multiple generations. Fist-time homebuyers often are just out of college and ready to move from their parents’ place or have worked for a few years and can’t wait to get out of that cramped apartment. At the opposite end of the spectrum are seniors. The options for this group range from active adult communities restricted to those “55 years or better” to assisted living to nursing care.

With such an age-diverse client base, how do you reach potential customers cost-effectively? To attract someone’s attention, your marketing efforts must speak to your target audience not only in a tone and manner in which they have become accustomed, but also via media channels that are familiar with. Read more

Customer Service is an Extension of Your Marketing Efforts

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Not even the best marketing or the best “deal” can make up for poor customer service during the sales process. Here’s an example. Last fall, I needed to purchase new tires for my car so I made an appointment online at a local discount tire retailer. I was enticed by the “sale.” After receiving a call that the tires I requested were not in stock, I was assured by the sales rep that I would be contacted once they were ordered and ready to be installed. Fast forward to six months later and still no call. Not only did this discount tire company lose out on a sale, they lost me as a customer for life.

How does that relate to your industry? Well, if you are like most companies, you have spent a great deal of time, energy and money to attract people to your place of business…a new-home sales center, a hotel, a senior living facility. Read more

Staying In Touch – It Can Make Or Break A Sale

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It’s taking people longer than ever, it seems, to make a move. That’s true for young first-time homebuyers, those purchasing a new home, and seniors deciding it’s time to downsize or move into an assisted living facility. For some, it’s easier or more comfortable to stay where they are while others are paralyzed by economic fears.

What does that mean for marketers in the real estate, homebuilding and senior living arenas? We need to keep in touch with prospects multiple times and in multiple ways. Building a relationship over time is essential to ensure that when your potential customers are ready to make their move, your company is on the top of their mind. Read more