Maya Asset Management is one of the UKs most dynamic management companies.
In a year when budgets have been exceptionally tight, with no product investment and minimal marketing spend, Maya have had a phenomenal success in the key accommodation destinations that they market.
Even though many of these destinations are in the struggling South West, Maya have seen double figure gross profit increases. In a time of squeezed margins and slipping turnover, just how have they managed to achieve this?
Maya marketing director, Tania Duarte, explains how they have managed to perform so well, giving her 10 top secrets on how to punch above your destination marketing budget. From people power to missed opportunities, Maya’s tips will reveal how a good strategic understanding and sticking to age old marketing imperatives will ensure that you will always win through.
1. Fit your promotion to the product
This might sound obvious but it is amazing how many times people ignore this. At Maya, we have worked with several businesses that have gone into administration because they have simply not tailored their promotion to their product.
While their glossy brochures promise a first class experience their websites reveal something completely different. Conning customers might work once but the cost of refunds, negative PR (especially in the age of social media and the power of Trip Advisor) and the demoralising effect on staff immediately counteract the revenue gain.
Furthermore, you will never have an efficient marketing spend when your cost of acquisition is based on an individual transaction rather than lifetime value. Repeat business and referrals are the lifeblood of any business.
This is why the benefits and value of the experience need to be properly understood and expectations set. So ask yourself, do you really live up to your promises and are they made to the right people?
2. People not pounds
If starting with ‘Product’ as the 1st P of the traditional marketing mix was basic, moving on to ‘People’ which has long been established as an extension of the ‘4 Ps’ might seem rather rudimentary. Again though, the power of people is all too often undervalued in a sector which heavily relies on customer experience.
At Maya, we have utilised the power of people and created notable experiences and ‘raving fans’ through the commitment and retention of our excellent staff. These fans in turn publicise the resorts and return to them year after year.
A new and energetic holiday park manager managed, with some help from our promotions and Food & Beverage department, to increase off-peak bar and restaurant sales by a massive 241%. This was largely through creating an atmosphere which drew people in, increasing the motivation and therefore output of the chefs, and building a community which lead customers to ask for more events to be created for them and their family on the park facilities.
Maya have also used sales incentives and competitions to further motivate staff to upsell, bundle or cross sell. It is infinitely cheaper and easier to sell future holidays, extended stays, accommodation upgrades, meals and activities to customers on site who are having a good time than it is to advertise them. Therefore the marketer must not only support the people on the ground, but work very closely with operations and HR to ensure that their potential as the ultimate marketing tool is not undermined by people management issues.
3. Use experts - expertly
It is a common misconception that small budgets rule out the use of specialist agencies. In actual fact, when you do not have the luxury of a large department with individual expertise, it is even more important to externally tap into this to stay ahead of the game.
A department that is balanced enough to have a strategic overview of its marketing effort will often be a jack of all trades but a master of only a few. So it is often a false economy not spend money on experts who can really enhance what you are doing. However, this does rely on choosing the right partners or advisors for your needs, structuring the right kind of support agreements and fees, and managing the output extremely tightly.
If the objectives are clear and powerful enough, an adroit use of agencies and consultants can stretch your capabilities and make your spend more powerful.
4. Make missing an opportunity a sin
When every penny counts, so must every opportunity. This must be at the forefront of everyone’s mind, whether they are involved in the creation, delivery or marketing of the service.
Management have long know that every interaction with the customer is a ‘moment of truth’ but it is still all too rare that this gospel has filtered down to those involved in such moments. It is crucial that internal communications are first rate.
All staff need to know what messages or offers to be delivering at all times. Similarly, there must be no excuse of taking out advertisements without a call to action or any kind of delay in answering inbound enquiries.
5. Check that the bandwagon is taking you in the right direction
In a world where something new is trending daily there is immense pressure to keep up with the latest method of social media marketing. It is true that Facebook pages are taking away views from company websites, although it should be noted that this is not always the case.
There are many Facebook pages that are not resulting in an increase to a company’s bottom line and the debate about the proper use of Twitter for B2B marketing still rages. New methods of marketing can be incredibly powerful if they are on strategy and meet your objectives.
If not, unless you have a body of literate and engaging brand ambassadors with spare time to hand, you should make sure that you have all the basics covered as it is futile to squander the effort already put into your existing platform. In the tourism industry, many types of consumers still want to see a tangible product.
They like to look at the nice pictures and pass them round their family and friends, or tear deals out of newspapers. So, don’t be shamed or seduced into jumping onto a bandwagon unless it is the best fit for your objectives.
6. Get savvy with segmentation
The British holidaymaker has undoubtedly changed over the last few years, both in behaviour and also expectation.
However, many companies are failing to keep up with the changing consumer groups and patterns, and the impact that this change has had on their business. If the budget is not there to spend on the scattergun approach to targeting customers, it becomes even more crucial to know exactly who your customers are likely to be and how to reach them.
Broadcast and on-going mass-market advertising are not options on a small budget. Your spend needs to be highly targeted and go only to those customers most likely to wish to visit your offering.
It also needs to be spent in the way most likely to speak to the customer in the language they understand (metaphorically in most cases, sometimes perhaps literally!) Regional tourist boards that used to support destinations in their area have gone to the wall, which initially presents a problem.
This can also present an opportunity for those wishing to pick up where they left off. The tourist boards will have left behind a body of insight into customer segments which is easily accessible.
A profile of existing and potential customers does not need to break the bank, but it can provide a focus which pure ‘gut feel’ and anecdote cannot compete with.
7. Think consistency and differentiation not branding
As previously mentioned, on a limited budget there can be no pure ‘branding’ activity, as in a price sensitive and competitive market every communication must work extra hard. However, this is not to negate the power of the brand, but the brand cannot be thought of as a slick conceptualisation of perceived attributes.
Instead the consistency of service delivery versus the promise builds the brand identity, and the expression of this through skilful differentiation, communicates it. We have followed strategies for our clients of sporadically entering the marketplaces of big brand competitors in order to use their platform and stole the show with a striking and differentiated, albeit much smaller, presence.
8. Measurement - appropriateness beats sophistication
Many smaller businesses envy the sophisticated measurement systems and matrices which large companies use to monitor feedback. It is all too easy for these smaller businesses to throw their hands in the air and resign themselves to continued decisions without the feedback.
However, there are many free tools available which mean that there is no excuse for not constructing some kind of framework, as we have done at Maya when faced with a similar problem. We used the limited data resources of one of our clients together with google analytics, some dedicated 0844 numbers (which actually earned our client money each month), and an absolute commitment to coding, tracking and analysing every single inbound enquiry out of the information available.
A discipline of setting up codes and monitoring despite a very unsophisticated booking system and an even less sophisticated website still managed to yield important and useful results. For example, we were able to determine which regional and specialist press worked hardest, and track conversion from email vs web vs print campaigns even over long periods of time.
All for free and with the most basic web platform, because the key is knowing why you are measuring and what the data means to you. A bit of ingenuity, a precise plan for how information will be used and an understanding of the real drivers of commercial performance are enough to construct a robust measurement system.
You could even find that you get better results than your competitors who have a shiny new CRM system but don’t use it to its maximum potential.
9. Honesty is the best policy
Honesty in business is too often underestimated. Openness can get you new marketing recruits - your customers, and the best thing is that you do not need to put them on the payroll. Some customers can be cynical about flashy marketing campaigns so not having one can often be used to your advantage. Explaining to your customers that all your revenue goes into making the experience (and the price) right makes it easier to explain why you are pushing for their support in terms of referrals, testimonials, reviews, and ‘likes’. This will also make them more receptive to engaging in referral incentive schemes. Explaining to them what does and doesn’t make money, the rationale behind cut-price promotions as loss leaders or teasers, can also make them value and promote the offers they have- in the current economic climate everyone is aware that businesses are stretched financially too. As long as you provide an experience that is important to your customer and demonstrate your customers’ importance to you, they will work hard with you in order to preserve it.
10. Use your inbuilt first rate research facility
Didn’t know you had one? Simple- you have to harvest and analyse your customer feedback, which can be is as enlightening as the most sophisticated of focus groups in some respects! There are a number of zero or low cost options to interactively collect feedback from customers, from online surveymonkey, free industry body benchmarking (for example the BH&HPA run a ‘Rate your Park’ scheme although this is not as interactive), incentivising staff and to gather quantitative exit surveys, and incentivising customers to take part in qualitative ones. It is amazing how many business managers do not take the time to walk around their venue themselves on a daily or even weekly basis talking to customers. The key is to study interactions instantly, thoroughly, open-mindedly and creatively. Too often they either get used simply for satisfaction metrics or for the selection of positive comments for testimonials. Crowdsourcing need not depend on a big initiative; it can be a daily habit of spotting trends which present opportunities, reacting to problems and evaluating what is working with your message, in a structured yet intuitive way. This will also boast engagement and customer loyalty.
So, there are many ways which cost little or no money which can improve sales performance and ensure that visitor numbers and visitor spend are up. However, they will only yield maximum effect if the marketing effort is seen as something not owned by marketing, but part of the company as a whole, and in which Marketing, Operations, HR and IT strategy and practices are seamlessly entwined. Maya therefore while delivering revenue boosting marketing strategies, also have capabilities across all functions to make sure that a savvy plan can be a show stealing campaign.
Tania Duarte is the Sales and Marketing Director at Maya Asset Management. Her marketing consultancy assignments have included brand strategy, strategic segmentation targeting and positioning, and marketing planning for growth businesses. Tania also oversees Maya’s Marketing Solutions Packages which offer clients an outsourced marketing function, with a track record of providing high revenue and profit growth.
Maya Asset Management is one of the UKs most dynamic management companies. Maya deliver management solutions, asset management and strategic business review services to institutional and high-net-worth investors, private equity funds, and specialise in servicing holiday park owners and managers who desire maximum returns from their managed asset portfolios.
