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

[The Chairman]

Back to the OP...

Scott Jones and I were talking on the phone the other day and he sent me a breakdown of his Facebook fans. His graph represented the current industry: very few youngsters with the bulk being in his and my age group. He had this overlayed with a graph representing Facebook and it was weighted in reverse. Their biggest group was the late teens early twenties and our age group was tiny in comparison.

We are not doing enough to attract the younger audience. Then again, I'm not sure that they should be our target audience. At what point does it make economic sense for someone to take up Scuba diving? If mom and dad don't dive, it becomes a real problem for most as there are a lot of fun and cheap distractions for every age group. How do we compete?

 

[HowardE]

Back to the OP...

Scott Jones and I were talking on the phone the other day and he sent me a breakdown of his Facebook fans. His graph represented the current industry: very few youngsters with the bulk being in his and my age group. He had this overlayed with a graph representing Facebook and it was weighted in reverse. Their biggest group was the late teens early twenties and our age group was tiny in comparison.

Of course it is... why wouldn't it be?

We are not doing enough to attract the younger audience. Then again, I'm not sure that they should be our target audience. At what point does it make economic sense for someone to take up Scuba diving? If mom and dad don't dive, it becomes a real problem for most as there are a lot of fun and cheap distractions for every age group. How do we compete?

This is not a mystery. Do you honestly think that the younger audience can afford scuba diving? Face it... It's not cheap. The question business owners should be asking is how do I attract the interested demographics into scuba diving with me as opposed to trying to coax the younger generation into scuba. Do you seriously think that the average 22 year old could/would shell out the costs involved with getting certified, equipment (either rental or owning) and then the costs of going diving? Sure there are exceptions like maybe kids in Florida who have shore diving access to warm tropical waters, and inexpensive rentals and lessons... but what about the average kid in Nebraska?

Solving the marketing mystery for dive shops isn't like finding the rosetta stone. It's about understanding the marketplace and doing what you can to attract the actual market. If I run an ad campaign for one of my clients on Facebook or Google. I pretty much leave out the 13 - 30 year old demographic all together. Why? It's fairly obvious... It's not worth spending dollars on that audience, my ROI is very low. Sure I might get a lot of clicks on my ad from the curious, but that equates to tire kickers (or specifically a high bounce rate).

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If you Pete, are saying, "Back to the OP" well then, I'll answer Julie's question.

Yes there is room for this kind of business (a marketing company specifically for Scuba Industry people), as our company has been thriving since we've started it almost 2 years ago. Our client list contains several dive shops and a few manufacturers, and we've even had to outsource some work because between Duck Diver and ScubaBoard, we occasionally need some free time.

So Julie... If you want to talk about contract work (I love your designs)... give me a buzz.

 

[The Chairman]

That's the point Howard... we are leaving out the 13-30 year olds. You are leaving out the 13-30 year olds. It shows. They get that. While it doesn't make sense to market them for individual businesses, it makes a lot of sense to do so on an industry level. Look at how popular skiing is in the US... would you say it's more popular than Scuba? I would. It's a very expensive sport.

The problem is short sightedness in the industry. We've accepted the fact that making Scuba popular to all ages is a myth, a Rosetta stone as you most aptly put it. While you might not be able to solve this problem by yourself, it can be done. Hell, it's being done by a number of other industries that aren't afraid of trying something new and different. What we've done traditionally just isn't working all that well so it's time to bypass that tradition and try something different. Many somethings different.

People are going to spend money on their passions. They'll spend money on their dreams. We've got some dreamscaping to do for our industry.

 

[HowardE]

That's the point Howard... we are leaving out the 13-30 year olds. You are leaving out the 13-30 year olds. While it doesn't make sense to market them for individual businesses, it makes a lot of sense to do so on an industry level. Look at how popular skiing is in the US... would you say it's more popular than Scuba? I would. It's a very expensive sport.

Maybe 13-30 is too broad (as you do find potential divers in their mid-late 20's) but really on a Google adword campaign, I'd leave off the demographic 18-24 (which is an option)...

Skiing is not as expensive as diving overall (having been a ski bum and living in the mountains of Colorado for 15 years), and you don't actually have to take lessons to get started. Honestly, my annual expense for snowboarding with a season pass to a mountain was less than $1000 a year. How many dive trips is that? How many dive trips is that for a person who lives nowhere near water?

Is Scuba an Olympic sport? Do people watch scuba on real TV stations (and don't say "Bering Sea Gold")? Scuba for many is a bucket list thing and not something like skiing, which is viewed as a family sport.

This discussion started off about what people should do for marketing their small business, and whether or not there was a need for specialists. Immediately, it turned into a DEMA bashing session... But trying to re-invent the wheel isn't effective marketing. Marketing is about focusing on your actual marketplace, and knowing where it is and isn't. Face it... PADI did the "drop zone" to make diving cool with young surfers and all that. What happened with that? Nothing? Wow. Shocker.

Effective marketing campaigns focus on the target group. Identify your marketplace is the first rule of marketing. There's plenty of interested people out there who want to learn diving... Reaching them isn't rocket science, but it does take time and experience to do that.

 

[Wookie]

Doppler was at the Boot show this past week. His observation was that there were far more young people at Boot than at any show in the USA. He also said that the energy was higher. This is in a country with little divable shoreline.

 

[mjrob]

As I mentioned earlier, demographics for our industry is a tough nut. We're big believers in family involvement and, frankly, that's how I got into scuba originally. My son, who was eight at the time, came home from school pumped up about a scuba presentation a local shop had done for his class that day. Long story short, not long after that, we got certified as a family (me, my wife and two daughters--Jack did all the pool sessions at the end of a long octo on our instructor's reg--he's always been a fish), bought full sets of gear for everyone and went on to enjoy family vacations for years to come. Show me any sport that keeps a family that close and having fun--does anyone here have teenage girls?.

Can every family afford that? No, absolutely not. But some can. At that point in our lives, it was a pretty big stretch but one I was willing to take to spend quality time with my wife and kids. At DiVentures, we start swim lessons with "mommy (and daddy) and me" sessions for six-month olds and teach swim through adult classes. I've been diving with eighty-year-olds who were great divers and great fun. In April, we'll take a group of more than 60 to Cozumel an a trip designed around families--several with kids too young to dive.

My point is, please don't discount any demographic. Do we have a considerable group of empty or nearly empty-nesters coming in to resume diving after taking years off to raise a family? You bet we do. But we also have that wonderful number of families who are fortunate enough to make scuba a part of their lives. You can't imagine how thrilled I am to see four of five family members under water, often holding hands like I did with my kids, and getting back on the boat laughing and talking about what they just saw. It's more difficult these days, bit we occasionally--the five of us--are able to make time to take another trip together. We're still making family memories I'll never forget.

I'm wandering and reminiscing, but this is probably a good example of what I'm trying to get across. We, quite literally, got into diving as the result of a dive shop owner who took the time to contact an elementary school teacher and offer to make a worthwhile presentation about oceans and scuba to a bunch of kids. Total time invested: about an hour and a half. Total dollars spent: pretty much gas money. Total sales: four open water classes and four full sets of gear and several dive trips. You tell me, was that worth the investment? Got an hour and a half--or several of them--to spare? I'll bet you do.

we used to call this guerrilla marketing. I still do and we still do it.

 

[The Chairman]

Doppler was at the Boot show this past week. His observation was that there were far more young people at Boot than at any show in the USA. He also said that the energy was higher. This is in a country with little divable shoreline.

I would imagine that to be true except for the Blue Wild. That audience bordered on almost being in their teens. I was the oldest person in the building for a while. It was awesome.

 

[mjrob]

Oh and Howard, I'm curious: would you agree with me that both the "Be a Diver" and "Drop Zone" campaigns were failures due to ineffective marketing? My perception (which, for everyone, is the only thing that really matters) is that, once again, we witnessed a "preaching to the choir" effort. You have to get the message to people outside the industry to create new divers.

Last week, I had lengthy conversations with the president of a major scuba manufacturer and the national sales manager of another. Both agreed, because they had to--numbers don't lie--that the pie of scuba customers continues to shrink. They are fighting for larger and larger slices of a shrinking dessert. That's simply self-defeating. We plan to meet with at least three major manufacturers over the next thee months to present plans for co-marketing and national advertising campaigns aimed at...drum roll please...the non-diving public! I didn't go to rocket surgery school but when needs like this are so obvious, you don't gotta be a brain scientist to get it.

You can all help by questioning and urging your suppliers to focus marketing efforts outside the industry. If enough of us whack our vendors up-side the head with enough 2x4's, chances are that a few of them will wake up.

 

[The Chairman]

My point is, please don't discount any demographic.

This is such a great point. You can often get to the parents through their kids. I ran a BSA Venture Crew at the local High School in Altamonte Springs, Fl. I needed chaperones, male and female, and quite often the parents saw this as something cool they could do with their kids. I taught a thirty/forty something for every 3 or 4 teens I taught. A few twenty something teachers were certified as well. I think a lot of shops miss a lot of young business by not sponsoring a Venture Crew. The World Wide Web is a great place to find a World Wide audience. If you're trying to get something going locally, it's probably not the most effective approach. If you can get people started diving as kids, then we have them as twenty and thirty somethings. More importantly, we have a better chance at getting them to bring their kids into the sport.

Edit... the fishing industry is actively campaigning a "Bring a kid fishing". It's working and the numbers for kids entering the sport are growing. We need a national "Connect with your kids through Diving" campaign. The rising tide would float all boats.

 

[SeaHorse81]

Do you honestly think that the younger audience can afford scuba diving? Face it... It's not cheap.

How many of us here today got started because of Sea Hunt? How old were we when we watched it? Did we have money then? No. Did we dive then? No. But the seed was planted and years later when we had disposable income, look what we did.