SB folks seem to have lots of ideas. No doubt most are good and might work for your shop. But you need a foundation first.
Your online presence - web and FB - is terrible.
Four suggestions.
- Review our liability exposure with an experienced local attorney. Continue to do this on a regular basis, as the attorney will no doubt suggest. The review should compose the full range of your activities - business structure, AK limits on liability waivers, and individual liability. I would discuss splitting the business into different corporate entities to segregate and minimize liability exposure. You are in business to have fun, make money and not go broke.
- Accounting - spend your money on advice and not solely on number crunching. As a small business, you should be focused on generating gross margin dollars and not gross margin percent.
- Travel - AK diving, sounds great. You have no warm water travel on your menu. Why not partner with established players and capture your client's warm water travel dollars? Easy dollars with minimal investment.
- WEB/FB - turn both off until you can present a message consistent with your marketing goals. You admit your current offerings are bad, stop the damage today. And hire a pro to assist you - Duck Diver Marketing?
ScubaBoard.com Website designed by Duck Diver Marketing
Home - Duck Diver Marketing
"We specialize in creating WordPress sites because it's easy for us to pass the ball to you to maintain your own website (if you want to). We also have continued maintenance available, including web hosting, e-mail, cPanel, daily backups, and other web services. We can also do custom php coding, mysql databases, straight HTML, and more. All of our work is done in the USA, we don't farm out our projects overseas."
WordPress is the key. Pay for marketing knowledge - the setup - and do basic maintenace yourself. Don't forget to return for regular consultations with a pro.
I excerpted a few highlights from your Web and FB presence. Brutal.
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"We also are very proud to be a
Scubapro Platinum Dealer, which means that we enjoy some pretty neat
dealer benefits."
Well, good for you, your shop gets great
'dealer benefits', but you don't say how this benefits your customers? The big SP catalog?
The SB crowd will surely find your training photo interesting. While this is likely PADI open water training, it is interesting from a shop promoting GUE training. Will the students still be on their knees when they finish OW?
"All SCUBA training is NOT created equal! and a higher level of proficiency required for successful scuba certification."
PADI Training
PADI Open Water Course | Dive Alaska
"Tuition is $699 for the full open water diver certification, or $399 for the referral portion." The dry suit add-on is a good value. You should be able to deliver a superior course for the price you are charging? Your students can do all skills perfectly, while on their knees?
Personal Gear - gotta make a buck somewhere - nice snorkels.
"... you’ll come in to the shop and select your personal gear. ...we estimate these items to cost approximately $300"
Facebook
Your trained-up open water divers posing at graduation? Fine looking group - on their knees. Are those the $70 'dry' snorkels? This is your finished OW product?
Quite the online shop you have
Products « Dive Alaska
Two hats, a hoodie, and a tee-shirt, along with one reg package - SP mk21+S560 - that's it? Same on your FB page.
Customer Appreciation Day? Sounds like fun. Oops, all three posts are dated. Anything new coming up?
Your link below is blocked, "This video contains content from WMG, who has blocked it on copyright grounds."
"For an example of some of the COOL STUFF GUE does: