Why aren't more people taking up scuba diving?

[Pullmyfinger]

That's just his cover story.

 

[drrich2]

If diving is such a social endeavor how do you make it such when a person is able to go online, select the products they want with the click of a mouse and have it shipped to their door. In most instances never have to have contact with another person. Same way with booking a trip.

Relationship is key. I've been to Bonaire 7 times; the 1'rst 4 times were with a group organized my one of my old instructors. That way I didn't have to worry about being alone in a strange place, dealing with driving in a non-U.S. system, not knowing where to eat, stay or how the diving work-flow works, etc... And I had fun. After 4 trips down, I felt more independent.

A good local dive shop where customers care about the shop and owner/staff, and learn by talking with people there, can engender a sense of loyalty worth a small market. Not huge, but small.

As for where I buy product, if it's something like an exposure suit I need to try on, and I try one on and it fits at your shop, I'll probably buy from you. Ditto hood, gloves and boots. Something where I don't need to try it on (e.g.: dive knife) or you don't carry what I want (e.g.: Cobalt dive computer, Spyderco Salt 1 dive knife, Trilobyte) and I can get it myself online and shipped pretty fast, well, that's a sale you likely won't make.

Richard.

 

[Leadking]

I just read, in another thread, that RJP works in the advertising industry. No wonder he is keen on the idea of advertising?

Back in the mid 1990's we had that discussion at the DEMA board level. The trade show was netting DEMA a couple of million dollars a year (remember we still have expenses to run the organization). I pointed out that Vail/Beckenridge, at that time, was spending close to $20 million to get skiers to ski there. There was no way we drive the industry forward with the limited resources we had.

 

[Doomnova]

I just wanted to add a few things from when I started diving. Firstly was the way my Ow class was treated being shoved through by one dive shop here (which I do not do any business with and turn people from due to their actions with my gear purchasing+ handling of my class). that shoved us through in a very short period of time that had 17 people being trained in 1 class. I can say this we all got our certs I know I'm only one diving today and I took about 40 dives to bring my skills up to something respectable(and I'm not resting there I still pick 3 things to work on each dive). I then purchased mu gear including my drysuit (note this is the only dive shop to train people in wetsuits and their gear is about 15 years old give or take). Since here its damn cold in the waters. The cost was fine but the drysuit was a neoprene one and the neck was miss measured by the person doing the measurements. To fix the shower I got every dive with it? $700 for their screw up. You can guess where I took my business after that.

Next treatment by others at the next dive shop I went to. The drop i dives were going to where I was trained because I was the newbie. I got the distinct impression that those I was going with at the drop in (which is advertised for beginners) that I was not welcome or wanted. Add into that the DM who told me "don't go getting yourself killed as this is your third time out diving since OW" following up with her talking to one of the folks working in the shop "great another day of babysitting". Funny how this person who was GUE trained(how do I know the shirt he was wearing + asking her about her training while filling out forms) and a DM working for a shop leading a dive is treating a potential customer like ****...I know this turned me from my second dive shop as well has placed any training with GUE I may ever think of in question.

I have since found a group to dive with and people who respect me and train me and I am slowly working upto the point of doing my DM so I know there is at least one more person who won't treat new divers like junk. I don't mind even now being buddies with newer divers. hell there have even been dives where I go out to help people just play in the shallows working on skills. Improving mine and theirs usually half a dive or so to work on a few choice skills and the rest to put them into practice.

So the points I'm making in summary.
1)Cost of courses for what you get...simple enough the training I got was crap. It was not an OW class it was a bubble blower class. The people I dive with have a very small shop yes but I know how they treat students and the quality of students they train as I dive with them after on a semi regular basis.

2) treatment of individuals. Pretty simple new divers are just that treat them like **** and they will either leave the sport or leave the shop. This also backs up into 1 as well. paying 300-500 classes you would expect decent instruction. Hell I get almost the same range of insturction of about 15-1 in my 400 level university classes for the same cost. We can also go into the class treadmill. Pretty much a class for the 250 range. Atleast here. All in all totals for a lot of money. Up here you really need AOW at the min for alot of sites and really should have rescue, deep, and nav. Toss in nitrox for any of those 4-5 dive a day options...I think the picutre is pretty clear

3) cost of gear. Many have talked about this. I will also add regional costs diving in PNW and cold water is much more expensive than in the tropics. You need bare minimum a 2 piece 7 mill suit here that is not cheap(and 95%+ end up in drysuits inside of a year here anyways). Used is a option for somethings. But for exposure suits....eh I'm not skimping there. A back up light or something along those lines ok like my c8 I have yea I'm getting rid of it soon but I saved about $80 on the ones here as it was an un-used display piece. I think both LDS's and Manufactures are guilty of this. The former is guilty of raising the costs by as much as 40-50% as one near by shop did/does. For the latter I would have to question chase for newer and better rather than effective and refined. Lets be honest there has not been any major "reinventing of the wheel" in diving gear seen at the rec level in years. Yet every year they shove out model x of something that when you take the fancy finish off it and the slightly different casing is in truth the same guts as the last model.

Now these are not to say that some shops/manufacturers are not trying to break the mold but it overall results in either go big or go home. This is just the rec level for cold water muchless tech. Looking at it all if it was not something that I love and cherish doing so much and could not do growing up in Alberta I think I too as many would say and that is "F it".

The fixes I think come down to the major agencies which need to stop milking people like the old home grown cow. I can see tech courses costing what it does for the attention+requirements of the training. But the rec ones to me read almost as extortion. This is not factoring in vacations ect.

Sorry for the long post.

 

[RJP]

I think someone mentioned a 70% attrition rate. So if you want to add a 30,000 divers to the sport, you have to get 100,000 to try it.

That assumes that "liking diving" is a completely random - and completely rational - event. Do you believe that is the case? Like flipping a coin or rolling dice?

Assuming for a moment that the 70% figure is accurate, I guess a better way to make my point is to say that you would have to get 100,000 people to try scuba diving in order to add 30,000 new divers to the sport... if you had no earthly idea what you were doing.

However, if you knew what you were doing, you could ensure that trying - and even liking - scuba diving is not a random event. How? By focusing more on the customer, and less on the product/service.

Below is cut from a different thread, but along the same lines:

There are several crazy-effective market research techniques that have been proven over and over again to determine the real barriers and motivators that impact a potential customer's behavior.

- What is it that people REALLY want to buy?
- What is it that REALLY stands in the way of them buying it?
- What can you tell them about your product/service to convince them that it will provide what they are looking for?
- What can you tell them about your product to overcome their barriers?
- How can you modify and vary those things in order to charge a profit-maximize price?

Here's my favorite example of a client/agency who figured out what their target customer REALLY wanted to buy... and offered them that. Care to guess what they were REALLY selling?

[video=youtube;GOLXnkbfEuo]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOLXnkbfEuo[/video]

The campaign won my former agency many awards (long before I got there) but the award that stands above all others as testament to the power of the campaign was the Effie Award, which are given for advertising effectiveness (as opposed to simply for being "creative") The campaign has been credited with reversing a decades-long slide in oatmeal sales, and it's effects are still in evidence today... well beyond the one product. Without that campaign, you wouldn't see entire grocery store aisles lined with 20 different brands of hot breakfast products... or oatmeal bars and granola bars actually. Even much of the growth of "healthy" dry cereals (ostensibly the competition at the time) can be traced to Wilford Brimley.

So, what was Quaker Oats really selling? Specifically. And to whom? And why Wilford Brimley?

---------- Post added January 3rd, 2014 at 01:07 AM ----------

I just read, in another thread, that RJP works in the advertising industry. No wonder he is [-]keen on the idea of[/-] intimately familiar with the overwhelming power of [-]advertising[/-] effective marketing?

Fixed it for you.



And I purposely changed "advertising" to "marketing" because advertising is merely one marketing lever. (In fact, it's even a smaller subset of "promotion" which would many other things beyond advertising.) Sure advertising is often the most visible thing people see about a brand... but is not the only lever we pull, and it's never pulled in isolation. In fact, some of the most effective marketing strategies and campaigns I've seen DID NOTutilize adverting at all. Sometimes that's due to budget, but other times it's due to strategic reasons... where/when advertising just wouldn't make sense.

In fact, I'm pretty sure I would not recommend broad-based advertising to drive scuba diving. I cite lots of advertising examples because they are often most familiar to people. But in actuality I spend much of my time doing market research, working on pricing, determining channels of distribution, developing trade programs, retail merchandising, patent/intellectual property law, public policy, advocacy relations, PR, and myriad other things.

 

[Vislor]

So the points I'm making in summary.
1)Cost of courses for what you get...simple enough the training I got was crap. It was not an OW class it was a bubble blower class. The people I dive with have a very small shop yes but I know how they treat students and the quality of students they train as I dive with them after on a semi regular basis.

2) treatment of individuals. Pretty simple new divers are just that treat them like **** and they will either leave the sport or leave the shop. This also backs up into 1 as well. paying 300-500 classes you would expect decent instruction. Hell I get almost the same range of insturction of about 15-1 in my 400 level university classes for the same cost. We can also go into the class treadmill. Pretty much a class for the 250 range. Atleast here. All in all totals for a lot of money. Up here you really need AOW at the min for alot of sites and really should have rescue, deep, and nav. Toss in nitrox for any of those 4-5 dive a day options...I think the picutre is pretty clear

I've seen these points as well. I got certified last September and after the class was over (what amounted to essentially 3 dives even though they called it 4) I sure as heck didn't feel ready to go dive somewhere without an instructor present. So honestly, out of the 13 students that were in my class how many are probably still active divers at this point? Fortunately my AOW was better, I had an instructor that though affiliated with my LDS doesn't work for them, he just instructs because he loves to dive. And as a result he's a good instructor (there were 5 people in my AOW class, only 3 of us passed, I definitely didn't feel like I just payed for a card in that class).

And as to treatment of individuals, I've noticed that beginners are often times regarded as annoyances. As an example, I know my buoyancy control is fair at best, but every instructor or DM I've asked about it pretty much just blows me off. I'm not asking for a free class or an hour's worth of instruction, but since there's plenty of "down time" on a boat trip between the ride out, the surface interval, and the ride back, would 5 minutes of discussion really be a killer?

Combine the above point and for me, right now, diving is more frustrating than it needs to be. I'd like to take some instruction in buoyancy control, but I'm also afraid the class will be just a pay-my-money-here's-my-card type class and I don't care to just waste my money on that.

 

[Doomnova]

I've seen these points as well. I got certified last September and after the class was over (what amounted to essentially 3 dives even though they called it 4) I sure as heck didn't feel ready to go dive somewhere without an instructor present. So honestly, out of the 13 students that were in my class how many are probably still active divers at this point? Fortunately my AOW was better, I had an instructor that though affiliated with my LDS doesn't work for them, he just instructs because he loves to dive. And as a result he's a good instructor (there were 5 people in my AOW class, only 3 of us passed, I definitely didn't feel like I just payed for a card in that class).

And as to treatment of individuals, I've noticed that beginners are often times regarded as annoyances. As an example, I know my buoyancy control is fair at best, but every instructor or DM I've asked about it pretty much just blows me off. I'm not asking for a free class or an hour's worth of instruction, but since there's plenty of "down time" on a boat trip between the ride out, the surface interval, and the ride back, would 5 minutes of discussion really be a killer?

Combine the above point and for me, right now, diving is more frustrating than it needs to be. I'd like to take some instruction in buoyancy control, but I'm also afraid the class will be just a pay-my-money-here's-my-card type class and I don't care to just waste my money on that.

Well if you were in the Victoria area I know someone I would point you too or I would play in the shallows to help you out. I took a PPB class to get mine sorted out which apparently is very good once we got a few of the minor points sorted out. But I took the class from a friend who I know does teach classes to her expectations which are much much higher than than those of the minimum requirements.

I also think one way to work on these issues is to up the min requirements if the classes are going to stay at the same price then roving people act as if they have no instruction and take classes from shops (especially those who are known to have quality issues). Who then evaluate instructors and DM's at said shops much like the dear delightful quality assurance programs I had to put up with retail industry. You never knew when a customer was a mystery shopper who was evaluating you. The idea is simple you have nothing to hide if you act as you should. Same thing applies to the professionals and shops.

 

[FM1520]

I think the dive club approach would be great!
I wish there were more of them in the US. I enjoy the social aspect of diving very much; dive clubs would be perfect for this.

I have found that GUE ends up being this way in many ways. A buddy and I are flying to New Zealand this year to meet up for a week of diving with some other GUE divers.

I also stay in touch with some other GUE divers, some in Japan, and one in the Middle East. I think this is one of the great things about diving. We sometime lose sight of the fact that we all doing something that is VERY cool, and we all have that common ground.
I think it would be great if there was more of that dive club environment in the US.

I think the avaliability of a reliable buddy is a big factor in diver retention - especially immediately following the initial training. If it weren't for my dive club, Power Scuba, here in San Diego I would not dive nearly as much and may even have drifted away in the first year.

---------- Post added January 2nd, 2014 at 11:57 PM ----------

I live in the heart of ski country. While conditions may vary, it's rarely so bad that you can't ski. You may find the snow is better on some days or another, but you will pretty much always be able to ski. I can only think of a handful of times that I canceled ski plans for weather, and every time it was because I didn't want to make the drive from my house under those conditions. If I had been staying at the slope, it would have been no problem.

Scuba is different. If you are planning a wreck dive from a boat and the wind is up, that boat isn't going out, and you are left sitting at home. As I said above, I was on the Alabama coast for an entire week last March, and there was no diving going on anywhere near there for that entire week. I go to south Florida every year for more than a month at a time, and there are many days when you can't dive at all, sometimes for 3-4 day stretches.

Good point but definitely location dependent. It's rare here in SoCal that you couldn't do a boat dive

 

[dmoore19]

Thanks for the correction.

Marketing is important in any business plan. How much and when is what changes. Poor marketing can do as much harm as great marketing. I will leave the expert stuff on that to people whose job it is to market.

The company I work for is marketing some new stuff. Marketing can give a company an identity, that identity can be hard to shake down the road.

I think that scuba could be marketed better. I think, as you pointed out, advertising might be an important part but it needs to be widespread. It is difficult to have a shotgun advertisement that reaches out to all demographics. In the case of scuba would you want to appeal to the younger section (who has no money) or the older folks who have the resources to make the trips, or both?

Fixed it for you.



And I purposely changed "advertising" to "marketing" because advertising is merely one marketing lever. (In fact, it's even a smaller subset of "promotion" which would many other things beyond advertising.) Sure advertising is often the most visible thing people see about a brand... but is not the only lever we pull, and it's never pulled in isolation. In fact, some of the most effective marketing strategies and campaigns I've seen DID NOTutilize adverting at all. Sometimes that's due to budget, but other times it's due to strategic reasons... where/when advertising just wouldn't make sense.

In fact, I'm pretty sure I would not recommend broad-based advertising to drive scuba diving. I cite lots of advertising examples because they are often most familiar to people. But in actuality I spend much of my time doing market research, working on pricing, determining channels of distribution, developing trade programs, retail merchandising, patent/intellectual property law, public policy, advocacy relations, PR, and myriad other things.

 

[RJP]

I also think one way to work on these issues is to up the min requirements if the classes are going to stay at the same price... then roving people act as if they have no instruction and take classes from shops to evaluate instructors and DM's

There appears to be universal agreement that OW training quality is too low... and that the cost of that training has been lowered to "loss leader" levels in order to attract more people. There is pretty wide agreement that this isn't working all that well from a training or a marketing standpoint.

And your solution is to say that the way to fix that is "if you are going to keep the price low, you need to increase the quality" effectively raising the barrier to entry for new divers. And further, to ensure that the quality is increased, you suggest that the industry build out a currently non-existent - and expensive - infrastructure?

The guys up in finance are gonna love you...

:d