Myrtle Beach South Carolina Marketing

Our Myrtle Beach Hotels Active Rain blog, earlier posted why we felt Hard Rock Park missed the mark.

Today, Sept. 3rd, our local paper The Sun News, has released news stating that the chief investor has completely written off his investment.

We laid out key reasons we felt the park failed. Feel free to read our blog on Hard Rock Park and give us your opinion.

You can do so by hitting the first Hard Rock Park Topic Cloud on your left.

Thanks,

David

Myrtle Beach Marketing

Some Myrtle Beach Hotels never saw it coming. Overnight, sites like Tripadvisor.com and, later, search engines including Yahoo and Google allowed customers to review each property online.

Those caught unaware, were exposed, unprepared, and now are having a hard time renting rooms at any rate: Some examples are here: Hotel One and Hotel two .

Others hotels were running a well oiled, customer oriented machine and got results like these: Great Reviews .

Search portals, like Google, Yahoo, and Myrtle-Beach.com are going to a Real Estate Agent customer review opportunity.

DO YOU THINK CUSTOMER REVIEWS ARE A POSITIVE OR NEGATIVE MOVE FOR MARKETING AN AGENT or AGENCY?

If you are a Myrtle Beach Real Estate Agent, we would like your input on the move made by Myrtle-Beach.com specifically.

Myrtle Beach Hotels Oceanfront were thrilled to hear that a well known national chain, like Hard Rock Cafe, had intentions of spending $450 million dollars to build a theme park in a central downtown location. Property managers, who rent Myrtle Beach Condos, ratcheted up annual expectations to homeowners for increased Summer returns. As of this writing in late August 2008, with just the Labor Day Summer weekend remaining, it is clear that the park has underperformed in its first Summer out of the box.

The Park opened to great fan fare with South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford appearing and a sold out Rock and Roll concert that featured the Eagles. Afterwards, attendance, which was budgeted at over 20,000 guests daily, rarely averaged over 5,000 visitors on its best days.

In this age of branding, marketing, and finding a customer niche, I think it is wise to reflect on how exactly a one half billion dollar expenditure in a prime tourist destination somehow failed to find an audience. Below are five reasons I believe the Park has yet to realize its potential. I would welcome any feedback.

1. Wrong Theme: Hard Rock Park, themed its concept on baby boomer era bands including Led Zeppelin and The Moody Blues. Baby Boomers no longer are the prime audience for thrill rides. Their children and grandchildren have no vested interest in bands from the late 60's or early 70's. The park would have been better off theming itself after Hannah Montana, Sponge Bob or the like. The kid appeal that came from the central theme of the park was very poor.
2. Too small of a foot print: The park bought a depressed location on the waterway where an outlet once stood. For the dollars spent in this area, Hard Rock Park could have placed the park at the split between highway 501 and the new Highway 22 expressway. Greater acreage at a cheaper price per acre would have created more park and rides. This would have more than made up for the travel time down an expressway with no traffic signals. The park now is just too small when compared to Kings Dominion, Six Flags, or Carowinds.
3. No property management or Hotel ownership: In my opinion, if you are going to spend $450 million in the local economy, buy an Oceanfront Hotel or get in the property management business. Hard Rock Park, at the onset, had no real partnerships or solid relationships with any area Myrtle Beach Oceanfront Hotels.
4. No prior experience: Hard Rock is primarily a cafe, hotel, and casino operation. The firm had no prior experience in the theme park business. A wise move would have been to pair up in partnership with a theme park operator like Six Flags. The idea that 13.4 million visitors come annually to Myrtle Beach, SC caused the park to believe prior experience was unneccessary. Perhaps that was brash thinking on the park's behalf. Rides, that were promised at the opening of the park, were either completely shut down or operating on and off. Much of the park was still unoperable and unavailable for visitors well into June 2008.
5. Some bad timing: While $4 gas can't be entirely blamed for the poor start of Hard Rock Theme Park, high gas prices did not help. Many tourists, who were strapped for vacation dollars this Summer, just did not find the park worth the $50 initial price tag per person in tight economic times. The park began discounting by mid Summer.

In summary, dollars invested will not create an audience if you have a poor themed message, a lack of customer focus, poor partnering, and minimal experience in your fundamental business model. Let's learn from the mistakes made by this giant as we navigate through our own Real Estate entities and Property management concerns.

What's your opinion? Do you think Hard Rock Park had a successful first Summer run?

Mark,

I think you have hit it in ON THE HEAD. Hard Rock Park bought billboards, radio, and TV in S.C. The park theme is built on Music Nostalgia.

Would it not have been better for today's younger (thrill seekers) under 35 if they had built?:

• Download Lane (Something thrill ride centered around downloading)
• Ipod Mania
• Rhapsody Row
• Utube video river

I know there are copyright issues and partnerships required here, but the theme did not meet the audience in my opinion, so no one even went.

They did exactly what you said. Customers went online and googled Hard RockPark Myrtle Beacch. Here are the reviews for you to see yourself. 53 reviews that run from yawn to needs improving.

Hard Rock Park should have hit social media, ipod users, and myspace and facebook much harder in my opinion. The rides should have been centered around concepts that are appealing to today's 17 year olds. I honestly feel they missed the mark. Read the customer reviews and give me your opinion.

Myrtle Beach Hotels, on average, spend up to and beyond $300,000.00 each on advertising annually. For a 240 unit condo hotel, this comes to about 4% to 6% of annual gross income.

As our firm is now helping Myrtle Beach Real Estate agents advertise their products, we are finding that some hotel marketing truths are transferable and some are not.

I am putting this information forward in the hopes that I can get some good feedback from high performing Realtors to determine if the media shift is universal. Here is what the Hotel industry has learned about where to invest their monies in this changing media age.

1. A uniquely designed, easy to navigate website: No matter how high your site ranks on search terms, it is critical that the site have good content and is easy to navigate. It should create Attention, build Interest, draw out desire, and have a call to action. These four navigational functions should be very easy for the visitor to follow. A good call to action for hotels is a strong online booking engine. What is a good call to action for a Real Estate website in your opinion?
2. Key Search Term Optimization: Google controls 54% of the market, Yahoo is 25%. The rest follow. Knowing the key search terms for your product is essential and ranking for them on page one or two (preferabbly one) is just as critical.
3. Social Networking sites: Not only will sites including: Active Rain, Pownce, Twitter, My Space, You Tube, Face Book, Delicious, among others get your site much needed optimization, but can result in direct customers when you post correctly. These sites have millions of visitors combined and are a good way to get your name out.
4. Strong recommendations on Peer Reviewed sites: For hotels, sites like Trip Advisor, Google Reviews, and Yahoo reviews can be life or death. Look carefully at the mistakes some hotels have made as customer reviews are coming your way via Google and Yahoo soon.
5. Referral Sites: Being on a good referral site, like Myrtle-Beach.com or Myrtlebeachhotelssc.com sends up to 25% of traffic to Myrtle Beach Hotels. Referral sites like expedia, Trip Advisor, Chamber of commerce sites, Hotels.com, travelocity and more are also important. It is best for a hotel to use a site that does not require it to discount its prices.
6. Direct Mail to a hotel's own internal customer list. This was once a number one source of business. A good internal customer list is still very important, but the fact that this now ranks #6 says a lot about where the internet has taken us.
7. Billboards: This can help hotels get much needed last minute traffic on busy interstates or major highways near the hotel. It is not as valuable as above, because it leads to last minute reservations and shorter stays. HOW DO BILLBOARDS WORK IN REAL ESTATE?
8. Trade Association materials: Myrtle Beach Hospitality does its own site, emailer and mailer as does Golf Holiday. These out perform any external associations, magazines, and newspapers. DO TRADE ASSOCIAIONS WORK IN REAL ESTATE?
9. Magazine ads; Publications like Southern Homes and Gardens, Golf Magazine, Golf Digest, Trip South, Conde Nast, and such were once a required expenditure. Most hotels are bypassing these all together. Only chain hotels are largely using these now and explicitly for branding, not for immediate sales.
10. Newspaper Ads: Hotels aren't even going here at all anymore. Is this still a strong product for REAL ESTATE LISTINGS. I know it once was.

Please respond below. I would appreciate any comments.

If you are in the Myrtle Beach area, and list Myrtle Beach Condos, let us know if we can help you promote your listings or service.

It happens everytime I meet as a consultant with a group of Myrtle Beach Hotels, who want to advertise on our various sites. They cosistently ask the same question. How do we stop these social networking sites, where customers are able to rate our properties? Can you help us with that?

This always leads me to my disertation on the new media versus the old media. I would like comments from readers on this page, Do you agree that traditional media is coming to an end?

OLD MASS MEDIA

The mass media period truly began with the introduction of the radio in the early 1930's and first started to diminish in 2004 with the advent of Social Networking and newer phone technologies. The mass media formula was about messaging and was a simple formula to follow. It involved FREQUENCY AND REACH. An advertiser came up with what was usually either a catchy or exagerated message about his product or service and then broadcasted that message to as many people as many times as he could.

Most advertisers and ad sales people are still living in the Old Mass Media era, even though the train has left the station for a new paradigm. This is one reason why our local Myrtle Beach Newspaper lost over $4 million last year.

The truth is, we all fear change and resist it.

NEW SOCIAL MEDIA, much like early America

The central reason, Myrtle Beach Hotels and Myrtle Beach Condo Rentals hate the new media is because it is so much like the pre-mass media era. Unfortunately, no one was around to remember what life was like before radio.

In early America, if a butcher in town put his thumb on the scale weighing the meat, everyone in town knew it. If a blacksmith did a shoddy job, the word got out. If your wife or husband slept around or was the town drunk, it was very hard to keep this information private. The new media is so much a cousin to early America that individuals, like Paris Hilton, and most advertisers, who have been hiding behind Mass Media are now finding their business practices exposed and are caught 100% off guard.

In the December 2007 Harvard Business review on media, the issue is clear. Consumers are becoming more and more in control of the process.

HOW DO I SUCCEED IN THE NEW SOCIAL AGE:

Our Myrtle-Beach.com city portal, which will be distributed to over 240,000 Horry County and Georgetown County locals beginning this Fall 2008, is going 100% to a star rated, customer reviewed website in late September. The ratings will look much like our current, Myrtle Beach Hotels, SC site here. Below are three reasons why we are doing this and why it will work for Real Estate Agents, Retail Stores, Hotels, Property managers, Restaurants, etc.

1. Consumers under the age of 35 do not trust mass media. They will trust a peer review over a message from an advertiser 10 times out of 10.
2. Iphones, Blackberries, and internet phones have limited screen space. A star rating system that is comprised from a compilation of consumer reviews gives a snapshot of how credible this advertiser operates.
3. Being known today is not so hard. How a business or agent is known is what is critical in the new Social paradigm.

HOW DO I MAKE THIS WORK FOR ME?

• Be honest in your dealings with every client
• Be open about your products and services (Don't exagerate)
• Be transparent in your operations. If something is currently down or not functioning properly, be the first to say so.
• If you are on a peer reviewed site, ask your new home buyers to rate your efforts on that site. Happy customer ratings will lead to more leads, listings, and sales.

THIS WILL BUILD TRUST IN THE NEW PARADIGM MARKET PLACE allowing you to excel where others flounder.

If you are a person of integrity, you should embrace this new paradigm. Over the next decade you can build a dynamic business. The way a business or agent conducts himself or herself is now a key component to marketing.

If you are in the Myrtle Beach area and want to learn more about marketing your agency or yourself, visit our Myrtle-Beach.com area portal.