How Not To Blow Your Marketing Budget
The SIMS Agency Inc has published an article on how to blow $100,000 on word of mouth advertising. The agency cites a local (South Carolina) example of money being spent unwisely, in their view, wining and dining German politicians.
“S.C. taxpayers will pick up the $100,000 tab for a group of German politicians to visit Grand Strand attractions and party at the Hilton Myrtle Beach Resort this fall.”
“When most Germans come to America, they visit places that are advertised over there, like Los Angeles or Florida,” Barfield said. “I’ve been going to Germany for many years, and I’ve never seen one advertisement for Myrtle Beach.”
Source: myrtlebeachonline.com
We’re not in a position to evaluate the benefits of this particular project, but we are delighted to see New Zealand and VisitAviemore.com (developed by us here at 4TM) are cited as the two examples of great practice in online Word of Mouth Marketing. The warm fuzzy glow may last us all day!
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Comments
I hope so… it’s wonderful to be connecting with real people / visitors / customers as opposed to placing an ad and hearing nothing. We’re doing a lot of work on tracking the success and connections made on the VA site. While I can’t give out numbers at this point, we’re really excited. Feedback from businesses is overwhelmingly positive.
No German politicians, though… 
Good luck and keep in touch.
Glad we were able to spread a little joy all the way to sunny Scotland!
I think we’re still in the very early days of web 2.0 marketing. Hopefully sites like VisitAviemore will help to show people how visitors can share their own experiences and make a much more compelling case than ad copy ever could. Nice work!