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We have several profit centers to cater to a large spectrum of people. Our goal is to maximize
our property and welcome as many groups to consume the boating lifestyle. Therefore our
fishing boat rental customer is different from our wet slip customer which is different from our
dry-stack boater and is different from our boat club member.

We have created an avatar of the ideal customer in each profit center. This is a technique I
learned at ICON 2017. I came back from this conference on April 28, 2017. On April 29th I
sat down with two of our experienced crew members Luke and Luke; ages 17 and 22. I said,
“Who is the average customer for In/Out Service?” I also did this procedure with our Boat
Club. I used their feedback and targeted our Facebook Ads to the demographic within a 15
mile radius. For our In/Out Service I switched our photo from a photo of our forklift to a stock
st
photo of a wake boarder. Here’s the deal, I signed up 8 new wakeboard boats starting May 1 .
I consider that an overwhelming success since each space rented just under $8,000.
How do I know this worked?

Well… 8 new wake board boats owned by men ages 27 to 35, are now in our Dry Stack
Storage!

I had been hesitant to use stock imagery. Now I will use stock imagery with confidence
because I also used this technique with our boat club and received equally impressive results
understanding the avatar is either young males or families. Surprisingly, the stock imagery of
two pretty middle-twenties women relaxing on the bow of a boat, brought in families,
hummmm…. I can only imagine the conversation between husband and wife, I doubt the photo
I used to target the males was discussed (haha).

I’m also a big believer in direct mail.

I had the privilege of meeting Gary Vaynerchuk at a marketing conference in NYC. His mantra
is “market to the year you’re living in” – that means a 75 year old will not use Snap Chat in the
same manner a 15 year old will not see an ad in the newspaper. You must take your messaging
and gear it to the customer you are attracting. Never before in history have we been able to
dissect our consumers to this degree.

As such, I use all tools; direct mail, social media, telemarketing, email, advertising, and in-
person visits.

WHAT WE’VE STOPPED DOING: About three years ago I cut all yellow page advertising
(I should have done it sooner). I used to participate in cable TV advertising, but the funny thing
was, I placed an ad and, brace yourself, the reach wasn’t and still isn’t what they advertise.
How do I know? Well, ironically I have two TV’s in my basement. An old one (analog) at the
bar and a new one (digital) in the family area, both TV’s were on the same channel and our
commercial for pontoon rentals appeared, but only on one TV. ONLY ON THE ANALOG
TV! The cable company claimed to show our ad, which it did, but it did not run it on the digital
frequency. Essentially our ad was being shown on the non-decision maker televisions; kids
rooms, guest rooms, etc. I will never advertise on cable TV again.

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