HSV Marketing Seminar

Phil Lemler offers marketing seminar to HSV BOD & Management

Phil Lemler, a professional with 45 years plus of marketing experience, has offered a professional marketing seminar to the HSV Board of Directors and Management. He is donating his time and expertise and paying for the venue rental as a community service. Phil has great ideas. Below are the emails Phil shared regarding this situation. The first email explains what happened and the second is the email he sent to HSV BOD and management.

Phil Lemler’s letter to Villagers re: HSV POA marketing seminar

Dear Villagers:

Attached is an email I sent this morning to Lesley Nalley, HSV CEO and the other members of the POA Board.

The email is encouraging them to attend a seminar/workshop on marketing to be held at the Coronado Center on April 11^th. I am conducting this workshop … and have many times for many companies … and I am offering it for free! I have even paid for the rooms out my own pocket because I care about our Village and we need a new direction.

Newly-elected BOD members agree to attend HSV POA Marketing Seminar

The three (3) new board members, Tormey Campagna, Diana Podawiltz and Dick Garrison have all signified their intentions to participate. This is a good sign and encouraging to know that the new incoming directors understand a need for marketing and are willing to educate themselves for your benefit. I believe this is the attitude we should expect from our elected officials.

Encourage all BOD members & HSV POA management to attend

However, the remaining board members, including Ms. Nalley, have all indicated they will not attend. The email below states some of the reasons that their attendance might be beneficial for HSV.

I am hoping you can join me in encouraging the four sitting board members, and Ms. Nalley (or any others from the POA executive management team), to reconsider their participation. It is a two-hour investment of their time … what do they have to lose?

Sincerely,

Phil Lemler

Phil Lemler’s email to POA CEO & BOD encouraging their presence at HSV marketing seminar

Dear Lesley (and all POA Board Members):

Once again, I encourage you to attend the “marketing” workshop on April 11^th.

This seminar is not the presentation of a marketing plan nor promotional ideas for the Village. It is a workshop, designed specifically for you, to craft the first building block of a long term marketing strategy for HSV. It will show you exactly how major corporations go through the process of marketing planning and why the first building block is most important. These are not my ideas. These principles can be found within marketing textbooks in any college in America. This seminar provides the format for a plan.

HSV marketing strategy tools will be provided

Once the first building block is in place you can add your own blocks and ideas to complete the HSV marketing strategy. But, if you don’t get the first one (block) right, the whole plan will be challenged. This workshop will guide you through the start of this process. My goal is not to do it for you … it is to give you the tools to do it yourselves.

Focus on specific target market

In this workshop, you will learn why corporations with billions of dollars focus on a single target market. For example (one of many), Burger King’s target market is 18-35-year-old males. They won’t turn away an old guy like me but I am not who they select as a target market. They have found, as many companies have, that it is a more efficient use of marketing dollars to target them on a specific target market versus shotgunning the marketplace. This is important for you to learn because our marketing currently targets too many demographics. We target millennials … we target Gen Xers … we target retirees … we target active lifestyle residents of all ages … and we target golfers.  It is fine to have all of these target markets to come and live here but it is a huge mistake to target all of them. With our approach, the market becomes confused and our message becomes diluted.

Advertising is confusing and unfocused

And, with so many target markets our advertising/promotion is all over the board. Confusing ….. We place ads in retirement publications where we directly compete with hundreds of other options. Our advertising is confusing and unfocused. We still promote the CMP which tells our target audience we want to commercially develop the Village yet in other ads we suggest we are a retirement community with an easy lifestyle. We attend some golf shows but not others. Our social media program must be more productive and targeted. We are trying to talk to multiple audiences at once. BIG marketing mistake!

Make it easy for people to visit

Another learning lesson within the workshop is that we should make it easy for people to visit here. It is obvious and has been stated many times that once people get here they fall in love with the Village. So all of our marketing should be designed to get people to visit. It makes our selling job so much easier. Placing barriers that discourage visits, like the “explore the village” packages is counterproductive and flies in the face of general marketing theory. When they give out food samples at Costco, or you go to test drive a new Volvo, they don’t ask you to pay for it. Charging for visitation may garner a few revenue dollars in certain cases but it is likely preventing exponentially more people from coming in on a platform of “visit the village” for free and we’ll throw in a free round of golf. This is only common sense.

Right HSV marketing strategy can bring new roof tops

In this workshop, you will find out that the traffic fall off of visitors, residents and new property owners in 2007/2008 was not only from the recession (mostly not). Instead it was a naturally occurring phenomenon that all businesses face in their life cycles, we just failed as managers to identify it and make the appropriate adjustments. With the right marketing program, we can restore a high volume of annual new roof tops to HSV.

These are just a couple of examples of what you might learn at this workshop.

But, the real benefit for you and the POA board will be learning how to craft and position that first marketing building block. Get the first block right and all of your other marketing decisions become easier. The right first block is the right first step to creating a winning marketing strategy for HSV. And a winning marketing strategy will restore a consistent flow of new property owners to the Village today, and for years to come. It will provide the revenue to correct our maintenance deficits, eliminate the need to borrow money, stabilize our monthly assessments and improve our property values. Most importantly, a proper marketing strategy will help you answer difficult questions like should we invest in a pool, should we spend $100,000 on a RV park enhancement and other operational issues. It will no longer be “what do you think” … the marketing plan will tell you!

Villagers deserve and expect attendance at HSV marketing seminar

Remember this: marketing creates revenue … revenue solves many of our problems! We are suffering from a revenue perspective because our marketing plan is ineffective.

Lesley, you and the other board members have a fiduciary responsibility to educate yourself on issues and management decisions that affect the Village. This is a seminar/workshop that has been conducted many times for a variety of businesses, worldwide. Once again, it is not my ideas … it is settled marketing theory. It is unfair to HSV residents for you to refuse to attend this workshop because you don’t like me or because I have actively voiced my opinion about Village affairs. You must put emotion to the side and check your ego at the door.

I believe that the residents of Hot Springs Village deserve and expect you to attend this seminar/workshop.

So, once again, I respectfully ask for your attendance.

April 11^th – Thursday

6 PM to 8 PM

Coronado Center

Phil Lemler