Right Marketing Most Important

Written by Phil Lemler

The RIGHT marketing must be first

Marketing is by far the most important, and first, decision we must make for the future of our Village. The right marketing investment will create the leads/traffic flow and people coming to the Village to live here, now and for many years to come. Those people will buy houses, pay dues, provide revenue for our amenities and provide financial growth. The right marketing plan will provide the funds for new pools, culvert repairs and other investments HSV needs.

Our marketing is more important than anything else we do because without new residents and growth, we can’t fund our Village needs.

Marketing HSV starts with a good foundation

Creating a marketing plan for HSV is a lot like building a house. The foundation is extremely important because if the foundation is not level, or properly done, nothing else will be right…. crooked framing, sagging walls, roof problems, etc.

The very first building block of every marketing foundation is the “Product”.  In our case, what kind of Village are we? Who and how we will target prospective property owners? Trying to convince prospective property owners, and the market, we are an “active lifestyle community” for all ages is a gross misunderstanding of marketing.

Positioning HSV

Retirement community?

If we position ourselves as a “retirement” community, we will be competing with hundreds of other retirement communities/options throughout the U.S. This means that potential retirees will have hundreds of choices (other than HSV) to choose from. The more choices people have and the more competition there is … the more marketing dollars we have to spend to convince them we are the best choice. And, the law of averages suggests that the more competition we have, the less likely they will choose HSV.

Active lifestyle community?

If we position ourselves as an “active lifestyle community” for all ages, once again, people have hundreds of other options to consider. We are still a small fish in a big pond, with many choices for potential residents to consider, and we must spend more marketing money to stand out.

HSV active lifestyle retirement community

However, if we position ourselves as “an active lifestyle retirement community that has 9 championship golf courses”, we rise to the top of the options and have very little competition. This makes our marketing dollars stretch farther and we get more bang for our buck. Big fish in a small pond! We capture their attention with golf and then introduce them to all of our other wonderful benefits … lakes, trails, 26,000 acres, etc.

Since there are approximately 255,000 golfers who retire every year, we have a very large market to pursue. Marketing to any other segment, or target market, greatly dilutes the effectiveness of our marketing dollar. Only 60 new homes per year or 60 “explore the village” packages annually only demonstrates that we are confusing the marketplace. For almost 50 years, we have told the market one thing … and now we are telling them something different.

This all makes sense. It is the economic law of “supply and demand”. If you have a wheel barrow for sale and it is the only one available for miles, you will quickly sell that wheel barrow, at your asking price. If others are selling their wheel barrows, at the same time, you will have difficulty selling yours and most likely suffer a substantial price reduction if you can even sell it!

Great marketing focuses and defines target

Great marketing strategies attempt to make the target market as focused and definable as possible, not as wide as possible. It makes sense for the right target market to be the first block laid in our marketing strategy.

Phil Lemler, HSV Resident

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