place which no-one else seems to know or visit, you will be able to persuade others to see the undiscovered attractions of the place and come to stay in your B & B. It seems plausible, after all:“ this place is so lovely, all I have to do is tell people- advertise it – and they will come, and fall in love with it as I did”.
NO! If this is what you are telling yourself, then the next sentence alone will be worth many times the price of this book. You cannot create a demand for an area on a B & B’ s marketing budget, you can only capture a share of the existing demand.
Think about it. Local and regional tourist offices spend millions of pounds over periods of many years to achieve a marginal increase in visitors. What chance have you got? The sort of budget needed to change people’ s travelling habits is way beyond what you could viably spend to promote your B & B.
This may seem depressing and defeatist. Nevertheless, it is true. You have been warned! Examining why this is true is worth a detour, as it provides a very fundamental lesson in marketing which may help you in planning to promote your B & B.
To reach the undecided and change their behaviour, you have to indulge in very expensive, mass-media, intrusive advertising. TV is the ultimate example. McDonald’ s and Coca-Cola put their branded ads on TV to make their brands enter the consciousness of viewers so that, next time those viewers want a burger or a soft drink, they are more likely to choose the heavily advertised brands rather than their competitors’. That kind of mainstream, high volume, high impact advertising – call it“ big” advertising for short – can change behaviour, and if you had McDonalds’ advertising budget you might have a chance of persuading people who have never heard of you or your area to book a holiday at your B & B.
If you haven’ t got McDonalds’ money, however, you can’ t do“ big” advertising. The good news is that“ small” advertising can be very effective – and for less than the price of one daily“ Big Mac”.“ Small” advertising does the opposite of“ big” – rather than put a new thought into people’ s minds, it tucks itself away waiting to be found by people who already know where they are going. An example: people wanting to buy a second-hand car will look in the used cars section of their local paper: placing a three or four line classified ad there will reach those self-selected readers. The ad will be read by far fewer people than see the colour Coca-Cola ad on the front cover, but almost all the 50,000 people who see the Coca-Cola ad will take no notice of it, whereas all the dozen or so people who do actually read the car ad will actually be in the market for a car. That’ s why they’ re looking there.
So the type of advertising we can do as B & B owners is limited to“ small” – but smart – advertising. Think through all the places where your potential clients will be looking to find somewhere to stay in your area, and try to get a cost-effective presence in the most promising of them. More on this later, in our chapter on marketing – Chapter Five.