TRANSCRIPT
Tele-Workshop: Assessing Your Marketing Plan

>>The materials that you were able to download for FTP type should have been included four things to our prior articles we wrote for Vistas, both--one in 2003 and one in 2004. First one is "Practical Marketing Plans for Byways", just the basics on how to develop a marketing plan. Again, from looking at this list, I believe most of you probably know those basics and could add to that list, if you'd like. Another one that we did in 2004 was "Evaluating and Updating Your Marketing Plan. And the intent of this Tele-Workshop is to, kind of, dig a little deeper into that subject and talk about how we evaluate marketing plan. And then, there were two other documents. One or two pages depending upon how your machine printed it, called "Assessing your Marketing Plan"--very basic. That's what we're going to follow today. It has a number of questions. And then another one, that's a tool, that's a tool that I've used in the past and it's one that will apply to what we're learning today and that you can use with your byway, as you'd like. So, did everybody have a chance to download those documents? 

>>Yes. 

>>Okay. I'll take silence to mean yes--and hi, Mike. 

>>Hi. Hi, Chel. 

>>Well, first of all, we won't go into detail on the two prior business articles, but I should talk a little bit about marketing plans. Has everybody on the line developed a marketing plan in the past or has their byway developed marketing plan? This time I'll take the silence as a "No." So, if you developed marketing plan, you better say yes.

>>Yes, the Talimena Scenic Drive Association.

>>Excellent! So, only one yes. Well, then maybe we'll reconsider. Let's back up and talk a little bit about marketing plans before we talk about assessing one. Marketing plans are really no different than any other type of plan, and we've all developed corridor management plan for a byway, we've all gone through strategic planning, and marketing is no different. You know, the act of marketing is you're trying to convince a segment of a population to do an action. In this case it usually has to do with some sort of financial commitment. You know, you want to come visit, then money, you want them to buy something, you want them to, you know, buy an advertisement to what have you.

>>So, marketing is about--it's your plan to convince that particular segment or population to do the action that you want them to do to get the results that you want. And much like corridor management planning, it starts with the goal in mind, and it should tie back to what your byway goals are, if you're a byway. Your group might sit down and say, you know, we want to increase visitorship at "blank" museum. And your whole plan is going to be the message that you grow about to increase that visitorship. And much like corridor management planning, the components are very similar. You assess the audience--well, first of all, you state your goal, you assess the audience, you identify what that market is, you identify realistically what you're trying to accomplish, and then you create a list of partners that can help you get that done, and then the methodology in the ways that you're going to get it done.

>>One of the spots that many people, when they're working in marketing plans, you respect of who they are--whether they're selling Maytag, whether they're a destination marketing organization, whether they're a byway group or anything else. One of the easiest spots to forget, and probably one of the biggest failures, is not identifying go or no go steps. And that's really what this workshop is about to day. It's evaluating and assessing your marketing plan. Because we've all seen, especially on TV, in fact, the auto industry is an excellent example right now where a tried and true method that works for years in which they invested a lot of money into is no longer working for them. We could all argue individually about whether we, you know, what we think politics had to do with that or anything else, but the bottom line is, the fact and the way that they were doing business is no longer yielding the same results that they needed to get. And when you get into trouble is when you continue to keep doing that kind of business.

>>And for us, in the byway world, if we've create a plan, and that plan is maybe two or three or four years old, that way of doing business may not be getting us the results that we need and we're wasting time, energy and money. And, of course, as many byway organizations know, those are very precious commodities that are hard to waste and we have too many other priorities on our plate to waste time, energy, and money.

>>So, it's really important when you create a marketing plan to identify, what I call, "Go"and "no-go" steps along the way. And that's the way to evaluate: Are we achieving the goal that we set out to achieve, have we spent too much money trying to achieve those goals, and do we need to be nimble and adjust the way we're going at it? And some of that, it's just checking in.

>>So, in reviewing the components again of a marketing plan before we talk about assessing them, you know, a basic component for marketing plan is an audience description. We identify the audience we're going after, your goal, what are trying to achieve, and again, you may have many goals, which means you're in many steps and many objectives, and then, a description of those specific objectives--detailed timelines, Go and no-go steps, and the descriptions of your tools and partners. That should be much like your corridor management plan. A document, it's alive and working document that you should carry to each of your meetings and you review every single time.

>>So, let's talk a little bit about assessing those plans. First of all, I want to hear from you. I did, when I asked if many of you created a marketing plan, I've heard form one of you that you've created a marketing plan. Has anybody else created marketing plan?

>>Well, there was the...

>>Plan River Valley. 

>>Yes?

>>Plan River Valley National Scenic Byway in North Dakota has on marketing plan. 

>>Okay. So, Mary Lee, you've got a marketing plan. Who else?

>>This is Christina Lilienthal from Oregon. 

>>Okay. 

>>And as part of the nomination to become a National Scenic Byway, we had to address marketing and our corridor management plan. And it's not a full blown marketing plan, but it discusses some of the main features, you know, that were to be implemented. 

>>Okay. Anybody else?

>>I was the one that checked in to start with Talimena Scenic Drive in Oklahoma. 

>>Uh-hmm. 

>>And we have a marketing plan. 

>>You've got a marketing plan? Okay. So, if I were to ask each of you, how old your marketing plan is, is it one year old, two years old, three years old? How old are your marketing plans?

>>Oklahoma, I created last year, so we're running up on possibly being near a year old. 

>>Okay. Christina? Come again?

>>Over five years. 

>>Five years? Okay. 

>>Same with us. 

>>Okay. Are there any reflections from anybody else about what do you think--before I say anything about age, has anybody have any reflections about you think age does to a marketing plan?

>>Oh, you need to revisit it after, even three years. And this age we're in now, it helps quickly things move. 

>>That's an excellent point. And I think, going back to the auto industry as an outside example, the one thing about marketing and again you're trying--the whole goal of marketing is you're trying to influence a particular demographic, a subset of society to do something that you want them to do to get a result that you want. Well, there're so many outside influences that play on to that particular demographic everyday that even having plan stagnant for six months, you could be wasting money. And that's not hard to do, and I'm not picking anybody who has had the plan sitting out there for a long time.  It's important to be working on the same goal all the way along.

>>So, I'm certainly not chastising anybody who has had plan sitting there for five, ten years. If you're clear about what goal you want, you may have revisit it that plan, which is what we're talking about today, and adjust the methodology. Figure out are you achieving it or are you achieving it with the best investment, the best cost and the best benefit possible.

>>So, you know, since this question is asked, and if you're looking at that sheet that has the basics, how old is your plan? No types put there. A good question to ask is what's the status of your plan? What is the usage of your plan? You know, get back together with your group and sit down and go, "Okay, we have this plan and it's a year and a half old, what's the status? Have we done anything with it? Maybe we have, maybe we haven't. What's the usage? Is it still usable? Are these methodologies still correct? Seven years we would not have identified as much web based marketing as we might now. It might be more cost effective to do web based marketing than it would be to do print advertising. Have we used it? Have we tried anything? And what's the relevance of our plan? Is that goal that we set forth when we're going through for a nomination still the same marketing?

>>Again, going back to what marketing is. Is it still the same goal that we're trying to achieve? If it is, great. If it's not, do we need to stop right here before we invest more time, energy and money, and figure out what we need to be doing? What's the substance of your plan? Some plans are pretty sketchy. Some have a lot detail--if you haven't revisited it or if you're not sure if you byway it as a plan. Next time you get together, let's take a look at that. Take a look at the substance. How much do you feel do you have now? Do you have a real good detailed timeline? And then, obviously, how much has been implemented? Those are important things to ask before you even move forward. So, number two, what was the plan desired, goals, and outcomes? So, I'm going to, just for fun, I'm going to pick on Christina, just because you had said you had a plan. Do you remember what the goal, you know, for the marketing plan? 

>>This is Barbara from Oklahoma. 

>>Go ahead, Barbara. 

>>And, well, we wanted to try that, you know, of course, setup more of a regional plan because we cover--our byway covers two states that we're working in a regional effort to try to touch, you know, basis in all the different areas, and we started with--trying to do a research, to start with, and see, you know, what's out there and how we could use it. And then, the second half of the plan was to implement, you know, what we found and then to measure what worth. 

>>What were you trying to achieve? What did you want the end goal to be? Do you remember?

>>Well, of course, the people that comes to the driving the byway is mostly tourists and visitors in the area. And we're trying to increase the number of people that visit this area. 

>>So, your goal will be to increase visitorship; you want increase the amount of numbers. And the reason I'm ask...

>>Definitely a Scenic Drive. 

>>Okay, correct. The reason I'm asking that question is that's fundamental. One is, you know, as we said, go back and look at your plan, how old is it, is it relevant, evaluate those things. The next thing is, what is the goal, and every marketing plan should have a very quantifiable goal in the end, because how will you know if you successfully achieve it and because marketing has a tendency to cost money, you should know what you're spending your money to try to achieve. So, if you haven't done that or if it's still sort of sketchy for each of you, as you look at the marketing plans that you've developed for are developing, make sure that you have a goal.

>>Now, I've been working with a lot of byways that may have four or five different marketing outcomes. That's all right. Each of those is going to have an individual plan and each of those will have the go-no-go steps--points in which they going to say, "Whoa, we're either achieving this or not." So, for each goal, you should have a plan, again, as I mentioned. And it doesn't mean that your marketing plans have to be 450 pages long. But I'm going to leap frog off what Barbara was saying there. You might have one of your goals in marketing is to increase drivership on the byway. Another goal is that you want to increase revenue at a museum and another one is increase exposure.

>>Well, you wouldn't use the same methodology to do all three of those things. So, they all require their own plan. They may not happen all at the same time, you might decide that it's important to increase the public awareness of your byway before you can increase and show an increase in the drivership. So, you would lay those out in a timeline.

>>The other thing to ask yourself is do you make adjustments, do you know when to stop working in a goal. Well, we're going to talk about that little bit more when we talk about indicators and measurement tools. But again, going back to spending money, that's probably the most fundamental thing we can repeat from today's session--is it important to evaluate when you're no longer having a good return on your investments? Do you involve your partners? Well, this is a standard byway piece, and I'm guessing if I ask, Alice, are you on the line today?

>>Yes, I am. 

>>Alice, do you involve your partners?

>>Yes.

>>Of course you do, and I'm guessing if I ask Fred or Katie or Julian, anybody else's on the line, that's something that we're really good at doing in the byway community. We tend to not have a lot of funds to work with, and marketing is no different. It's a tremendously expensive than sure to do a lot of things with marketing because, again, you're trying to influence a certain segment of the population to do something, and influencing people is not easy, so it's great to involve your partners, and there're a lot of partners available out there. Do you have a... Measure your progress. Go ahead. Any questions?

>>One of the things that I was just going to suggest is, because of the cost involve--there's a lot of marketing and stuff--one thing that we've been doing with a little bit of the see grant money that we got, were upgrading our website associated with the forest because we're, kind of, like the lead for our, for the Rogue-Umpqua National Scenic Byway and what we're going to do is deliberately work with some of our partners and see what we can do about doing better linkage among the partners, so that when people are looking into Scenic Byway information, they can go from one agency or organization to another easier, and it'll just be more efficient that way. 

>>That makes a lot of sense. That's a great idea. And that's a great tool for somebody to consider using. I like that. 

>>And, of course, the website is only one of several different strategic ways to, you know, that we're working on marketing. But we have all that identified in our corridor management plan, and it's just a matter of keeping, you know, going back and updating it periodically and making sure we're on track.

>>Good point. Thank you, Christina. Well, that, sort of, link since this next one, which is, "Do you method to measure your progress?" You know, again--and I'm probably telling you like a broken record--it's important to measure your progress so you know if you're achieving your goal and if you were making wide use of your time, energy, and resources. But, it's also important to have a method to measure your progress, because when you are being successful, that's how you reward your partners.

>>If you are starting to achieve the goal of your, for instance, if one of the goals was to increase visitorship at a particular museum, you're seeing that there is an increase starting, hey, you use that web component, that Christina has talked about, and you say, "You know what, we're starting to achieve this goal. We're seeing blank amount of increase, 15% increase." That makes other people happy, they're more likely to help contribute to your cost, they might help funds to some of the future projects, and it tells your partners that things are happening. There's nothing worst than getting to the end of a three year progress or project maybe to a large marketing project and saying to the partners who invested their time and energy with you, "Oops, we didn't quite reached the goal." Well, they're probably not going to work with you next time. So, it's wonderful once you go along and especially if you can identify these steps and these points every quarter every month. If you can say, "You know what, we're achieving our goals. I think it looks really good." Or even better if you can say, "You know what, we're achieving our goal but we're going to have change because we feel that there's another way to do this more efficiently. They'll be real happy to continue to work with you.

>>And then, lastly, do you know when you have achieved your goal? That goes right back to point number two: What are the plan, desired goal, and outcome? You have to identify exactly what you want to accomplish in order for you to know when you've achieved it. And a lot of plans that are created--a lot of plans that are created, whether they're marketing plans or one of the points in which we can run into troubles when we don't clearly identify what the goal and the outcome is, because how can you know when it stops working if you don't know when you've achieved it. So, with marketing plans, it's really, really important.

>>Now, there are couple ways to gauge where you are in a plan, as a waiting indicates success or failure. And then I go back to that go-no-go point, and they're called indicators. And I've listed a few examples of indicators. We're going to talk about those a little bit here because this is really gets down to the fundamentals of how you're going to do some assessment. So, what is an indicator? Anybody want to take a crack at what the definition of an indicator is? Anyone?

>>Maybe it's a cue to let you know that change have occurred, positive or negative. 

>>Exactly. Thank you, Christina. You know, it's no different than in any form business, biology, you name it. I learned about indicators when I was a biology student, and I was shocked when it came in to the business world. But that's exactly what it is. It's a clue that tells you that change is happening. And when we talked about measurement or evaluation or anything else, even in education, we have indicators, and that's what tells us when change is happening, and it has to be quantifiable. And that's kind of a tough part, but it's got to be quantifiable. You got to be able to measure it, and typically in marketing.

>>And there are many others--and if I missed some, I'd love to hear from you--but typically, marketing, the most common ones that you would use as an indicator is dollars spent. Well, you can quantify that. How much money have you spent to do something? Dollars receipt. How much money has come in? If you're selling a Maytag, you can tell how much money has come in. That's very measurable. It doesn't necessarily say success or failure, but it's an indicator of action. Number of visits, you can measure that. That's easy. You can have a ticket taker at the door, you can sell tickets, you can see receipts, but you can clearly have an indicator of visits.

>>Value added products are results. All of you have seen those. You open up a magazine, it's called a drop card, you know, it's that goofy little postcard looking thing that plops down on your lap and it's for whatever it is for. Well, they're trying to get you to call in or log-in or do what have you. The indicator there isn't the goofy card. The indicator is how many times somebody has logged in to the website or done whatever action that little thing wants you to do. They can indicate, "Oh! We have action now." So, again, in marketing... Yes, go ahead. 

>>Would you include visitor satisfaction then as an indicator?

>>I would include visitor satisfaction as a measurement tool. And that's a good question. In less, again, because indicators is going to be something that's very, very quantifiable--and I see where you're going because you can evaluate, you can survey on visitors' satisfaction, but you want to be able, I guess, I would look at the indicator as how many surveys have been turned in, and then the measurable part would be the satisfaction. Go ahead. 

>>You could also measure, you know, say, the number of complaints you've received. 

>>You put...

>>You know, as a, you know, some sort of level of service that you're providing. 

>>Yes, you could. Well, indicators are tied to measurement. I mean, measurement is vital to providing the worst or outcome of your goal. Well, indicators, as you exactly stated, it indicates changing the case action. So, they're very tied in some ways. It's because of the little bit of a gray line. And the reason I separated them here is, I think, a lot of people when they get into, sort of, that evaluative point where they're saying, "I'm assessing my marketing plan," they forget that they are a quantifiable piece, and that's where the indicator is needed--how many, how much money is going out the door, how much money's coming in the door, how many people have gone through the ticket taker line, how many responses have we gotten. And then the next step is to come up with a measurement tool to determine are you achieving it. So, does that make sense to everybody, the indication...?

>>Totally. 

>>It does?

>>Totally, it does. 

>>Okay, all right. It's hard to do this on the telephone. 

>>I know. 

>>All right. So, the next thing is, obviously, there's indicators, and the next thing that we do is we talk about measurement tools. And these should correspond to what you're desired going out somewhere, and you're not going to use the same ones all the time. We're going to go through a little skill builder here where I'm going to have you guess what kind of measurement tool you might use, but common ones would--and this goes back to what Christina was saying--hitch requests your call. That's a customer actively contacting and accessing his information. So, you're going to say I want to, it will be tied to a goal; for instance, we want to increase public awareness on XYZ Byway. Well, one way you might measure that is how many times somebody has accessed the website or request some information, right? 

>>Uh-huh. 

>>Another measurement tool is return on investment. And that's that combination of evaluation or how many dollars have been spent compared to results. The indicator is that you're spending money and that you're receiving money. Now, the measurement and evaluation is, "Are you breaking even?" Right? You might to increase a certain amount or get a profit.

>>Another measurement tool is survey. And we've all been through those, you know, you can survey people of their satisfaction level, you could survey somebody for whether or not they enjoyed it, you can survey somebody for whether or not they would comeback again. There're a lot of different surveys out there, methods for doing surveys, but it is a good quantifiable tool for you. They take a little bit longer to get the results, where hitch requests some calls, or right now, you can have a deaf person measure that every month and give you, you know, here's where we're at. Return of investment is very--it requires a little bit a math and a little bit of accounting know-how. However, you can do that in health surveys. You're probably best to find somebody understands how to create a survey and get the right answers that you need or you invest in.

>>Another one that is commonly talked about in marketing plan is economic impact. And you can see here that I have a notation that that's difficult to measure and isolate. It's not impossible. But economic impact, the one caution that I have there is, I think, because most us when we talk about marketing, we're usually, also engaging in a world of economic development and, sort of, everything that we feel goes in to destination marketing. Economic impact is very expensive, it's very difficult to measure, and it's very to isolate it, especially as it relates to a specific marketing goal. It doesn't mean it hasn't been done, but it's one that I would reserve for very large marketing campaign, because the amount of money that you're going to spend to get that final number probably outweighs what you're accomplishing in the beginning. Does anybody have any comments on that? 

>>I think you're right on. Oklahoma, Barbara. 

>>Okay. 

>>The things that have been done by other organization and tourism and arts organization that taught to this specific traffic and how many people might come in to an area for the various things, and there are, you know, good things to use and, you know, trying to rise up or approve some point, but very difficult to patch your goals and measure. 

>>Yeah, and the other thing about economic impact is when you are measuring that that tends to be a very long term measurement. And most of our market goals--again, as we've said in the beginning--they tend to be more short term. You know, you're working on and being nimble and you maybe turning something in a year, a year and a half, or even six months, and often times, you're not going to get this measurement answer when it comes to economic impact and that sort of timeframe. It may suffice for a larger regional goal, but when you're talking short quick plans, it's probably not practical, where when you talk about hitch requests and calls, or return on investment, those are going to be more immediate. You can use those. If you can pull them up monthly, you can see them. Now, are there any other measurement tools that any of you have used that I haven't put down here before we get to some scenario? 

>>We've got accessed again here in Oklahoma as a car count that the force service status and just to give us--I mean, on a traffic coming through an area. Not only re-lights to go and try to pull some information from other research on what is projected--that tourists have been when they actually do come to the area. 

>>So, in this case, car count is probably a little bit more like an indicator. You're counting a number but they're--are they, in the end, trying to measure an increase in traffic or an increase in spending?

>>Well, you can, you know, tie in to the spending if you use the information from the other research.   
          
Okay. So, they're going to use...

>>You know, it's not directly. It's just the number of cars that come over at the highway. 

>>In that case, they're using an indicator applying a multiplier which would be the economic impact model in getting a measurement result. 

>>Exactly. 

>>Okay. 

>>So, you said car counter?

>>Yes. 

>>Yeah...

>>This is drive over?

>>Department of Transportation, it does them too.

>>Yeah. 

>>You know, just the academic cars or treads coming over the roads. 

>>And that's sort of like the ticket taker on the museum. 

>>Right. 

>>The little, the "swirly" gate that you pass through. That clicks every time somebody goes over like a web counter. You know, the same thing here. Your indicator, there's a certain quantifiable amount of pass-through.

>>Yep, cross reference, you know, where you're trying to get to, you know, your point. That's difficult. 

>>All right. Well, in--I'm sorry, go ahead. 

>>Well, there was just one other thing that kind of falls on the surveys that we've been working with a couple of professors from the Pennsylvania State University and Virginia State University. And they were doing these visitor preference surveys and they conducted it for the Scenic Byway last year. And, they asked a whole number of questions dealing with visitor satisfaction and, kind of, where they're coming from and all that kind of stuff and it falls into the survey situation. I think, I think it does, even though it's conducted by, you know, academia. It wasn't something that we did. I mean, it was something--they actually wrote up the survey to make sure it was done properly and then they compiled all the results and analyzed it for us, and it's not of a specific campaign or anything like that. It's just more general feedback from users who drive the byway. 

>>Well, I mean in, you know, for surveys that are happening, and again somebody's are hard to do. We, in fact, here, we don't design our own surveys. We actually have an outside company that does them, for good reason. To be done well, they are difficult to produce. But surveys are very informative in a lot of ways and if you're cross tabulating like you said, that can fall into your measurement tool and it maybe that your goal was to do ABC or D and you can see that customer satisfaction is increasing and that--therefore goes into your goal. Let's talk about some scenarios, and I put together a series of eight goal statements and I'm curious for the groups. This is, like I said, this can be conversational, a bit a little more interactive. If you were to look back at the measurement tools we talked about, the things we've discussed, how you would measure any of the following goal statements?

>>So, let's roll out one and let you answer it. So, the goal for this byway, byway B, the goal for the winter marketing campaign is to increase ski lift revenue by $300,000. How would you measure that if that was your marketing plan? 

>>You want to start with your indicators, like dollars, you know, what you've received.

>>There you go. That's one way. Yeah, go ahead.

>>But it doesn't have a timeframe. Increase it by 100,000 by when?

>>Good question. Yeah, so there's something missing here. So, you would want to say in the--let's just pretend--we'd say it would be in the 2008-2009 season. So, now, you have a one season winter. Yep, correct. You want me to identify timeframe and then you'd use the indicator. Somebody said about dollars receipt. Is there another way you would--anybody else how you would measure that? 

>>You could do by the number of visits, because each visit has a certain dollar value associated with it, and, you know, you might have a different--what, you know, you might have a sales outlet that, you know, is a part of that visitor cost and you want to focus here on the ski lift revenue only. So, you know, there might be some strategic things that you do specific as a ski lift that, you know, might give some people a break for bringing their friends who pays full price. I mean, who knows. I mean, it could be a whole number of things, but I just somehow think the visits would tie in with the dollars receipt.

>>Okay. That is a great point. In there, you would be, sort of, applying a math multiplier or a math equivalency. That's an excellent way to measure it. Anybody else before I go to the next one?

>>If you're simply looking at the goal of increasing the revenue by a certain amount, you just look at the revenue of the year before and then take the revenue for your year that you've got the goal for and see if you've measured goal or not--is that the goal? 

>>Okay.

>>But if you just have a goal to increase it, you have to have actions identified that make a difference so that you can increase it. You can't just expect it to happen. 

>>Well, that would be part of your plan and that--I'm glad you said that Christina--because part of the marketing plan, if that was your goal, then the job of the marketing plan would be to say how we're going to identify a lot of ways that we're going get there. But the measurement tool, when you go back--the byway group gets together, let's say in January--and they want to say, "Are we getting there, have we spent--we did whatever it is, whatever our plan is, all our fun little ideas, we're going to look back at our revenue receipts and we're going to look at the amount of people coming through the door, are we achieving it?" And if loom beholds, we're not achieving it, boy, we better stop spending our money or we'd better find another methodology, because we're better to find it out January instead of finding it out on April. Right? Let's go to the next one.

>>We might just increase the ski lift tickets. You know, it could be that simple.

>>Yep! Let's go to the next one. Next one is a little bit different. So, for this byway, we're going to say--we've got a time, we're a time specific--this summer, Kalamazoo--I hope everybody's been to Kalamazoo Michigan, its great place--this summer, Kalamazoo will make outside magazine's top ten list. There's a marketing goal for you. How would you go about measuring that? 

>>That makes it or not.

>>Simple.

>>Well, you have to know what the criterion is to be in the top ten, first, so that you know that you're, you know, meeting those criteria.

>>And what do you want to know where you were, to begin with? How far off or you in hundred and nine or where?

>>Okay. I thought to figure out how you are going to get that point you need to know that, but to measure it, you simply need to look if you were in the top ten or not to see if you're there.

>>Excellent! Yep. The reason I brought this one in here, it seems pretty simple and it is pretty simple, but again, you know, these plans are just like any other plan. You've got to come up with a quantifiable goal. You got to know when you've reached it, that the getting there is a part of the plan part. But, you know, there was somebody in there who said you got to know where you started and what the criteria is. Again, mid plan, you may look at that criteria, that part of the planning process and say, "Whoa, we're not going to hit it. We're off on five of these things. You know, let's stop the campaign then." Or, you know, "We get them all. Rock on!" And then in the end, you're going to say do we hit it, or didn't we hit it. Pretty simple. Here's Number 3. For Byway XYZ, the attractions along the byway will see a 40% increase in number of visits. How would you measure that?

>>About the only way you could really truly measure it, is of each one of those attractions you were talking about, actually you could only get to the attraction if you had a ticket.

>>Okay.

>>If it was something like that you could just walk in or you didn't necessarily need a ticket, or something to measure it, it would be pretty hard to do.

>>So, the indicator there is going to be numbers of tickets or some measurements, someway to indicate the ticket taker get in to the door?

>>Yeah.

>>But how would you measure whether or not they achieved 40% increase?

>>Well, if you have like campgrounds along a byway, you have campground revenues, so you can check those receipts and prorate it back to, you know, how much a cost per, you know, camper, and that will tell you whether or not you did increase.

>>Well, you should you almost have to know what you did the year before, I mean...

>>Right.

>>It's almost a two year project in a way at least, unless you've been keeping track.

>>So, in the end there's going to have to be some, sort of, quantifiable data that says what you've started with and whether or not it was increased. The measurement, if the goal on this case is that they'll see of the 40% increase, you measure your success on was it 40 or more. If it was under 40 it may have not been successful. Okay.

>>I have a question for you. Could it be as informal as working with your partners and recreation providers along the scenic byway to have them observe and just kind of keep track records of increases in number of visitors and types of visitors and stuff like that? I mean...

>>It depends on what your goal is. It all goes back to the goal. If the goal is increased visitorship, then you need to have some sort of an indicator to indicate the change and a measurement tool. And a measurement tool might be somebody observing and applying a multiplier, if you can't be there to get ticket takers all the time, which isn't--it's not applicable to everywhere. But you do need to have something in the end that you can say, "Yes, we have achieved or not achieved." Does that make some sense?

>>Uh-huh.

>>Well, here's a good one that I'll throw out, and I've seen this, and in fact, I was involved, not in a byway organization, but on different organization, and this was one of our goal. We printed a hundred and fifty wrap cards and we want them all gone. That was our marketing goal. Okay, anybody any accountancies about that?

>>Could you repeat it again?

>>We printed a hundred and fifty wrap cards and we'd like them to be all gone. 

>>We can relate.

>>Well, it depends on how they got gone. Somebody could have just dumped them in the garbage can or actually distributed them to people.

>>Does it sound like a goal statement?

>>No.

>>No. But oftentimes that's what we get. We kind of do, especially in marketing, it's like, "Oh, we got all these money. We printed these brochures and our whole goal is up. The brochures are gone". We can't really measure that. You just wasted a bunch of money. You haven't measured anything. You haven't yielded any change, you haven't convinced the demographic to do something, which is what marketing is all about, and you have no way to measure. Aside from the fact that their gone, but you don't know where they went and where they are. So that's something that happens a lot, as we kind of come up with these nebulous statements: "Oh, we printed a hundred and fifty of these. That's great!" All right, here's a loaded one, but this comes up a lot. For Byway X, we will make a measurable impact on our community. That's their goal statement.

>>What kind of measurable impact?

>>Okay, anybody else? 

>>The timeframe again.

>>Glad to see you all learning.

>>That's too open-ended. You could make a bad impact. You could make it--what kind of impact are you talking about?

>>Uh-huh. 

>>Good point. And again, this is something that comes up often. It goes back to the--when you start with your marketing plan, it's that very quantifiable goal. You know, we go back to that first one I threw out, the goal about the winter marketing campaign, and Christina said, "Well, what timeframe?" It needs to be pretty tight, you know. For our byway, we want to increase the number of hits on our website by 30% in the fourth quarter. You're going to know if you hit it or didn't hit it, and you're going to know whether you spent them--correct them on money, time, and energy to get there. Okay? Any other comments before we move on? All right. Now, let's take a look at the tool. There's a sheet that has a spreadsheet that says "Assessing Your Marketing Plan Tool." And this is a tool that I modified that we used in a destination marketing organization. You can modify at anyway you need, but basically, this is something you can use at every meeting, and you should be looking--when you go to a byway meeting, whether it's monthly or quarterly, you should be pulling up a full--you know, your CMP, your strategic plan, and your marketing plans, and interpretive plans, and check it in, right? That's pretty common--where are we at?

>>Well, this is something you can use when you're doing it. But let's just sort of modify. We're going to create--we're going to get pictures, I got to clip some papers around. If I already use this sheet--let's use the ski lift revenue example. So, our goal and again, you can modify this as you need, our goal is that we're going to increase ski lift revenue by 300,000 in the 2008-2009 season, right? And part of the marketing plan was that we were going to have a print web and radio ad campaign. You know, we decided that early on, we were doing the campaign, we are going to need to spend 80,000 dollars to do that, and we are going to have a PR campaign and spend 5,000 bucks, right? So, our estimated cost is going to be about 85,000, right? And we're increasing our revenue from blank. So, you would write that in there, and again this is a working document. About a quarter, you know, maybe 2 months into it, we're going to sit down and see where we're at. Well, our actual cost-to-date, the cost of advertising went up, somebody made a mistake with the plan of, you know, who knows. It could be positive or negative. Let's pretend it's negative, just for fun. The actual cost increased by $20,000. Somebody bought the wrong package, I don't know. So, now, you have an increase in cost of $20,000. Instead of costing you $85,000, it has now cost us $105,000. Our estimated completion date--well, obviously, this is running for the ski season--we're talking about October to May. Actual completion date, probably in here, isn't going to change a lot.

>>Here is what we talked about earlier. That's when we talked about what we might use as an indicator. A variety of you threw out some of those. It might be the number of lift tickets sold, number of visits. So, you would have identified that in advance. 

>>And now, here we are on January, we're meeting and we want to say, "Okay, guys, where at we at? How many lift tickets have we sold? How many visits have we made? How much money is pumped through the door?" And it doesn't to have to be one single indicator. But, again, those indicators are got to be quantifiable. It's data. It's really what it is. It's data. And why it's important to check in, as you can see here, if we're measuring this for the ski season and now we're in January, we want to know. I want to know how much money has come in, how many tickets are sold. I want to find out all those ways that we're indicating that we're getting some change. And we've also--when we came up with the plan, which we probably came up with the year before, because rarely we could come up with a plan 2 months, you know, right at the moment.

>>We were also, at that point, did what we did earlier. We identified what kind of measurement tool we're going to use to determine our... And it might be a turn on investment, or it might be--our measurement tool might be something else. In this case, it's going to be return on investment or spending money. We want to make money, right? So, we're going to say sales versus cost. Well, at this point in time, depending upon how our lift ticket sales have gone, the lift ticket sales have gone wonderfully and we are all ready 40% up on what we've been doing. Our increase in cost probably is all right. It means our return on investment is still doing pretty good. It was okay.

>>Sharon? I have a question for you. When you speak of return on investment, is there a certain ratio or a maximum amount you want to spend for a certain amount of return?

>>Oh, that's such a great question that I wish I had an answer for you. I really don't. I've seen different models out there depending upon the industry, and I don't have a good answer for you on that. I can do a little bit of research and send it to the group. 

>>I'm just thinking, you know, you typically would want to double your money as a minimum, wouldn't you or...?

>>It goes back to your goal, really. 

>>Uh-huh.

>>You know, break even return on investment, you're usually not getting a change, you know, the whole reason for doing something of change, right?

>>Yeah.

>>Yeah.

>>So, if you break even, you spend 50 you get 50, you're not really getting change. You're maintaining status quo. And that might be a red flag to your group that, you know, boy, we have to spend a lot of money just to maintain status quo, or something's wrong. Two to one is pretty good. You know, I'll do a little bit of research. Does anybody else have any comments on that?

>>I just don't--I have nose from other research that they put, like 5% into your PR efforts in an organization and, you know, some housing industries, they won't do it any less than 10, and, you know, they want 10% return or they wouldn't talk about it even--an apartment. So, it is really, like you said, it ranges round.

>>I would really--probably in the case, especially for byways, go back and focus on, you know, again, go back to that original goal statement you had--you know, what are you trying to achieve? And I think that I would let that be your guide on return on investment. For instance, if you're just trying to maintain a public appearance because maybe you have to bid for grants etcetera, etcetera, you may not need more than a break even. You may have to spend money to get to that point, but you don't really need much more than a break even, whereas if you're are really ramping for something and you don't have a lot of time, energy or money, you're going to need to figure out a methodology that gives you the highest return on investment. You know, make the most efficient use of what you have to get the best fact. So, I think it's really dependent on your original goal. 

>>You know, I think this is a really valuable discussion, because in these economic times, we're going to have really strategic, you know, almost kind of go into a maintenance frame of mind here to get us through the next couple of years during this real bad economic downturn and, you know, dropping land values and home values.

>>That's the point. 

>>Uh-huh. 

>>Well, I'm glad that you mention the--that part of it is because if you are in a very bad economic situation, well, such as Michigan is, actually keeping even with last year's, the previous years' is actually a good thing.

>>Yeah.

>>In a way. I mean, at least you're not--you're keeping your head above water, your--you know, you're staying above, but everything else going down.

>>You're kind of like a maintenance strategy through the bad times.

>>Yeah, exactly!

>>You can still be there when things get better.

>>Yeah, if we're holding our own now, what can we do when it actually turns around, hey, you know.

>>Yeah.

>>And the important part of that is, I think, especially for a lot of groups, if you don't have this discussion like we're having right now and evaluate your plans, you can see where you can dump a lot of money, time, and energy into things and not be getting anywhere. I mean, think of how many groups we're all involved in that produce a little brochure or, you know, we have like a bake sale or whatever, doesn't matter how big or small. It could be a $150,000 campaign down into a bake sale. If you're not measuring that return on investment and how are we achieving the results that we want before we get into the end, we don't--right now, with our economic times--we really don't have--can't afford to waste our volunteer time, waste our precious resources. So, it's really--it's an important thing to do is go back and say, "Whoa, you know, where are we at? Do we really need to print 500,000 brochures? Does that going to get us that many more visitors? Maybe brochure isn't going to get us to visitors that we think we want. Or, do we really need to have that big gala event? Does that going to increase our political stand in the community?" 

>>Whatever it is, and if you are going to proceed with those then you need to use a tool like this and sit down monthly or, at the least, quarterly and say, "How much do we spent in time, energy and money? And you can see volunteers, staff hours, and here are partners are also listed in here, and that is a commodity. 

>>You know, you can only use your volunteer so much and you can only use your partner so much. They need to also say, you know, how many hours do we spend on them? Have we used them and are we getting to our end result? And if were not, have the guts to say, "Whoa, we better be nimble and pull back. And maybe we need to re-strategize." Because plans are only plans. They're just dynamic. They're dynamic, and their meant to be change. And if you are achieving the goals then you go yahoo and you move forward and you let everybody know about it. 

>>You know, I'm thinking, as you're talking here, it does make a lot of sense, you know, during a time, you know, when people just aren't--they don't have the capability that they may have had, you know, just a few years ago and we'll have again in the future. But now is a wonderful time to be doing all these planning and self development within your organization and base building up people's education levels and their knowledge about marketing and stuff to do a lot of internal building so that later on you can spend money to do more outreach, you know, and make it more effective.

>>Excellent point. Now is a great time to do a lot of that base building and...

>>Yeah.

>>You know, because it all builds on each other, and, I think, as we talked about earlier, your byways probably is going to have multiple marketing goal, and some of them will require action now and before you spent a whole bunch of money and get to the bigger one.

>>Uh-huh.

>>Well, does anybody else have any comments or questions? I went through that tool pretty quickly, but I suspect that everybody seemed to understand it. 

>>I just have a question on the concept of marketing in a more general way.

>>Yes.

>>When I think marketing, you know, and I talk to people about it, a lot of people think it is publicity and promotion. Now, when I talk to other people they think it is more research and identifying who your customer is and what they want and filling the niche type of a thing. And so, I'm a little confused as to how we are using marketing in the byway.

>>You know that's a great question. And the way I define it is, marketing is about influencing a specific audience to act. That's what it is really. The methodology to get there is, you know, there's a gazillion ways to do it. And that's the wrap cards or the advertising or the public relations or the promotions. They're all sorts of gimmicks to get it in audience to do something that you want them to do. There's a certain amount of research that goes into targeting and identifying that audience. That's the market research. That's where you say to yourself, you know, what can I--what audience is receptive to these things, what makes them tick, you know, who buys the Maytag and why? 

>>Uh-huh.

>>But the act of marketing is about influencing that specific audience to do something you want.

>>Uh-huh.

>>So, when you set a goal, you're going to say I want that group of people to buy more or whatever. I want that group of people to feel better about my place, I want that group of people to get more lift tickets, you know, whatever is going to be. Then you go through the research, what makes him tick, how I am going to get them to do that, you know, because now I know a little bit about them, they like teddy bears or they like blue skies or, you know, whatever it is. And then, now I'm going to apply the methodology to get there because they like teddy bears and they're going to throw a bunch of teddy bears out in front of them so that they feel all warm and fuzzy and they are receptive to my product. Does that make some sense?

>>Uh-huh.

>>And you're right. A lot of people don't understand the difference of it. When you say marketing, people think PR, some people think advertising. Those are all just methods. There are methods to get in to that specific demographic. 

>>Uh-huh. Then the bottom line...

>>From the piggy back from what you're saying on that is just you can't go after the whole world, you know, for you have to be more specific on what you are trying to accomplish. 

>>That's a great point.

>>Exactly! If we're never--none of us are going to be able to get an appeal to absolutely everybody, so the more you--that's kind of like a shotgun approach, just throw up advertising to everybody. But if you do good market research then you're, kind of, on a kind of a rifle approach, you know. You're shooting after that specific group. So, the market research...

>>So, we want the any Oakley plan.

>>Yeah. Exactly.

>>In a goal structure, again if you're assessing your marketing plan, if you have a good assessment plan down, you know, you're utilizing this tool, you really couldn't do the shotgun approach, then you would realize you were blowing money out the door.

>>Yes, exactly.

>>Yeah. You'd say, "Whoa, there's no way we can evaluate this or measure."

>>But if you don't do good market research you maybe trying to go after a group of people that never in a million years or without a huge hank of money would come to your, you know, what would appeal to your byways. So, a lot of that research will tell you which the best groups are for you and a way to go after.

>>Yeah, that's correct. And that could be at the whole Tele-Workshop itself.

>>I have another question then. If really the bottom line is kind of return on investment, how do you measure things, like in the best public interest or increase public relations and an increase happiness quotient and some of those other things that aren't, you know, you can't define them really in dollars.

>>Well, you don't necessarily have to have your measurement tool be return on investment. That's probably one of the more common ones because it's easy. You know, you spend money, you get money, did you make money, right?

>>Economic return, yeah.

>>But as you see down, when we go back to measurement tools, that survey piece, that would be your measurement tool for evaluating that sort of public awareness, social sort of thing. That's harder and you're going to end up hiring somebody to do that because that requires some skills, right? But you can still measure it, and if your goal in the beginning is that, we want to increase the public awareness or we want to increase public appreciation and what have you. I mean, that's fine. You better have a quantifiable way to measure it, and that's where the survey comes in, and that's where survey companies are going to, you know, there're certain keywords we've all taken surveys. They're very clear about how they, you know, measure, did you enjoy versus, was it satisfying, was it this, was it that. But you would have to survey to get that answer. And that will kill a little bit more time, but you can do it.

>>Another question that I have for you is how best is it to tie in to other people's goals, like I remember at our previous scenic byway workshop, we have that author come in and talk about a nature deficit disorder, you know, last child in the woods. And in order to achieve a greater goal that society might have, like increasing, you know, children's awareness and stuff, you know, maybe just number of children, you know, come to the byway or something like that. 

>>I think your goal has got to be relative to what your byway needs.

>>Okay.

>>Maybe able to tie in to a larger one, but it's really got to be at the local level. Because, again, you have to be able to measure it and evaluate it. If that's in a National level and it isn't necessarily immediately applicable, you're throwing time, money, and energy at something that comes out head on. Now, if it fits into a National goal, that's great. But, I don't think you can force feed that onto a local level and come out ahead in time, money, and energy.

>>Uh-huh.

>>You know, if locally, like in your area in Rogue-Umpqua, you want to say, you know, "As a byway group, we would like to increase the number of visits or access by children." That's got to be for you guys and your measurement and your way, and, yeah, it's great because it fits into a larger force service initiative. That's fabulous. 

>>Yeah.

>>But your methodology is going to have to be focused at the regional--at the local level, too. You're going to have to do things to make that happen. And at a National level, you can't wait for that movement to affect you locally.

>>Yeah. Okay, good point.

>>So, anybody else have any questions? Oh, thanks, this has been really dynamic. I will do a little bit of research on return on investment, and it might take me a day or two, but I do have everybody's e-mail addresses. I'll go back and look at my old models. I have to jog my memory, but I may have some information that I can send off.
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