What Goes Down Must Come Up

Ariana waiting to ride the slide
during a previous visit to
Chestnut Mountain. Yes she
is wearing flip-flops.

So a few weekends ago I took my family up to Chestnut Mountain Resort to ride the slide, enjoy the view, and have some great food at Sunset Grille. My kids – Ariana (10) & Maya (6) – absolutely love to ride the slide at Chestnut and we are frequent visitors every summer.

I guess I wasn't thinking because I let Maya wear flip-flops. Not a good idea when you plan to ride the slide. For those of you not familiar with Chestnut's Alpine Slide it is a fiberglass (I believe) slide that twists and turns its way down the mountain and you use a sled to ride from the top of the slide to the bottom. Once you reach the bottom you take the chair lift back to the top.

Well it was bound to happen - Maya lost a flip flop when riding the chair lift back to the top. By the time she reached the top and got off the chair lift she was an emotional mess. For some reason she had decided she couldn't live without her FAVORITE flip flop.  So I agreed to climb down the mountain with her & Ariana to fetch the missing flip flop – despite the wise council from the other adults in our party. They, like any other rational adult, thought I was insane to climb down the mountain (475 foot vertical drop after all) to retrieve half of a $5 set of flip flops.

Well I had a plan – those of you who know me know that I always have a plan! I knew the going down wouldn’t be too bad and thought that I could just retrieve the missing flip-flop make my way down the rest of the mountain and ride the chair lift back to the top. After all it would be good exercise to climb down.

Maya & Vicki before their
excursion on the Alpine Slide.

The girls and I had a pleasant trip down – chatting and picking wild flowers along the way. It was good bonding time after all. We retrieved the flip-flop and I started to continue down the hill when I heard one of them – I think it was Maya – who yelled “Where are you going?”. Sure enough, I turn around and the girls are climbing their way back up the mountain roughly following the same path we took down.

I tried everything I could think of to convince them to turn around – truly I did, but they wouldn’t do it. And for some reason I wasn’t comfortable letting them proceed on their own.  I’m not sure what my rationale was at the time after all it wasn’t like there was anyone else climbing around on the mountain and the rest of our party was waiting for us at the top.

So I did the unthinkable – I climbed up after them. Both Ariana and Maya are very active children and therefore both are in excellent physical shape. I, on the other hand, have made every excuse not to exercise and therefore am not in any kind of shape to speak of.

A portion of the Alpine Slide
at Chestnut Mountain Resort

The girls proceeded flitting back and forth across the mountain continuing to pick wildflowers as they went. I kept my head down – I refused to look up to see how far I had to go yet – and plodded along as straight as I possibly could up the mountain. I figured we were about ½ of the way down so roughly 200 feet to climb back up.

100 feet to go….. I flopped on the ground gasping for air & desperately craving water. The girls began to get concerned for me and started cheering me on and offering encouraging statements to keep me moving.

50 feet to go….. Ariana ran to Rick, my husband, and told him I was dying.

25 feet to go…..Rick met me with a bottle of water and let me lean on him as he walked me to a shaded table to recover.

30 minutes later I recovered enough to slowly start walking back to the vehicle – still leaning heavily on Rick. 60 minutes after scaling the mountain (following a short nap during the drive home and another bottle of water) I felt like myself again.

In summary, the lessons I learned from this whole experience are:

§  Stick with what you know will work to avoid scaling a mountain when you are not prepared.
§  Always bring water with you when hiking – particularly if out of shape.
§  Exercise is not a waste of time but will ensure your body is ready when you want to challenge it.
§  Listen to the advice of your peers – particularly if they all think something is a bad idea.
§  And finally your child will get over losing a FAVORITE flip-flop!

Maya's infamous FAVORITE flip-flops!

Target Markets

"Target marketing, know your audience, identify the primary customer," yadda yadda, yadda!  These lines have been drilled into every marketing person's brain since their first marketing 101 class.
The fact is, you have to do it. And what makes it more difficult is that as the Internet continues to open the world to everyone; people in a demographic group no longer follow each other around like geese.

There was a day when the majority of women over 55 years of age wore polyester, drove a 4-door sedan, more likely to not have a pet in her household than have one and she lived to serve her grandchildren. She was probably married and was mental mush if she was divorced.

These ladies still exist, but not as the majority. Now you have the "polyester" minority and many others, including, the metro, senior female, who if divorced will more than likely choose not remarry, prefers to live alone, probably has a dog and is just as likely to drive a Jeep as a sedan.

Add to her, the ever exciting psychographic makeup of the Cougar (yes, she is a recognized co-hort in marketing today) This flashy lady, likes younger men,  may or may not be financially well off, travels alone and she may very well still be top in her career field. She is not wearing rubber soled shoes, she is in 3" heels. Want to sell her something....get to the point. Don't load her with droning details. Tell her the benefits of doing business with you, upfront.

And these are just three very small micro groups of women over 55! Whew!

So, why do it? Why go to all this trouble? Because it can dramatically increase your sales and just as dramatically lower your marketing expenses. Stop talking to everyone and start talking to the few that care about what you sell and have a want or need for your products/services. Are you sending out 1 direct mail piece to everyone in your database? Waste of postage, waste of paper,WASTE of money. Develop 3 or more messages, send less and target the right message to the right group. No call to action? (gasp!) Don't you dare! :P

What encourages a buying decision out of a 30 something, married, female is her family. "Does this make my kid's life better or my life easier?" (Sorry hubby's, you don't weigh in much to her daily purchase decisions, except for food.) She also is swayed by her budget and whether or not her friends are talking about/aware of the product or business she is considering and what experience they had with you.  She will hunt your reputation down on line like a bloodhound. These reviews are gospel to her. If you haven't monitored your brand on social media, take time to audit this!

What encourages the same buying decision from a woman over 50? "Do I know/trust the brand, does this make MY life better, does this purchase reflect how I see myself? (younger, vibrant, sexy, informed and so on) She cares MUCH less about what her friends are buying or who they buy insurance from, bank with, or where they shop at online. You have to reach her directly.  Don't lie to her or offer her untrue value statements about your company. If she catches you, she will never use you again.  Tell her the truth and talk to her as you would a male customer. Talk down to her or try to charm her and she is gone.

This process can seem overwhelming, but you can see how in the end, it simplifies everything. By trying to market to everyone, you are literally, targeting thousands of unique categories of consumers. Drill it down to 3 or more groups that offer you the most ROI and go get them!