Dive Industry Association, Inc.

Why Marketing Professionals Use Target Marketing
 by Gene Muchanski, Editor
The Dive Industry Professional

Target marketing is the art of reaching a specific audience.  Professional Marketers pick and choose their audience prior to creating a message they intend to send them.  I’m sure you’ve seen the image of a single arrow hitting the bullseye.  That’s target marketing.  In a more descriptive manner, marketing educators teach their students to aim for the bird instead of shooting at the flock.  Apex predators like the Lions know that it is better to chase a single prey and eat that day, than it is to chase the herd and go hungry.   One choice involves strategic planning, less energy output, and a higher degree of success.  The other requires no planning, more energy output, and less probability of success.  So how come our industry marketers don’t understand this simple process?

If you are a Dive Industry Professional and have been following my editorials for the past twenty-two years, you know that I either talk about diving or the business of diving.  Mostly about the business of diving, because that is where the greatest need in our industry happens to be.  We are all surrounded by Dive Industry Professionals who know everything about diving, diving equipment, dive training, and dive travel.  The bar is so high that many of us struggle to keep up.  The bar for proficiency in good business management in our industry, on the other hand, could use a little improvement.  That is the Mission of our Association and Non-profit Foundation – to Raise the Bar of Business Professionalism and Success in our industry.

Besides using monthly editorials as education vehicles, many times an editorial is sparked by an event or an occurrence that we experience in our daily business lives in the diving industry.  This month’s editorial, in part, was prompted by the excess number of emails, from a select few dive companies, that our office has been getting for the past two years.  There are a few companies in our industry who have gone overboard with the quantity and frequency of their email messaging lately.  As a Dive Industry Professional on the receiving end of email advertising, I want to go on record to say that this practice is only going to hurt them in the long run.  I know email broadcasting is inexpensive, but one can overdo it and wear out your welcome pretty quickly.  Advertising via email messaging should only be a part of your overall marketing strategy, not your entire strategy.

The second prompt to write this monthly editorial is the fact that I too use email messaging as part of our association’s marketing strategy.  I believe it can be a powerful tool to use if it is done correctly.  To do justice to this topic, I have written a separate article in the November Issue of The Dive Industry Professional, that covers messaging, marketing, and advertising.  I hope you will find Target Market Messaging informative and helpful.

The Dive Industry Association maintains a diving trade database of about 8,000 Dive Industry Professionals that work in the Global Diving Business Network.  Our goal is to acquire and maintain a business relationship with the buyers and sellers of diving equipment, training, travel, and lifestyle products.   As a trade association, we are more interested in developing business relationships with our colleagues rather than just compiling a mailing list.  In the past two years our association has also been building rapport with dive instructors, divemasters, and certified divers in the Global Diving Community.  Our current database for diving consumers is somewhere over 20,000 divers and growing.

When you are dealing with a large database of Dive Industry Professionals, targeting your messages becomes extremely important and is the professional thing to do.  That is the situation we are currently dealing with.  Our monthly trade publication, The Dive Industry Professional, started a new column entitled Caribbean Dive News.  The content we publish is fit for any dive industry professional to receive.  We can safely write articles about diving equipment, dive training, dive travel, and lifestyle products that pertain to diving in the Caribbean.  However, writing articles and sending catalogs that contain dealer pricing is not a subject matter intended for every sector of the industry. Therefore, we had to put out a notice to our database that if they had a Qualified Retail Buyer at their business, they needed to register with us to receive information and pricing that pertains to them.  As you might know, when we started the Dive Industry Association, we separated the Global Diving Business Network into eighteen sectors, or industries.  At any moment, we can customize our messages to have applicable content to the manufacturing, retail, training, and travel industries.  That keeps our messaging relevant to the targeted audience and cuts down on the unwanted, irrelevant, and voluminous emails that are sent out by certain members of the industry.

The advantage to target marketing is that you can reach a particular sector of the industry, like Dive Stores, and yet individualize your message so that it addresses a specific person at each store.  In case you didn’t know it, dive stores don’t buy merchandise or certify dive students.  People at dive stores do!  Your ability to individually address specific people in a mass mailing is a professional reflection of your knowledge and understanding of modern marketing vehicles and commonly accepted marketing principles.  You should always strive to present a professional image every chance you get.

With the modern marketing vehicles, apps, and programs available to small businesses today, there is no reason you cannot conduct a pin-pointed, targeted, mass marketing campaign to thousands of individual divers across the county.  It is unprofessional and unforgivable to receive an unsigned form letter addressed to Dear Diver or Dear Dive Store.  Especially if you have been a customer of that business for many years.  Does this industry really need to raise the bar of business professionalism?  You bet it does.

I learned a long time ago that you have a higher degree of success if you advertise to an audience that has a need for your products, wants what you sell, has the resources to purchase it from you, and is given a call-to-action to easily acquire it.  I also believe that if you try to market to everyone, you’ll sell to no one.  There are many reasons for marketing strategically.  First of all is the cost.  It takes a lot of time, money, and manpower to conduct an advertising campaign.  That is why we have a channel of distribution in the Global Diving Business Network.  With over six million divers in the world today, a single company cannot possibly market to everyone.  Each link in the supply chain must do their part to market and advertise to their immediate customers.   What we have in the diving industry today, are foolish companies attempting to vertically integrate the supply chain by taking on the role and responsibility of reaching and selling to the final consumer.  That is a costly and foolish strategy.  I firmly believe that is why we see so much email advertising in the industry today.  It is the cheapest method of advertising and the only way some companies know how to market.  It’s time to raise the bar!

This is an exciting time to become part of the Global Diving Business Network.  For more information about target marketing, contact Gene Muchanski, Executive Director of the Dive Industry Association, 2294 Botanica Circle, West Melbourne, FL 32904.  Phone: 321-914-3778.  Email: gene@diveindustry.net  Web: www.diveindustry.net

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Lead With Your Vision
 by Gene Muchanski, Editor
The Dive Industry Professional

The diving industry has always been criticized for lacking vision. Going back as far as I can remember, Dive Industry Professionals have always engaged in conversations about the lack of vision in the industry, or would it more correct to call it the lack of shared vision in the industry?  I think it is the latter.  We have all been a part, to some degree, of bar room conversations about what was wrong with the diving industry or what the diving industry should be doing.   We have even blamed single individuals, companies, and associations for not doing for the industry what in the industry needs to be done.  That’s our opinion of course.  Well, that was then, and this is now.  We can no longer blame others for the lack of growth or the lack of unity in the diving industry.  It’s time for those who have a vision for the successful future of the diving industry to put their vision to the test.

Let’s begin by saying that a vision is something which is seen.  If it exists in the physical realm, then most people can understand it and get behind it.  But if the vision is in the imagination of an individual, or visionary, then it becomes an idea that fewer people will understand, comprehend, believe in, or follow.  So, after all these years in the diving industry, I’ve come to realize that our visions and ideas must make their transition into the physical realm to be seen, understood, and believed in.  I know, as my grandmother used to say, “Too soon old, too late smart.”

To be perfectly honest, there have been many visionaries in the diving industry.  Individuals we all know have put together training agencies, trade associations, trade show organizations, retail chains, innovative travel companies, liveaboards, and resorts, and some of the best dive equipment manufacturing companies in the industry today.  We have all benefited from the application of the vision from photographers, explorers, environmentalists, and engineers.  What they all have in common is that they saw something that didn’t exist, and they made it a reality.  We all need to follow their example and do the same.

Not everyone in the diving industry has a vision for the future of the diving industry.  Many people just deal with the present conditions, challenges, and opportunities in the industry and deal with it the best they can.  I believe that a vision for the betterment of the industry, comes from studying the global diving community and understanding its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and limitations.  When we see things that are wrong with the industry, it seems natural to offer suggestions for their improvement.  When we see things that are missing in the equation, filling in the blanks would appear to be the next logical step.

Eight years ago, we came up with the concept of creating a Global Diving Business Network that would work to grow the Global Diving Community.  The concept became known as DIVE LOCAL and was designed to be a diving industry community project that created and maintained local diving communities across the globe.  We created the framework, defined objectives, established geographical boundaries, organized dive industry professionals into stakeholder groups, and described levels of participation.  Our original group sponsored three regional summit conferences where we met with over 100 Dive Industry Professionals and recorded their comments, suggestions, and feedback.

Our first project in 2018 was to list all the Retail Dive Centers in their respective territories, by state.  The goal was to verify dive stores that are currently in business so we could refer divers and prospective divers to their local dive stores.  We listed each store by their name, city, and state.  To confirm their current business status, we offered to include their website address in exchange for one of their business cards.  The listings were free because we were looking for local diving community participation that would unite and grow the local diving communities.  In the following two years, a few dive stores sent us their business cards and claimed their complete free listing.  A number of Sales Reps verified their local dealers, and we added their website addresses to our web pages.  We were thankful to the Retailers and Sales Reps who participated in our project, but it wasn’t enough.

We brought back our annual first class, post card mailing to all dive stores in the United States in January 2020.  Although our mailing eliminated out-of-business dive stores and gave us the new addresses of stores that relocated, it did not help us identify new start-ups nor did it verify stores that went out of business but had a mail forwarding agreement with the post office.  We needed to do something more.

Beginning in 2023, we started to spotlight one state per month in our Weekly Dive News press release service, with a link to the DIVE LOCAL website page that listed the dive stores by territory.  This weekly press release has turned out to be one of the most clicked-on press releases in the Weekly Dive News.  The releases were getting good readership, and a few people started to send us comments on the stores that were listed on the web page.  The comments about the stores who are no longer in business and the new stores we had not listed were very helpful.  What hurt the most were the negative comments we received about the validity of the listing without specific reference to which stores were current, not current, or missing.  We were being judged on the validity of the actual listing and not on the community project we were undertaking.  The community project of listing the current dive stores is a work-in-progress type of project that gets a local diving community involved in promoting their own community.  But sometimes, a work-in-progress project is too slow to do much good.  Based on the comments we received, we decided to speed up the process of verifying current dive stores.  We have added the process of verifying the website address of each dive store from our database, and then adding them to our website listing.  We have already verified over 500 dive store email addresses but have a few states left to complete.  We are now finishing up with California and Florida.

Beginning in 2024, we will continue with our annual first-class post card mailing and showcasing one state per week in our Weekly Dive News press release service.  We will continue to verify website addresses every week and hopefully fill in the blanks of the stores currently listed without website addresses or delete them in the process.  Our goal is to direct divers and potential divers to their local dive store to begin their underwater experience.  As always, community participation is still welcome, while we lead with our vision of a united, transparent, and growing Global Diving Community.

This is an exciting time to become part of the Global Diving Business Network.  For more information, contact Gene Muchanski, Executive Director of the Dive Industry Association, 2294 Botanica Circle, West Melbourne, FL 32904.  Phone: 321-914-3778.  Email: gene@diveindustry.net  Web: www.diveindustry.net

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Gene Muchanski – Caribbean Account Executive
Riptide Sales Group – Territory: Caribbean Islands, Bahamas and Mexico.

Gene Muchanski has joined the Riptide Sales Group as their Caribbean Account Executive.  According to Dave Pollock, President of Riptide Sales Group, Gene will represent the lines for deepblu, Lefeet, Ocean Guardian, QYSEA, Rheos Nautical Eyewear, Surffur, and Victory, in the islands of the Caribbean, Bahamas, and Mexico.  Gene will start his new position beginning September 1, 2023.

Gene has been an active certified diver since he was 15 years old and has worked in the diving industry all of his adult life.  Gene has an excellent understanding of diving, dive equipment, and dive travel.  As an active Diver, Gene has logged over 7,000 dives worldwide and was awarded the SSI Platinum Pro Diver Award.  As a Scuba Instructor and Course Director he taught classes for NAUI, PADI, NASDS, and the U.S. NAVY, and has certified hundreds of divers.  Gene has a degree in Marketing from the University of Connecticut and has worked in the diving industry as NAUI’s first Marketing Director, U.S. Divers Product Manager, and Action Plus Wetsuits National Sales Manager.  Gene served as a U.S. Navy Mixed-Gas Deep Sea Diver and Diving Supervisor for Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit One.  He is a former Dive Store Owner, Scubapro Dealer, and Wetsuit Manufacturer.  Gene consulted with hundreds of business clients, as a Senior Business Consultant for the University of Houston’s Small Business Development Center and was an Adjunct Professor of Marketing.  He has lectured and written extensively on small business start-ups and development, marketing strategy, and business planning.  Gene is currently the Executive Director of the Dive Industry Association and Editor of The Dive Industry Professional.  He has traveled and dove throughout the Caribbean and is looking forward to meeting with his Caribbean Dive Stores, Resorts, Boutiques, and Resort Gift Shops.   Gene can be reached at gene@diveindustry.org

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The Changing Role of Marketing
 by Gene Muchanski, Editor
The Dive Industry Professional

Marketing is a profession.  You can get an undergrad degree in Marketing from a college or university, although you don’t necessarily need one to call yourself a Marketer.  As a degreed Marketing Professional, I understand why a degree in marketing is not required in the public sector, as is required in the accounting and law professions.  Marketing is a young profession, having only been around formally for about 40-50 years.  Colleges and universities have always, and probably still are, wrestling with the definition and meaning of marketing.  Community Colleges offer an associate degree in business administration (ABA).  Junior colleges offer a bachelor’s degree in business administration (BBA).  The University of Connecticut offers a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and yet at Yale University it would fall under the Bachelor of Arts category.  Is marketing a specialty, an art or a science?  I guess it would depend on how you applied the skill set you were trained for.

My Bachelor of Science Degree in Marketing covered courses in marketing, management, accounting, finance, business law, economics, sales management, research, pricing, consumer behavior, computers, calculus, planning & strategy, promotion, and advertising.  As you can see, most of the courses in my major were focused on the management of these disciplines.  In order to get practical experience using some of the marketing tools we use in business, I had to take elective courses in literature, photography, and an independent study in consulting.  Today it would be graphic arts, digital design, computer programing, social media, app creation, website construction, and sales courses.  There is a fine line between being a marketing professional and a marketing technician, in the diving industry today.

Becoming a degreed Marketing Professional can put you on a path to become a Marketing Director, Vice President of Marketing, or the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) of a large company.  The pay is outstanding, and it could be an excellent career for you.  But it’s a little different in the small business world.   As a small business owner or someone who works in the diving industry, the universal business focus is on sales.  The highest paid people in the diving industry are not the company directors or managers, but the sales reps who sometimes make more than their company General Manager.  Sorry to disappoint you.  That’s just the way it is.  So how does that affect the role of modern-day Marketing professionals?

My philosophy has always been that marketing paves the way for sales.  Marketing professionals are trained in product management, customer behavior, market composition, and communications.  My job has always been to assist in the development of programs, products and services that potential customers need, want, can afford, and are ready to purchase.  When our products are ready for launch, we communicate our offering to the target market.  Historically, it is then up to the company sales representatives to make contact with the customer and close the sale.  For that, they are well paid.

The COVID pandemic changed all that.  Before the pandemic, Sales Reps spent time on the road making sales calls and attending trade and consumer dive shows to sell their products.  The Sales Reps were the industry trade show warriors and face-to-face sales professionals.  During the pandemic, many of the dive shows were cancelled and it was not safe to visit dealers on the road.  Without sufficient face-to-face time with the buyers of dive equipment, training, travel, and lifestyle products, industry sales declined.  Marketing professionals picked up the slack and explored virtual conferences and zoom calls, but nothing was able to take the place of face-to-face contact.  We needed to improve or change our digital messaging and communications.

During the pandemic, marketing professionals did improve their digital communications and refined their call-to-action inclusions in their marketing messages.  We still paved the way for sales but took it one step further and asked for the sale in our marketing message.  The change is growing sales by making marketing professionals responsible for the flow of products all the way from conception to consumption.  In effect, the change has streamlined the sales process and given marketing professionals the opportunity to participate in sales commissions.  The interesting point of all of this is that using modern marketing technology is making marketing professionals better at their job and it could also mean that sales representatives can become more effective at doing what they do by using digital technology to argument their face-to-face functions.  The new outcome results in a more efficient sales process and an increase in the flow of goods and services through the channels of distribution.

So, how does a marketing professional become the go-to-person at a business that specializes in diving?  First of all, it does not matter whether the company is in the diving equipment, dive training, dive travel, or diving services business.  The same concept applies to all.  My first step would be to choose which sector you want to work in.  Then you have to learn everything about the programs, products, and services the company produces and sells.  That’s called product management.  Next is to determine what type of person or business would buy your products and then do the research to build your database of prospective clients.  That’s called Customer Management, which includes customer acquisition, customer retention, and customer database maintenance.  If you have been in the business for any length of time, you should already have an extensive database of perspective clients and have an existing business relationship with many of them.  The third part of your sales strategy is to find out how your clients want to be contacted and by what media sources they read, listen to, or follow.  Creating a sales message with a persuasive call-to-action message is now the most important thing you do.  As a marketing professional, you should already be familiar with how to create compelling sales messages, although you may have to learn more about graphic arts and text messaging.  You may have to learn more about the use and placement of text, images, and graphs.  As I said, there is a fine line between what you need to know as a marketing professional and what you need to do as a marketing technician.

Since dive shows are still on the decline and less buyers are attending industry trade shows, sales and marketing professionals must improve their digital messaging and always include a call-to-action option within their message.  We no longer have the luxury of asking the client to wait until they see us in person to make a purchasing decision.  The important aspect of our job is to educate our clients about new products and services and then give them the option to make a purchasing decision immediately.  We don’t have to wait until the one trade show of the year to show off our new products and make a sale.  Nor do we have to rely on an annual visit to our dealers to show products and ask for an order.  Instead of waiting for up to 12 months to make a sale, we need to learn how to get in synch with our clients’ buying cycle.  The 21^st Century Marketing Professional just added “Salesperson” to their list of qualifications.   We can now close the sale we used to just pave the way for.

This is an exciting time to become part of the Global Diving Business Network.  For more information, contact Gene Muchanski, Executive Director of the Dive Industry Association, 2294 Botanica Circle, West Melbourne, FL 32904.  Phone: 321-914-3778.  Email: gene@diveindustry.net  Web: www.diveindustry.net

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What Is The Cost Of A Missed Sale?
 by Gene Muchanski, Editor
The Dive Industry Professional

Too much emphasis is given to the price of things in business.  We think about the price of a magazine advertisement or the price of a booth at an industry trade show, but do we spend equal time thinking about what we are getting for that price?  Better yet, do we even give some thought as to why we are buying that item in the first place?  Well, after three years of sitting at home, trapped by restrictions imposed on us because of the COVID pandemic, I think we are all ready to leave the confines of our digital offices and spend some money in the real world of face-to-face marketing and dive travel.    

First of all, there is no question that the pandemic hurt our industry economically and socially.  I think it even negatively impacted the way we conduct business in our Global Dive Business Network.  But the good news is that I think we’ve learned a lot about running our businesses for fun and profit while we pay more attention to the important things in a new economically and environmentally sustainable way.  A new business model for the post pandemic economic recovery perhaps.

I don’t believe that our new business models will be the same as they were in the last millennium.  That’s a given.  The only constant thing in life is change.  With that said, I believe that the change will be incremental while retaining concepts that have worked in the past and continue to bear fruit.  Many things will change, like in the way we do things, and many things will stick to a foundational approach like why things are done and when.   I am already seeing that our industry is changing in many ways, but it won’t be in with the new and out with the old.  I believe that the baby will not be thrown out with the bathwater.  You know who the baby is.  It’s your customer.

The focus in the future is the customer.  Sorry sellers.  It’s all about the buyers.  It’s not about you or even about your products. It’s not about the new ways you are trying to market your products or the marketing tools and apps you think will help you make record sales.  It’s about what your customers think of you, your company, and your products.  It’s about reaching your customers in the ways they want to be reached.  What do they read?  Where do they buy? What information do they need to make a purchasing decision?  Where will they be when they take that last call-to-action suggestion that completes the purchase of your product?  If you don’t know how to reach customers with your information, message, and call to action, you just lost a sale.  Astute sellers will not only have to use demographics and geographics in their marketing planning, they will have to become masters at psychographics and genographics.  Incorporating psychographics in your sales strategy will help you target in on why people buy.  Genographics (Generational Graphics) is the study of population trends sorted by generation groups (Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, Millennials, Next Generation).  The modern-day challenge in business is making sure that buyers and sellers are on the same wavelength when communicating.  How do you think the business community at the time succeeded in selling to a generation of Boomers, who’s motto was “Don’t trust anyone over 30” ?  They learned how to communicate with them.  At their level.  Well, at least the ones who succeeded did.  The businesses who never learned, went out of business.

I was in the market for a new roof for my house.  A salesperson came to my door and told me all about his roofing company.  He didn’t have a business card or a brochure.  He wrote his name, phone number, and web address on a scrap piece of paper.  I thew it in the trash.  The price of a brochure and a business card is about $1.02.  The cost of the lost sale was $25,000.

Trade Shows and Events suffered during the pandemic.  Many of our dive shows were cancelled and the few digital shows that tried to break into the market failed.  Partly because the sellers didn’t understand the new technology, or the new technology wasn’t ready for the times, and partly because the buyers were not ready for a digital trade show.   I personally thought they were expensive and boring.  I didn’t feel they had significant value for the price, and I was not confident we would get a good return on our investment.  It seems that the digital conferences were not popular with exhibitors or attendees.  The Shows & Events Industry wrote a lot about the possibility of Hybrid Trade Events, but the reluctance to incorporate free internet availability at face-to-face shows was a major mistake.  I realize that selling internet access at trade shows is an income stream, but in my opinion, show producers would sell a lot more booths if exhibitors could incorporate internet programs and presentations at their booth. 

Even with internet access at reasonable rates, trade shows are still a good value for exhibitors, attendees, and sponsors.  Scuba Show sold over 300 booths and had 245 exhibitors at their June 2-3, 2023 event.   We think the attendee numbers will show us how well the show was attended.  I can’t speak for Scuba Show, but I honestly feel that the goal of the event was not just to sell booth space.  The way the show was advertised and conducted was to provide a successful show experience for the exhibitors, attendees, seminar speakers, and sponsors.  There were tons of value for the price at that show.  If you didn’t exhibit, you will never know how many sales or new contacts you missed.

There was one error that I saw a few exhibitors making at the show.  The topic came up a few times during the show and even with a young marketing company I met at the Houston Airport after the show.  I think this ties in well with our lost sales argument and the mis-marketing to different generational  customers.  At the Scuba Show I estimate that 99% of the exhibitors had business cards.  To me, having a business card with your complete contact information is a critical and inexpensive marketing tool to invest in.  They are inexpensive to purchase, easy to carry, easy to hand out, and can be left at your booth for customers who didn’t get a chance to meet you personally.  They can be left with other vendors at their booths with little personal contact and can be included with other marketing materials and direct mail correspondence.  That is why I call them the silent salesperson.  They are easily scanned, stored and posted.  Business cards even make great luggage tags.  They have a small environmental impact, are recyclable, and can have QR codes put on them for cell phone retrieval and storage.  All for about 1 penny a piece.  I have even used business cards of our members as fill-in ads in our professional trade magazine.   A FREE $200 ad for $.01?  Not bad.  Why would any company choose not to use paper business cards is beyond me.  All I can think about is how many tens of thousands of dollars in lost sales have they gotten because of a lack of a penny business card?

The business card issue is only a symptom to a underlining problem.  Creating and using business cards or any other marketing materials takes some thought and graphics expertise.  They are tools we learned about in Marketing 101.  The creation of your marketing materials is elevated by your understanding of your product, the market, and more importantly, your customer.  First time Marketeers usually think from their own limited knowledge and experience.  Limited as it may sound, you cannot be very successful if you think that the whole world, outside of your little bubble, thinks like you.  They don’t. Experienced Marketeers have come to realize that the more they know, the less they think they know.  Take it from Dale Carnegie, see the world through the eyes of your customer.  If you want to reach them, communicate with them, and sell to them, ask them how and how often they prefer to be communicated with.  You cannot afford to miss too many sales.

This is an exciting time to become part of the Global Diving Business Network.  For more information, contact Gene Muchanski, Executive Director of the Dive Industry Association, 2294 Botanica Circle, West Melbourne, FL 32904.  Phone: 321-914-3778.  Email: gene@diveindustry.net  Web: www.diveindustry.net 

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