Have you ever noticed how many more “attractions” there are in Southwest Florida than in metro areas with comparable population? You know why? It’s the tourist market.

While attractions from Caribbean Gardens to The Shell Factory appeal to and serve local residents, a large percentage of their guests are visitors to our area. In fact, if it weren’t for tourists, many of these attractions would have difficulty staying in business.

The marketing people at these attractions have become very adept at reaching out to both local residents and tourists. One of the most popular tools is the brochure. At an average cost of between 50 cents and $2 a piece, printing a four color, multi-panel brochure is not cheap. And that doesn’t include the cost of photography, design, writing, and other preparation expenses. But the real expense in a brochure comes if it doesn’t get into the hands of potential customers. (True Story: I once had a client tell me he didn’t put his “expensive” brochures out on the counter because he didn’t want people carrying them off.)

To distribute their brochures to the widest possible audience, some attractions use brochure distribution services, such as Southwest Florida Distributing, Publishing and Mailing. The company places rack displays in hotels, restaurants, office lobbies, visitor centers, and almost anywhere people gather. The company says that 700 locations in Southwest Florida have their brochure racks.

One of their clients is the Southwest Florida Attractions Association. This organization, with a membership of more than 80 local attractions and allied members, publishes its own attractions brochure. The most recent edition includes photographs and text featuring 24 attractions. All are members of the association and pay approximately $1,500 to be included in the 300,000 copies of the brochure, which are distributed from Venice to Everglades City. Several thousand copies are distributed outside the area in markets on the Atlantic Coast and in the Orlando area. The cost of participating is significantly less than publishing your own brochure.

Another medium used to tell tourists about local attractions is the visitor guides. They range from Sunny Day magazine on Sanibel to the Naples Guide in Collier County. Southwest Florida Distributing, Publishing and Mailing also publishes a travel guide, as does CJ Publishing. The latter company’s Welcome Guide Map is a foldout sheet with maps, ads, and discount coupons. According to Gordon Reigelman, regional manager, discount coupons are very effective in generating visitors to an attraction. “It’s like a one-two punch,” Reigelman says. “Because these people are not familiar with the area, the ads tell them what an attraction offers while the discount coupon stimulates them to pay a visit.” More than 1 million Welcome Guide Maps are distributed each year from Punta Gorda to Marco Island and in Visit Florida Welcome Centers. According to Reigelman, 97.5 percent of the 58 advertisers repeat each year, making a place in the Welcome Guide Map highly coveted.

Other opportunities for local attractions to reach local residents as well as visitors include visitor guides published by the News-Press, the Cape Coral Daily Breeze, and the Naples Daily News. These tend to be published in or adjacent to the traditional “tourist season.” Some attractions use outdoor advertising to reach visitors and local residents while they are in their cars. Cape Coral’s Sun Splash Family Waterpark has two outdoor boards. One is located along the roadside route to the park. The other one rotates through several locations. The sign directs drivers to the park.

Carter-Pritchett Advertising, one of the outdoor companies in the area, counts more than a dozen attractions among its clients. Charles Cockrill, Sales and Marketing Manager for Carter-Pritchett says, “Outdoor advertising works both with visitors, who are looking for something to do, and residents, who drive by a billboard everyday. For the resident, it’s a frequency medium, while it’s an impact medium for the visitor.”

Marketing outside of the local area has taken on some new possibilities as the result of recent changes in the Lee Island Coast Visitor & Convention Bureau’s cooperative program. Previously, attractions had to team with tax-collecting accommodations to be eligible for cooperative funds from the VCB. This placed a serious burden on attractions to package with hotels that were often reluctant to take on the paperwork. The other available program was inclusion in cooperative ads subsidized by the VCB. As the number of hotels participating in the cooperative program expanded, there were fewer openings for attractions.

In 2002, however, the VCB will offer modifications to both programs. D.T. Minich, VCB executive director, explains that the VCB recognizes that the area attractions encourage visitors to extend their visits. Nationally, about a quarter of visitors extend their stay an extra night in order to attend an event or visit an attraction. This contribution wouldn’t show up in a hotel/attraction package room-nights projection.

With the modifications to the program, a solid marketing plan will still be required, but VCB funds will be available without requiring the hotel package. Secondly, the VCB plans to launch a new cooperative advertising program for attractions only. It will be similar to the ads the VCB now runs that combine ads by individual accommodations in a large, full-page or double-page ad. The ads will run in in-state and out-of-state publications and focus on the beauty and desirability of a visit to the Lee Island Coast. According to Minich, they will allow individual attractions to participate at a fraction of what the space would cost if it was purchased on its own. “We don’t just split the cost of these ads. We also subsidize some of the media cost so that each attraction will pay less than a pro-rated share,” says Minich.

VCB co-op programs require that the advertisements run only in other markets at least two hours away by car so that an overnight stay is indicated. Minich advised that the details of the programs are being finalized and that funds are expected to be released in October for use in the 2002 off-season.

Participation in cooperative programs with the Attractions Association, local VCB, Visit Florida, and other programs that share your target customers can help you maximize the return on marketing your marketing attraction.

Other strategies for more effective promotion include:

Make sure your attraction’s benefit, promise, and identification appear at the top front of your brochure. Often this is the only part that is immediately visible in a rack.

Print your brochure in quantities large enough to take advantage of the efficiency of scale but small enough so that you are not stuck with unusable brochures if prices and hours change. It’s wise to put only information that is permanent in your four-color brochure, and print information that is likely to change in a one-color insert.

Use your attraction as its own advertisement. Give visitors a thank you discount for their next visit. It will bring them back or give them something to pass on to someone else who might make a visit to your property.

If possible, capture the names of your visitors and their addresses, especially e-mail addresses. This will allow you to communicate special offers or news about changes and improvements to people who already know and have enjoyed your attraction.

William Ernest Waites is the former chairman and co-creative director of Spiro & Waites Advertising, Marketing, & Public Relations. In a previous life, he held senior creative and management positions with Young & Rubicam a