Services & Solutions

Market Strategy & Planning

Strategic Marketing Plan

Need help with your marketing strategy? Let SMG help. We assess macro and micro environments, the competitive marketplace, strengths and weaknesses, and sustainable opportunities to help you create a strategic marketing plan to effectively guide short and long-term marketing efforts.

Strategic Visioning and Planning

SMG’s strategic visioning services help your organization identify important long term strategies to ensure competitiveness.

Organizational Vision Retreat

The retreat is designed to achieve specific objectives to improve your organization effectiveness over both the short and long term. We look to include a variety of input and perspectives into the process and work with you as well as challenge you and your staff to see new possibilities. We offer the retreat in both half day and full day formats.

Strategic Directions Report

The Strategic Directions Report is an in-depth analysis of the strategic issues, challenges and opportunities facing your organization, designed to capture its strategic insight and future direction. When developed in conjunction with the Organizational Vision Retreat, it can be a powerful guide for your organization’s future.

Interactive Marketing Services

The SMG interactive strategic planning process assesses macro and micro environments, the competitive marketplace, strengths and weaknesses, and sustainable opportunities.  From this analysis, SMG outlines strategic options and specific marketing tactics, ranging from interactive and video to more traditional programs, to help you create competitive advantage and effectively guide long-term efforts.

Tourism Business Improvement Districts (TBID)

Overall TBID Strategy

SMG identifies the potential challenges, opportunities and Return on Investment (ROI) a community may achieve with a TBID. This comprehensive service is designed to take your tourism community from the basic concept of a TBID to determining the projected ROI your community might realize from the increased tourism dollars a TBID is designed to generate.

TBID Marketing Plan

Once your TBID is in place, you’ll need to develop a marketing plan to ensure that the funds generated are invested in a way that generates increased revenue and ROI.  SMG has extensive experience developing TBID specific marketing plans.

TBID Legal (With our partner firm Civitas)

SMG has exclusively partnered with Civitas, the most respected legal firm providing TBID legal services. Civitas has been involved in the development of many tourism TBIDs within the state of California. They offer excellent legal counsel and service in the formation of your TBID.

Marketing Research/Economic Analysis

Marketing Research

Understand your customers, what they want and how to reach them more efficiently. Identify profitable market segments, targeted media placements, and effective online booking systems with our collection of Marketing Research Services, a soup-to-nuts range of services.

What’s more, SMG will translate the numbers into competitive marketing strategies and tactics to help you efficiently target your efforts and resources.

DMO Website Return on Investment Study

As focus turns more and more to measuring return on investment (ROI), DMOs are looking for methods to effectively measure their programs. SMG’s DMO Website Return on Investment Study is a comprehensive approach to measure the effectiveness of a DMO’s marketing programs.

• We identify the impact your efforts have on driving those all important incremental visits, and what the economic value is to your destination and to your funding sources.
• The study provides a thorough analysis of visitor travel behaviors, destination perceptions and attitudes.
• The study also provides demographic information of both visitors and non-visitors to your destination.

This is the study you’ll want to have to show your board, your city council or your county supervisors.

Advertising Conversion Study

Want to know how your advertising is working? This SMG Advertising Conversion Study allows a DMO to better understand the effectiveness of its advertising programs, and whether it is creating loyal customers for a destination. This study provides the following:

• Measurement of your advertising recall.
• Understand what people like about your destination.
• Understand if your advertising had an impact on their decision to visit the area (or if they decided not to visit).
• Understand the efficiency of your marketing and advertising investments.

Visitor Profile Studies

The SMG Visitor Profile Study is the classic destination study to understand the characteristics of those who are visiting your destination.

• The study provides a thorough analysis of visitor travel behaviors, destination perceptions and attitudes.
• The study also provides demographic information of visitors to your destination.

Note the information from a visitor profile study can be used for SMG’s new Destination Decisions™ program, which allows you to understand the economic implications of your marketing strategy and decisions.

Special Events Measurement

Wouldn’t it be great to understand who is actually attending the events at your destination (locals, day visitors or overnight visitors?) in an effort to understand if your events are meeting their objectives? SMG’s Special Events Measurement allows a DMO to measure just that. The measurement includes the following insights:

• Understand who is visiting your destination, their reason for visiting as well as their demographic profile.
• Understand the economic impact of your special events on your destination.

Visitor Center Research

Does your destination have a visitor center? Wouldn’t it be great to not only understand why people are there but whether your DMO is being effective in developing incremental spending through the information presented at the visitor center? Thanks to SMG’s Visitor Center Research, you can.

• Understand specifically how people find your visitor center.
• Understand if your visitor center is presenting the kind of information that is generating incremental additional days spent in your destination or planting a seed for a future return trip.
• Find out who is visiting your visitor center, their reason for visiting as well as their demographic profile.

Measurement System Consulting

Let SMG assist you in developing an overall measurement system for your DMO. We can work with you and your staff to create measurement tools that will allow you to have the most useful metrics and information your DMO requires to continually improve marketing efforts. Let our unique experience as a former DMO Board member and DMO executive work for you provide the answers to the questions of what measurements truly assess the effectiveness of your bureau.

Tourism Economic Impact Analysis

Want to know what your tourism efforts generate in terms of revenues, taxes and jobs? SMG can help with its Tourism Economic Impact Analysis studies. We use IMPLAN software to assist you in understanding the economic impact of your efforts.

Our new Destination Decisions™ allows destinations to better understand the economic implications of their marketing decisions and to use economic analysis to more effectively manage their destination’s promotions dollars.

Organizational Services

Marketing Audit Review

Guarantee your marketing efforts are on target. The SMG Marketing Review is an in-depth look at your organization’s entire marketing structure from decision making processes to strategy development. With years of success, SMG can identify opportunities to improve your marketing performance and tighten your bottom line.

Following the review, SMG will provide recommendations to improve your efforts. SMG Marketing Reviews consist of a multi-day visit with your marketing team.