Key West Marketing – Part 1 – Word of Mouth

As many of you know, I just returned from my honeymoon in Key West, Florida. Key West is an interesting town. It’s almost entirely dominated by the tourism industry and every business there is trying to out market their competition.

For this reason, I got lots of great marketing insights while I was there, so I decided to do a series of blog posts highlighting what I learned. Today is part 1.

Word of Mouth Marketing in Paradise

Everyone has their favorite place to go in Key West.

As soon as we started telling people we were going to Key West they would start rattling off their favorite party spots.

That’s the first degree of Key West WOM (word-of-mouth).  The best places get talked about and tourists want to go there because their friends insisted on it before the plane even landed.  (by the way this is a picture of Laryn’s uncle’s favorite place.  On the roof their is a clothing-optional bar.  It was indeed a great time, even though we didn’t get nude).

Tourists always ask locals where they should go.

On our second night we rented bikes and asked the bike rental guy “Where should we eat dinner?”  The next night we shopping for souvenirs and we asked the girl at the checkout “Where’s a fun place to get a drink around here?’

The point is that it is profitable for both parties for these relationships to exist.  I didn’t see evidence of anyone leveraging these relationships intentionally, but still.  Can you think of ways that  you can leverage this principal in your business?

Get in with the hotel concierge.

This one’s almost not even fair.  Laryn wanted to get her hair cut.  We asked the concierge.  We wanted to go see the coral reef and snorkel.  We asked the concierge.  Para-sailing?  Ask the concierge.

Who are the concierges in your market.  Hazel Walker would calls it a ‘hub firm’.  If you’re in someone’s hub firm then they pass you business simply because they need someone to pass it to and they know and respect you.  Find the concierge, make friends, and make money.  What do you think?