Bonjour Magazine - Living the French Experience

We are entering the period when companies offering all types of advertising or letting services will swamp holiday property owners. These will range from agencies that want sole rights to your summer period, companies offering solely Internet advertising, organisations that produce specialised brochures and those that publish general holiday publications.

The first rule is BUYER BEWARE. You can split these companies into three main categories. Companies that provide an excellent service and will deliver more or less what they are claiming. Those that believe that they will be able to provide an excellent service but can't and organisations that are just interested in taking your money and think that ethics is a county north of the Thames. The companies that fall into the latter two categories make life more difficult for the former who do an excellent job.

You are going to be approached by companies making all sorts of claims. These are not necessarily false as they are carefully packaged to lead you to believe one thing whilst actually promising very little. Advertising rarely comes with a guarantee other than to produce an advertisement and any sales pitch and documentation will be carefully worded to impress without making any promises. You will sign a contract guaranteeing you an advertisement in a publication and nothing else. Providing the brochure or magazine is published and your advertisement appears in it, the company will have fulfilled their side of the agreement.

There are scores of companies now selling Internet advertising. Some of the deals they are offering are ludicrously cheap or even free. Although there are over 150,000,000 people reputedly connected to the World Wide Web, they still have to find the Internet site you are advertising on. If you do not understand the Internet, beware of being bamboozled by technical talk and statistics. Despite all the hype about the Internet, web sites have to be advertised in the press to guarantee attracting visitors. The last time I typed French holidays into a search engine I was confronted with thousands different Internet addresses to choose from. Only one site can be at the top of the list at any given time. So anyone offering you cheap Internet advertising should be asked how they intend to promote the site and how they can afford to advertise it if they are charging so little. Inexpensive advertising can often turn out to be the most expensive if it gives you little or no return.

The second rule is to check out the search engines for yourself to see which Internet sites come up in the top ten. The most frequently used keywords and phrases are (Robert OVER TO YOU). If the Internet site you are advertising on (or planning to advertise on) does not come up in the top ten - forget it. The only way to ensure that you really get full Internet coverage is to advertise across a wide range of Internet sites that are configured to pick up different traffic from a variety of nationalities. No web site can be all things to all people.

I am aware of two new brochures appearing this year and no doubt there will be others to add to what is already a very fragmented arena. As with all the brochures serving France there are some pertinent questions to ask before committing yourself. The major rule of thumb where publishing is concerned is - let other property owners waste their money. New brochures take at least two years to establish themselves. Determine the circulation, you are not interested in the print run as this means nothing. The distribution - is it just being advertised in the press? How many advertisers will be in the brochure so that you can calculate the ratio of properties to recipients.

If the company producing the brochure claim to be advertising on the television, ask to see the television advertising contracts. If they can't produce them, they are still waiting to generate the revenue. If that's the case, if they don't succeed in generating enough revenue, nor will they be able to fulfil their agreement.

READ THE SMALL PRINT. The less ethical companies will carry a get out clause like - "Promotion and advertising may vary and is subject to approval by the broadcaster and publisher." So you could end up advertising in a brochure that promises to be advertised on TV and ends up advertised in Dalton's Weekly.

The third rule is, DON'T CHANGE A WINNING FORMULA. If your advertising is successful don't be tempted to change by companies offering you cheaper advertising. A hundred pounds saved may well result in a thousand pounds lost revenue. For numerous reasons, not necessarily the fault of the brochures, bookings in general, have been down in the out of season months. Competitors will play on this and try and entice you away from publications that have proved successful for you in the past. What worked for you in one year may not necessarily work for you next year so it is a good idea to have supporting advertising.

Radically changing your advertising medium may result in you jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. Ask why their brochure will be more successful than the one you are currently advertising in. Companies that distribute the brochure at property exhibitions are mainly looking for new advertisers. Whilst it is true some of these people may visit France at some point in time, they generally go home with carrier bags full of all types of literature, that end up in a cupboard or in the bin. The market place is continually changing and the companies providing advertising to property owners need to recognise that they have to move with the times or risk
falling by the way side. It is not possible to predict the unexpected, but it is possible to have contingency plans. Quality market research will help plan for the future and knowing who is likely to be visiting France next year is of primary importance. The companies that have continued to utilise the same formula over the years without realising that the market has changed have fallen behind.

Tourism is the most fragile of all industries, it is the barometer that reflects economies throughout the World. It can be affected by interest rates rising and falling, as the public both borrow and invest money. Wars, weather, politics, economics, housing markets, ageing populations, changing school holidays, price wars, more competition, public opinion, strikes, changing attitudes and habits can all affect the market. Yet despite all these problems and obstacles, intelligent marketing can overcome many of them. It is therefore imperative that your advertising covers as broad a spectrum of the world market as is physically possible to ensure that what ever happens, your market does not disappear from under you. Even more important is, you advertise with companies that understand not only what marketing is but also how to use it to maximum effect.