Rural System's

Marketing and Public Relations Strategy

See E-Mail Marketing.

changing behavior

"Marketing", like "community" or "love", has many meanings. In Rural System we see it as a class of actions termed changing behavior. This strategy description is intended for employees, consultants, advisors and volunteers within the System. It is my view about what we all should be doing together.

In 1970, then assistant professor James Kennedy observed that "By inclination, academic training, and professional experience, forest and wildlife managers are traditionally oriented to the production of forest products rather than forest services. Developing perspective and sensitivity to provide for the tremendous, unanticipated growth of demand for outdoor recreation and other urban services has been difficult, given the raw material production orientations of most managers."

He cited Gould (1962:45) as saying

Gould, E.M. Jr. 1962. Forestry and recreation in Economics in outdoor recreation policy (Report #11), Western Agricultural Council, Berkeley, California

This problem of the mental adjustment of foresters to recreation is aggravated by their traditional concern with producers' goods. They have seldom had direct contact with consumers. Rapid changes in consumer demand and tastes have come to them in a much watered- down version, through limited contacts with primary product buyers--who themselves have considerable sympathy with the foresters problems of production on the land...

The manager of the forest recreation environment is thus directly subjected to all the pressures of the consuming public and is constantly against the cutting edge of changing tastes and innovations. This can be a frustrating experience for men trained to handle the slow processes of tree growth and to produce primary raw materials.

Marketing includes:

1. analyzing individual and group wants and needs;
2. presenting new options and alternatives that are now or may become wants and needs;
3. increasing desire for needed things (life quality enhancing and prolonging; socially beneficial); and
4. assisting in finding legal ways for individuals and groups to satisfy these wants and needs.

As Adam said to Eve, "we live in a period of rapid transition." Every generation experiences the same feeling in some year. Rural System emerges in 1995 when there are many changes, real and discussed. New needs are seen, wants reduced by some increased by others. Agencies and universities change. The effects of the end of the cold war are sweeping over society. Agencies seem less able to provide needed natural resource services; needs for services seem to increase. The Rural System seem uniquely positioned for success if the marketing strategy is sound and well employed.

Marketing "Plans " are system descriptions, documents that typically include the elements shown here. Within the external or environmental analysis box shown are Politics, Economy, Societal Trends, Technology, Personnel, Ecology, Customers, Competitors, and Suppliers. Achieving stable communities and quality of life, and attracting new customers seem to be important topics not included.

Other documents describe Rural System but this Marketing and Public Relations Plan will probably make the most sense when it is recalled that:

1. We take a systems approach
2. We are intent upon natural resource improvement
3. The concept of "resource" includes human benefits, typically called wants and needs
4. The system may change under management by changing the social world or/and the physical world
5. We advance through synergism
6. Each Division or group provides superior services and products
7. We each gain by promoting each other
8. Divisions are unbalanced in size, function, and profitability
9. We achieve major economies by centralizing common services and functions
10. We harvest information and experience of other agencies, organizations, and companies
11. The System succeeds based on total profitability that includes financial (cash flow) stability, adequate reinvestments, and meeting or besting competition
12. Maximum resource improvement (by many criteria) is more important than maximum profit.
13. We are continually revising, correcting, and adapting management efforts.

Marketing Note

Identifying human needs and alerting humans to needs and wants not readily articulated is a major part of our marketing concept. There are absolutely new things in the world that no person will say they want ...because they have no knowledge of it. Of course, we provide ways to meet fundamental needs, perhaps in ways never considered before. We view advertising as one means (within hundreds) of acquainting people with products or services that may meet a fundamental or life-enhancing need or merely a "want." We believe that we have identified a large set of needs that can be met by products and services in one realm - renewable natural resources, primarily wildland resources. We need to market Rural System as well as its products and services.

We seek to perfect a marketing system. That system is change oriented and designed to move the benefits produced or available to users, especially to buyers.

Benefits - to - Buyers

Perfecting the restoration, preservation, production, maintenance, or management system is not the job of marketing. Perfecting its operations or management is not a marketing task. Neither is making people outside of the system want or need things. (Making sound and thoughtful suggestions for improvements of all types is a generally accepted function of all participants.)

Users (e.g., those visiting a public recreation area or viewing a scenic landscape) and buyers of all of the products and services (and other benefits of Rural System) must

1. be decided (by Rural System marketing system staff) to be approached as individuals or groups (identical tactics do not work for each)
2. be attracted or hooked - evoked interest that continues on a priori interests (quests, problems, frustrations, annoyances, or activities)
3. know they are in control of their decision
4. know that they are fully informed (perhaps trained or taught; various types of "proof" detailed, quantifiable, specific, inside-reality, revealing information, what to look for or lookout) for out for; special conditions if not unique
5. know that they can get other information
6. know that a purchase from Rural System is better than from the competitor (any type) (the "best deal")
7. take a preliminary action, a first step, some low-risk action prior to purchase (free book, CD, seminar with an educational objective)
8. purchase or take the desired action
9. nurture the buyer for next purchases or use
10. begin thinking about or awaiting the next purchase or opportunity (equal or varied)
11. anticipate being named a special customer

Marketing staff need

• to emphasize uniqueness and goodness of Rural System and its products/services The unique exists because of the union. A brand image is built.
• to communicate to "production" the perceived reasons why an alternative (competitor's) purchase was made with a chance for a modification or for initiating a benefit-producing system
• to quantify before-and-after market tactic gains (e.g., leads and sales and approximate profits from each per dollar invested in the tactic)
• to test likely public responses to tactics and parts of tactics (e.g., advertising headings)
• to integrate all staff with the full marketing strategy - all are profit seeking through sales and use
• to designate prime buyers for intensified marketing and relationship-building workefforts
• to evaluate cooperative,joint-venture, or partnership projects
• to add products continually (something " new " to sell), to repackage existing products, to warehouse in order to gain price advantages or lot-size advantages, to offer point-of-sale pricing, to package memberships with other services.
• to encourage referrals by satisfied customers (e.g., a premium for 3 addresses of friends that may be interested)
• to continually improve and practice the 60-second elevator speech
• to limit vague discussions of strategic marketing to: what you say, how you say it, and to whom you say it.

The following note addresses in several ways the basic "4 P's" of marketing: product, price, place and promotion. Remember: Price is related to utility.

Price = product + place + promotion

is the exchange equation. (We hasten to add "service" to product and continue to add the full list of benefits.) If the equation is true, an exchange is likely. Marketing is ancient, but the first formal thought and writing was in the 1940's. Categories of analyses were the customer/seller, exchange, pricing, promotion, the product, position, objectives, and distribution. Once the concept was to target customers (sex, age, etc.) with the marketing mix (the 4 P's). Now the Saturn car is evidence of an alternative: selling a relationship. The key remaining concept: satisfy the customer's need at a profit.

Public Relations Note

Public relations is more than how the Rural System relates to the public. Public relations (hereinafter PR) is a set of planned actions by System staff to influence the actions, structure, facilities, and outward appearance of the System; and the inner feeling of the public about the system. It is ground in simple phases like: "To believe the message, you must believe the messenger." "Seeing is believing." "Birds of a feather flock together."

Positive, mutually beneficial relationships between the System and various publics will assure success by several criteria). Those seeking such relationships analyze situations, predict outcomes, advise management on actions and messages, and improve based on experience and thoughtful, creative work. "Publics" are employees themselves, customers, media employees, the general public, and special interest groups.

Situation Analysis

Changing agency staff, cutbacks, State and Federal agency changes have created a new situation. Land taxes increase; more people are urban; rural experience decreases as "experience" leaves the farms and forests.

Wood prices increase; supplies of quality hardwood decrease (thus price increases). New regulations reduce amount that can be sold and prices increase.

There is a new era of environmental concern, one poorly informed.

Problems will arise in anti-hunting, anti-trapping areas. Strict preservationists may resent the intensive management orientation of Rural System. Competition will increase. There are consulting foresters that may compete. Agencies will feel threatened and initiate costly regulatory or excessive reporting, inspection, etc. requirements and threaten the company contacts through grantors, benefactors.

We want people to want a good region (many criteria of "good" discussed under Objectives), to want to know how to manage land, to want us to do it for them or help over the long run, and to allow us to help them to do it (financially, etc.), which is perceived by me as a major reason they have not improved conditions in the past (even more so than ignorance of how to do so or unawareness of the need).

The "want and need" cannot be seen or measured. The behavior we want to change is from the very diverse set of unnamed conditions to the behavior called request. We want people to request items, services, inspections, project work, management contracts, research reports, software, tours, etc., etc. . . . anything within the existing or creative purview of any Rural System group.

Note that the strategy is not addressing "sending messages." It is not addressing "agencies" but individuals and homogeneous groups. "Support for our programs is an immeasurable attitude that results along with other rules as "flock behavior" as in artificial life, explainable but unpredictable." We want requests. "Support" may be one grounding for the emergence of such requests. This topic is one under "advertising"; it is an expression of "belief in the messenger"; an expression of confidence and past positive reinforcements (called "product recognition").

Leadership, a much-desired status, will be evident in the number of requests and especially in the short time between a product announcement and a request. People follow leaders, quickly. They suspend their risk aversion and act with the leader, or delay without the leader.

This strategy addresses work at all levels within the System. It may provide a worthwhile pattern for others in natural resource fields to follow. It avoids presently functionless words like continuing education, extension, and outreach. It does not specify things to do but hopefully the space and conditions within which actions are appropriate, efficient, and praiseworthy.

We really want people to buy "needed" things. If they can afford it, we want them to buy "wanted" things. They may not know they need something (e.g., a baseline ecosystem study, a type of insurance). Our strategy is to increase this awareness, whether we get an immediate request or not.

Differences between want and needs are debatable. There is an overlap. The emphasis intended is that on fundamental needs, e.g., food, housing, security, etc., in all of their expansions. Wants include high-risk events, trivial recreation, functionless or excessive property, un-prescribed narcotics, etc.

I believe that within 50 years a major fossil energy shortage (no matter what the mechanism) will occur, threatening fundamental actions of all kinds. Resources (money, time, etc.) will have to be re-allocated and needs must be met. The transition will be very difficult since needs will be met; wants cast aside in the final stages, Rural System , in the long run, will concentrate on needs, remaining opportunities.

The Principles:

1. Do good work. The quality and quantity of the work will speak louder and more convincingly than any advertising the System is able to produce.
2. Evaluate: a request for more services or fellowship is an expression of success.
3. Referrals are an expression of success.
4. Land area influenced over the long run (the product index) is one major unit of effect. (A farmer with 1000 acres with an expected ownership turn-over rate of 12 years an average is a lesser success than a foundation acreage of 500 acres but expected duration of 100 years.)
5. Youth are customers tomorrow.
6. Profits in one area allow experiments in others; land use control and restoration (costs) allow profits tomorrow.
7. Success stories are better than paid advertisements. Both are needed.
8. Services have been free; we need to resist giving free advice. Offer service. Low costs are in order when presented as a learning or experimental case. This allows higher costs later to be justified.
9. Target people likely to afford products and services; work toward other customers later. The area and resource volume influenced per unit invested is the criterion for effect, not numbers of individuals contacted.
10. Time is money. All costs must be accounted.
11. Every customer contacted by one Division person probably involves potential work by at least one other Division of the Rural System. Every employee seeks to connect customers to other Divisions or individuals.
12. Research is a cost; results are assets.
13. Contracts to do research for others provide opportunities. Profit is desired, but at-cost, by personal agreement research is very acceptable if there is >80% likelihood of using results within the Rural System.
14. Software development follows the concepts in 12 and 13 above.
15. Free lectures etc., if pure advertising or PR-oriented, are acceptable. Otherwise costs, at least must by paid by the sponsor or someone. Lectures etc. are potentially profitable and should be presented as a worthwhile ($) educational or entertainment event.
16. Every presentation of any type (telephone call to multi-media) seeks to change peoples' behavior in ways compatible with the objectives of the organization.
17. Break-even, marginal analysis and optimization are intuitive, but poorly understood. They rarely can be explained. Hide the complexity; use the analyses; present the "best" -- show the differences between the next one or two bests, e.g., compared to best (100) this one gets a score of 86; the third, 84.
18. Whether desirable or not, most people think initially in terms of self-interest. Speak to it for the long run. It will probably be good for all of us.
19. Total number of people contacted is not a criterion of marketing, only median cost per value of each request produced.
20. Demonstrations work. Locate them well.
21. Promise only what you can deliver.
22. Consultants and assistants, not full-time employees, can often be used effectively.
23. Develop equipment pools, teams, and software, all to be general systems, which have multiple uses.
24. We have many "messages", all in our slogans, guiding principles, as well as operational truths. You are encouraged to write and publish about them, as well as pass them along in any way (e.g., it is possible to find an optimum, then work to achieve it.)
25. There are at least 50 distinctive market groups, the domain of each unit of Rural System.
26. Special-interest groups must understand us well so we may have the freedom and low costs to achieve our objectives profitably.

Objectives:

1. To cause people in the region to make abundant requests for goods and services that we can fulfill
2. To assure people that we can and will deliver high quality total land management for the long run more cost-effectively than anyone else.

Target Audience: Audiences for each Division or group vary, but the main audience is the private owner of large tracts of land (> 50 acres)

Marketing Techniques: Program Action Elements

1. Name - selection of a name suggesting outdoors, beauty, intermediacy, forests, as well as landscape and garden, perhaps with an honored tradition and history
2. Niche - selection of a needed, unoccupied niche now being vacated by agencies;
3. Colors - white, barn red, black -- high contrast
4. Identity - a complex renewable natural resource management system
5. Logo - RS in some form because of the diversity of topics;
6. Theme - bringing sophisticated management to the resources of the lands and waters of the world;
7. Package - as a System with multiple Divisions, Groups, or sub-enterprises all working "as an ecosystem for the ecosystem";
8. Size - regional; multi-division; growing; separate Division managers;
9. Decor - modern; Virginian, not colonial; "environmental"; mid-range; not high-tech; emphasis on work and product, not the facilities. "Excuse our appearance; we're busy doing good work";
10. Attire - high quality outdoor clothing, power dressing, e.g.

• jacket emblems
• shirt emblems
• quality, distinctive hat, cap
• tan lab coats where appropriate
• separation from U.S. Forest Service appearance
• new vests
• new cruiser jackets
• business clothing when not in field