Building an Army of Timeshare Marketers

The following is an excerpt reprinted with permission from The Resort Trades. You can read the full article at Building an Army of Timeshare Marketers or in the July edition of The Resort Trades Magazine.

Why don’t other industries use the timeshare marketing model?

Do a quick mental run-through of the products and services you buy and enjoy. Do any of them follow the timeshare tour marketing model?

Traditional timeshare marketing models lack efficiency, but far more importantly, they lack respect for the targeted consumer — the man and woman who are most likely to make a buying decision to become timeshare owners.

Maybe at one time, the idea of giving away a mini vacation in order to capture the heart (and three or more hours of the vacation weekend) of the prospective buyer was a valid model. But today it is simply inefficient, overloaded with frontend costs, and off-putting to a growing segment of the marketplace that demands not to be “sold to” but to make informed decisions based on personal needs and objectives.

Instead of giving away large numbers of free timeshare weekends and recouping the cost from the pockets of the much smaller numbers of consumers who make the decision to buy timeshare, there are other viable and far more respectful approaches. Timeshare companies can offer reduced rate timeshare rentals to their prospective buyers, enabling consumers to try before they buy.

Sales presentations can be offered, but they don’t have to be mandatory. What would sell you as a consumer? An amazing weekend at a resort where you felt relaxed, valued, pampered and respected, or several hours behind closed doors with a sales associate who won’t take no for an answer?

We can do better

The timeshare credibility deficit is considerable, and we won’t erase it through industry infighting, continuing to do the same things that got the industry to the place it is today, or failing to address burning issues and thereby opening the door for disreputable business practices, charlatans, and consumer fraud. In fact, if you set about to pick a challenging industry to rebrand, you probably couldn’t find one that offers a greater test than timeshare offers, but where challenge is greatest, so is opportunity.

When timeshare becomes an industry people trust, marketed in ways that are transparent, efficient, and consumer-centric, all other marketing challenges will fall away. The product, already exceptional, will become irresistible and industry-wide we will discover an army of the most influential timeshare marketers imaginable in the form of timeshare owners who are so genuinely thrilled with the product they own and the service and respect they receive, that they spread timeshare fever in ways that are organic, magnetic, and wholly authentic.