For this assignment I decided to make a response tool targeted towards the family and friends of the hikers. These individuals are back home and watching the progress through social media platforms. This squeeze page will allow our company to begin networking with more than just the hikers themselves. Hiking the Appalachian trail requires an individual to exit society and enter the wilderness. This natural isolation can weigh on a person overtime. That’s why we believe that strong social engagement and support from friends and family back home is essential for a hikers mental and emotional health. We want to encourage people that are already enjoying and liking the photos and videos of hikers to contribute to the trip.
To do this our page is going to offer statistics about the financial hurdles that hikers face.
One of the key statistics we want to use is the amount per mile that hikers spend. Many people back home believe that the hike is cheap because of its separation from society. We want to correct this notion and encourage them to study up and understand all the difficulties their friend or family member is facing. This will become a vital source of support and help to mitigate the financial reasons for coming off trail. It will greatly benefit both our business and the hikers themselves throughout their journey.
After signing up, we want to provide a sheet that offers our advice on how to best lend support to hikers that are out on the trail. This will cover basic information such as common equipment, mistakes and practices of hikers. This information will help them better understand the products and services that we offer and transform a hiker’s solo journey into a collaborative effort with all the support that is required to succeed.
When sending this out to my 5 ideal clients I ran into a delay. I had easy access to the hikers themselves but reaching their family and friends was more difficult. I reached and eventually got 10 direct family members of hikers and 4 close friends from the original 5 hikers. I made age the diverse factor, choosing two hikers over 40 and 3 under 40. The younger hikers had family members view the advertisement and thought that It did a good job explaining the importance of contributing to the hiker’s overall money pool. The older hikers were reluctant to reach out for financial help but that was expected based on the data I had gained during the positioning grid assignment. Overall, the direct marketing tool was a success. Most of the people were asking for more information about how they could contribute and stay up to date on their hiker’s journey. I wanted to keep this information concise so that we could quickly gain the email address before moving into pricing and sales. One late addition based on the feedback from one of the hikers was to include a line where the person could insert their hikers name when signing up. This allows the person to immediately feel as though they are taking this action for them and not for themselves. This actionable advertisement and marketing tool will make it much easier to gather and distribute information in the future. All the names and emails that I gathered through this exercise have also been added to my list of contacts that I’ve already collected. Most of the responses that I gave were very interested in learning more about the day to day experiences of hiking. From my research I have found that many older people were excited just following the experiences of the younger hikers and were excited about the opportunity to help contribute to journeys that are forthcoming. I think that moving forward firsthand written experience and testimony from some of my hiking friends may also become a key resource for drawing clients
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