An industry affair

For the past four years, the National Marine Manufacturers Association has been collecting leads. Its Discover Boating Mobile Marketing Tour has been traversing the country, stopping at fairs and festivals to introduce non-boaters to the boating lifestyle.
Now, armed with hundreds of thousands of leads, NMMA has decided it’s time to stop collecting them and start activating them. As part of that effort, it’s launching several initiatives this year.
To start, it has created a global demo day calendar through which dealers and builders can register their demo day events and get a list of leads within 100 miles of the event in return.
“Sometimes, there are 70 leads within 100 miles, sometimes there are 600,” says Amy Murray, NMMA’s event marketing director, who is heading up the effort.
NMMA is also working closely with those marinas celebrating National Marina Day in an effort to get as many as possible to offer test ride or test drive opportunities. To help them – and others – put on such events, Murray is putting together a demo day promotion support kit, including information and tools that can be used to construct press releases, postcards, flyers and signage.
Finally, NMMA is partnering with companies like GM to provide boat rides at events nationwide. In late April, for example, Murray and the Discover Boating Guy brought five boats to a Lake Havasu poker run and truck show, providing about 100 people with rides over the course of a day. GM paid for the gas, the cost of the event and the slips, while NMMA provided the staff, signage and an e-mail to its list of leads.
“Test riding or driving that boat is simply the best way to get from a hot lead to the buying point,” sums up Murray.