John Veverka & Associates

Developing Marketing Plans for Heritage Interpretation & Tourism
Sites and Attractions.
12 Units,  4 CEU's  $300.00

Without a doubt marketing is one of the most critical aspects of any heritage or interpretive attraction operations.  Marketing brings in visitors, creates new market groups - and gets them to come back for return visits.  Successful marketing efforts = staying in business for most heritage attractions, particularly those not totally supported by local governments or other governmental agencies.  Yet many agencies and organizations don't have marketing plans or yet... "successful marketing plans".  You need this course if:

- Your visitor numbers have been flat for the past 2-3 seasons.
- Your visitor numbers are decreasing.
- You site's return visitation rate is very low/season.
- You have had to reduce staff and hours of operation.
- You haven't changed or updated your marketing materials in several years (or decades).
- You haven't done a critique or effectiveness analysis of your marketing materials (brochures,
  web site, etc.)
- You haven't done a recent visitor survey to see who your current visitors are and what they
  expect from  a site visit.
- Looked at site visitation total costs vs. perception of $ benefits from the site visit.  Did they
  have to pay $100.00 for what they perceived as a $25.00 in value experience?
- Your on-site experiences haven't changed or been updated in years (or decades).
- Your interpretive experiences are boring and lack-luster or poor.

Meet me here on YouTubo for a quick course overview: https://youtu.be/E579AazvWw4




Markets of One, The Experience Economy and Mass Customization - you ready?


Course goals:

Upon competing this course you will:

- Have taken a hard look at your current marketing plan and material as to their effectiveness.
- Have look at who your market groups are currently and what market groups you want to attract.
- Look at the objectives you want your marketing strategy to accomplish.
- Look at the re-invention of your site's story and interpretive experiences.
- Look at creating a new mass customization product (experience) package.
- Have developed a new/updated marketing plan working draft.

Course Instructor: Professor John Veverka




- B.S and M.S in Heritage Interpretation - The Ohio State University (Taught a course on
 Interpretive Master Planning - wrote the first Interpretive Planning Text book).
- Ph.D. program in Interpretation at Michigan State University. (Taught introduction and
 advanced interpretive courses including interpretive planning units.)
- Adjunct Professor Heritage Interpretation (summer heritage tourism institutes) North Carolina State
 University, New York State University.
- NAI Certified Interpretive Planner and Trainer
- NAI Fellow
- Certified Professional Heritage Interpreter (Canada).
- Author of several interpretive planning/training college text books.
- Publisher of InterpNEWS - the International Heritage Interpretation e-Magazine.
- 40 years of interpretive planning, training and writing experience.


Course Units:

Unit One - So what's the problem?  This is your assessment of what is not working so well in your marketing efforts.  What are the objectives you want a marketing plan update and upgrade to accomplish?

Unit Two - what are your sites "products"?  What are your selling (experiences, contacts with living history interpreters, programs, special events, etc.).

Unit Three - What are your current marketing materials - and are they working?  Do your marketing materials match your audience and your experiences?  Unit three includes a review - send me (as a PDF) some of your main marketing materials for a critical analysis.

Unit Four - Analysis and re-thinking of the products your are offering your visitors.  What business are you in?  Who are your real or perceived target market groups?  What do they want from a site experience.

Unit Five - Current market sustainability - how to keep them coming back for more.  More of what?  What is your current market sustainability plan?

Unit Six - Market Creation - What new market groups do you want to attract?  What products or experiences would they want?  How will you let them know that you have a great package of experiences that they will love?

Unit Seven - new concepts for marketing: Markets of One - Mass Customization and Experiential Experience strategies.

Unit Eight - Marketing plan/materials income stream - what will your marketing materials cost and how will you track them to see if your brochures, web site or other marketing instruments are generating a "visit".  Cost/visitor contact and cost effectiveness.

Unit Nine - competition analysis - Who is offering similar heritage experiences and how can you compete with them?

Unit Ten - Creating a new Marketing Campaign
1.   Budget allocations based on need.
2.   Advertising material design and pre-testing.
3.   Ad placements and tracking strategy.
4.   Web Site Development

Unit Eleven - Implementation of the Marketing Plan.
1.   Time Lines for implementation.
2.   Budget determinations per ad line item.
3.   Staffing needs.
4.   Contracting needs.

Unit Twelve:  Tracking and evaluation of the ad campaign.  On-going evaluation to see how the advertising and marketing strategy is going month by month.

l.   Tracking reviews (schedule, etc.).
2.   Evaluation tools, and on-going evaluation (monthly?).

Anticipated course product - you will have developed a working draft of a new and improved heritage interpretation/tourism marketing plan.

Estimated time to complete this course is 40 hours.

When will the course start? You can start this course at any time and work at your own pace. It is estimated that it will take about 40 hours to complete this course. The cost of the 40 hours of training is $300.00 USD, which can be paid for by credit card or PayPal using the Pay Now button below.

As the course is limited to 10 participants at one time, if you would like to see if the course has current openings or have us send you the course Registration Form, or if you have any questions at all please feel free to ask: jvainterp@aol.com