Kayak Marketing – Greek Style!

I have just returned from a lovely family holiday in Fiskardo.

Whilst there, I decided that I had been sitting around quite long enough and I needed to get out on the water. A kayak was my vessel of choice.

I started in the obvious place by doing a Google Search for “Fiskardo Kayak Rental” which yielded results only from boat hire companies – none of which supplied kayaks for hire. This seemed odd (it turns out it is a different licence required for kayaks).

With only 2 days left to go of my holiday, I was getting desperate to kayak. I decided to visit each of the three boat hire companies to ask them if there was anywhere I could rent a kayak. The first one said no. Then I stepped into the chandlery – he said he is going to do it next year. The third one yielded a result. I was given a phone number. I tentatively called it expecting a Greek “yassou” but instead was met with a South African “hello”.

Yes, he did rent kayaks, and yes I could have one now.

It turned out he was 50 metres from the part of the harbour I turned right at to head back up the hill, but he was to the left!

I had a great kayak (so good I went back the next day for another outing with my son).

Afterwards I was talking to Alexi (born in Fiskardo but raised in South Africa for a number of years – hence the accent) and asked him why he wasn’t online.

He said he was, but he hadn’t really had time to get to grips with it. He had, however, spent some money printing a lot of brochures which he had handed out to local business owners around the main harbour. I didn’t see one until after I had rented a kayak – doh!

This is where I had to hold myself back a bit.

You see, in Fiskardo everywhere has wifi. All the hotels, villas, apartments, tavernas and café bars. Everyone has it. So naturally, I looked there first, as I imagine 95% of people would also do when looking for something while out there.

Yet Alexi, despite having a good WordPress website, which is so easy to optimise for Google, had not found the time to do it.

One questioning him further he explained that he planned to do it over the winter.

“Over the winter!” There are 6 to 8 weeks of season left in Fiskardo but he is going to stay wait until the Winter to spend the 15 minutes it would take to optimise his website.

Ouch!

Worse still, he had spent time and money on brochures which were not visible.

Are you making a similar mistake?

Are you spending time on marketing that won’t work (the brochures) whilst ignoring something simple that could produce results pretty much instantly (optimising your website for very simple and relevant search terms).

For Alexi, with literally no competition, simply changing his title tags and description tags would yield very fast results.

I sent him a video walk through of how to do this, and to be fair to him he gave me a substantial discount from my second day rental to show his appreciation for my help.

Guess what too. I have just dived over to his website and he has half implemented my advice, and at least changed his home page title tags and description tags to “Fiskardo Kayak Rental” and from being nowhere in Google he is now in position 10, so giving himself a real chance of getting more rentals from Google. Good man Alexi!

Once he changes the title and description tags on each page to be different (eg Kayay hire) etc he will get even better results.

If you have a WordPress website there is a really effective tool to use to ensure that you are always at the top of Google. To access it, simply download my free guide below and then I will send you a link to a video walk through (just ask me for it and I will email you the link – no charge):

Click the button below to see the four most effective marketing tactics for small business owners:

Small Business Salt – Practical Business Advice For Small Business Owners.