|
Evansville Lodge gets Marketing Lift
The Oak Meadow Lodge is a quiet haven on Evansville's picturesque north
side. Everyone who stays raves about the accommodations and the nearby
amenities at Oak Meadow Country Club. But until recently, Oak Meadow
Lodge was a well kept secret. New owner Lynne Lewis approached the Southwestern Indiana SBDC desperate
for marketing advice. Unfortunately, she had no budget for marketing and
advertising. That when the SBDC contacted a marketing professor at the
University of Southern Indiana. Lisa Wiltsie was thrilled with the idea of giving her marketing students
a real world experience. She divided her class into teams and Lewis gave
them a $1,000 budget in which to work. That kind of limitation certainly
forced the students to get creative! Six teams of students spent an entire semester on the project. First
they did market research. One team sent representatives with surveys to
restaurants, stores, and malls all around town. They asked respondents
if they were from Evansville and if so, had they ever heard of Oak
Meadow Lodge. The results shocked Lewis. “Although I knew our name
wasn’t really out there, I didn’t know how NOT out there it was!”
The student team then set to work on marketing strategy. There were
dozens of ideas, some reasonable and some not. But Lewis is putting
several of them into action. “I’d never even thought about a bus sign.
Who hasn’t been at a stoplight and read the side of a bus?” Lewis also
gathered some suggestions about building relationships with Evansville’s
sports teams, caterers and event planners. One student team also had
many good ideas about building word of mouth advertising by giving
discounts to those who make referrals. Oak Meadow Lodge is still a quiet get away on the north side, but there
are far fewer empty rooms these days! |