Archive for category: Marketing Tools and Tips

The Marketing Tools and Tips category includes:

  • Digital Marketing tools
  • Tips on how to market effectively with digital or non digital tools
  • Tips on Monitoring performance of marketing activities
  • Trends in Marketing of our industry

New Tech: How many more boats, parts or charters could you sell if your clients could finance their purchases online?

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A new wave of technology in the financial industry (fintech) could truly bring a breath of fresh air to the yachting industry in segment under the £50.000 price mark.

It sounds like a small price tag for a boat purchase but it’s not if you take into account the number of transactions or look at the yacht charter market and in yacht supplies/components. On the contrary it is a very large segment of the yachting industry in terms of number of transactions and many traditional Marine finance companies barely look at anything below £25.000-50.000 not to mention oftentimes they don’t look at vessels that are older than 30 years.

What does £50K buys these days in the boating and yachting industry ?

  1. Jet skies and personal water-crafts
  2. Ribs with outboards up to 6-7 meters
  3. Sailing Dinghies
  4. Sport Catamarans
  5. Yacht Charter Holidays with vessels up to 25-35 meters (depending on the vessels sail or motor)
  6. Outboard engines
  7. Superyacht toys (Sea Bobs, Jetsurf)
  8. Sails and rigging
  9. Small-medium inboard engines
  10. Generators
  11. Electronics (Radars, Chart plotters, SSBs , Sat phones etc..)

What is it and how does it work ?

It’s a fintech solution called DIVIDO we have partnered with that operates on websites that have enabled ecommerce modules. It allows a prospective client (user) that is –  for example –  interested in buying a dinghy or a yacht charter holiday costing £5000 to finance that payment and pay instalments instead of the full amount on their credit card right from the website. This process is enabled by multiple lenders competing for that client in real time and right through the website of the seller itself (the Dinghy seller or the Yacht Charter company in our example).

What are the benefits ?

Web users can spread the costs of for example yacht charter holiday through the year, or a high ticket purchase, get better offers booking in advance or during sales even if they don’t have the full amount in cash available. Ultimately, it is also a great way to attract new generations who are accustomed to use online tools to complete the purchases instead of going through a lengthy financing process which in most cases would actually contribute to a lost sale.

It also goes without saying that a Yacht charter holiday or any other a small boat becomes much more affordable if the client is able to spread that cost in time and yet have an immediate response on whether he can get that very purchase financed or not and at what rate.

What companies (sellers ) qualify for this solution ?

Sellers (Companies) that can benefit from this solution will need to meet some basic requirements.

  • At least £250.000 or other currency equivalent in yearly turnover
  • At least 1 year of trading/business history
  • A minimum online cart/purchase value of £250

Geographic Reach

This solutions is available currently in

  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • Germany
  • Norway
  • Sweden
  • United Kingdom

It will be soon available in the following countries so please sign-up and get notified when it will be available in your country.

  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Canada
  • France
  • Ireland
  • Italy
  • Netherlands
  • Poland
  • Spain
  • United States

How much does it cost ?

The set-up fee to install and test the multi-lender financed payment solution provided by DIVIDO can vary from merchant to merchant. However, plug-ins are available for the most common Content Management Systems such as WordPress, Shopify, Magento and Open Cart. Please Enquire and let us know your website set-up so that an accurate quote can be proposed.

Divido charges a small transaction fee for every purchase made with their finance solution

furthermore a monthly maintenance fee is required for their technical support and to make sure that your website Trust Pilot rating keeps as high as possible with smooth transactions and outstanding customer service.

How much more business can I expect to generate ?

A survey carried out by DIVIDO itself on a variety of industries shows that 39% of prospective clients would have NOT gone through with a purchase if a financed payment option was not available and they had to pay in one single transaction for the full amount. Although it is hard to estimate how much more business you can generate, many of Divido‘s merchants have seen a sales increase of 30% to 40% since offering Divido to their customers.

We really look forward to see what this solution could do in the industry of yachting as we believe it has truly great potential.

What companies are already using it?

Nobody in the yachting industry yet. We are the first to propose it to the industry. However brands like BMW, HTC and BNP Paribas have already adopted this technology.

Who are the investors behind this fintech company?

The same investors of Skype, TrasferWise and WordlPay. Their last round of financing was £2.9M. It is one of the ‘hottest’ tech companies in Europe.

How do I get a quote and check if my company qualifies for Divido payment solution?

click this botton below or get in touch with us.

Go to Divido
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Why will the Airbnbs of yachting improve boat ownership as well?

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We live in the sharing economy. Aside from the famous Airbnb, sharing vehicles and much more has become an everyday reality especially for those of you who live in big cities such as London, New York, Paris and Rome. We are sure you are getting accustomed to use services like Barclays’ Bikes, (now Santader), Zipcar, Car2Go, Ubequoo, to ‘rent’ bicycles or cars.

In the UK even big players are venturing into peer-to-peer services like EasyCarClub (the logo will remind of EasyJet), BlaBlaCar and others that are based on the ownership or cars being on a private basis instead of being owned and managed by fleet operators like in the case of Zipcar.

In the boating industry things are a little more complicated but chartering or sharing a boat has been practiced for quite some time even if with much less technology involved in the process. After more than 50.000 people read our our article on Investing in Yachts to Charter we had to dig into a number of platforms that are slowly but steadily changing the game.

Today in the Yachting industry we have quite a few new web-based companies putting effort and resources into making the boating and yachting experienced more accessible to more people.

There are essentially:

  1. Yacht charter aggregators
  2. Peer-to-Peer boating and yachting platforms
  3. Traditional yacht charter firms
  4. Boating and yachting companies providing curated yachting experiences
  5. Hybrid platforms that work primarily with single yacht/boat owners and small fleets
  6. Yacht managers with big branded fleet

We have tried to create 6 macro categories, however not all companies do fall strictly in one of the above and some of them embrace traits of more than one of the above or have pivoted along the way from a business model to the other.

We refer broadly to the Airbnbs of yachting when considering mainly those platforms that are not too selective on the of new boat listings and welcome new boats  right from the front end of their website (have a list your boat option) and focus primarily on entry prices as low as €100/day or even less.

We have asked some of the founders to help us and comment on this article main point.

BoatSetter.com

BoatSetter.com Formerly Cruzin.com

Former Cruzin.com founded in 2012, a U.S. based peer-to-peer platform now merged becoming BoatSetter.com

It was started by Jaclyn Baumgarten and it is now based in Miami Florida.

We have asked Jaclyn to give us her comments on  boat ownership vs easy access and she replied with a few meaningful lines:

BOATSETTER, often receives inquiries from perspective owners asking us what types of boats they should consider purchasing because they want to offset the cost of ownership through the Boatsetter program.

It’s a U.K. based counterpart of the aforementioned, focusing mainly on peer-to-peer and small fleet owners and it is called BorrowaBoat.com founded by Matt Ovenden. 

BorrowABoat.com

BorrowABoat.com

We asked Matt to give us his comments on whether new platforms could actually bring innovation to the industry and his words were very clear to us.

” ..bringing the sharing economy to boating, with a wider choice of boats than in the current market, and wider choice of locations and better prices, will bring real change and benefits for the customer, and boat owner”

Another case of peer-to-peer that started in the U.K with a very different take from the previous ones but much more similar to Airbnb is BedsOnBoard.com

 


BedsonBoard.com

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Marketing Yachts Online – Skim through the noise – deploy the most suitable tools and technolgy

Yachts and even smaller boats are hardly seen in store and although a lot of people were very skeptical about generating real leads from online marketing today it is the primary source of clients and the most effective one in terms of return on marketing spent. Many companies and entrepreneurs in the yachting industry are somewhat confused by the huge offering there is out there for tools and agencies that promise just about anything under the light of day.

Very few agencies (if any) understand the complexities and diversity of the type of clientele that decides to purchase a boat/yacht

or even the more simple requirements that yacht charterers have. In an orderly fashion, we’ll try to pin down for you a clarifying set of points in a bit of a checklist on the process and tools which one should use for marketing yachts online as well as marketing the experience of yachting.

The metrics

Understand the metrics first

Above all, there are very few metrics that will really count and those are:

The amount of visitors and sessions (one visitor can and will do more than one session if interested),  The average time they spend on your website, Your click/visitor acquisition cost, Your CTR (click through rate), Your Website bounce rate,  Your conversion rate and ultimately your (business) closing rate (if your website does not conduct the actual transaction online it will be the leads/closed deals) Before you go ahead and spend any marketing money online you have to make sure you can track your performance so it is fundamental to have the followings at hand. a) A fine tuned Google Analytics installation for your website Google analytics is a free tool to track your visitors, their sessions on your website, their behaviour, the source of traffic and a lot more however, if it is not finely tuned to track the conversions and the lead generation part of your website such as a contact form or enquiry form you are not going to be able to discern effective campaigns from ineffective ones Below is a video example of advanced conversion rate tuning in Google analytics. 

 

Yacthiting Website Google Analytics tuning and conversion rate optimisation 

A post shared by Adottimo – Revenue maximisers (@adottimo) on

b) Making sure you learn how to read the metrics and filter traffic before you make any changes to your website – You might also want to try to use another tracking tool such as CrazyEgg or HotJar that will actually give you a heat map and click map of what your visitors are doing on your website.

c) Loading speed is a crucial metric (read this post) that can influence all the others, this should be kept always under control and should ideally be under 2sec. If you are using wordpress we highly recommend to choose a solid hosting company such as Siteground we can’t speak highly enough of them.

The Tools

Choose the right tools and make sure you have time and resources to use them correctly: 

There are countless tools you can use to market your yachting business online but using virtually all of them at 10% of the tools potential often equals to spreading your resources to thin and not making the best out your time and budget. Let’s pin down those tools you cannot do without.

  1. Email Marketing Software – We recommend Mailchimp (also see this article) simply because it’s solid and easy to use and gives you a lot of control and monitoring tools for your email campaign
  2. Google Adwords : Google Adwords will serve the purpose of making Search and Display campaigns on the whole Google proprietary network and partner network. It’s fundamental to know how to use it as it is otherwise very easy to waste money with it and pushing ads to a not-that-relevant target market. Do not venture into an Adwords campaign if you don’t have the appropriate conversion tracking on Google Analytics set up and tested (See video above and previous block) – It’s fundamental to have the proper set up for re-marking/re-targetting campaigns because as we all know decisions related to buying or even chartering yachts are far from impulsive and your prospective clients will need to be exposed to your brand more than just once.
  3.  LiveChat if you want to interact more with your visitors (We also wrote a specific article with some case studies on this very specific tool link here)
  4. Social Media management tools such as Hootsuite (All related social media accounts need to be active first) – Posting on Social Media on a regular basis can be incredibly time consuming tools like Hootsuite can help scheduling posts in advance so that they can regularly get posted and monitored.

Strategy Planning and execution

  1. Make a Content plan for your website, for your social media posts and for your email content
  2. Frequency: keep your brand and products/services of on top of mind without being harassing this all comes down to having a well planned frequency of posts, emails, display campaigns, video campaigns and any other type of communication you are putting in place towards the same target market.
  3. A/B test: Testing is crucial you can test email campaigns with A/b testing in Mailchimp, you can test variations of your home page or landing page with Optimizely and you can also A/b test different ads within the context of a display campaign on Adwords, there are new tools for the latter but they imply a certain degree of knowledge of the Adwords platform.

Get your website reviewed

  1. A new pair of eyes on your website will spot things you can’t because you have been looking at it too much or simply because you don’t have enough User Experience expertise,  so get yourself a brand new pair of eyes to review your website and let you have a professional review.
  2. Get you Google Analytics data reviewed by a professional your interpretation might not be the only one on how to improve your presence.
  3. Review the size and weight (in KB) of your images
  4. Test and review Page speed figures and see where the areas of improvement are.
Contact us for a review of your website
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Why is page load time so important for your website?

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In the industry of boats and especially when we are looking at the leisure boating industry pictures/images play an incredibly important role in making a website successful. Getting a prospective client to fill in a form and enquire for more info is the name of the game. Ultimately, it is about motivating people enough to make that first move on your websites. Have you ever heard the sentence ‘an image speaks more than 1000 words’  well that is very much the case with all sorts of communication but when it comes to luxury items it’s exponentially true. Not to mention that in these times we live in a lot of the content (images, text, videos) are consumed on-the-go on mobile devices.

 

Some of you may think we are stating the obvious; good images = better communication however, on the web ‘good’ images can come at a ‘high price’ which means a lot of KB or even MB (kilobytes or Megabytes of data) to load on each page when a web visitor is browsing your website. The key phrase here is PAGE LOAD SPEED. 

Why is load time so important ? Because it directly effects your conversion rate

Converstion Rate VS Load TIme

Did you ever use Google Page Speed Insight, or the Pingdom Speed Test to check on the load speed of your website. Well if you haven’t already these are free tools and you should have them at your fingertips and weekly check the performance of your website. You can rest assured that your prospective customers are NOT going to wait for your website to load if it is slower than they are used to.  In the Image below you can see that the speed test has some main indicators:

  1. The load time

  2. The Page Size in Megabytes
  3. The number of requests
  4. The location the website is tested from


Among these 4 points the only one that isn’t not self explanatory is number 3: The number of requests.

The number of requests (a.k.a.: number of Calls ) is the total number of request that a browser used by your website visitor ‘asks’ your server to load in order to put together the full page and display it. Think of it (metaphorically) as the number of pieces of a puzzle that you need to display the whole home page for your web visitors.

In the image below you can see the number of calls sorted by load time.

RC Calls Pingdom Speed Test

The load speed ultimately is the total time it takes to deliver ‘answers’ to these requests/calls (in our case 89 requests or pieces of the puzzle to get back to our metaphor)

Now what you want to know is essentially how do I get my website to perform better in terms of load time (say under 2-3 Secs and ideally in the region of 1.5sec or lower)

We can guarantee that you traffic will increase and your leads will increase as a consequence as soon as you website is speed-optimised.

These are some key things you can do

  1. Most important is your hosting server (the place where your website lives):
    1. HOSTING: We  highly recommend SiteGround but you can try many other services and see which fits you best. The reasons why we love SiteGround   are numerous and quite technical so we won’t go into too much details, however, it is incredibly simple to migrate a website to them because the will assist you step-by-step and their customer support and speed is second to none especially if you are using wordpress. If your website is of the size of Netflix or YachtWorld.com you will probably need AWS (Amazon Web Server) but chances are you will be already on AWS  paying 20-30 times what Siteground would charge you.
  2. Make sure you images are of reasonable size, you don’t really need anything above 150kb. You can use an image optimiser that is compatible with your CMS and if you are using wordpress you find a lot of them
  3. Make sure to minify or inline the CSS, and eliminate render-blocking JavaScript
  4. Lastly, you can use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) such as CloudFlare to make sure your website display from the closest server possible to your web visitor

If you need help migrating your website or optimise your conversion don’t hesitate to contact us

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What price should I pay for the boat I want?

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A yacht or a boat valuation is no ordinary process and it can hardly be compared to other vehicles  like cars or even planes simply because most boats are built in very small series or one-off and even those that do have a production line are hardly identical to one another and without a doubt the way that have been maintained can make two identical models can be seen with prices that are different by 2x or more. (exceptions can be made for some personal watercraft and a very few more modern brands).

A lot of vessels, often some of the most beautiful you will ever see, have only been built once and never replicated therefore it is hard to compare them to another similar vessel.

The way we approach valuations is essentially a combination of a technical valuation of the vessel and its status together with a market valuation based on some comparable boats from comparable [or the same] designer/shipayard. However, in this [apparently] simple equation there is one element we take into account very seriously and that is that the yacht market is relatively illiquid [not easily convertible into cash] at least in several size segments, therefore, the rarity of buyers gives them the opportunity to have an advantage on the price. On the other hand, it can be counter argued that those who buy boats, especially above the 50 feet segment, are generally not desperate for cash, and therefore can afford to play hardball on their sale price.

One more element that is to consider in terms of liquidity of the market is the very geographical area the vessel is located.

For example areas such as the South of Florida in the U.S. are far more liquid markets than the UK, therefore you will often see faster transaction and less tiring negotiations than in other parts of the world.

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This is not to say that you can’t get lucky and acquire a vessel for a significantly lower price that what a technical valuation would suggest.

Our history is full of clients acquiring their vessel at 30-40 or even 70% their value

however, these are often complex situations such as bankruptcies or even divorces at times and need to be handled with care. Indeed, it is not uncommon to find an owner who might not even know [maybe because he/she inherited the vessel] that the vessel actually comes with a £40,000 unpaid bill from the marina where the vessel was moored in the last 2 years.

Helping people acquire their favourite boat or their ideal charter vessel is something we have always been passionate about, therefore, we are in the process of building a free Yacht Valuation Form to help you acquire your next boat at the right price.

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Increasing Conversion Rate From web visitor to prospective customer – relationship building in yachting websites

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Increasing the conversion rate on a yacht related website is not a one size-fits-all job. The truth to be told is that the yachting industry is still strongly based on relationship building. Not many people really buy a boat online (over 20 feet) and even those companies who are very experienced in selling yacht charters like BoatBooking.com don’t believe that yacht charter holidays can be sold online with no human-to-human interaction on a 1-1 basis just yet.

Therefore,  it is crucial to increase and optimise conversion rate. Conversion rate is the measure of how many website visitors become leads and then again how many leads become customers. It is a numbers game but also a game based on relationship building.

Fortunately, technology is much better and more affordable than it was even only 10 years ago. There are plenty of tools that are aimed at improving and increasing the interaction between website visitors and the business behind the website.

One tool which has given us a lot of satisfaction with a number of clients including the one mentioned previously is the live chat tool .

Increasing conversion rate

The reason is fairly simple. It allows people to talk to the business behind the website they are visiting and ask them all sorts of questions. While it sometimes can be a huge waste of time on high traffic websites it is incredibly useful for websites who do not have traffic numbers in the tens of thousand every day. Furthermore, every conversation (chat) can be useful to understand how the business can improve its website and provide information (maybe as FAQs) that are get repeatedly asked in a number of chats.

On the other hand if you are an experienced yacht broker for example you will have immediately a sense for who you are speaking to (chatting) by the question one asks.

In one case of one clients the mere customisation of the live chat we did for them brought their conversion rate up by 4% in less than 30 days. The reason behind it was that real prospective customers who wanted to charter yachts could immediately understand from the chats that they were talking to real experienced brokers instead of a contact center in a developing country, that instilled the much needed confidence the HNWI web visitor requires to leave their contact info and follow-up with a the broker.

There are many tools we have tried and tested and a lot of them implied the operator (chat operator that is) to sit at his desktop/laptop with the backend of the website open waiting for chats to happen. This practice is of course not sustainable for the size of the teams of many companies in the yachting industry so we kept on searching for a better tool. In the end the one which we decided it is the best value for money and the most user-friendly for nontechnical users is from a company called LiveChat Inc.

They offer several features for advanced customisation of every greeting in every page and also based on the language of the user (yes the tools ‘knows it’ before hand based on where the web visitor is typing from).

LiveChat visitors
Lastly, the tool has a wonderfully designed mobile app which means that you can manage your chats just like you would manage text or WhatsApp conversations from your phone. It doesn’t hurt that they offer a free trial period so you can test it and decide whether it is for you or not.

The integration with your website is quite easy if your website is in WordPress, there is a dedicated plug-in for it. However if you need help contact our digital team 

If you want to try to implement the Livechat on your business website go ahead and use this link  and let us know what are your first impressions in the comments if you like.

We liked the results we were able to achieve with our clients through the LiveChat tool that we decided to become their partner and help other companies achieve those results too

Live Chat Software

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Superyachts by 2020 – the results of the Hamburg superyacht interiors international conference 2015

On the 29th-30th of June 2015, I was called to do the opening speech at the Superyacht interior international conference (links below), an invitation I gladly accepted. The focus of the conference was on design trends, construction materials, efficient project management, cooperation and communication among the stakeholders that are regularly involved in the creation of a new superyachts and refitting of exiting vessels.

As I was given the responsibility to do the first lecture and the opening speech of the conference I decided with the team to stick to what we do best and open the conference with hard data on the yachting industry.  We prepared the market data and forecasts on the superyacht segment (>24mt) together with qualitative trend analysis we created with the help of our panel of experts, our business partners and some of our clients.

The scope of Rodriquez Consulting’s presentation at the Superyacht conference had to have at least two goals:

– goal #1 Inform and deliver a superyacht market analysis framework for the participants to use as a guideline in terms of market size forecasts and benchmarks and

-goal #2 Start and fuel the conversation regarding trends, ideas, process innovation, and elements that are challenging the yacht industry while building the super yachts and the market towards 2020. 

Superyachts 2020

I was pleased with the feedback received from our presentation (download link here) of the participants among which industry leading brands(shipyards) such as Lurssen Yachts the builder of the worlds biggest superyacht Azzam, Oceanco the shipyard that built award winning Alfa Nero, Fincantieri, Italy’s biggest passenger (cruiseliners) that is set to become a power player in superyacht and gigayacht (100mt+) building.

Among the top players of yacht interior outfitting highly experienced participants such as Anjia Matzing from Metrica Interior and Mr Antonio Costamante of AIM Yacht Interiors  were contributing to make the round tables particularly interesting together with the Managing Director of Genesis Technologies AG, Thorsten Steinbrecher a specialist firm in advanced audio/video entertainment systems and even commercial aviation representatives such as Antje Terno from Airbus.

The materials discussion was driven by Alan Mcvitty from M Studio Rob Henderson from UN studio, Ian Langham from Eckersley O’Callaghan together with Sandrine Mialy, who presented a very innovative optical fibre textile (see video below) that triggered the creativity of the designers and architects attending the conference.Rodriquez Consulting analysis was focusing on delivering answers the most usual questions we get:

  1. How big is the superyacht industry in 2015 in terms of units and value
  2. How  big will the superyachts industry will be in 2020
  3. How many clients are there (Ultra High Net Worth Individuals) and how much money will they be making by 2020
  4. Where and how are they investing their investable wealth and what is the target market (U-HNWIs) allocation  within the realm of the Investment of Passion ?
  5. How are the demographic and psychographic profiles of the HNWIs changing towards 2020?

Right after the presentation, thanks to the opinions and debate sparking from the 2 intense days of round tables and challenging Q&As, we are editing the document to make it optimal for readers (without a speaking presenter) and a useful guideline on some of the hot topics of superyacht building including;

  1. How to improve the yacht building process (with a special focus on the interiors and fittings) and what are the current issues to be addressed in terms of processes, tools, communication methods, and coordination of the stakeholders (system specialists, designers, shipyards, certification bodies.
  2. The design challenges, new materials, techologies, and the who and where of the innovation value chain.
  3. Marketing, using modern technology to enhance the experiential value and improve speed and efficiency in generating new leads, improving lead-to-customer speed and responsiveness of the sales team.
  4. Diagnostic of custom quotes, risk assessment for interior specialists, liability budgeting.
  5. How to scope the wants and needs of clients correctly to facilitate contractors quotation and mitigate risk (The Elevator Case)

These and a few other questions have been answered during our presentation which you can find available for download at this link (DOWNLOAD).

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The Antifouling paint market 2011-2015; numbers, trends and opportunities in the yacht industry.

It took our team almost 3 years of research to determine the trends and peculiarities of the antifouling market for yachts and pleasure crafts. It was not an easy task to separate the products on the market that would theoretically serve only commercial vessels (commercial/passenger ships and workboats) and those, instead, dedicated to yachts, super yachts and pleasure boats.

The antifouling market for yachts and pleasure boats has two, essentially distinguished, types of usage that show different market dynamics depending on the size range (<8m, <15m, <25m, >25m,)  of vessels one takes into account. The two macro types of usage relate to the size segments are:

1) The professional use done by shipyards and professional painting/coating companies working on both new vessels and used ones and

2) The DIY (do-it-yourself) non-professional use done by boat owners.

We have analysed that the breakdown of the above macro category can differ depending on the geographic area that is taken into consideration. For example there are more DIY customers in relation to the country’s overall fleet in France using antifouling products on vessels larger than 30 feet than there are in Italy. Whereas the number of shipyards that use antifouling and coating products for new vessels (before vessel 1st launch) larger than 25 meters is by margin greater in Italy than in France.

It’s very interesting to observe that markets that are very fragmented in the distribution towards the DYI customers such as Italy show less profitability for the manufacturers than other markets where the distribution is much more efficient. In our professional opinion the associated the fragmented distribution channels are high and obsolete making a very poor use of technology. On the specific topic of point of sale, we have surveyed directly over 3000 qualified responders (boat owners, yacht brokers, marine paint specialists, captains, hardware stores and others) in 12 different countries (France, Italy, UK, USA, Spain, Slovenia, Malta, Croatia, Netherlands, Turkey, and others), asking them “where they would mostly would like to find (a sample) antifouling products?” Right after the physical stores and ship chandlers which still accounted for 50% of the answers 20% stated that he/she would prefer to find the products Online on the producer’s website. In our view this is a sensitive sign of how the generational shift will influence the distribution dynamic and its overall impact on profitability on antifouling coatings and associated products.

Ultimately, the result of our survey show how the companies have a significant opportunity to increase profitability progressively shifting their distribution models and increasing progressively the use of e-commerce.

(Please contact us for further information or to request a consultation +44 7445 30 86 22)

Through our research we also analysed the dynamics that relate the end users (boaters) and the professional users (shipyards) to be more or less loyal to a certain brand (please contact us here for more info). In general terms we noticed that the smaller the size segment and the younger the boat owner the less brand loyalty he/she would show. Whereas, in the professional use, both the brand choice and the brand loyalty had a high correlation with the customer support and after sales reputation of the brand (and manufacturer).

From a data point of view we have segmented the market in two macro segments:

1) The “OEM” Market (the market generated by new built vessels)

2) The “Replace” Market (the market generated by the existing fleet in need of new antifouling coating as part of regular maintenance of the vessel)

The methodology: To accurately estimate this two markets we have built a complex algorithms to sub-segment they types of hulls and therefore estimate the amount of coating needed. Furthermore, we have used an adjustment factor for those vessels that do a new coat of antifouling paint every year and those that choose cycles of two years. Lastly, we have cross referenced the sales data in litres collected and estimated from direct research on the various players in the market  (Akzo Nobel, Jotun, Hempel, Boero Group,etc..) with the data built through the new and existing fleet of vessels.

Having collected and processed data form 2011 onwards with regards to the antifouling coating market for yachts and pleasure crafts,  we were able to calculate and compare the compounded annual growth rates (CAGR). Between 2011-2014 and forecasting 2015 in specific geographic areas we have analysed key markets such as Italy, France and other European countries and the U.S. and others.

In terms of estimated monetary value, the data emerging from our research showed us that markets that have a strong production of large yachts and super yachts (>15m and >25m) such as Italy (Antifouling coatings -6% CAGR 2011-15) were more affected by the reduction of new built than France (Antifouling coatings +1.3%  CAGR 2011-15). Instead, the “Replace” market for antifouling coating did not show such large difference between these two established yachting economies; Italy (Antifouling coatings +4.1% CAGR 2011-15) vs France (Antifouling coatings +6.5% CAGR 2011-15). 

Economic Value CAGR antifouling market

Please contact us for further information or to request a consultation +44 7445 30 86 22

 

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Wealth Trends and HNWI prospecting

Wealth Trends and HNW leads

Wealth trends and Tools for HNWI prospecting

 

The global recovery continues to show signs of weakness. Heightened Eurozone financial market and sovereign distress, stuttering recovery in the U.S. and slower than expected growth in major emerging market economies are the main drivers behind the IMF’s recent adjustment of its forecast for global growth downwards to 3.5% for 2012 and 3.9% for 2013. The two main assumptions that the forecast is founded upon are policy action in the Eurozone that allows financial conditions to ease gradually and recent monetary policy changes in emerging market economies gaining traction.

The continual recurrence of financial market distress leading to sovereign distress and bailout packages that provide temporary relief in the Eurozone heightens the potential for uncontrolled default and Euro exits. Both these scenarios will certainly have a severe impact on global economic growth prospects and wealth growth.

WEALTH TRENDS

Investment

UHNW investors are shifting their wealth into private companies, real estate and commodities.

Risk aversion is largely reflected in the shift away from speculative financial investments to hard assets.

Professionals and institutions engaging with UHNWIs should consider strategies and approaches that address the current concerns and focus of these clients.

Reduction in Tax Exposure

As governments around the world look to revive state finances through higher and stricter taxation regimes, UHNWIs look to reduce their tax exposure through a shift to territories with beneficial tax regimes. Professionals engaging with the ultra wealthy need to consider strategies that reduce tax exposure and address their clients’ concerns.

WEALTH CURRENTS

2012 at was  a year of shifting wealth currents, with the broad direction for wealth flows going eastwards. Eurozone UHNWIs, concerned over volatility and distress in sovereign and financial markets, have shifted wealth away from the periphery towards core economies with Germany and Switzerland as favored destinations on the Continent. Other beneficiaries include the United Kingdom, the US, Hong Kong and Singapore.

The shift in wealth growth to emerging economies poses a challenge for wealth management firms based in the U.S. and Europe, who need to convince clients of their long term viability. In contrast, finding and keeping talent in developing markets is a key success factor as wealth management firms need to invest in human capital to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the shift.

STATE OF WORLD’S UHNW POPULATION

  •       The global UHNW population stands at 187,380 with a combined wealth of US$25.8 trillion. Combined wealth attributable to this segment shrank by 1.8% from a year ago. The decrease was largely driven by the Eurozone crisis and a slowdown in emerging economies.
  •       Oceania saw the greatest growth in UHNW population, with an increase of 5.9%, largely driven by the continued growth of Australia.
  •       Asia, in contrast, saw the largest percentage reduction in UHNW population amongst the regions. The 2.1% reduction in UHNW population is a result of poor equity performance, particularly in Japan, China and India.
  •       Combined wealth loss was highest in Asia as Hong Kong, China and Japan led wealth loss across the region.
  •       The U.S. leads in terms of real growth in UHNW population numbers, with 2,250 UHNWIs joining the ranks of the ultra wealthy. The combined total wealth of the U.S. UHNW population expanded by US$ 265 billion.

For more information or to receive a copy of our complete Wealth Report or our most recent Yachting Industry Market Analysis please contact us Market@RodriquezConsulting.com

If you are looking for new tools to network with High Net Worth Individuals and generate prospects in this difficult target group you might want to request a free trial of Wealth Monitor by clicking here  or on the logo below

 

Wealth Monitor HNWI leads

Wealth Monitor is a tool for soucing new HNWI Clients

 

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Mailchimp and the importance of emails

I cannot deny to be a big fan of digital marketing and a fond believer that communication and marketing is largely underestimated in the marine and yachting industry. It is often the case in fact that you go at a boat show see a magnificent product, let’s say, a hand made mahogany wood sail boat, you know one of those vessels that really gives you an idea of hard work, passion for the job, incredible technical skills and countless hours with the utmost attention to details, but then you go have a look at their brochure, or and their website and you think…if only this product was presented better.

I do understand that oftentimes the team of people behind a great vessel has its core skills concentrate on the technical aspects of yacht building and virtually none in the communication and marketing area, which tends to penalise their business resulting in lower on non-existing sales.

Furthermore, boats are non-impulsive purchase decisions even if the prospective customer has the cash in hand, simply because buying a boat requires planning things such as docking space getting the wife to agree and plenty of other elements. So what is the best way to stay in touch with that prospect that has visited the boat at a recent boat show for example. Some might argue that social media will do but it’s arguably not the always the case within a older age group of prospective customers or with customers that conduct particularly busy lives.  However, there is one piece of marketing that is inexpensive and that you prospective customers regardless of their age on how busy they are will always see. That piece of your marketing is EMAILS, yes ! the good old emails which are now on everybody’s phone, ipads and at times gets read even more than once (especially if someone has more devices where he/she reads emails from)

Emails are as old as the internet in fact arguably older than the web itself but they are still extremely effective and also constitute long-term value in a company as all prospects that don’t buy today might be buying in the future, and that’s particularly true for boats as they are very often regarded as a very time-intense hobby or an entry in the retirement.

Emails nowadays are not only a form of communication but can be an incentive to generate interaction with other digital assets and non digital occurences  such as videos, websites, events, surveys and much more.

They are a way to get to know your audience with time and understand their preferences their habits gathering a plethora of valuable information that will help your business and company refine its marketing and sales strategy.

I have personally tried a variety of tools for email marketing but I have to admit the very best of all is

Mailchimp LOGO

Mailchimp Logo

MAILCHIMP. It must not be a case as over. 1.5 million businesses are using it every day, and their servers channel through over 1 BILLION emails every day. As you might expect this gives Mailchimp and as a consequence all its users a substantial source of data on how to best build your email. Indeed, MAILCHIMP allows you to test your audience inbox for spam filters, test visualisation on multiple devices, choose the best subject line to for your emails to get more opens or clicks and if you have a very international audience it even allows you to send the emails at a scheduled time that takes into account the time zone of the recipient.

In brief MAILCHIMP is a great tool, it helps you even test which subject line will produce  the most emails opened or clicks  with an A/B split campaign

You don’t need to believe me  you can try it it’s free just click here or on the logo above.

 

A:B Split Mailchimp

 

The one feature I like the most about Mailchimp is  that it constantly gives you the opportunity to improve by having an industry and list average for open rate and click rate so each campaign you make can be compared to the industry average which is preselected by you and the list average (only if you have done another campaign on the same contact list) See snapshot above of a campaign we ran for a client

Mailchimp HOURLIE.001

If you would like to do a 1 day training session for you or for your team on how to make the most out of email marketing you are more than welcome to contact us.  

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