Performance Marketing in the Real World
For whatever reason, if you happen to live in the eastern two-thirds of the country and have a significant amount of Membership Rewards points, chances are you have spent some time in Cancun, Mexico. For all but the West coast, Cancun is incredibly accessible, e.g., a direct flight from NYC takes less than four hours, and in most regards, incredibly efficient. The airport is new, clean, and modern. Customs and Immigration flow smoothly, and there are no shortage of transportation options, from shared ride vans to rental cars. There aren’t any bogus taxes or tricks, like the $10 you must pay after landing in the Dominican Republic, or that country’s airport photographers.
Cancun may be run efficiently, but that shouldn’t be confused with simplicity; because, one thing that Cancun is not, is simple. It is a system designed to overwhelm, confuse and ultimately separate you from your money. Unlike other places, this is one with some benevolence; its motivations are clear, because the people need to make money. It’s a system with a disproportionately large number of performance-based arrangements. All of them, though, need foreign dollars to keep it running smoothly. Going there is like entering a real-life example of the survey path; more than anything, Cancun (namely the hotel zone and use of excursions) illustrates in black and white the distinction between leaving feeling fleeced and parting with one’s money willingly. One way or another, you will leave spending more than you intended – the aim of every performance marketing offer. How you feel about is what will differ.
There are so many lessons to learn and analogies from Cancun, but we’ll focus on three.
1. Lead Gen – Want to know why the user experience for generic lead gen matters? It begins the moment you exit baggage claim – a sea of selling products you are told you need. A better example comes when trying to arrange an activity off property. In Cancun that involves the purchase of a ticket from one of two places, representatives from within the hotel who work for outside vendors or people on the street focusing on night life. You’ll experience just what many online do, where they know generally what they want but don’t have a specific provider in mind. As is the case with aggregators online, offline, you will have multiple vendors selling a combination of the same thing. You will never know if what they pitch is a) what you actually get or b) the best fit, because they make varying amounts by the back-end providers. Like a ping tree, you are served by who pays them the most not who gives you the best.
2. Bait and Switch – All-inclusive is rarely all-inclusive. The nicer hotels have incredible staff, many of whom don’t work for tips, but once you step outside the hotel to partake in an event / excursion, even especially if you learned about the event from a lead generator at the hotel, be ready. The classic scenario goes like this. You have booked all inclusive golf. Arrive at the course but find out that there is a cart fee. Want to walk? That’s not possible. Alternatively, you have booked a snorkeling excursion. You arrive at the marina, but there is a fee to actually see the reef – not their fee but to some agency. And, chances are the price you pay will be more than the locals pay or that is printed. You don’t know the questions to ask, and you have no idea if you paid the right amount. It simply leaves you feeling cheated, even if the ultimate experience was worth it. This type of bait and switch happens all the time online, but we justify it better because we can think in abstract terms like conversion rate. Yet, it’s no different than being lied to and fighting to get money back.
3. Coco Bongo – There are other activities that are well run, which generally means decent transparency on pricing and product, well executed, and not really lamenting the price paid post experience. Then, there are those where you forget the price and can’t decide if you the consumer or you the entrepreneur enjoyed it more. That’s Coco Bongo, and it’s everything you expect from outside the US (seriously gray behavior with no shortage of trademark infringement) but run with the precision of a world class heist. It’s the place that every other lead generator on the street steers you away from because they can’t make any money sending you there. Entry price is steep, and while open bar, it’s below bottom shelf. It, though, has managed to do what few other club-like environments can – be fun for couples and not boring for singles. More importantly, it delivers. It is the definition of high quality product – better than initial expectations and delivering consistency again and again. Coco Bongo didn’t pioneer the concept by any stretch. The modern day champion is by far Cirque du Soleil. Their performances require the utmost skill levels and timing; it’s an experience built on extremes on top of layered nuances that is executed predictably and repeatedly. It’s the mark of a great product, and in a land of deception, it stands out even more. Best part is, you can go there and call it a business trip.
