Marketing From Hell

Tomorrow I am going to Hell ... literally. There is an area on Grand Cayman Island nicknamed "Hell"  thanks to some black limestone formations that (as legend has it) caused a local at one point to explain that "this is what hell must look like!" As you might expect, the area has been turned into a tourist destination, where the star attraction is a Post Office which specializes in letting you send a postcard home directly from Hell (with official postmark included).

Imagine for a moment that you had the challenge to create a destination based on a normal natural phenomenon like these limestone formations. Sure, a catchy name like "hell" would certainly help ... but your real goal isn't just to create a memorable experience - it is to create a shareable one as well.

How many tourists do you think visit Hell and DON'T send a postcard home? Not very many. Part of the fun of going there is sharing it with friends and family back home. In Hell, they don't have signs asking visitors to please join a neglected Facebook page or follow them on Twitter. Their marketing is built into the experience itself - and it works because of it.

The next time you are considering some method of desperation marketing to get your customers to talk about the experience you offer, remember that the ideal solution might be to find a way to make word of mouth an inherent part of how people interact with your business. The result could be creating something as shareable as going to hell and back in an afternoon.