b'LETTER FROM THE PRESIDENTWhen it Comes to Tech, Its BestFacebook, and Twitter experts that run your to Keep Up than Catch Up integrated marketing and social media strat-egies. However, I imagine that for many PVA Recently, I had a conversation with a formermembers this isnt the case. Im sure that there colleague and friend who runs her own in- are some still using seasonal college interns formation technology consulting and serviceto handle Facebook posts, or that the same company that specializes in the travel,guy that built your website 15 years ago is the tourism, and hospitality industries. Sheguy you call when a link stops working, or told me that if you are not doing the bareBob Lawler your site needs an update. And, Im sure that minimum to keep up with the ever-changingsome members feel intimidated by the whole world of technology then you are being leftthought of going digital. Well, for those who behind and you may never be able to catch up. This wasare not there yet, I am here to tell you it is time to embrace a scary thought for me so I asked for further explanation.the future before you get left behind. I can guarantee that She told me that when it comes to business technologyif you are not using a digital marketing strategy to harness it is much more cost effective to keep up as opposed tothe unbelievable power and reach of the Internet, and spending money trying to catch up and the longer youyour competitor is, they are eating your lunch. They may wait the harder andalready be optimiz-more expensive it willing their own website be to get back on anto target your best even playing field.customers. They mayThis was a verybe outbidding you timely conversa- on your most profit-tion for me becauseable keywords and we had just hiredforcing you to pay an integrated digitaleven more for your marketing agency toown terms on Google build us a brand-newand they may have website. A site, thatan integrated social for the first time,media campaign will be optimized forthat is engaging with mobile use. We alsoyour former guests engaged the agencyand their future to guide us throughguests. the world of digitalM y p o i n t i n marketing with a Search Engine Optimization (SEO)sharing this information with you is to drive home the fact and Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign, a lead nurture emailthat digital marketing is here to stay and the technology marketing campaign, and an enhanced social mediabehind it is growing and changing every day. If you cant campaign.afford to hire your own internal team of experts there are As a company with a one-person marketing depart- thousands of companies out there that specialize in digital ment and a one-person IT department, our decision totechnology that may be more affordable and able to help. hire an outside agency and take advantage of their col- I suggest looking for one that works in the hospitality and lective knowledge and digital marketing expertise hastourism industry and spend some time and money to quickly developed into a game changer. I found myselftrying to understand exactly what you dont know. Take leaving every meeting a little smarter and a little moreit from me: you do not want to be the last company to join confused, and usually saying, I didnt know how muchthe digital party. I didnt know. By hiring this outside agency, we essen-tially tripled the size of both our IT and Marketing de- Sincerely,partments for the price of hiring one full-time person. We now have consultants and partners that teach our team how to use Google Analytics, discuss ad word strategy, and keep our website optimized so we are theBob Lawler top organic listing on any search engine.President nMaybe this is old news to some of you and you already have a full-time internal team of Google, 4SEPTEMBER 2019FOGHORN'