Quarry Hill Farm is a 160 acre property a few miles from Elk Mountain Ski Resort in the Endless Mountains of Northeast PA. It’s an old family business, relying mainly on word of mouth over the years to rent the buildings. They have several group rental units on the property and were looking for some online/social media marketing support to get the rentals rented without spending a ton of money. Various forms of social media were used as a way to keep costs down and the site fresh.
Flickr
Design inspiration was pulled from the natural beauty of the QHF property and LaunchDM conducted an initial photo shoot – utilizing Flickr to house the images. Flickr became not only the online storage device but was also utilized to display the images on the new web site. It gives the client the ability to add/delete photos on their Flickr account – acting like an content management system for photos on the site.
Twitter
During site planning, design and development, QHF wanted to start building some brand awareness so we helped them get started on Twitter. This exercise not only got the brand out there; it helped the client get a better idea of how others in the region conduct the online portion of their businesses.
Facebook
The QHF property is diverse in regards to its offering which made Facebook another great communication and broadcast device. So far, Facebook has been used in two distinct ways. 1) It’s being used in the traditional sense – as a business “page” where people can visit the page and “Like” Quarry Hill Farm which makes them a fan of the brand. 2) Facebook “Like” buttons were installed on each “rental page.” When a site visitor clicks “Like,” Facebook automatically throws a post on that members profile page.
In a nutshell, the new Quarry Hill Farm site is extremely intuitive and user-friendly, carries a lot of power on the social media and SEO side of things, and gives the client a number of media outlets to keep the site super fresh.
In addition to building this online presence, LaunchDM is helping Quarry Hill Farm setup listings on/in popular local and statewide tourist web sites and other advertising media. We have also consulted on ideas to make the property more attractive to specific types of groups. For instance, we recommended setting up wireless internet connections in the three main rental units so they might be more attractive for company retreats, etc. Cable was already there so an extra $35/month seemed well worth the cost.
As Peter F. Drucker said, “Marketing is not a function, it is the whole business seen from the customer’s point of view.”
