This week, I had the opportunity to go to Charleston on Wednesday for the Charleston Area Claims Association meeting. I had planned to go down there with one of our experts, but ended up making the trek by myself. I told my wife that I was considering taking a suitcase and spending the night one night on this trip and she thought that was a good idea. It worked out nicely with Maddie being at Pawleys Island already and Meagan was going to be working late in the art studio with her pottery class.
I have been wanting to focus on our clients along the coast that are not located in the heart of downtown Charleston. I felt like that area was over fished and I have not even tried to market our clients in Beaufort and areas like Georgetown and even Myrtle Beach. These could be “Honey Holes” as we used to call them when my dad would take us fishing in Lake Murray growing up. For those who don’t fish or don’t have a clue as to what I’m referring to, a “Honey Hole” is a lucrative fishing spot that is normally kept secret from other fishermen.
My plan was to make this a marketing trip from Beaufort to Myrtle Beach. I sorted our CRM database for just include the following towns and cities: Orangeburg (because that is on the way to the coast), Beaufort, Georgetown, Pawleys Island, Murrell’s Inlet, Surfside, Myrtle Beach and even Manning and Conway. These outlying locations would prove to be Honey Holes.
Once the excel spreadsheet was sorted by these selected cities, I then copied and pasted the spreadsheet into my favorite website mapping software, www.easymapmaker.com. This is just like fishing with a depth finder in a big lake. If I was new to the lake and someone gave me a list of key hotspots where fish are normally caught and I had a limited amount of time to fish, I would make a point to try and stop and fish at each of them. Even if I were to only fish for a few cast, I would get a sense of how deep the water is, how much obstruction is in the way between me and the fish. How clear the water is and how much competition there is in the area from other fishermen.
I did the same thing with marketing. I believe it was lucrative for me to skip marketing this time in Charleston, but instead focus on the smaller areas like Beaufort, then Georgetown to Myrtle.
I know we got one direct case from this trip last week. Al Duncan received a collision reconstruction case from a long time client who has not hired us in a few years. He called me directly after I left his office and spoke with his paralegal. I am grateful for my job and the ability to speak freely to clients.
