The seasonal economy of Ocean City operates on a tight clock. Merchants have about three months to woo time-constrained vacationers who come with little downtime and many choices for fun.
While digital marketing helps capture some of those visitors, many beach town entrepreneurs are finding success with an older strategy: printed catalogs that customers can leaf through while reclining on the sand or planning their next day’s activities.
Those real estate agents on the shore market really know who they are selling to. Families looking for vacation homes frequently launch their searches months before summer arrives, collecting information during winter planning sessions. Those descriptions are useful, but on the low-tech side of home browsing, Zillow-inspired catalogs let potential buyers tape out listing printouts across kitchen tables and mark favorites with sticky notes.
Folks who are purchasing second homes here aren’t doing so on a dime. They want something they can refer back to, show their spouse, take out at family gatherings. Vacation rental guide features neighborhood tours, beach access map and listing by property.
The likes of HelloPrint’s catalog printing services have made it more wallet-friendly for individual agents who would never have had the budget for professional print runs. Cost per unit decreases drastically at modest volumes, enabling even agents with small portfolios to set up catalogs.
Beach boutiques have a special challenge: every few months, their clientele turns over entirely. Summer visitors are not the same as spring breakers, who are not the same as fall wedding parties. Now savvy private shop owners are making seasonal catalogs that cater to these changing demographics.
Customers are known to return dog-eared catalogs with the corner of a page turned down, searching for items they had tagged during previous visits.
Restaurant owners are doing the same with menus. Instead of generic year-round menus, several Ocean City restaurants now offer a seasonal catalog-style menu detailing the day’s fresh catches, where they came from, and even recipes to make them at home. These lengthy menus also function as souvenirs evoking visitors’ vacations.
With little vacation time, families need help deciding what to prioritize. While the traditional brochure provides elementary information, an in-depth attraction catalog delivers the context that visitors rely on to make smarter choices. The Traveling Torusims sectors all now have a quarterly catalog that includes in depth profiles on local attractions, breakdowns of pricing and accessibility for each price tier, and tips from packs of regular Scoud settlers.
These pamphlets are stacked on tables in vacation rental welcome packets, the lobbies of hotels, real estate offices. They are meant to be used over the course of a family’s stay rather than referred to quickly. Many of the businesses profiled in the guide say their visitors come with pages earmarked from their guides, picked out during free time.
For companies wanting to produce the same material, there are also different paper stocks, binding styles and quantities available when working with HelloPrint to suit a variety of budget levels. The trick is making something that people can hold onto, rather than throw away after a single glance.
