You'll find Dennis Cavargno's lead generation plan here:
http://speedgliding.googlepages.com/marketplan


Dennis writes that hang gliding is unique and therefore newsworthy. That it is
an extreme sport. That is an extreme adventure, a thrilling experience, and has
a highly unique status. One of the things he seems to mean "unique status" is
that it is an elitist sport, that is, only a few will actually take it up.


I refer to this as the "romantic notion." It is a common feeling among the sport
participants that they and their sport are somehow "special," a little bit
better than the common man, that they have a higher perspective. While this may
all be true, it, like all romantic notions, blinds us to the rest of reality.


The reality is that hang gliding is just one human activity among many possible
human activities and that there are lots of interesting, fun, exciting,
thrilling, extreme, and unique (all in their own way) sports out there and that
we are in competition against these sports if we want to capture potential
pilots imagination and later their commitment. Heck one of those sports is
paragliding, our fellow pilots and fellow members of the USHPA.


So the first thing to do is see the sport without using one's rose colored
glasses, and we all have them on. If we want to grow our sport, we need to look
at what would make it appealing to others (even though to us it is obviously
appealing and we wonder why we would have to do this).


Dennis critiques the USHPA basically for catering to the existing pilots and not
looking for new ones. This is a very fair criticism. The marketing efforts of
the USHPA are internal marketing efforts aimed at their existing customers. They
have very little outreach.


So Dennis and I agree that the USHPA is not setup to bring in new students and
it is unlikely that it can be retooled to do so (in spite of their strategic
plan).


Dennis proposes using the www.hanggliding.org web site as a recruiting tool (leaving the
www.ushpa.aero and
www.ushga.org for the existing members).
Seems like a reasonable solution to me. Using or creating a separate web site(s)
for potential pilot outreach certainly couldn't hurt.


Dennis lists five reasons why web sites work to create leads and I have no basis
for any argument with him. In fact I suggest that the owners of the web site
begin today and get their lead generation business going. Charge for each lead a
small amount enough to make it attractive to instructors to take the leads
generated there.


Dennis is willing to volunteer to get the program working. Dennis also wants to
reach out to other web sites through Google Adsense and other similar programs
that would put ads up on hang gliding related sites and funnel prospective
students to the lead generation system. Sounds good.


It seems to me that the USHPA doesn't actually need to be involved in this
program, and in fact their involvement may be detrimental to it. They may insist
that paragliding get equal footing for example. Of course paraglider pilots
could just replicate this lead generation program on their own.


Of course, something needs to be done with the leads generated. That is there
has to be a national wide system of effective hang gliding schools that can
handle the leads and provide a product, hang gliding instruction, that has a
much higher value than what is typically offered today. This is another area
where we will be hard up against our competition.