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Published On: January 27, 2003

Although highly regarded within the California lodging industry, CABBI wanted to improve its brand recognition, and that of its 320 member inns, among the traveling public. Additionally, the CABBI organization struggled with justifying and tracking the results of its marketing efforts in order to continually promote the organization’s value to its members.

Recognizing that bed & breakfast inns were perceived as “romantic getaways” only, SMG developed a long-term strategy to broaden the awareness and appeal of a CABBI B&B inn to new segments such as business travelers and families. To help direct CABBI’s efforts over the next 2 to 3 years, SMG developed a long-term marketing plan that outlined the steps needed to strengthen the CABBI brand, increase awareness of member inns to the expanded target market segments, and to ultimately generate more leads to its membership.

To assist with justification issues and to clearly define the roles of CABBI and its members, SMG developed a systematic approach or Business Model for CABBI brand building efforts, lead generation for its members, and overall system measurements to continually track successes and areas of improvement.

Since 2002, SMG has been developing and implementing the brand building efforts for CABBI on a daily/monthly basis. The new long-term strategy of “beyond romance” has been integrated into CABBI’s core positioning message and every branding building effort including rack cards, public relations, newsletters, ads, online efforts and the CABBI web site, www.cabbi.com. To date, CABBI has successfully generated more leads for its members and improved brand building efforts.