Is your business closing like Arizona race track Due to lack of new marketing ideas?

Arizona’s largest dog racing track is closing in December, after operating for 55 years. Attendance has fallen 14 percent in the past year and nearly 60 percent in the last 10 years.

This is classic of an organization that doesn’t know how to market itself. For a decade they avoided any new ideas until the company ran out of steam. So many organizations are run this way.

There is not a bad economy in the U.S. today. There’s lots and lots of money floating out there. Ask all the 21st Century marketing companies building MySpace, Facebook and Twitter accounts for major corporations. They’re awash in green.

For half the 21st Century I have been advocating 21st Century marketing tools many call social media. In late 2006 and early 2007, I was thrown out of offices for offering something other than traditional press releases that public relations practitioners have plied for more than 100 years.

The fifth annual O’Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference costs around $5,000 and is being held in San Francisco in a month. It is on-track to being one of the most attended conferences in its history. The only problem, from a public relations standpoint, is there is no theme or slogan.

In six weeks, the Public Relations Society of America will have its “international” (then why is it called “of America”?) conference in San Diego. None of its literature tells how many years the conference has been held and that information is not readily available via a Web search. Bad public relations. Yet it does have a theme, “Delivering Value.”

It costs about a fourth of the Web 2.0 conference, yet preregistration is reportedly at one of its lowest levels is history – indicating the field of press releases (that’s what PR stands for, right?) is dying.

The Arizona dog race track could have been saved with new marketing thinking. There is a popular radio announcer currently out of work. If the track had hired his Sex Machine Band to play every Friday night, they’d be reeling in the bucks. There are many other marketing ideas they could have utilized. They never returned Marketing Sociologist’s calls, so now they’re closing.

If your company is not rolling in the green, act now by activating the “call now” button on this blog, or visit MediaRelationsExpert.com for ideas that can help you.