An Interview With Kieran Powell
Focus on channels and strategies that offer measurable returns. At Five Star Parks, we use historical data to identify which marketing efforts have yielded the best ROI in the past, guiding future budget allocations toward those with proven success.
In an age where marketing landscapes are rapidly evolving and consumer behaviors are constantly shifting, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) play a pivotal role in steering their organizations’ marketing strategies towards success. With a plethora of channels, platforms, and techniques at their disposal, the decision on where to allocate the marketing budget is more critical than ever. We’re seeking to explore questions like: What factors influence their decisions? How do they balance between digital and traditional marketing channels? What role does data play in their decision-making process? And importantly, why they choose to invest in certain areas over others? As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Troy Sacco.
“Sales is not selling something. Sales is providing a solution to another person’s problem. At the end of the day… People buy from their teachers, and they buy what they trust.”
Troy’s sales and management style stems from his desire to help teams drive revenue within a consultative sales and operational environment. He works effectively with people across an organization to build a winning culture, drive revenue ahead of forecast, and bring innovation to the organization. Using his vigorous work ethic, comprehensive approach, and ability to build partnerships not vendorships, Troy seeks to actively fulfill personal goals within a successful team atmosphere.
Throughout the course of his career, he has excelled in team management, leadership development, sales training, organizational models including sales deployment and compensation, local and national marketing strategies, and revenue management.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I was born and raised by my grandparents in Syracuse, NY. Playing every sport imaginable, I grew up wanting to be a coach and teacher. I excelled on the football field most and was fortunate enough to earn a scholarship to pursue my degree from Emporia State University in Kansas. Right after graduation, I began to teach and coach in Fort Worth, TX. Looking to earn some extra money, I took a summer job selling advertising and sponsorships inside stadiums for the NFL, the NBA and the MLB.
I had some immediate success in that world and decided to try sales as a career path. Shortly after entering the world of sales and marketing, a mentor told me that I could still fulfill my passions of teaching and coaching in sales.
From that point on, I decided to dedicate my career to sales and sales leadership training. Today, I get to wake up every day doing something I’m passionate about — teaching and coaching — and do it in an environment where I’ve been very successful — sales and marketing.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I was going into a meeting with some folks and had a colleague tell me they were big Michigan fans. In the Detroit airport, I picked up some Michigan koozies as a gift. Turns out, my colleague did not type the word “State” into his email. As one can imagine, when I showed up with Michigan gear instead of Michigan State gear, they were not only confused, but they thought I did not do my homework on them…embarrassing to say the least. The lesson is “Trust but Verify.”
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
My team at Five Star Parks is currently working on our Behavior Tracking Metric. This survey allows us to gather data on our guests as they walk in and out of our parks and measures motivation, perceived value and guest experience. This data will help us determine what brings guests into the park — the brand, the experience, a specific promotion, etc — so we can allocate marketing spend for each park accordingly. This endeavor will help our guests get more of what they want in the parks they visit.
Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. Can you share an experience where a unique or unconventional budget allocation led to unexpected success in your marketing campaign?
We started out with a very small Text Club campaign budget of a couple thousand dollars. In less than one year, we have over 250 thousand people in our text clubs and now spend over 80 thousand annually to promote parks and communicate with our guests. These text campaigns have an open rate of ninety percent, and it has proven to really move the needle when used properly.
How do you balance investing in emerging marketing trends versus traditional, proven strategies in your budget decisions? Can you give us an example?
We allocate a small portion of our budget to emerging marketing trends and then use data on which marketing investments have yielded the highest ROI to guide future budgeting decisions.
Currently, we are dedicating a larger portion of our marketing budget to CTV and streaming services to reach and attract a larger audience base. Not only can we track where guests are visiting from and who they are, but we can follow them through the journey meaning they are coming back to our parks and bringing others with them, so we know we’re getting a good ROI.
In what ways has data-driven decision-making influenced your approach to allocating marketing budgets, and can you provide an example of this in action?
We measure website traffic as a leading indicator of revenue, not a lag measure. This allows us to see how many people have visited our website Monday through Thursday and correlate that to revenue and traffic counts for the upcoming weekend.
For example: if 24,500 people visit our website Monday through Thursday and that range of traffic normally drives $85,000 — $97,500 of Friday through Sunday revenue, we can push text and marketing initiatives out increase traffic. If the website traffic is in the 30,000+ range, we know we can anticipate $100k -110k in revenue that weekend, so we may pull back on last-minute text and marketing efforts.
How do you evaluate the ROI of different marketing channels and decide where to invest more or cut back?
One word: Traffic. Did more people walk through that door or not?
Based on your experience and success, what are the “5 Things To Keep in Mind When Deciding Where to Assign Your Marketing Budget, and Why?”
1 . Audience and Channel Alignment:
- Five Star Parks chooses to prioritize platforms where our target audience is most active to ensure our marketing messages are seen by those most likely to engage and convert. Understanding where our audience spends their time aids in allocating our budget more effectively.
2 . ROI and Performance Metrics:
- Focus on channels and strategies that offer measurable returns. At Five Star Parks, we use historical data to identify which marketing efforts have yielded the best ROI in the past, guiding future budget allocations toward those with proven success.
3 . Trend Adaptability:
- Emerging trends, such as GenAI, in marketing and the evolving digital landscape can offer new ways to engage with audiences, so keeping a portion of our budget flexible allows us to test and learn from new opportunities when they present themselves.
4 . Content Quality Over Quantity:
- Invest in creating high-quality, engaging content rather than mass-producing lower-quality pieces. High-quality content drives better engagement and loyalty.
5 . Customer Experience and Engagement:
- Allocate budget toward enhancing the customer experience and engagement across all touchpoints. In today’s competitive landscape, providing a memorable and positive customer experience at the park will differentiate your brand and foster loyalty.
Could you discuss a challenging budget decision you faced, how you navigated it, and the impact it had on your overall marketing strategy?
Five Star Parks recently purchased a very successful family entertainment center brand and were faced with the notion of possibly streamlining their marketing budget to highlights and profitability opportunities.
One of the marketing spends that we eliminated was the significant budget allocation to billboards. They had six stationary billboards with very branded messaging that was not easily tracked. We reduced the number of billboards to three and put them on high-volume traffic locations with promotional and call-to-action-based messaging.
This resulted in the spend having had a larger and more dedicated audience with more trackable ROI for less money.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Reversing the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917. This act essentially stopped the United States Government requirement for obtaining citizen approval on bond spending. Prior to this, the government would have had to seek specific approval from Congress each time it wanted to issue new debt and would have to sell bonds to pay for things. Now we simply get taxed and must pay for things we don’t vote on paying for. This Act totals over $600 Billion a year in wasteful spending.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I’m active on LinkedIn. Connect with me here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sacco12/
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Kieran Powell is the EVP of Channel V Media a New York City Public Relations agency with a global network of agency partners in over 30 countries. Kieran has advised more than 150 companies in the Technology, B2B, Retail and Financial sectors. Prior to taking over business operations at Channel V Media, Kieran held roles at Merrill Lynch, PwC and Ernst & Young. Get in touch with Kieran to discuss how marketing and public relations can be leveraged to achieve concrete business goals.
CMO Perspectives: Troy Sacco Of Five Star Parks On Where to Assign Your Marketing Budget and Why was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.