In April 2003, more than 1,400 skiers and boarders shared detailed information about the factors that shaped their decisions about where to slide during the 2002-2003 season. By learning what motivated skiers and riders and what didn’t, you can shape smarter strategy, execute stronger programs, and deliver more sales from your marketing efforts.
How’s Your Focus and Execution?
There is no silver bullet technique, message, or tactic that works across the board. But there are a number of actions that, when applied in the right circumstances, can influence skier and boarder decision-making. The trick is figuring out when advertising and other marketing tactics are most likely to deliver results, and with whom.
The research did reveal a clear guideline for effective marketing. Successful tactics stemmed from a single-minded focus on winnable target audiences, coupled with strong execution and a strategically driven marketing plan. This combination almost guarantees you will deliver positive impact on cash flow. But few resorts pull it off.
The most important conclusion from this research is that focus matters. The research indicates that high-impact marketing occurs when:
- A resort focuses the bulk of its efforts on motivating one specific audience that the resort knows it can please, because it understands what that audience really wants and how it responds to various marketing efforts, or:
- A resort builds the organizational capacity to successfully deliver targeted programs to different segmented audiences that it knows it can please, because it understands what the different audiences really want and how they respond to various marketing efforts.
Outside of these two approaches, it’s difficult to drive significant returns. Typically tight resort marketing budgets require careful resource allocation and thorough customer understanding.
To identify effective marketing expenses, here are some top-line findings on common tactics and segments that many resorts pursue.
Does Advertising Deliver?
For industries like skiing and riding, which offer high-gross-margin products and services that generate strong emotion, effective advertising boosts a company’s profit margin.
Ski resort advertising, however, often fails to leverage the emotion of customers. Our survey found that advertising led only 25% of respondents to try or return to a resort they might not have visited otherwise during the 2002-2003 season. But the news isn’t all bad: 46% percent of respondents said that ads helped place a resort on a wish list to visit later. That’s not bad, but it certainly leaves room for improvement given the high level of interest ski/ride customers have in hearing from ski/ride marketers compared to most other types of businesses. The challenge is to not just get on a skier’s list, but to get skiers and riders to visit, and often.
Why do so many winter resort ads fall short? Typically, these ads try to prove to all potential audiences that their mountain is as good as all the others around. For example, New England skiers are bombarded with ads from many resorts that present a weakly disguised variation of “We have (insert #) of trails, new and challenging terrain served by a high-speed quad, nearly complete snowmaking coverage, and oh, we’re a great place for the family, too.” Radio versions of this message are usually accompanied by distinctly unappealing music. Survey respondents tended to identify such product-focused ads as motivators only when they were already customers of the resort—if they recalled the ads at all.
The realities of the advertising environment demand a more focused and unique message to grab attention and motivate skiers and riders to visit. One minute on radio and 30 seconds on TV is enough time to lose the interest of potential customers. A print ad in the 272 pages in Ski magazine’s October issue must stand out among pages and pages of glorious photos and resort descriptions. At 65 miles an hour, only the strongest billboard executions get their message across.
We asked survey respondents to recall any specific ads that led to high key message recall, motivated last season’s destination decisions, or placed resorts on wish lists for future visits. The ads that did so tended to deliver a unique hook for a focused message aimed at a segment of the market. The executions, however, varied dramatically:
When you have Whistler’s budget, you can drop a 36-page insert into Ski magazine that sends a clear message on almost every page screaming pointedly, “We’re the biggest!” This works, in this case, because Whistler is, in fact, by most measures the biggest. As you might expect, this insert drew some of the highest levels of unaided response among skiers identifying a specific ad that motivated destination decisions last season. And, while we hope that larger budgets deliver corresponding impact, this is not always the case.
If Whistler has eight times more chairlifts and a marketing budget that’s perhaps 80 times bigger than yours, you pull out a different club. A simple bumper sticker declaring: “Mad River Glen: Ski it if you can” generated disproportionately high unaided response among advanced skiers in New England, who put this boutique Vermont mountain on a wish list for a future visit. The annual budget for the single most important weapon in Mad River’s marketing arsenal: $900.
Music drives astonishingly high unaided recall of ads by Massachusetts’ Wachusett Mountain. Music is one of the most under-leveraged tactics in ski resort advertising. Boston-area skiers and boarders had no problems recalling Wachusett’s somewhat corny jingle, many admitting that it stuck in their heads and helped remind them that winter fun is just one hour away. Unlike the annoying background music in much resort radio advertising, Wachusett’s jingle communicates the area’s main message—”Mountain Skiing Minutes Away”—in an unforgettable way. It keeps the area top of mind for spontaneous ski/ride decisions. Without the jingle, Wachusett’s aggressive media buys and co-marketing promotions simply wouldn’t deliver such high recall.
Unfortunately, there aren’t too many more examples of resort advertising that especially motivated and registered with survey respondents. Sometimes they mentioned resorts with larger media budgets, but did not recall any key advertising messages or attribute any influence on their past or upcoming destination decisions. In those cases, it’s likely that the noise generated by those resorts failed to deliver impact proportionate to the budget.
While good advertising is always difficult to deliver, our study revealed a number of tactics that have impact with different market segments. A few examples include:
- Households with incomes over $150,000 use radio less, with the exception of National Public Radio and talk radio (32% usage).
- Skiers who consider the safety of children as a factor tend to be influenced by resort advertising more than the norm. This audience includes both moms and dads.
- Direct mail works. The 25% of respondents who said their destination decisions were influenced by advertising were twice as likely to consider direct mail offers as other respondents. Ski Utah’s direct mail piece was cited more than any other for having shifted destination decisions. This is not completely surprising, since Ski Utah shifted most of its budget into 800,000 direct mail pieces last season, but the survey response to their mailing was more than just a response to quantity. This direct mail piece outperformed all other Ski Utah marketing vehicles in the past two years. Despite a weak snow year, Utah still turned in near-record numbers. This success corresponds with our findings that direct mail has greater impact among skiers who consider regional marketing campaigns (e.g., Ski Utah versus resort-specific campaigns).
Boarders respond more strongly to advertising than skiers do. Only 21% of skiers report that they considered billboards in some or all of their destination decisions, compared to 45% of boarders. In addition, boarders are twice as likely as skiers to choose a resort based on advertised special events.
When young adult boarders provided unaided recall of various ads that influenced destination decisions, one adjective kept coming up in their descriptions of those ads—”sick.” Riders respond to more radical imagery than skiers—radical images being what makes good snowboarding sick. Resorts need different campaigns to appeal to skiers or to riders, especially younger riders.
Besides looking at advertising, there are a number of other marketing vehicles that our study examined, and three merit discussion: online marketing, discounting and building buzz.
How Big is Online Marketing?
Our research found almost universal usage of the Internet for destination decisions. Nearly 9 out of 10 respondents turned to resort websites for some or all of their planning (46% always considered ski resort websites), and 66% used information from ski resort e-mail newsletters for some or all of their planning. Nearly 4 in 10 used regional tourism group websites and 30% used weather websites for trip planning.
However, there are pronounced differences across segments when it comes to specific online usage. For example:
- Higher-income households, households with children, and skiers ages 40 to 49 are more likely to use resort websites and e-mail newsletters. Higher-income households in particular cite the imagery and deals available online as key factors that helped close the sale for destination decisions last season.
- Boarders are one third less likely than the norm to use resort websites and e-mail newsletters. With only a few exceptions, most resorts don’t embrace boarders online very well. (All sites that perform well have both focus and good execution.)
- Enthusiast websites for skiers and boarders (e.g., Kidznsnow.com, Firsttracksonline.com, Snowboard.com, Snowjournal.com, etc.) are building subscriber bases that ski or board far more frequently than the subscriber base of resort e-mail newsletters. An average enthusiast website subscriber is twice as likely to ski 30 or more days a year. Cultivate one or two of these sites that match your audience. The audiences are small, but many of these sites drive very high response rates. These visitors are swayed by discounts.
The good news is that the Internet provides a more controllable opportunity to influence destination decisions. Given the Internet’s critical role in that process, it’s remarkable that so many resorts continue to lag behind on what customers want online. Customers have come to expect more from websites.
For example, photos help close the sale better than words, yet most resort e-mail communications are text-only. Show powder, corduroy, images that give your resort a personality.
- Give your web visitors reason to come back more often. Winter sports are a lifestyle, but mountain resort websites don’t seem to engage people over a long period—they simply aim to influence near-term decisions. Compared to what other marketers are doing online, resorts are not capturing information about their customers and engaging them.
Who Takes Advantage of Discounting?
The majority of skiers and boarders respond to discounting. More than 6 in 10 survey respondents reported that they took advantage of discounts in the 2002-2003 season. More than 7 in 10 reported that they considered discount vehicles such as discount cards and coupon books in their destination planning.
Those who took advantage of discounts tend to be:
- Twice as likely as others to be influenced by resort advertising, twice as likely to use resort websites, and three times as likely to consider resort e-mail newsletters;
- 50% more likely than others to be advanced and expert skiers who ski more than 10 days a year;
- More likely to make final decisions closer to the day of the trip (40% make daytrip decisions 2 or 3 days in advance).
In other words, discounts are consumed for the most part by engaged skiers who seek out information from resorts and can be swayed by the deal. One interesting twist is that men are more responsive than women to day-trip discounts, but women are more responsive to lift/lodging package deals for multi-day trips.
Examples of discounting programs that earned disproportionate mentions in unaided responses:
- Whistler’s 7-11 First Tracks retail distribution program. This program, focused specifically on Vancouver residents, offers a 10 to 15% discount. It is juiced by a significant television budget, split with 7-11 and a media partner. Based on a comparison of the frequency of unaided responses in different markets, this partnership appears to have greater impact than retail distribution programs used by other resorts.
- Entertainment Publications’ 2-for-1 coupon books. Users of these books appear to be rather motivated by the coupons, redeeming them at multiple participating resorts over the course of a season.
- Resorts’ aggressive promotion of heavily discounted season passes. Numerous respondents noted that advertising triggered their season pass purchase, and they were grateful to the resorts for these deals. Note that deep discounting typically requires strong promotional support to deliver positive return.
Note, too, that when confronted with a list of potential discounts, 55% of respondents reported that they look for value—the difference of a few bucks wasn’t going to change their decision. It’s not purely a price game—the entire value of the experience still matters for the majority of skiers and riders.
Does PR and Word-of-mouth Deliver?
Separate from paid media buys, another key factor for influencing decisions is the buzz factor carried through press coverage and word-of-mouth. More than 80% of respondents reported that stories in the media are sometimes or always a factor in their destination decisions. Beyond local media coverage, particularly influential publications include Ski, Skiing, Transworld Snowboarding and some of the airline magazines. The unaided response sections also indicated that the Ski magazine resort ratings were a critical factor in decisions for a large number of skiers. The resort ratings were mentioned more often than any advertising-related activity. (Transworld Snowboarding has started its own rating program for best snowboard areas.) Ratings help create brand value that provides the opportunity to win customers on a basis that extends beyond price alone.
Word-of-mouth and referrals also showed up as a key source for information on discounts, and as a critical factor for destination decisions by women and families with children.
The dirty little secret in other industries that compete with winter resorts for the same share of leisure time and entertainment dollars is that successful word-of-mouth isn’t left to coincidence. For many successful marketers, cultivating word-of-mouth is carefully orchestrated as a central ingredient in the marketing mix.
In a business defined by high gross margins and customers who are emotionally attached to the sport, improved marketing flows right to the bottom line. But effective marketing requires more than a catchy slogan or killer powder shots. It requires the proper focus—one based on understanding which customer segment (or segments) will deliver stronger returns, what really motivates those segments, and what communications vehicles reach those segments effectively. That’s easier said than done, but resorts that are focusing and executing well are succeeding. They know that marketing isn’t just a large line item on the budget. Instead, it’s the most controllable lever for increasing cash flow.
James Chung, a former advertising executive and head of a student group ski tour operator, runs Reach Advisors, a strategic consulting and marketing services firm focused on family, youth and young adult markets. For more information about the study, call (617) 489-6180 or e-mail [email protected].
Marketing Survey Details
In April 2003, 1,437 skiers and snowboarders (providing 1,410 sets of usable responses) who ski or ride in North America shared detailed information via an online survey about their demographics, what resorts they visited, and what marketing factors shaped those decisions for the 2002-2003 season.
The data were analyzed using SPSS software to determine what influences had a direct impact (with a 95% confidence level) on actual decisions and other correlating factors. The unaided response sections were coded and analyzed to assess open-ended responses. For most of the highest-impact marketing efforts identified by survey respondents, Reach Advisors sought more specific information directly from the resorts.
To obtain 1,400 responses, Reach Advisors contacted approximately 40,000 skiers and riders. Lift tickets, provided by 22 resorts, were offered as an incentive to take part in the survey.
