Actually, it’s none of those things. Your area’s single most important attraction is the people who already ski or ride there. In the 2000 National Skier/Boarder Opinion Survey, 33 percent of the respondents selected “friends” as the primary influence from a list of over 30 resort features. The lifts, snowmaking, grooming and amenities all matter, but ultimately, skiers and riders go where their friends go.
This is especially true for newbies. In a study we conducted this past winter with entry-level skiers and snowboarders, 68 percent reported that friends and family were the primary influences that brought them to the slopes.
The evidence is indisputable: your customers are the growth engine of your business. Problem is, most resorts don’t know who their customers are, and therefore can’t harness the power of customer-driven marketing.
Out with the Old
Growing your business requires a new approach to marketing: marketing from the inside out. That means recognizing that your customers—your skiers, riders and locals—are your most powerful attraction and the key to future growth. How many people just go to a resort on their own, walk up to the ski school desk and say, “I want to learn how to ski or ride?” Would you go to an unknown place alone when you could go someplace else with friends?
To capitalize on the fact that your best customers are your top salesmen, you must change the way you develop your marketing plan.
Typically, ski areas first establish a budget for skier visits. Visits are translated into projected revenue, and the marketing budget is set as a percentage of that. Then, the bounty is allocated into line items for staff, radio, TV, newspaper, magazines, brochure, ski shows, publicity, cooperative marketing, website, special events, etc., trying to get the biggest bang for the buck.
There are three major problems with this approach. First, it fails to focus on your primary growth engine, your existing customers. Second, it allocates significant funds to programs that are virtually impossible to measure. Third, it involves mass media, which are extremely inefficient. Mass media (TV, radio, newsprint, etc.) are expensive and reach far more people who are not interested in your services or our sport than people who are.
Your marketing funds will have much more impact if they focus on the people who really drive your revenue, your customers—especially if you can measure the results of your efforts. If you could spend $5,000 on a marketing project that generated $20,000 in revenue, would you do it again? Most likely you would repeat the project until you were at or near capacity. If you use marketing programs that show measurable results you can expand your marketing efforts with confidence that the revenue will cover the cost.
Who Are Your Customers?
Once you recognize that past customers are the key to future growth, the planning process changes dramatically. It becomes very important to discover who your customers are—their names, postal addresses, e-mail addresses and key information. You become curious to know if they ski, snowboard or both, how often they ski or ride, how many days they spend at your resort, their ability level, whether they travel to destination resorts or just day-trip, if they ski with children, and when they visit your resort.
Collecting this information can be easy. One resort placed small boxes in the base lodge asking skiers and riders to register to win a free trip to the resort for the following year. The registration form asked for all the information above, and then some. In 30 days the resort collected more than 2,000 forms.
Customer data can also come from rental forms, lodging reservations, opt-in e-mail systems on your website, event registration forms and season pass forms. Inventory all the places you collect customer information and develop a plan to record it electronically. This is also a good time to establish a consistent set of questions for collecting data.
The next step is to put your customer information into a central data storage system where it is easy to use. If you have a couple of highly skilled programmers and consumer database managers on staff, you can organize the database in-house. But most resorts should simply hire a company that specializes in consumer database management.
This latter choice has become affordable. Advances in technology have significantly reduced the cost of collecting customer data, entering it into a database and maintaining it. You can also amortize the costs, since the data will have value for years to come.
Inside-Out Marketing
Once you begin to develop your customer database, you can start building your marketing plan around it. First, decide what information you want your customers to know, and when you want them to know it. Then, transform your image-oriented brochure into an informative catalog.
This catalog should continue to project the image you want for your resort. But most importantly, it must provide the information your customers need to decide which services to buy from you. Don’t worry about information overload; just be sure the information is easy to sort through. Use packages wherever possible, and include a simple table of contents if the piece is more than a few pages long.
Don’t assume your customers know all about you. Many of your active skiers don’t even know the price of your season passes. Chances are they don’t know most of the products, packages, special promotions, events and programs you offer. But once they learn, they will purchase more for themselves and sell more to their friends. Since these are the people who bring new skiers and riders to your resort, include information about your learning programs. You can’t provide your best salespeople—your customers—with too much information.
Getting the Word Out
With the message in hand, develop a distribution plan. Frequency is as important as content—most catalog marketers get their highest response rates after they have communicated with their customers three or more times. So allocate enough funds to reach your key customers as often as possible. Otherwise, great marketing materials will pile up in the warehouse. If your customer list is too long to reach everyone more than once a year, focus on the people whom you consider to be your best customers and salesmen.
Keep the cost of your mailings as low as possible so you can reach the greatest number of people. One tactic: Develop direct mail pieces as self-mailers rather than putting them in envelopes. It’s less expensive, and your customers are much less likely to toss out your mail if they see skiers or riders on the cover. Direct-mail research shows that 35 percent of all mail is never opened. Good graphics on a self-mailer will improve your results.
E-mail marketing can be cost-efficient, but understand that it works differently from printed mail. First, collect e-mail addresses from customers who give you permission to communicate with them. (Renting e-mail lists of skiers and snowboarders is an option, but good lists generally cost as much as postage.) Use your website to collect customer lists for promotions, special offers, etc. You’ll be surprised how many people want your information.
Time e-mail messages carefully. If you overload customers with irrelevant e-mails they will shut you off in a flash. But send them concise messages with links to the details (which should already be on your website) and they will appreciate the value of your news.
Information is Power
A well-developed opt-in e-mail database collection system on your website allows you to segment your lists and target your messages. If you collect geographic, demographic and participation information, you can send the right messages to the right people at the right time. New sliders should get information on learning programs, families will want updates on programs for kids or holiday week packages. If you have flight programs, you should send information about packages tailored to your customers’ home cities.
The system should also give your customers the option of signing up to receive specific information from you: ski reports on specific days or when major snow events occur, regular newsletters, special offers or news about key events. The system should be capable of handling large volumes of e-mails quickly—a snowstorm announcement isn’t news if it is several hours late.
Finally, be sure you have developed ways to measure your marketing programs. Watch phone and website traffic after you drop a large mailing. Use special offers and coupons freely. Be patient and track results over a long period. One resort that we worked with decided a large brochure mailing was a failure after two weeks; three months later they had a hard time keeping up with the phone volume in their reservations office.
Transforming your traditional marketing plan to a consumer-driven one will take more than one season. But during the transition they can work together—you can design your traditional advertising to generate names for your customer database. So don’t wait to convert. You’ll only be that much behind the competition when you do.
