Posts tagged mrktchat
Interesting Things From #Mrktchat Participants #1
010 months ago
by Eric Hoffman
in series
I’ve been tossing this idea around a bit and have decided to kick it off this week. It’s a listing of topics, links, items, etc that have been posted by #Mrktchat participants over the prior week or so. I don’t think I’ll have this as a weekly update, more like somewhere between a weekly to maybe monthly series. So without further ado, here’s the first list:
- via @ozskier, it’s the missing guide to Facebook’s new analytics for pages, official called Facebook Insights Product Guide for Facebook Page Owners, it’s a bit over 10 pages (lots of pictures of the various Insight graphs), but does clarify – a bit – what the various analytics provided in Insights represent.
- Now @skippyski didn’t point out this story entitled, “Gas prices put brake on spring break for many“, in USAToday but he did bring up the topic of the impact of high gas prices in the #Mrktchat group on Facebook last week.
- And to wrap up – a classic tweet from someone that didn’t realize that some ski resort do actually monitor their brand in the social media space – nicely done @jaypeakresort! Wanna bet? RT @megunder Anyone want a seasons pass to Jay Peak? Any female can have it for $30! It's got a grainy picture, so you're golden.
@jaypeakresortJay Peak
Please feel free to add any good “#Mrkchat Interesting Things” that I may have missed in the comments below.
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Labor Day is the Unofficial Start to…
01 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
I’ll finish that title, Labor Day is the unofficial start to…the ski resort marketing season.
In the years I’ve worked in ski resort marketing I’ve often wondered a bit about why we started each winter’s marketing cycle when we did. Much of it has been related to the timing of the ski vertical publications – anyone checked circulation numbers lately? Much has also been related to traditional lead times of vacation rental bookings – anyone seen how short lead times have gotten over the past several years? A lot of timing has also been tied to the idea that Labor Day weekend is the “traditional end of summer” and that if a resort is first to market that they may seem some sort of bump in brand awareness and hopefully business over the coming season. Does any of this still hold true, and when is the ideal time for resorts to start their marketing as well as PR efforts?
Certain things like mountain improvement announcements are usually announced earlier in the summer. This is then followed by special package deals for select time frames around Labor Day Weekend. Season pass sales typically are pushed anywhere from mid-summer up through Labor Day weekend. And you can count on a big blitz of PR and marketing as soon as the first major snow storms pass blanket the mountain tops.
I think that the best time for each resort to start their marketing efforts is different, depending upon who their target audience is and therefore upon when their target audience begins to think about their winter plans. I also think that it’s integral in today’s integrated marketing environment to continually test to see if what you thought was the right time might be wrong and vice versa – see my post on testing for more.
This is also topic that we will discuss on #mrktchat tomorrow, so please stop by on Twitter at 3pm MST and tell us what you think Labor Day weekend is the unofficial start of – or just let us know in the comments on this post.
Photo credit: Flickr user iwouldstay
K2 Skis and Facebook
21 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
During the weekly Twitter #mrktchat conversation this past week, @motorad666 (thanks again for guest hosting), brought to light the fact that K2 Skis has been redirecting their entire corporate site’s web traffic to their Facebook page. The K2 team has a decent incentive for someone to visit their Facebook page in that users that “Like” the K2 page can then get a “sneak peek” at the 2010-11 ski lineup. Certainly a nice motivation for a die-hard fan, but not something that I think would be a real incentive for most people. But, in a comment on the All Facebook post about this, someone who I assume is a K2 representative notes:
The goal isn’t to gain fans – it is to reward K2’s Facebook friends with an exclusive preview of 2010-11 skis for 2 weeks prior to launching the new website to the public. K2 sells the vast majority of its products through local retail shops so there is no money lost in shutting down the 2009-10 site.
This strategy makes good sense to me and I hope that K2 has it in their plans to further engage with their dedicated fan-base as the 2010-11 winter season approaches and most of us get more into the hard goods buying mode. I’m not sure what it would be, but perhaps some way of letting your friends know what setup it is that you’re thinking of buying, or even a way to show them what you think they should be riding on…
Two last points in regards to this strategy, @elisabethos smartly pointed out that redirecting your entire sites to Facebook does have some SEO implications. And finally, when looking at K2 Skis page stats, their fans have increase significantly, from 24,190 on 7/17 to 31,133 on 7/23 and counting. What do you think about Facebook fan pages and what great (or not so) promotions have you seen winter snow sports companies doing?
Thoughts on SAM’s Best/Worst Advertising 2010
01 year ago
by Eric Hoffman
in article
Sam Rufo, one of the authors of Ski Area Management magazine’s article on the Best/Worst Advertising of 2010, was kind enough to volunteer to ‘guest host’ this past week’s #mrktchat Twitterchat. For anyone who isn’t familiar with what a TwitterChat is, please take a quick read of Sam’s excellent description on her blog post, “TwitterChat 101“. We had a good discussion about the ratings, but to some extent I think we just glossed the edges a bit, in that we never really delved very deeply into what the article.
I don’t want to get into the debate of what a best/worst list is all about, after all everyone seems to do them (note, the image is just for an example, I’m not a reader of Star’s 55 Best and Worst Beach Bodies!). The article had a lot of positive and negative things to say about a variety of resort marketing efforts and called out a number of trends:
After combing through this season’s ski area ads in print, broadcast and online sources, SAM found standout campaigns in all channels, as well as some ho-hummers. We looked at branding, messaging and consumer response, and some of the most powerful advertising still derives from print and broadcast media. Creativity knows no boundaries.
Resorts that had a clear understanding of their customer demographics and the audience for each medium were able to engage, inspire and attract followers. But beyond showcasing deep powder, scenic vistas and après-ski activities, more areas are exploring their inner selves—their “social brand”—and these efforts often produced the most memorable and compelling messages.
Resorts express their personalities in a variety of ways: profiling the people who work there, showcasing the lifestyle of the locals, and using major events, from town festivals to snowboard competitions. Social media add a new strategy: letting your customers define the place in their own words and images. This creates a human connection with undeniable authenticity.
This all sounds great, but it doesn’t fully address the biggest thing advertising is about – accomplishing strategic goals and objectives. If a resort is just trying to drive database growth, then I’d say Mountain High did well with 20k plus acquisitions; even then, are these really consumers that will spent or will spend money at that resort or just a bunch of freeloaders that signed up for a contest? It’s awful hard to say one way or another as an outsider looking in.
As an interactive marketer, I’m also a bit disappointed in the examples presented as great interactive campaigns. Maybe it’s because there just isn’t enough room to go into Northstar and Sierra at Tahoe’s behavioral campaign, whoops think I meant to say re-marketing campaign, nah I like the description behavioral targeting. 
I thought the summaries of the Copper and Jay Peak campaigns were adequate, but to include a screen cap and a print creative for these two progressive interactive campaigns seems almost criminal – at least give us a link, I’m sure the resorts would be more than happy to post or provide creative for this piece. And I won’t even touch on the Social Media section of the piece because by only listing the ‘worst’ I can’t find anything to discuss.
I wish there was more discussion of how these advertising campaigns fit into each resort’s overall strategic objective. How these campaigns focus on each resort’s target demos and to what level of success, because as the article’s authors state in the 2nd paragraph quoted above, the most successful marketing will attempt to appeal directly to consumers – in essence creating buyer personas and using them to create advertising that is most effective as it is the most targeted.
I do find much of the thought that went into this article to be very spot on, and in most cases the authors did a great job of drilling down to specifics in terms of what was ‘best’ or ‘worst’ about a particular campaign. Keep it up Sam, Ken, David and Katie! BTW, what about the Vikings go Skiing ad from Capital One, I really enjoy this one even now – definitely a solid add to the ‘Best of 2010′ in my book!
