Squaw Valley USA’s 50/60 Pass Paid Search Campaign : 2010 IMA Awards

CATEOGORY: Search Engine Marketing
FIRST-PLACE: Squaw Valley USA’s 50/60 Pass Paid Search Campaign
AGENCY: AMP Agency
CLIENT: Squaw Valley USA

Squaw Valley ski resort doubles number of season passholders and cut their age in half with 50/60 paid search promotion

Squaw Valley, known as one of the premiere ski resorts in the Lake Tahoe region, got its 15 minutes of fame and then some when it hosted the 1960 Winter Olympics. Since then, it has been the destination of choice for avid skiers primarily from northern California.

However, popular though they were, the resort was facing an aging population. Squaw Valley’s 18-45 audience was leaning more toward the 45ish side and getting older every day. In addition, it was proving difficult to attract new season passholders with the resort’s high-end pricing — season passes ranged from $899-$1,500 — and the recession wasn’t helping. They knew they needed to add new, younger customers to its season passholder customer base. In addition, the best time for attracting new season passholders for the next season was the tail end of the current season, so time was of the essence.

They started by building some attractions for the younger demographic, including terrain parks and snowboarding events. Then, they restructured their pricing into four tiers with varied blackout dates and perks to make it more attractive to a wider audience: Bronze $369, Silver $469, Gold $949 and Platinum $1,599.

Squaw Valley’s primary goal was to drive sales of more than 10,000 season passes between March 15tand May 11 — a target that would more than double the number of season passholders they already had. They also wanted to leverage a medium that would easily reach a younger demographic. They tapped AMP Agency to create a paid search campaign, and supported that with a media buy.

“We’re very good at reaching our existing market, but we needed to find a way to get to those people who were loyal to other resorts for so many years,” said director of marketing Christine Norvath. “We achieved that with a good media mix, but search’s true and quick ROI made it a valuable tool. We had to be extremely scientific on this and know what we were dealing with because it was a whole new set of variables for us; we had to know that what we were doing would perform.”

Since the resort was celebrating the 50th anniversary of their Winter Olympics and the 60th anniversary of the resort, they tied the season passholder promotion into those two anniversaries and called it the “50/60 Pass” campaign.

Campaign keyword buys were optimized week over week. The campaign began with the resort’s core, brand-related keywords to generate early-stage awareness and consideration (i.e. skiing, California skiing, California season passes). Farther into the program, they used more definitive keywords, such as the name of the resort, to move the customer through the decision-making process and drive them to a customized landing page to convert as easily as possible. The campaign was also geotargeted to Squaw Valley’s primary demographic in northern California.

The search messaging used a fixed end date to create a sense of urgency and influence purchase.

“With search, we only had 35 characters to tell them what we wanted to say, so we incentivized them to sign up early — we let them know that the quantities for this pass were limited,” said Stephen Anderson, senior vice president of search at AMP Energy.

Their thinking worked. The optimization strategy resulted in an 850% increase in sales in the final week over week two of the campaign, while cost per sale decreased 192%.

In the end, season pass sales far exceeded their goals and set a national record for the number of season passes sold in a single day, according to their e-commerce engine RTP. They significantly increased the number of passes among the younger demographic and saw large gains in the Sacramento market, an area where they previously had little brand strength.

The paid search campaign did so well, in fact, that they are doing it again this year. —Lynn Russo Whylly

View all the 2010 IAM Award winners here.