The Marketing Conference Blog

Brad from Snowshoe.

Is it possible to liveblog a Q&A while scoffing a marshmallow cookie?

Probably not.

Video:

Does only two percent of this fine nation ski? I’ve never really thought about it to be honest.

Anyway, a niche market is a niche market. Brad is talking about wanting to keep Snowshoe’s customer’s engaged via direct marketing. Where are the 5 million new skiers coming from – no idea but Snowshoe wants to be in the right place to help them out.

Question Time:

How’s your marketing become two way rather than a megaphone one-way blast:

Travel. Coattails and slipstreaming. Float around see what people are saying and monitor forums and blogs and cream them off.

Key new marketing influencers

Really powerful voices – Beware being hijacked by trolls…..the John McCain strategem. Tap into the voice of the customer. FInding key influencers. Take them out skiing. Show them what SNowshoe does and let them enjoy your service

Do you key people into email adveritisng effectiveness

Easy email tool. 80,000 on email list subject line versioning – split messages between two groups. Email A/B split testing.

Which Web 2.0 tools do you use.

MySpace – not sure on effectiveness. Paid search is the best tool they’ve found so far. Not strictly speaking Web 2.0, but nice bone thrown to us at Direct Online Marketing. Now he’s advocating buying competitor’s brand names as keywords. It’s all shades of grey.

Talk about search phrases Snowshoe uses

Branded and non-branded. So, those terms with Snowshoe in them and those that don’t include those terms. So terms with Snowshoe as a modifier.

Anything helped with bad ski seasons.

Not a lot can be done with bad snowfalls

Seasonality?

7% of revenue during summer. 40 % of ad revenue spent during summer. Snowshoe = skiing during the winter but they have diversified to include other sports elements and lesuire activitities during the off-peak season. Marketing is busier off-peak preparing for the ski season.

Snowshoe got together to devise their grand brand plan. Devlopment of their core brand strategy. They came up with a brand book so they were all on the same page – as it were. ONLY FOR EMPLOYEES. It’s a secret.

7/11 and Snowshoe as a partnership….no. Subaru and Snowshoe – yes. Right partnerships and new products.

Measurement: how do you measure the right mix of response rates and their correct combination.
Unique phone numbers for each. Web visits – shopper to buyer ratio. Gone from a 56 to 16 page brochure. Wondering if it’s still viable.

How do you maintain the site.
Dangerous to market by committee. It’s a one person shop with 10 urls. Brad is that one person. Consistent voice on the Web site.

What kind of market research?
Voice of customer – intercept surveys when somebody comes out of a restauarant on holiday gets surveyed then gets sent a follow up email with discounts offer. Net promoter – raving fans vs non-fans – 60% score.

Focus group of people who used to come every year but why they had stopped. Found they had a higher propensity of coming at a later date. 15 %

Traditional media doesn’t work. They only use traditional channels to please employees. Targeted mail and direct research.

Nutshell moment from Brad:

Understand paid search. Have everybody in line on who the company is and what they want to achieve.

It’s easy peasy lemon squeezy.