The Ski Tourism Marketing Network is a marketing group comprised of key Regional Tourism Organisations, Tourism New Zealand, Christchurch Airport, Air New Zealand and South Island Ski Resorts. The focus for this marketing group is print, TV and online marketing of New Zealand skiing, targeting the Australian market.
The Brief
Our role in the campaign was to design and develop the website, which was to be the main call to action for all advertising. We were also required to create online adverts and undertake the Search Engine Optimisation and Google Adwords marketing campaigns. The project was done in coordination with an online advertising agency in Australia and a print advertising agency in Christchurch.
Our Solution
Website: The website design had to be inspiring and informative but with a core focus on directing traffic to packages and marketing network members' own websites. The site incorporates large slideshows with advertising taglines which are updated regularly to match the changing print and media advert placements throughout the season. Video was implemented to compliment the TV advert placements and interactive maps were developed to help first-time Australian visitors orient themselves to ski resorts in New Zealand.
Custom development was also undertaken to gather automated package deal feeds from Tourism New Zealand and BookIt. This makes it easy for ski areas and partners to publish packages to one site only and ensure consistent and timely delivery of these offers.
Adwords: Core to the marketing campaign was the placement of Google Adwords. A sophisticated Adwords campaign was developed, focussing on search terms for resorts, locations, skiing, snowboarding and winter package deals. The ability to amend the campaign at short notice allowed the marketing network to manipulate spend to match expected demand and website traffic.
SEO: The management of the site's search engine optimisation was a difficult balance between optimising site content to improve organic search engine placements and not placing so much information that it would negate the visitors' need to move onto each member's website for more details and packages. Our team of expert writers and search engine optimisers worked hard with the project manager to recommend ideal content and gain feedback and approval from each member for their sections.
Digital Adverts and Email Marketing: Transactional measures were not the only objective of the marketing group. There was also a strong emphasis on building the Ski New Zealand brand and inspirational profile through a mixture of print, TV and online display adverts.
Cabbage Tree created a series of online adverts to fit a wide range of placements as well as background frames for video pages and designs for email marketing campaigns. All of these elements required specialised technical skills from our digital design team and fast turnarounds to meet the demanding marketing schedules.
Success Factors
A range of factors combined to make this project a success. These included: flexibility in terms of design time allocation; quick turnaround of creatives; a good understanding of the campaign objectives and co-operation with all agencies involved. Consistent design throughout all media and a well planned Google Adwords campaign delivered a timely and highly successful promotion with excellent results.
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