It’s time for ski resorts to use AI to optimize digital advertising

Digital advertising for ski resorts: Lots of work, little return

The problems with digital advertising are well known to ski resort marketers.

Too much waste. Endless adjustments to control messaging, promotions, and offers. Inconsistent branding. Plus managing content delivery on multiple ad platforms (search, display networks, YouTube, social media, and others).

But many resorts rely on digital advertising programs so we’ve had to accept low time and resource efficiency, low ROI, and marketing that stays focused on quantity over quality. Until now.

We will walk through how AI is changing the digital marketing landscape, what the risks are to ski resorts, and how we reduced cost-per-transaction advertising rates an average of 68% for ski resorts by leveraging AI.

AI to the rescue

For resorts seeking to escape the cul-de-sac of digital ad dysfunction, AI has an answer. And it’s a good one. With current AI-powered digital ad creation and management, clients are seeing lower cost/acquisition, real-time targeting, real-time insights, and delivery of the right ad at the right moment to the right target. AI-powered advertising is known to provide a lift in ROI of 25%.

While running an AI-powered ad program is not quite as easy as Google might suggest, , it can be done. And it works. Here’s how.

How AI-driven ads work

Google’s Performance Max is a 5-step process that is front-loaded. Do the thinking and asset loading first and let the program run.

1. Define specific conversion goals. Identify your targeted conversion rates for each campaign you run.
   
2. Select campaign topic. The usual suspects include: Beginner packages, Season Passes, Night Skiing, Midweek, Family Packages, Stay & Play, and group discounts.
   
3. Set budget & bidding. Allocate resources in advance (again, by campaign) based on resort priorities. Reminder: You need a critical mass of spending to generate enough impressions for the program to produce results, but AI-powered ad delivery optimizes bidding, reach, and budget across all platforms.
   
4. Upload creative assets. Gather all images, messages, videos, logos, URLs, and other campaign components to upload.  Note: We do not recommend letting AI generate assets – yet. Its ability to generate image-message compatibility and synergy has not, in our experience, been impressive.
   
5. Launch and monitor. Allow time for the content, the market, and the AI-driven optimization to “bake.”

Benefits

Ski resort marketers will like many aspects of AI-driven digital advertising, but they will absolutely love the multi-platform ad delivery.

Rather than manage multiple platforms individually, Google ad delivery happens automatically across Search, YouTube, display networks, Discover, Gmail, and Maps.

While each platform is populated with the ad content that performs best, you can create, manage, and optimize your multi-channel presence from one environment.

The downsides of AI-driven digital ads

In our view, AI-powered ad benefits far outweigh the negatives, but ski resorts new to the technology should know what they’re in for. Some examples:

• Creative assets: You need a range of content forms for max effectiveness. And the content needs to be authentic and branded.
  
• AI runs the show. Many advertisers aren’t accustomed to hands-off advertising.
  
• Precise targeting and messaging are needed for niche audiences. Make sure your copy is on-target.
  
• The budget needs to be equal to the task. It takes resources to get enough data momentum going.
  
• It still takes people who understand optimization. You need informed measurement and monitoring to run a strong AI ad program.

Avalanche! A look at AI ad programs for New England mountains

It’s time to tune up your mountain’s marketing technology performance.

When you’re ready to start using data and creativity to solve marketing problems, contact us.