War Room Inc. Drove Conversions & Delivered Sun Peaks Resort’s Best Season Ever
Sun Peaks Resort is a year-round resort situated just outside of Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. War Room Inc.’s client, Tourism Sun Peaks, is the Destination Marketing Organization mandated to promote the destination to the world!
It has full-service resort amenities, friendly locals, and a car-free village with shops and cafes. It is surrounded by three mountains, making festivals, outdoor events, concerts, and other variety of activities available.
The natural and gorgeous landscape provides excellent hiking trails for visitors and locals alike. But that’s not it; in the wintertime, the stunning mountain slopes are amazing for winter sports — it’s Canada’s second-largest ski area and was named National Geographic’s Best Winter Trips of 2019!
Sun Peaks Resort offers a multitude of experiences year-round for visitors from all walks of life. There is no doubt that a trip to Sun Peaks is like escaping to an entirely different world.
The Goal
“Spread the Word, Sell the Idea”
Sun Peaks Resort wanted to:
- Increase brand awareness
- Drive more visitors to Sun Peaks
- Sell more season passes in the winter season
That’s where War Room Inc. comes into the picture as their digital advertising partner, providing them with strategy, execution, and reporting.
The Challenge
“Adjusting For The Weather”
Challenge #1: Mother Nature was cruel: the year prior, Sun Peaks had their lowest sales season yet due to a terrible snow season.
Challenge #2: The resort has implemented a price increase in the season passes. Between unruly weather, ticket price increases, and having previously run campaigns strictly in-house, Sun Peaks was concerned that ticket sales would be sub-par this year.
How could War Room Inc. communicate the unique value and experience of a season pass for Sun Peaks with according price increases? The biggest challenge for Sun Peaks was to convey the true value of a season pass to their target demographic and sell, sell, sell!
The Execution
“Here Comes the Sun”
Previously, Sun Peaks had managed their advertising campaigns solely in-house; as seasons became busier, responsibilities around the resort were spread thin across staff, which resulted in fewer resources to be allocated for campaign management. That’s where War Room Inc. stepped in to fill that gap.
War Room Inc. consolidated and managed their campaigns across all their ad platforms in detail. Using their proprietary programmatic platform, Kedet, they provided the Sun Peaks team with in-depth campaign analytics and reporting. The first thing War Room Inc. noticed was that their website wasn’t mobile responsive. So the usual Call-To-Action (CTA) “Click to Website” would not have been effective for the campaign goal. So, they focused on the campaign aspect that would garner higher season pass sales for Sun Peaks: Awareness.
War Room Inc. leveraged Sun Peak Resort’s beautiful imagery and showcased it on Facebook and Instagram ads. They implemented hyper-targeting methods based on the clients’ target personas to drive more conversions of season tickets. It was all about serving the right ad to the right people at the right time.
Sun Peaks had never run any ads on social channels before. They had previously used Display Ads to drive brand engagement, so this was a completely new method for them to implement. They took them out of their comfort zones and delivered — big time.
The Results
“We’re Walking On Sunshine”
Sun Peaks never sold as many pre-season passes as they did in this campaign…ever.
They also exceeded their campaign revenue goals!
Take a look at their case study video:
Tourism Sun Peaks Programmatic Advertising Case Study from War Room on Vimeo.
Here are some other results from the campaign:
- In two weeks, the campaign drove 542,455 impressions, 2,002 ad clicks, 47 landing page visits, and 6,429 button clicks.
- 18,510 people would remember seeing Sun Peaks ads when asked within two days.
- They exceeded their overall impression goal by 233.07%!
- 13.80% of visitors clicked the “Continue” button on the landing page; most people were interested in the rate and information forms.
- Both Facebook and Instagram Ads observed a spike in post likes, page follows, and engagement amongst their target audience.
The Testimonial
Jennifer Lestander Destination Marketing Manager, Sun Peaks said:
We saw a lot of engagement in extended reach. We were pretty impressed, we had a target in terms of impressions that we were going to reach in the campaign and I think we tripled it! They were able to scale things up at a higher level, so that delivered more results for us from an awareness and conversion standpoint. So to see that kind of growth for us, it was the best growth that we’ve seen in the last handful of years.
One of the great things that I love about the reporting that War Room Inc. provides you as a client is that they provide the behaviors of the visitor to your site through their heat scroll maps, where their cursor is hovering over, and where the engagement is on the page they’ve taken to, which gives you great insight to future landing pages
About War Room Inc
War Room Inc. is an advertising agency that specializes 100% in programmatic. Get the best of both worlds with cutting-edge ad tech and digital strategy expertise.
