We began working with Northern Escape Heli Skiing (NEH), a Terrace, BC-based adventure tour operator, in late 2020. Northern Escape has been in business since 2004, and provides high-end, small group heli skiing excursions to very affluent clientele from around the world. In 2020, they opened a brand new luxury lodge at a cost of $5 million, to further position NEH as an industry leader in the sport. However, with covid, the 2020 season was cut short and the new lodge received little PR and marketing.
Marketing New Tourism Products for Locals
Winter 20/21 would be a very challenging ski season, with borders closed and covid still raging. But NEH adopted new health protocols, and decided to open for private trips, for Canadians only. In normal years, nearly all of Northern Escape’s guests typically come from the US and overseas (Canadians make up about 3% heli skiing clientele), so to operate with a Canadian-only market, would require a major pivot. We worked with their team to create and market new, discounted heli and cat skiing products, specifically designed for Canadians. This involved market and competitor research, website work, SEO and Google and Facebook Ads.
Building a Long Term Foundation
Shortly after we began working with them, NEH’s president and GM, John Forrest, shared an email chain from a guest. This guest was considering Northern Escape and another competitor for a 2022 trip (these tours often book 12+ months in advance) and decided to book with the competitor instead of NEH, because they had ‘a more superior heli ski tour.’ This was a large overseas booking, well in excess of $100K, and the loss stung. Worse, the competitor’s heli tour was clearly inferior to NEH’s. This was also a marketing failure.
Up to this point, NEH’s ideal client was anyone who wanted to go heli skiing and could afford to pay for it. And their marketing reflected that, being essentially identical to their competitor’s and offering no clear point of differentiation.
We had our work cut out for us and began working on a new, long term strategy. Using the Duct Tape Marketing System, our first task was to begin ideal client interviews. We made over a dozen phone interviews with NEH’s top clients, the trip leaders who return year after year, and bring groups with them. We soon began to spot trends and key differentiators and by the end of this exercise, and with additional deep competitor and market research, we developed ‘ideal client personas’ and new core messaging for NEH.
Our new personas clearly defined exactly who NEH’s ideal clients were, the ‘benefits’ NEH provided them and a clear picture of their customer journey.
Growth Tactics
Armed with a detailed strategy, we began the tactical side of the marketing plan. NEH did not have strong reviews, despite having large numbers of very happy customers. Ratings and Reviews are not only a ‘trust factor’ they’re also a ranking factor, so we created a new reviews workflow that could be easily integrated into their operations, to prompt all happy guests to leave 5-star reviews and to deal with any problem reviews before they’re posted.
Core messaging was updated on the website and social channels to reflect those benefits most important to NEH’s ideal clients and we got to work on improving NEH’s Google search rankings (SEO).
A PR program was started and NEH’s key points of differentiation were used in Facebook and Google pay-per-click ad campaigns.
As NEH was concerned about the impact of their sport on the environment, we helped with a green, carbon-neutral certification and media outreach for this. Further, we began a social media campaign to get votes for a major industry award.
The Results
As NEH began incorporating our ratings and reviews program into their operations, their number of 5-star ratings on Google and Tripadvisor increased over 400%. We achieved several high-value press placements, and their Google search rankings (SEO), for their most important search term ‘heli skiing’ (US) moved from the bottom of Page Two up onto the middle of Page One.
Our SEO work dramatically improved Google rankings for NEH’s most valuable and competitive keywords. (ahrefs US SERPs report)
Further, our Google Ads PPC campaigns began seeing strong results, with more than 5X better performance and CTR than NEH had achieved before working with us, and our social media campaigns helped them win the World Ski Award for ‘Best Heli Ski Operation’, a very prestigious award.
As a result of our work, winter 2020/21 was nearly sold out with 100% bookings coming from Canadians and winter 2022 was NEH’s most successful year on record, with nearly double the bookings and revenue of their best pre-covid season.
