Membership Dollars at Work: Peak Marketing | Black Hills & Badlands - South Dakota

Membership Dollars at Work: Peak Marketing

Phone: 
(605) 355-3600

The dog days of summer are here. Around our shop, this is the time of year when taking stock of the current year and planning for the next becomes a priority on our daily to-do lists.

With only two months remaining in our 2016 fiscal year, we're rolling out a few more marketing efforts as we continue our mission to promote the Black Hills as an all-seasons vacation destination. As we begin to transition to fiscal 2017, we’re happy to report that marketing efforts through July are responsible for nearly 124 million impressions and over 20 million engagements. They have also produced 330,976 goal conversions (VG requests, likes & follows, sign-ups, and bookings).

Tracking these marketing efforts (as most business people can attest to) can be a frustratingly inexact science. We track our efforts to inspire and inform potential visitors as best as we can (efforts that span travel shows, print, digital, social, and television) and then try to figure out the return on our total budget of over $1.55 million (less the operating expenses of the Black Hills Visitor Information Center).

All told, we conservatively estimate these efforts to have generated over $5.95 million in spending. Please note: This $5.95 million estimation is derived from only 14 of our 53 total campaign components which provide enough metrics to be able to compute a return on investment.

Despite the largely dark activity that we can’t follow, we can estimate that for every dollar spent on our membership-funded marketing program, the region saw a return of $3.84. If we look at the return vs. spend on just those components we can track, our return on every dollar spent is $46.68 (vs. the whole budget).

Again, this is from a mere quarter of our efforts and doesn't include efforts like the South Dakota Vacation Guide, the Black Hills Facebook page, Black Hills Travel Blog, or any of our group tour efforts. While seeing millions in return is a good thing—ultimately, what we really like to see is business up. So far in 2016, we’ve been happy to see that.

Now, for 2017…

For more information on BH&B’s marketing program, please contact BH&B's Vice President of Marketing, Mike Gussiaas, by emailing mike@blackhillsbadlands.com or calling (605) 355-3600.