Custom promotional stickers can be a powerful marketing tool for businesses, especially for mountain resorts. In the past, ski resorts had physical lift tickets and season passes that served as badges of honor for skiers and snowboarders. These physical items were not only difficult to remove but also advertised the resorts for extended periods of time. However, with the shift towards electronic passes and cards, these physical badges of insider status have been lost, and resorts have inadvertently stifled the voices, pride, and marketing potential of their best customers.
To fully harness the marketing power of fans and advocates, businesses need to create tangible, visible symbols that can be displayed to others. Badgers are people who enthusiastically showcase a badge declaring their association and affinity. As Jonah Berger points out in his book Contagious, cues in the environment not only boost word of mouth but also remind people about things they already want to buy or do. Thus, custom promotional stickers can serve as a badge that advertises, encourages word of mouth, and identifies insiders.
Mountain resorts can reignite word of mouth and display insider status by designing and distributing custom promotional stickers that are visible to all customers and visitors. These stickers not only advertise the resort but also encourage word of mouth and identify insiders. By creating something visible and unique for best customers and insiders, resorts can give them back their social currency and marketing potential.
In Stick This! the author talks about how custom promotional stickers work. If properly designed, produced, and distributed, these stickers can provide a badge that advertises and encourages word of mouth. As our culture moves towards more online and electronic means of communication, physical badges, endorsements, and insider awareness are becoming harder to see and spread. However, custom promotional stickers can help businesses create tangible, visible symbols that boost word of mouth and remind people about things they already want to buy or do. You can get all sorts of die cut stickers online.
In conclusion, custom promotional stickers are a powerful marketing tool for businesses, especially for mountain resorts. By designing and distributing custom promotional stickers, resorts can reignite word of mouth and display insider status to customers and visitors. Custom promotional stickers provide a badge that advertises, encourages word of mouth, and identifies insiders, and can help businesses create tangible, visible symbols that boost word of mouth and remind people about things they already want to buy or do.
Ideas for Resorts to Use Stickers
Most mountain resorts have promotional logo stickers, but not all of them are designed and distributed effectively to cover different customer tastes and encourage visitors to apply them and broadcast their affinity to others. Here are two ideas to maximize the effectiveness of promotional stickers when marketing for resorts.
First, produce one custom sticker sheet or sticker postcards with multiple stickers to encourage applications to cars, helmets, water bottles, electronic devices, and other locations. This approach offers many benefits when marketing for resorts, including ease of distribution, multiple options for recipients, and high perceived value. Copy or color changes can also be utilized to target different market segments and appeal to different customer tastes.
Second, distribute custom promo stickers in a planned, organized manner to paying customers who appreciate and are likely to display the custom logo stickers. Instead of random piles in random locations or offering no stickers at all, stickers can be offered verbally to everyone who makes a purchase in a retail store, rental department, and/or in restaurants or cafeterias. In this way, people are asked, and the stickers end up in the hands of interested paying customers who view the custom stickers as a valued gift.
These sticker ideas can be especially powerful and important during the pandemic, as they can serve as a way for visitors to show their support for their favorite mountain resorts and promote them to others. By designing and distributing custom promotional stickers in a thoughtful and strategic manner, mountain resorts can increase their visibility and attract new customers while also building loyalty among their existing customers.
Stickers for VIP Customers
Best customers and insiders of mountain resorts deserve a unique product or badge that separates them from other visitors and common folks. They need to feel special, appreciated, and have a way to show off their status with stickers. A unique sticker or badge offers the highest degree of exposure at the lowest cost. Here are some ideas for affordably showcasing the status of best customers.
Firstly, the design of the sticker needs to reflect a special, unique status, and the quality and perceived value of the sticker need to be pumped up a few notches as well. Vinyl cut decals, gold, silver, chrome or etched glass material, or a domed sticker of obvious high quality can be highly prized.
Secondly, two sizes of VIP/Insider stickers should ideally be produced for mountain resorts. Smaller stickers can cover helmet and equipment applications, and larger stickers for cars, cargo boxes, water bottles, etc. Multiple size options can cover many other applications, and it leaves it to the fans/advocates to decide where and how they want to display their stickers.
Thirdly, VIPcal or “Insider” Stickers should be given to top-level (or all levels) of season pass holders, or perhaps people that reach a milestone of a certain amount of runs taken, days skied or years with a pass. These stats are now readily available at many resorts, making it simple to reward top customers, frequent fliers, and VIP “insiders.” Different designs for different achievement levels can incentivize more time on the slopes, a higher-priced pass, membership in a special club, etc.
Lastly, the elite stickers should be distributed to best customers and insiders in a planned, organized manner. Mail them with a nice note congratulating them on their elite status and how much the resort appreciates them. You can further incentivize application by offering special perks, such as special parking privileges or access to a special event on a car or free coffee, an express lane for lifts, or any number of creative perks on a helmet. But, the sticker itself should be cool, coveted and convey special status, making extra benefits unnecessary.
