Five Metro State students enlisted by Echo Mountain ski area to help sculpt its marketing strategy presented their plan Wednesday.
The marketing students, armed with a $125,000 budget and aiming to expand Echo’s 35,000 annual visits to 50,000, urged the 80-acre ski area on Squaw Pass to broaden not only its offerings but its target audience.
By promoting offseason activities and events such as hiking, biking, weddings and yoga retreats, Echo could bolster its year-round appeal, the students said. By expanding its kitchen and developing terrain for tubing or zip lines, the area could boost its revenue beyond skiing. The ski area should look beyond the snowsports industry for sponsors and partners, such as a credit union or grocery store.
Bolstered by statistics that show more than 80 percent of people who try skiing for the first time never return to the sport, the students proposed tweaking Echo’s marketing campaign to elevate its lessons. With the tagline “A place to grow,” Echo’s affordable lessons could lure Front Range residents who don’t ski.
“I liked everything I heard,” said Echo marketing director Scott Gales. “It’s good to see the status and condition of our brand from a new, fresh perspective.”
When 80-acre Echo Mountain launched in 2006, the area heralded itself as a skate park on snow, targeting young snowboarders. A couple of years ago, Echo switched its tack, aiming for moms with a “Let Traditions Begin” campaign that touts affordability and proximity to metro Denver.
While the ski area’s visitation and revenue have grown every year, it has yet to make a profit for its Maryland-based owner, Jerry Petitt, who paid $700,000 for the 250-acre area in 2002. “There is a ton of potential everywhere we look up there,” Gales said. “But before we spend $500,000 on a new tubing hill, we need to be on better financial footing.”
With waning pass renewals this season, the need to raise Echo’s revenue is paramount. But Echo’s image as a terrain park lingers and could be deterring families and first-timers. The area needs to better broadcast its family-centric appeal with shifts in its social-media and advertising efforts, the students said.
Professor Darrin Duber- Smith, a veteran marketing consultant who teaches at Metropolitan State College of Denver, said his students develop marketing plans for 25 businesses each semester that “bring together every theoretical perspective they have learned in a practical application.”
“I learned a lot more in this class than I did from any textbook,” said marketing major Aaron Dunser.
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com
