Friday, May 25, 2012

Can the valley be a fat-tire mecca?

Marketers see possibilities in touting region’s mountain-biking trails


By REBECCA MEANY
Express Staff Writer

A niche mountain biking campaign was launched last week with the goal of getting people to think of the Wood River Valley as the next mountain biking mecca.

"People always think of Moab," Arlene Schieven, Sun Valley Marketing Alliance president and chief marketing officer, told the Sun Valley City Council last week. "Why not think of Sun Valley?"

The initiative is part of the alliance's efforts at marketing to the mountain biking and Nordic skiing communities as well as a push to get more attention from a younger demographic.

Schieven said the alliance sees those user groups as a good fit with what Sun Valley has to offer—and it's less expensive to advertise to those niche markets.

"The opportunities of growing awareness, it attracts people to try your product, it gets them to come back again, to talk about you," she said. "And we also need to reach that missing generation of younger travelers, and I think we can do that."

Partnering with companies such as Smith and Scott, the alliance created videos promoting the area's mountain biking trails.

<

The companies, who make products for mountain bikers, have contributed to a new promotional contest's prize and are helping get the message out through their social media channels such as Facebook, Schieven said.

"We have a combined reach of 500,000 [people]," she said. "That makes it go so much further."

She said clicking though contest links on partners' social media sites drives web visitors back to the www.visitsunvalley.com website.

The alliance is spending $100,000 for summer-season advertising. Of that, $20,000 is being spent on mountain biking.

"I think we're going to get some good mileage from this for our $20,000," she said.

Schieven said that the first day of the campaign, May 17, drew 4,770 views of www.visitsunvalley.com/remedy. She said that by Tuesday afternoon, that number jumped to 10,000.

"We're definitely excited about the response we've seen," she told the Idaho Mountain Express. "We're really pleased with the interest in it. Sun Valley and mountain biking is resonating with the target audience."

Rebecca Meany: rmeany@mtexpress.com

View the videos, theirs and others'

To see a Sun Valley Marketing Alliance video promoting the area's mountain biking offerings, as well as contest entrants' video submissions, visit www.visitsunvalley.com/remedy.




About Comments

Comments with content that seeks to incite or inflame may be removed.

Comments that are in ALL CAPS may be removed.

Comments that are off-topic or that include profanity or personal attacks, libelous or other inappropriate material may be removed from the site. Entries that are unsigned or contain signatures by someone other than the actual author may be removed. We will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or any other policies governing this site. Use of this system denotes full acceptance of these conditions. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

The comments below are from the readers of mtexpress.com and in no way represent the views of Express Publishing, Inc.

You may flag individual comments. You may also report an inappropriate or offensive comment by clicking here.

Flagging Comments: Flagging a comment tells a site administrator that a comment is inappropriate. You can find the flag option by pointing the mouse over the comment and clicking the 'Flag' link.

Flagging a comment is only counted once per person, and you won't need to do it multiple times.

Proper Flagging Guidelines: Every site has a different commenting policy - be sure to review the policy for this site before flagging comments. In general these types of comments should be flagged:

  • Spam
  • Ones violating this site's commenting policy
  • Clearly unrelated
  • Personal attacks on others
Comments should not be flagged for:
  • Disagreeing with the content
  • Being in a dispute with the commenter

Popular Comment Threads



 Local Weather 
Search archives:


Copyright © 2024 Express Publishing Inc.   Terms of Use   Privacy Policy
All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Express Publishing Inc. is prohibited. 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.