Everyone’s heard the old saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” It’s surely saved a lot of time in the decades since it was coined. But, like so many proverbs, it has its limitations, especially when applied to marketing strategy. If Williams Randall were to revise that old saying to reflect our approach to year-over-year campaign strategy, it’d go more like this: “It might not be broken, but we’re going to make it better.” It’s this proverb that we look to when building a new campaign, even and especially when it's following a successful year. There's no laurel-resting in advertising – not if you like to retain clients – and a recent year's season pass campaign we did for Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari provides a good example. 

Taking What’s Worked & Making it Better 

For over ten years, Williams Randall had the privilege of being the agency of record for the Southern Indiana theme parks. Even by our own ambitious standards, this Holiday World Season Pass campaign was a rousing success—its Key Performance Indicator (KPI) numbers beat the previous year's soundly—and that previous year was no slouch. A big reason? We utilized insights gained from that earlier campaign to inform our following year's campaign strategy. Plus, we saw advancements in targeting and trackability for online ads, and the addition of some new social platforms/tactics.

Strategic Changes Paid Off

At Williams Randall, we don’t “set and forget” our media campaigns. We measure and track all we do so we can make necessary shifts to get even better results for our clients. We took that to heart and made some strategic changes that differentiated the campaign under discussion. Some highlights include:

• An earlier start to the campaign than in the previous year, to align with the park’s announcement of a new family-friendly ride opening. We used that organic momentum to bolster Season Pass sales while promoting the new attraction.
• Adding YouTube ads to the media mix, to build and bolster early- and mid-campaign awareness.
• For the first time, adding a TikTok video, which ran the third week of November when holiday spending traditionally begins to ramp up.
• Taking advantage of newly more robust targeting capabilities to reach out to highly specific groups in addition to the broader, more general ones we've traditionally targeted.
• Continuing to incorporate the Pre-K Pass messaging, which was proven effective by a prior campaign and highlights a recent program raising the age of free season passes from two to three.

Some of these changes represented mere tweaks from the previous year’s campaign. Others were more substantial. But collectively, they all serve as evidence of our policy of refusing to simply "stand pat" by repeating what had worked in the previous year’s campaign strategy. The eyebrow-raising YoY KPIs they produced attest to the wisdom of this policy.

The Results

With nearly the same budget, season pass sales increased by 23% over the previous year. That increase in sales led to a $33 ROAS (Return On Ad Spend, meaning there was a $33 revenue return on every $1 of media spent in-market. This represented a 51% increase in ROAS over the previous year. A whole new set of Holiday World & Splashin’ Safari brand loyalists was created, youngsters who enjoyed the park all season long and will one day think back fondly on those great memories when pondering leisure options for their own families. And that's a win in the short game and the long game at the same time.