Lake Winnie Resort Association
Opportunity
The Lake Winnie Resort Association operates within one of Northern Minnesota's most competitive vacation markets, defined by dozens of competing resorts on several legendary fishing lakes. The initial challenge wasn't just to sell Lake Winnie—it was to cut through the noise from all the competing lakes to position Lake Winnie as THE vacation destination in Northern Minnesota. Our initial assessment quickly identified a critical breakdown that was costing the association valuable leads and revenue - the existing website was obsolete and failed to convert traffic.
Strategy
Even if we fixed the advertising, all potential leads were being funneled to the outdated site that was difficult to navigate, did not properly showcase the quality of the resorts, and, most critically, lacked clear, working conversion mechanisms. Our first priority was fixing this digital dead-end while developing updated print collateral that was ready to go once the new website was launched. Upon completion and launch of their new website we created a targeted digital ads campaign and enhanced social media strategy to drive leads to the new website.
Results
The Lake Winnie Resort Association operates within one of Northern Minnesota's most competitive vacation markets, defined by dozens of competing resorts on several legendary fishing lakes. The initial challenge wasn't just to sell Lake Winnie—it was to cut through the noise from all the competing lakes to position Lake Winnie as the destination for high-value bookings.
What We Accomplished
A New Website That Converts
Typically a website serves as the end of the sales funnel for a singular business - in this case the website served as the beginning of the funnel for 14 different businesses. We designed and built a consolidated destination funnel focusing on selling the region's unique experience—showcasing local highlights and things to do—via a seamless, guided conversion path. To ensure strong SEO and continuous traffic, we introduced blog content into the strategy which we were able to integrate into their promotion on their social media. The resulting high-value platform successfully centralized the association's promotional efforts while guiding guests to one of 14 independent member resorts that best matched their needs. All 14 resorts benefited by efficiently converting general lake interest directly into targeted bookings.
Print Collateral
While the client's primary marketing effort focused on driving traffic through the new central digital funnel, their website, the association also needed tangible print collateral (The Visitors Guide) for potential guests to reference offline. This guide became the solution to a significant tracking challenge we had been trying to solve: how to reliably measure the efficacy of the new central website’s conversion funnel, which directed traffic to 14 external resort booking sites. Our creation of the comprehensive Visitors Guide served the dual purpose of being a high-value physical asset and a unique, measurable tracking mechanism for capturing the website's print-to-web funnel efficiency, thereby providing a clear Return on Investment (ROI) for the entire campaign.
Digital Marketing
Our social media strategy addressed the association's historically underutilized and inconsistent use of platforms like Facebook. We engineered a complete turnaround by implementing a structured content calendar and ensuring all posts were strategically designed for the buyer's journey—either lead nurturing, generating, or converting—while beautifully showcasing the lake's area. All content included clear calls to action (CTAs) that linked directly to the new central website, efficiently moving users into the consolidated conversion funnel. For Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, we maximized reach and efficiency by developing engaging, high-quality graphic and video creatives. These were paired with clear calls to action and deployed as hyper-targeted ads, leveraging an in-depth analysis of the member resorts' customer bases. Crucially, these high-conversion ads linked directly to the central website, ensuring that paid traffic was immediately funneled into the newly established, measurable system.
