Google ROAS
12x+
north of 12x on average, with our best accounts past 20x
Prepared for Mt Buller - Buller Ski Lifts
Prepared for Mt Buller
What we found inside Mt Buller's acquisition engine.
You sell a product that only exists for about four months a year, in a category that spends its biggest dollars in January. That mismatch is your single sharpest lever.
Three hours from Melbourne, 80km of runs, a resort entry fee on every windscreen: the demand is already driving toward you. The question is who owns the 48 hours before the snow is confirmed.
$677Mspent across the travel category
last year, peaking in January
last year, peaking in January
The thing that caught our eye
The category peaks when your lifts are off.
Australian travel advertising spent $677M last year and it crests in January, the exact window Mt Buller has nothing to sell. By the time your season lands in June and July, the category's spend, and its media inflation, has rolled off. That is not a problem. It is an opening: you can buy attention in your peak while your category rivals are quiet.
The trap is treating the season as your marketing calendar. Intent for you builds weeks before, when a Melbourne family is deciding between a weekend at Buller and a flight somewhere warm.
We've solved thisAcross our travel & tourism accounts we have driven ROAS north of 12x by owning intent windows, not just the on-sale date.
Category rhythm vs your rhythm
Everyone else's calendar runs opposite to yours.
Here is how the category spends across the year (Nielsen Ad Intel). Read it against your own window. Where the line dips is where impressions are cheap and the field is thin.
Category peaks January, troughs December. Your peak sits in the category's quiet months. · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
Everyvehicle pays resort entry,
skier or not
skier or not
Our read on your economics
You monetise the visit, not just the lift ticket.
Like an airport that earns on parking and retail regardless of which airline a passenger flies, Mt Buller charges resort entry on every car that comes up the hill. The tobogganer, the grandparent who never leaves the village, the day-tripper who came for one run: they all pay to be there. That widens your real addressable market well beyond "people who ski."
Most alpine marketing speaks only to committed skiers and snowboarders. We would build a second acquisition track for the snow-play and day-visit audience, who are cheaper to reach, decide later, and convert on a confirmed-snow forecast.
Track recordPurchase costs under $20 on Google across our travel accounts, driven by segmenting intent, not blanket reach.
We can map your day-trip vs overnight demand by week against last winter's snow forecasts before we even meet.
Just hit replyWhere the category's money sits
The field still buys yesterday's channels.
More than $208M of category spend still went to newspapers last year, ahead of all of digital and social. For a resort whose customer checks live cams and a snow report on their phone before committing, that gap is your advantage. The audience deciding on Buller is already on the device you can bid on.
Newspapers remain the category's single largest channel, ahead of digital & social. · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
Scale, in perspective
You do not need to outspend Flight Centre.
Here is the category's heaviest spenders against Mt Buller. The point is not to match them. They are fighting nationally, year-round, for every trip. You are fighting for one region in one season. Concentrated spend in your window beats their diffuse spend across twelve months.
Category giants spend broad and constant; a resort wins by owning a narrow window. · Source: Nielsen Ad Intel, as at Dec 2025
What you only learn from the inside
Things we know that aren't on any dashboard.
Snow-report bounce
Bookings can stall on a soft forecast even with every lift spinning. We retarget the people who opened your live cams and snow report but did not book, they are your warmest, most anxious audience.
The 48-hour weekend window
Day-trip demand consolidates in the two days before a confirmed-snow weekend. Bids and creative need to move on that trigger, not on a fixed weekly schedule.
Ikon buyers are already committed
An Ikon or Mountain Collective passholder has decided to ski somewhere. The battle is which resort and which dates, won early, before other passes lock in the calendar.
Overnight is worth multiples of day-trip
The overnight guest spends across accommodation, food and rentals, but decides later and more cautiously. Same audience, two very different bids and two different messages.
Pre-purchase is a margin lever
Your own site pushes off-peak and pre-purchase savings. Those discounts are a targeting signal, we use them to pull forward the mid-week and shoulder-week visits that smooth your capacity.
Your radius is one drive
Being Australia's most accessible alpine resort means most of your market is a single Melbourne drive. That lets us geo-weight spend tightly and treat interstate flyers as a separate, slower-burn campaign.
One honest comparison
What we deliver for travel & tourism accounts.
These are our own delivered results across Australian and New Zealand travel accounts over the last year. Directional, deliberately rounded, and real, the kind of numbers a competitor cannot find online.
Cost per purchase
Under $20
as low as single digits on Google when intent is segmented
Meta CPM
Single digit
cheap enough to run always-on retargeting through your window
Sunny first-party benchmark, as at Jun 2026. Averages not weighted by spend.
Three things we'd look at first
Where we'd start, specifically.
01
A weather-triggered media layer
Creative and bids that respond to your own snow report and cams. When cover is good, spend lifts and messaging shifts to "conditions are on." When it softens, we hold budget and lean on the guaranteed experiences: village, events, snow play.
Track recordCost per purchase under $20 by matching spend to live intent.
02
Split day-trip from overnight
Two audiences, two economics, two campaigns. The day-tripper is a same-week, weather-led decision. The overnight guest is a higher-value, longer consideration booking. Right now they likely see one message.
Track recordROAS north of 12x when campaigns are built around value tiers, not one funnel.
03
Buy your quiet months
While the category floods January, your winter window sits in cheaper media. We would concentrate spend where impressions are cheap and the field is thin, exactly opposite the category's habit.
Track recordSingle-digit CPMs on Meta sustained through peak intent periods.
This is a snapshot, not the plan
A real plan is built on better data than a quick scan.
Everything above is what we can read from the outside. With your booking, resort-entry and cam-traffic data, the picture sharpens fast.
Nielsen Ad IntelCategory & competitor ad-spend tracking
Roy MorganAudience & consumer profiling
Google Premier PartnerTop tier of Google agencies
Meta Business PartnerVerified platform access
This briefing is what we can see from the outside. Imagine what we'd build with the data on the inside.
Proof, not promises
Check out our success stories.
We've done this for travel & tourism brands right across Australia. See the campaigns, and the results, for yourself.
Check out our success storiesWhat this is actually worth
Here's the size of the prize.
6x to 12x
return on a concentrated winter-window media program
Our travel & tourism accounts return north of 12x on Google on average, with a floor around 6.7x across the full range. Applied to whatever you commit to a focused winter performance program, that is the honest band we would expect to land in, assuming spend is concentrated in your intent window rather than spread evenly across the year.
Directional only, based on our anonymised category benchmarks (as at Jun 2026), not a bespoke forecast. Your real numbers depend on booking value, snow, and current baseline, which we would confirm together.
One winter, one shot at the window
The next 30 minutes
Let's own your quiet months before next season.
Half an hour, and we will walk you through the weather-triggered layer, the day-trip vs overnight split, and where the cheap impressions sit in your calendar.
Just hit replyNo prep needed. We bring the category data.
This isn't a sales call in disguise. If we cannot see a clear win for Buller, we will tell you straight and you will still leave with the read.
- ✓
Your window vs the category's
Where impressions are cheap while your lifts are on.
- ✓
The two-audience split
How we would separate day-trip and overnight demand.
- ✓
The weather trigger
Connecting your snow report to what the market sees.