Discover Kalispell

While Kalispell benefits from proximity to Glacier National Park, it often struggles to stand out as a destination. As the park has grown in popularity and experienced an uptick in visitors, it has also experienced overcrowded trails and frustrating reservation systems, resulting in trip disruptions. This popularity highlighted the need to showcase alternative Montana experiences beyond Glacier.

The Abbi Agency and Discover Kalispell saw the traveler situation as an opportunity to leverage their proximity to the park and encourage Montana visitors to explore their destination and experience great trails, stunning views, and a charming small town (minus the crowds). The agency highlighted these experiences and the charm of Kalispell to craft a cross-channel campaign for the destination.

To establish a more distinctive sense of place for Kalispell as its own standalone destination, The Abbi Agency crafted the Venture Boldly campaign. This evergreen campaign created a unified vision for the destination’s growth, celebrating the destination’s values, traditions and heritage from a spirit of adventure to the Native American legacies of the region. The Abbi Agency emphasized sustainability and stewardship as a core element of the campaign, ensuring that the campaign included bold messaging, charging visitors with taking care of the region.

Following the launch of the Venture Boldly campaign, Discover Kalispell reduced its paid media budget by approximately 25% due to post-COVID uncertainty in the tourism sector. Despite the reduced investment, the new campaign achieved a 6% increase in total clicks and a 29.4% improvement in click-through rate (CTR), demonstrating greater audience engagement with the campaign.

In addition to establishing itself as a tourism destination, Kalispell aimed to grow its appeal during off-peak periods, particularly in winter and shoulder seasons. To compete in the increasingly competitive winter adventure market, Discover Kalispell launched a strategic campaign to drive awareness, engagement and bookings. Targeting regional drive-market audiences seeking affordable, accessible mountain getaways.

With winter travel becoming an increasingly competitive space, Discover Kalispell and The Abbi Agency set out to refresh the long-running “Ski Pass” campaign to better capture attention and drive bookings. The updated campaign leaned on the notoriety of Montana and positioned Kalispell as a hidden gem for winter adventure. New creative focused on the value of the offer, leveraging Ski for Free in the headline. While digital media focused on high-impact placements, historical data, and targeting regional drive-market audiences to capture users most likely to visit. The paid media plan leveraged channels like Google Display, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), and On The Snow, and focused on driving clicks to the landing page to ultimately drive conversions.

• An increase of pass redemptions and ultimately hotel room nights by 89.36% year-over-year
• 43,532 clicks generated, and increase of 584.78% year-over-year
• 120% reduction in cost per click compared to the previous campaign
• Improved click-through rates (CTR) with Google increasing 1.21% and Meta at 0.40% year-over-year
• Decreased cost per click (CPC) with a decrease $0.93 on Google and $1.07 on Meta, demonstrating efficient targeting parameters