Buoyed by my semi-successful prognostication in 2014, I’m back at it this year with three predictions about where I think resort marketing will go in 2015.

A couple months ago I covered why I thought the way Copyblogger deleted their Facebook page was one of the more brilliant pieces of content marketing I’ve ever seen.

Today, I’m continuing my line-up of 2015 predictions with something similar. By the end of the 2015/16 season (so technically not 2015), at least one well-known ski resort will have deleted their Facebook page.

I believe they’ll do this for four reasons.

#1) Increase of Pay to Play
As the volume of Facebook posts increases, Facebook has had to continually tweak their algorithm to favor users first and brands second. After all, without users there is no ad space and less free reach drives demand to pay for it. This is only going to increase.

#2) PR Value of Being First
As Copyblogger, Eat24, etc. have learned, being the first in your field to delete your Facebook page resonates with normal users (who have often considered doing the same thing) and grabbed gobs of headlines. In an industry that’s about going outside instead of browsing inside, it may have even more potential.

#3) Math vs Other Channels
With pay-to-play costs increasing to maintain reach, resorts will start to do the math with other channels and realize that for the same cost they could use a much more reliable medium (like email) to send the exact same messages and layer in massive amounts of data to target-distribute their content without concerns over keeping the EdgeRank monster happy.

#4) Getting Their Fans to Talk
Finally, as resorts get better and better at getting their fans to talk, they’ll realize that the authentic voices of 100,000 skiers (each with 300 friends) is many times more valuable the marketing voice of the brand directly.

Not Just One
It won’t happen for just one of those reasons, it will be a combination of all.

A resort with a page that’s struggled to justify the value for a while will do the math and realize that they can accomplish virtually the exact same results without the Facebook page for the same cost and use their page as a PR tool in a cleverly timed PR blitz.

That’s my second prediction. Number three is coming on Friday.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.