How to Market Your Summer Camp | Summer Camp Marketing | CampMarketingNews.com

Sometimes we'll put the same or simliar post on this blog, our facebook page and twitter. Other times different marketing tips and information will appear in only only one or two of those places. Make sure your read this blog, follow us on twitter, become a fan on Facebook (and even friend me on facebook) so you don't miss anything.

A few weeks ago I blogged that stealing marketing ideas from other industries could mean a promotional windfall for your camp. A few days ago, Dan Kennedy, one of my favorite all-time marketers, wrote about this same marketing strategy in Entrepreueur.com. Check it out.

You can find a car wash anywhere. Car washes are popular businesses, and visible. But how come there's no "motorcycle washes?" I bet that'd be a great new business idea someone could try. And it's a good example of how to think "outside the box." You can use this same approach at camp to improve your marketing effectiveness. For example, lots of kids go to day camp, lots of kids go overnight camp, but how many kids do you know go to day camp at night? Not many, I'll bet. See what I mean?

How often do parents call you on the phone and say, "I'm ready to sign up for camp right now"?

Maybe it happens from time to time. But more likely it takes a series of contacts with people before they're ready to register for camp. This is why customer follow-up is so important.

Since people sign up for camp when THEY'RE ready, not necessarily when YOU want them to, you need a follow-up strategy that gets people to register for camp sooner rather than later. Here's what I suggest.

Keep a list of EVERY prospect you speak with. At the very least collect their email addresses, phone numbers and physical addresses. I can't tell you how many times I've seen camp directors have promising first contacts with people, only to lose the enrollment because they failed to get the required follow-up information.

However long you wait before following up is up to you. I follow up with my mine prospects every seven to 10 days. Any longer than that, people start to …

Two of the better youth marketing sites on the Internet:

ypulsefusemarketing

The Internet's a WILD place, a frickin jungle. It's hard to find good websites sometimes. But one I recommend you visit often is mashable.com. If it's not the absolute best site on the net, it's the absolute best social media site. I'd bookmark it if I were you.

Why go broke paying a professional "videographer" thousands of bucks to make your camp video? Create your own instead at Animoto or OneTrueMedia. It's cheap, easy, and it'll look like gold.

Here's an interesting article from web2journal: 4 Common Sense Media Tips. Pay close attention to points 2 and 3 which reinforce what I keep saying, namely that making consistent, relevant blog posts and posting videos of interest to your camp prospect audience can help your google ranking and make you famous.

Everything you need to know about marketing to Moms on facebook.

CBS accepts Tim Tebow's anti-abortion ad for the super bowl, but rejects a gay-dating site's bid to advertise too. Shame on you, CBS

Moms are using social networks more than ever.

Twitter, like all social media, is about relationship building. Your tweets should be funny, entertaining, and comprised of content people want to know about. Twitter is NOT about selling or promoting your stuff...not usually, anyway. My suggestion is, use twitter to post compelling content and build relationships 98% of the time, then sneak in your promotional message the other 2%.

Whether you embed your blog into your main website or keep it separate is a personal choice. Whatever you prefer, go ahead and do. My feeling is to keep them separate. This gives your blog its own identity. And you'll probably get better treatment from the search engines because the Internet loves new content and, theoretically, you're updating your blog with new content much more often than your main website.

Pretty soon Camp Coupons is gonna start charging money to add coupons to the site. If you're a camp director, add your camp today while it's still free!

If you run a camp in Minnesota, get free advertising for it now.

If you're like me, customer service is a big part of your camp's marketing strategy. But even though we try to exceed our customer's expectations, sometimes we fall short. An occasional upset parent, unfortunately, is part of camp life.

Play your cards right, and an angry customer can be a blessing in disguise. At least they've taken the time to express their concerns. Most pissed off customers will never speak up; they'll just tell their friends about the poor experience they had with you and sign up with your competitor instead.

It's hard to take, especially if someone's flying off the handle. But when a displeased customer voices a complaint, they're in essence sharing with you a way to improve your camp. You can use this situation as a starting point to reestablish a long-term relationship with them, win back a potentially valuable customer, and gain valuable feedback so you're able to make whatever improvements are necessary to ensure other f…

When you write ads, blog posts, or any kind of copy, the headline is the most important part. Thing is, 80% of the people who see your ad will read the headline. But only 20% will continue reading the rest of your ad. To increase that 20%, your headline needs to be a whopper.

In my experience, some of the best headlines:

Ask questions (How Much Money Would You Like to Save this Summer?") Start with "How To" (How to Save Money at Summer Camp") Include dates ("Offer Ends March 1")Use numbered lists ("Top 7 Ways to Pick a Summer Camp")
Here's a link to the top 100 headlines ever written. See if you can't adopt a few to your camp marketing copy.

Damn, every time I hear someone say, "traditional marketing is dead," or when I read an article that says, "as we move away from traditional marketing...", I confess I shake my head and laugh. Traditional marketing is NOT dead, and will NEVER die. Consider this: Not everyone has email. Not everyone has a twitter account, Not everyone's online. Not everyone's on facebook, and not everyone has a computer. But EVERYONE has a mailbox! That's why traditional marketing, and direct mail especially, will never go away. In fact, when used correctly, direct mail is a VERY powerful marketing tool camp directors would be wise to embrace.

From your camp's website to advertisements to brochures and dvd's, use color as much as possible. You'll get a much higher response rate (up to 80%) with color compared to black and white. If nothing else, your logo should be in color, but try your best to make everything else colorful too.

Do yourself a favor and follow SCORE (Service Core of Retired Executives) on twitter. These guys are LOADED with fantastic experience and great tips about how to run and market and organization from top to bottom.

Posting to Facebook in the middle of the week (Tues, Wed, Thurs) will be more well-received than posts on Monday or Friday. And, if you're trying to get people to click links, avoid posting such links Friday, Saturday or Sunday cuz you're unlikely to get the click-thru rate you're looking for. Post your links mid-week instead.

Remember that great pitchman Billy Mays ... the guy on TV infomercials who could sell sand to a sheik? Here's a picture to help remind you:


As you might recall this guy was one FANTASTIC salesman. Most camp directors I know hate selling. But you gotta be a salesman (or saleswoman) in this day and age if you're really gonna compete. (If you're a good marketer, you'll get your share of word of mouth referrals and all, but nobody's gonna do all your selling for you...except you.)
I came across this article tonight and thought I'd share it with you. It focuses mainly on selling products, but you can easily adapt it to selling summer camp services with little effort.

Camp marketing season's about to blow up. If you want more campers, don't forget to add your camp to camp coupons.com. It's free, so why not?

Would you rather sell 50 things to 50 people, or 50 things to 5 people? Obvious answer, right? And that's EXACTLY why it's easier and more cost effective to keep the campers you already have, rather than trying to get tons of new ones every year.

Get your camp's website to the top of Google faster. Check out google's search engine optimization starter guide:

Don't miss yahoo's advertising blog where they're focusing on teen trends and what teens are doing online

Do you ever get "writer's block" when thinking of what to say on your blog? Here's a tip: Just take bits and pieces of content already on your camp's main website, change the words a little, then use that as your blog post. Easy!

Direct mail tip: When you address an envelope, use the biggest font possible. People get an emotional charge out of seeing their name in print, even if it's only a subconscious one.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know how important "green" products are services are to businesses and consumers. All other things being equal, if a family is deciding between one camp or the other, the camp who shows a bigger environmental commitment could win the enrollment.

Important fact to take away from this: "Green" is HUGE, especially among kids! "Green" is one thing that's never been affected by the recession, and when the economy finally comes back, the eco-friendly camps (or at least those who convince prospects they're eco-friendly) will see nice rewards.

Good article here from econsultancy about marketing to kids online.

There's lots of ways you can post pictures to twitter. But if you use other social networking services like MySpace and Facebook, learn about yfrog where you can post your photos to all three services at once.

When you get a new follower on Twitter, sometimes you might wanna send them a quick "thank you" message or just introduce yourself. That's fine, but I would NOT use this opportunity to try to sell them anything. Instead, just say a quick, "thanks for the follow, look forward to connecting further" or something like that.

Did you know you can AUTOMATE this function in twitter? This way you don't need spend time writing and sending DMs (direct messages) every time you get a new follower. Visit this website to set up your automated DM replies on twitter today.

Top 10 Reasons why people don't follow you on twitter.

Twitter limits your username to 15 characters primarily so others have more space to "retweet" your posts.

Enamored with Twitter? Everyone is. Check back throughout the day because today's blog posts will focus on it. (I'm changing my account soon, but for now you can follow me there at twitter.com/campmktgnews and twitter.com/alohabeachcamp).

We just posted about "storytelling marketing." Here's an interesting video to go along with it.

Have you ever heard the term, "storytelling marketing?" Not many people are familiar with the concept or, if they are, may not know how to use it to their advantage.

Storytelling marketing is just what it sounds like: Incorporating stories into your marketing messages. Not stories as in "lies." Stories as in real, honest-to-goodness storytelling -- sorta like your grandpa used to tell you about when he was a kid, or how your mom shared stories with you about when she was young.

Marketing with stories takes your customer service and social marketing efforts to a whole new level. It humanizes your camp, and it helps you connect and engage more deeply with your customers and prospects on an emotional level -- through stories. And as you probably already know, when you can reach a prospect emotionally, you've got a pretty good shot at making them a permanent customer.

Here's a blog post about storytelling marketing and how you can use it to reach any market. T…

If you couldn't tell by now, I consider myself a small business owner as much a camp director. Here's an article on 80 ways you can use twitter as a small business owner. This 80 point checklist applies to camp directors, too :)

If you have a facebook fan page for your camp, you might want to dress it up a little. You might want to add more customization than what a general facebook page offers.

I'm doing mine right now. It's a work in progress and won't be done for a while, but check it out here when you can. If you need tips on how to do it, let me know.

Check out Google's channel on youtube.

You work hard to get folks to come to your website or read your blog. But people aren't always gonna seek you out. To make the most of your social marketing agenda and build your camp's brand, it's often up to you to initiate relationships.

Find 3 or 4 blogs or message boards related to kids, summer, camp, parenting, teens or whatever. Then, participate in their online communities. Leave relevant comments and ask important questions. Engaging with other participants online is an excellent way to build relationships, extend your camp's brand and establish yourself as an expert.

Comment areas on blogs and message boards often allow HTML. If there's a subtle natural way to incorporate your website address, by all means do so. But don't run from site to site posting your camp's url or blog address on every forum you can find. That's spamming, and a fast way to ruin the solid reputation you're trying to build.

If you're adding value to the communiti…

We've mentioned before that your website content should contain relevant keywords people are searching on. One way to improve your search ranking is to avoid "research oriented" content/keywords in favor of "action-oriented" ones. A keyword phrase like “summer camps" will most likely appeal to people doing general research on summer camps. But a specific keyword phrase or website content such as “Summer sports camp for girls ages 6-11 in Las Vegas" is gonna bring you a lot more people ready to take action, that is, ready to sign up for camp.

Via bnet.com

Sometimes weeks go by without any feedback from readers of this blog, then boom, I'll hear from lots of people at once. Today I got three emails from camp directors who each asked generally the same thing: What's the BEST way to make social media marketing work for me (us)?

Every situation's unique, just like every camp's unique. But if you're asking me to make a universal suggestion, it'd be this: don't be a "friend whore" on facebook, and don't spend your time trying to get as many followers as possible on twitter. The sheer number of friends, followers and fans you have is MUCH less important than how meaningful and relevant your connections are.

If I were you, I'd focus on establishing a smaller network of meaningful connections with influential people than trying to establish a huge network of friends, followers and fans you barely know.

I'd rather have just one person in my social network who will refer their friends and others …

Most camp directors discourage kids from bringing cell phones to camp. If you're one of them, it's gonna get harder, not easier, for you to control this situation.

Even worse, your "no cell phones at camp" policy might be pissing off your customers.

Cell phone activity among kids is SKYROCKETING, not just because more and more parents are buying cell phones for their kids, but because cell phone use has become one of the primary ways kids and parents communicate with each other.

Check out some of these findings from the recent Marketing to Mom's Coalition survey:

Mobile devices account for the top two ways mothers communicate with their kids under 18
Moms and their school-age kids on their cell phones over 5 times per week Moms and their school-age kids text each other over 3 times per week
What does this mean for camp directors? Cover your ears if you don't want to hear this, but many kids and parents already despise your policy of not letting them speak to e…

Posting online flyers and classified ads is a great way to get free exposure for your camp. Try vflyer.com, craigslist.com and backpage.com. I've used them all with nice results. Make sure you include pictures and links back to your camp's website when creating your flyers and ads, and you might even find yourself at the top of Google within minutes. Seriously.

Did you know Youtube gets over 1 BILLION views every day. That's a mind-boggling number. And the very reason why you MUST get your camp videos on youtube right away.