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

There's a couple places, online and off, where you can find camp marketing info. (But that number's pretty small, lol, so that's why I write this blog.) I'm trying to bring you the good stuff so you can grow your enrollment and beat your competition. Ultimate Camp Resource is nice site. Check it out if you need a sample camp marketing plan or what they call magical marketing ideas for your summer camp.

Check out http://www.ymlp.com (your mailing list provider) for email marketing software. Can't beat the price!

Sometimes people will object to the price you charge for camp. They might ask, "Why is it so expensive?," or "Why do you charge so much more than Camp XYZ?"

So here's what you do.

You say, "Well, I'm sure Camp XYZ knows the value of their services better than we do..."

It works every time! :)

Marketing your camp with Google Adwords can be a smart advertising strategy.

The way it works is, you tell Google what keyword terms you think people will use when searching for your camp on Google (such as "summer camps," "day camps," or "overnight camps"). When a user searches on those keywords, your ad comes up at the top of the page or on the sidebar.

What's nice is, you only pay if people actually click on your ads. So in effect you're only paying for results. You need to be careful though. Sneaky competitors can manipulate your Adwords strategy and hurt you.

For example, the malicious camp owner next door might click on your ads over and over again, with no other intention than to deplete your advertising budget.

Another dirty trick a competitor might do is use YOUR camp's name as THEIR keyword. That means when someone searches on your camp's name, your competitor's camp comes up in Google's search results instead.

If you …

One of my Facebook fan pages now has 9,000 fans (mostly kids). And it's growing by at least 25 new fans each day. It took less than a year to reach 9,000. The cool thing is, almost ALL of these fans are camp age kids, and I can send each of them a simultaneous message (like email) with a simple click of a button.

If you wanna do the same thing, I'll show you how. It's easy to get this many fans and more. But you gotta become a fan on facebook now and follow @campmktgnews on twitter for more information and the latest updates on how to do it.

(Or your other option is to just forget it and let your competitors do it instead.)

One way to get more Facebook fans AND increase camp enrollment simultaneously is to offer a promotional rate or discount off camp tuition to anyone who becomes a fan.

Wanna get your sales letter thrown in the trash? Make it look like junk mail. A plain white envelope with a metered stamp and will do it every time.

But if you want people to actually open and your mailer, be creative. Use a first class stamp. Put the stamp upside down. Print the address and return address in different color ink by hand. Write "Important Information" or "Time Sensitive Material" on the front. Your prospects will open your mailer every time.

You can't step outside these days without hearing the words "social media marketing." But you better step outside, because as Mashable tells us, just as much word of mouth marketing among moms happens offline as on, if not more.

Oversimplified (or maybe not), Search Engine Optimization is designing your website so search engines trust your content enough to pare it up with what people are looking for. I guess it really is that simple.

Check it out.

Do you market your camp with videos? I hope so. Here's an article from Designfollow.com on how to optimize your videos for search on YouTube.

I was talking with a camp director yesterday who dropped email marketing from his marketing arsenal because he said it's a "dying breed." He was absolutely enamored with the notion of texting, social media, Facebook and all that instead.

I told him I understand where he's coming from, but giving up email marketing is a bad idea. The fact is, email marketing is one of the hottest marketing tools a camp director can use. I included email marketing
in my Top 7 Summer Camp Marketing Strategies list for 2010. And if you're looking to add a viable social marketing component to your promotional plan, sending emails is a great choice.

Remember when the Internet came of age 10 or 15 years ago? Email was pretty much how everyone communicated online. And that's precisely why email marketing should remain an integral part of your marketing plan -- it literally crosses generations. Here's what I mean.

The "new" ways to communicate online -- MySpace, IM, Fa…

One of the best ways to use twitter and other social media platforms is to run contests and polls. People can't resist entering or voting.

Aloha Beach Camp's running a contest right now on twitter where you can win a free rash guard.

Here's the blog post about it if you want more info. All you need to do is follow Aloha on twitter, make a "tweet" from your own twitter account and include #alohabeachcamp in that tweet. Good luck!

Did you know moms love Facebook more than any other social networking website? If you read this blog even remotely from time to time, you probably do know that. Here's some stuff you may not know.

The most popular pages for moms on Facebook are those with 1) coupons, and 2) kid-themed subjects.

This is yet another reason why I continue to say you should market your camp with coupons. In this economy, EVERYONE's looking for a bargain...especially moms who are often responsible for maintaining family budget.

I run the campcoupons.com website where you can add your camp for free. Plus there's already 59 fans on the Camp Coupons facebook fan page, so you can hang out over there and connect with moms who are already interested in what you're selling...summer camp for their kids! :)

Google can now read content and links embedded in flash files and websites. This is good news. In the past, any content included in flash and other rich medias files was a waste in terms of search engine optimization.

Even though Google can read flash, other search engines may not be able to. Accordingly, I'd avoid including important links and content within flash
to be sure you're maximizing your camp's website reach across the internet as a whole.

Just got back from a sushi dinner with my wife and kids. The restaurant was OK, nothing spectacular...yet we go there all the time.

Why do we choose this particular sushi place when there's so many other options with better food?

Tradition. Let me explain.

My kids -- ALL kids -- LOVE this sushi place because the restaurant encourages them to draw pictures (of anything) on napkins, then tape the napkins to the restaurant wall.

There's pictures of dragons, buildings, cars, robots, boats, people, airplanes, you name it. Some of the pictures are pretty good, some aren't. But just the fact the restaurant plasters its walls with kids' drawings gives it a warm, personal, neighborhood feel. And it makes kids feel important and included in the restaurant's traditional pastime of allowing them to draw their own pictures and put them on the wall for all to see.

In fact my kids refer to this place as, "the restaurant that lets us draw on napkins and put them on the w…

Imediaconnection's one of the better websites out there. While everyone else is out there talking about social marketing, Imedia comes out with this fantastic article about how to turn your social media activities into actual sales (read: enrollments). It's solid, practical information you can use today.

Here's an easy way to build enrollment without spending a dime. Just ask your existing customers for more referrals. If you've got happy families who are satisifed with your camp, they'll be happy to oblige.

When you meet or talk to a new prospect, it's natural to trip over yourself trying to make them happy. Maybe you give them extra attention and all that. They don't have a relationship with you or your staff yet, so you want to make the best first impression possible to win them over from the start.

Whatever you do, don't get complacent when serving established or long-term customers. It's an easy thing to do. You're so focused on pleasing the new people, the current ones don't get the attention they deserve.

One of the best ways to keep everybody happy -- including those who've attended your camp for years -- is to pretend you're talking to EVERYONE for the very first time, even if you've talked to them a thousand times before.

Your kindness and enthusiasm will show through, and your customer relationships, long term and short, will continue to grow.

Pretty soon, if we're lucky, all of us are gonna find ourselves scrambling to get ready for camp. As winter moves out and we get deeper into spring, it'll get easier to make excuses for putting your marketing on hold.

But don't.

Please make sure to include at least 1 or 2 (or 3!) marketing activities into your busy day, every day. Keep promoting your camp no matter what.

As I always say, marketing's not easy -- it's hard. But it's also too important to put off, and you'll be rewarded for sticking to it.

So keep on marketing!!!

The word "FREE" just grabs you. It's one of the most powerful -- if not the most powerful -- word in marketing.

Everyone's looking for a deal, especially in this economy. The question is, how can you use "free" when marketing your camp? Here's 6 ideas to get you started:
Free t-shirt when signing up for campFree day of camp when signing up for 10 days of camp or moreFree camp session next year when you sign up for 2 sessions this yearFree registration when you sign up for camp by such and such dateFree prizes and giveaways at our next open houseFree upgrade to our premium Campers Photo Package when you subcribe to our Basic Camper Photo Package
Sometimes you can offer the same item or deal for free, but the way you say it makes all the difference. Check this out.

A dentist in my area made the following two offers to get customers to buy subscribe to his newsletter.
"Subscribe to my newsletter for one year for just $100, and get the second year for on…

Do you know who Robert Scoble is? He's a high profile blogger/internet guy. For the most part he's very well respected in internet circles. But recently he came up with this dangerously erroneous notion that 2010 marks the year search engine optimization won't be important to market your website any more.

Here's my take: The guy's way off.

If you want to make your website fall off a cliff, listen to Scoble's argument. If you want people to find your camp's website online, don't pay any attention to the fool.

As long as people use search engines to find websites (do you think Google's going anywhere?), optimizing your website so people can find it is one of the very best things you can do.

You and I care too much about our websites -- and our customers and our prospects and our camps -- to dare listen to guys like this who think search engine optimization is dead.

There's so many aspects to SEO, from keyword content to meta tags and descriptio…

I read tons and tons and TONS of stuff on low tech marketing, high tech marketing, social media marketing, ALL kids of marketing. I study it like crazy. But I've never see a better article than this about how to market your website in the social media age. (Gist: Search engines are still king.) Enjoy.

We always appreciate getting comments here. One person commented today and said they don't like the language I use. Who cares? Don't read the blog if you're so frickin uptight. But if you want to comment, why not have the balls to say who you are rather than posting anonymously? You can't be taken seriously when you're hiding behind the shadows of your own computer.

Check out this article from USA Today. Facebook and texting are where it's at, because as one kids says, "Twitter is Lame."

You know those community bulletin boards, like in Starbucks or local businesses, where you can post flyers or business cards? Here's a great new way to promote your camp with business cards. It's called Card Cues. For the same size as a single business card, you can stick 40 cards into a little holder and post it on a bulletin board. Think I'll give it a try. (By the way, if your business cards look like everyone else's, maybe you should think about dressing them up. Just saying.)

Here's an enlightening summary by Mashable of Pew Internet's findings on the way teens use the net, mobile devices and tech gadgets in general. One of the things that wasn't so interesting was the confirmation that teens don't use twitter, because we already knew that. But check out some of the other stats:

Teens use laptops more than desktopsMore teens have a cell phone than a computerTeens don't blog (or tweet, as we mentioned)Teens love being online, but they don't like creating content. They'd rather comment on other people's content or post photos and videos or chat insteadAnyway, check out the article. You'll enjoy it.

Here's a list of 25 Social Marketing Tips from SEO Consult's blog. (As social marketing blogs go, this one isn't one of my favorites. But I hope the list is helpful to you.)

You've probably heard the phrase, "Sell the sizzle, not the Steak." It's a sales and marketing phrase that simply means you should promote the benefits of your camp program, not its features, because people buy benefits more than features.

When you demonstrate for prospects the benefits people get by signing up at your camp, you could see a nice enrollment spike.

Why?

Because identifying the benefits of your camp for prospects answers the question every prospect asks: "What's in it for me?"

But here's the problem. Identifying the difference(s) between features and benefits can be hard. Many marketers struggle with it. There's a few tricks you can use to find the difference.

Think of the features of your camp as factual statements about it. For example, if you offer horseback riding, beach activities, or sports and games, these are features of your camp. So is your returning staff.

But just telling people about your features won't necessar…

You know me, I'm a hard-core proponent of marketing your camp with video. Here's an absolutely phenomenal article from Mashable on how search engine optimization for video has comes of age.

I'm sending out 3,000 emails tonight announcing Aloha Beach Camp's new website. Thankfully my email processor has spell check built in. I can tell you that misspelled words, poor sentence structure, and weak sales offers have killed many otherwise promising emails I've sent in the past. I learned my lesson the hard way. So now I always have at least 2 other people proofread my emails, ads, and other sales copy before sending them. Do yourself a favor and do the same...better safe than sorry!