How to Market Your Summer Camp with Flyers

I love marketing my camp with flyers. They’re easy to make and cheap to print. They’re more eye-catching than business cards (since they’re bigger and contain more info), and they can be just as effective as brochures.

You can’t just make a flyer and hope for the best. You need an effective design, printing and distribution strategy. Otherwise your flyer might convey your camp as “cheap” — obviously not the image you’re going for.

Even high-end camps can market with flyers. You can include all kinds of detailed information, plus pictures. Prospects should be able to make an informed descion about your camp when your flyer’s done the right way.

You can get away with printing your flyer in black and white, but I suggest color instead. People want to know what your camp looks like and what you offer kids. You can’t beat color for showing that.

Last week I made this flyer about Aloha Beach Camp’s surfing program that I distributed at a Camp Fair:

I wanted to test whether color or black and white worked better, so I printed 250 flyers in black and white on colored paper, and 250 more in vibrant color on plain white paper. The color flyer worked a LOT better than the black and white one shown here. I got 6 enrollments from the color flyer, but only 2 from the black and white one.

One challenge when making your flyer is finding the right balance between giving too much information (making your flyer look cluttered), and not giving enough (leaving prospects disinterested in your program.)

Notice the “Aloha Beach Camp at a Glance” tidbit in the middle of my flyer? That’s a good way of giving people just enough info to pique their interest — a small summary of the main points so they’re inspired to request more info.

Other things to include on your flyers are special offers like coupons, pictures of yourself or your staff, customer testimonials, and your phone number and website URL in a prominent place.

You can create and print flyers online at vflyer.com or at your local print and copy shop.You should distribute them at pediatricians’ offices, toy stores, family restaurants, little league fields, parks, kids’ karate studios, gyms, beauty salons, or anywhere your prospects frequent.

You might also carry around 20 or 25 extra flyers with you all the time since you never know when you might run into someone looking for camp for their kids.

If you already market your camp with flyers, you know what a powerful marketing tool they can be. If you don’t, now’s the time to get started.