Building a couple new summer camp search engine/blog sites. The first one is called Eco-Friendly Camps.com, and it's up and running now at http://www.ecofriendlycamps.com. Add your camp for free today.
As many of you know, I'm a big fan of getting other people to do my marketing for me and signing up lots of kids at once rather than one at a time. It's a much more efficient way to market a camp, or any business or organization for that matter.
The way you do this is forming partnerships, joint ventures and strategic alliances with like-minded organizations who share the same customer base as you, but with whom you don't compete. Then you each market to each others' customer and prospect bases so everyone wins.
It's the easiest way to reach a ton of new campers quickly and all at the same time.
I'm Not Just Blowing Smoke
I hope you know I'm not just another one of those marketing guys -- frankly, frauds -- who always tell you what to do, but don't have the first clue how to do it themselves. I practice what I preach.
Just to give you an idea for how to get started, I suggest reaching out to an association, employer, membership club, or some other organ…
Years and years ago (we're talking 2005) I organized Camp Fairs for the American Camp Association. Then, not only did I stop promoting them for a period of time, I stopped attending them altogether. My feeling was the internet made Camp Fairs irrelevant. Boy was I wrong. Here's the backstory.
Last year I decided to put on my own camp fair (without ACA) in Calabasas. I called it the L.A. Calabasas Camp Fair. I wanted to see what, if anything, I was missing by not going to Camp Fairs. Aside from the uneasiness I always feel knowing my competitors went to Camp Fairs when I didn't, I wanted to know if Camp Fairs still worked as a summer camp marketing tool.
Things went pretty well last year for the first time out. Over 400 families and 51 camps attended the Calabasas event. Needless to say, I am once again a staunch supporter Camp Fairs for marketing a camp, namely because it's the best way to find so many potential campers all in one place.
Even though your website and blog may already be included in the top search engines, it doesn't hurt to cover your bets. Here's where you can add your sites to Google, Yahoo and Bing for free:
You might also try DMOZ, the open directory project. DMOZ is a massive internet directory run by volunteers who understand the needs of the internet users. It's a little harder to get included there, but if you do, it can pay off big time. In fact DMOZ is so potentially influential that many of the smaller (and larger!) search engines often use the sites listed in DMOZ to deliver search results to their own users.
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