The best places to connect with people, and how to get your materials there. Marketing summer camps has actually never been easier. We have opportunities today that camp directors from the 1970s could literally not have even dreamed about. Unfortunately, though, a lot of us ignore a lot of the marketing approaches that got the summer camp boom going in the 1950s and 1960s. The key to marketing in the 21st century is blending both old and new practices, and I’ll explain what I discovered along the way to growing Vanderkamp from 207 kids in a summer to 418 just two summers later. There are 8 basic marketing platforms we’ve worked with, and I can give you some insight into the costs and benefits of each. I’ll give the cliffs here, and follow up with some more long-form posts on the nuances of each. But this will give you a general idea, to help you understand what worked for us, or what we want to try next. The Eight Major Camp Marketing Platforms 1) Retaining current customers – Check here for details on the 7 inexpensive tricks we used that are guaranteed to boost your retention. 2) Word of Mouth Marketing – Here are 11 easy ways to enhance...
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So why are you marketing it that way? Whenever I talk to a camp person, we wind up talking about what hooked us on summer camp. And it seems like we all have basically the same feelings on the subject. “Camp was the first place I could really be myself.” “The friends I made at summer camp just weren’t like anybody I had ever met.” “I had this one amazing counselor who…” “It was the place I became my best self.” You get the idea. I’ve literally never heard anyone reflect back and say something like, “They had this insane rock wall there,” or “You’ll never believe the jet skis they had at my camp!” Now, this isn’t totally fair, because I’m mostly talking to summer camp die-hards. These people found something so much bigger than jet skis, or rock walls, or color wars, and this is why they’ve dedicated their lives to summer camp. But I think we can all agree that those first set of quotes are the things about summer camp that we really care about. The things that we love to hear back from parents regarding their kids’ experience at our camp. The objectives we’re putting forth during staff training. I started thinking, as I...
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