It’s time to market your camp. What are the best tools? And where should you focus your marketing efforts?
We’ve compiled 3 simple, yet effective tools to help you promote your camp.
Promote your summer camp using Social Media:
Facebook:
The mother of all current social media platforms. As of 2021, “Facebook has 2.89 billion active users“. These are the effective tools to utilize Facebook’s unique features and implement your own strategy to promote your camp’s next session.
- Business Page: Facebook has a business page option that displays all your company’s information, such as contact information, address, and essential information relevant to your audience.
- Content-Type: 82% of all content will be video format in 2022 according to Social Media Week so this means you should heavily invest more time into producing daily content that is educational, inspirational, and informative. Because Facebook ‘s algorithm favors video content and is more likely to show up on other feeds allowing for page growth. And as you incorporate these elements into your page, you can add more promotional content like your next big event.
- Facebook Ads: This is an underutilized marketing tool that anyone can learn. However, it involves much research rather than slapping an ad together and hoping for the best. To fully optimize this function, you need to understand your audience or targeted audience, pinpoint their likes and dislikes, and see how they operate. Then provide a juicy offer that they would not want to miss. However, there is a catch. You need to come up with an ad that would catch their attention as they scroll through an app. And finally, have a call to action that pushes them to sign up for your camp sessions, subscribe to your email list, join your Facebook group, etc.
- The ad sets can also be used on both Facebook and Instagram.
- Many businesses invest in this method and have a higher return on investment. If given this opportunity and budget to spend on marketing, use it!
- A good place to start is with a tutorial for setting up Facebook ads.
- The ad sets can also be used on both Facebook and Instagram.
- Facebook groups: This method is used mainly to build a community and trust. Promote your camp by setting up a group page and invite those in your following or interested in camp resources to join. In this exclusive group, you can foster a culture of meaningful interactions by engaging with your audience with discussions, tutorials, and insights. This allows your audience to build trust and provides you with a way to write content answering your audience’s questions and concerns. After building trust, you can start to promote your camp sessions or your services that may be relevant to your audience’s needs.
Instagram:
Another powerful platform that can help change your marketing game. This app has recently emphasized promoting creators, allowing for organic reach using its latest features such as reels and Instagram shopping. Here are some tips that could help grow your following if you are just getting started are wanting to expand.
- Post daily: The algorithm favors consistency because it needs content to keep its users on the app. If you can, utilize a schedule to post content daily. This type of content shouldn’t be random pictures. It should be a mix of educating, inspiring, and personal content.
- Livestreams: The algorithm also favors live-streamed events and accounts that heavily use this feature, so much so that they started offering money for people to use it. Try using this feature to educate or provide value, such as Q&A or behind-the-scenes of the camp sessions. Livestreams should be about at least 30 minutes.
- Tap into influencers: In this day and age, consumers are most likely to trust a review from a reliable source such as an influencer specializing in a specific niche. For instance, if a trusted person has influence (ex: past camper, staff member, or a camp enthusiast), reach out to them and pitch a joint paid collaboration.
- Reels: As of Jun 30, 2021, Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, announced that it is no longer a photo-sharing app. Instagram-no-longer-photo-app-video-entertainment-focus) It will now focus on more video content, and using their latest feature, Reels, is how they are pushing this campaign forward. With competitor social platforms such as TikTok surpassing Instagram in user screen time, the social platform needs to keep up. As a camp that is trying to push your promotions out, this is great news. Because now Instagram’s algorithm automatically pushes content being posted on reels.
- Carousels: These are the infographic types of content that you can use to share to educate your audience with powerful points. This can be used to provide a resource for your audience in the camp niche. It’s mainly helpful for educating and setting up a rapport with new audiences.
TikTok:
And if you are looking to promote your summer camp toyounger audiences, TikTok is a great place to promote your camp.
- GenZ audience: TikTok is the fastest growing social media platform worldwide. It has over 80 million users in the US alone. 60% are between the ages of 16-24.
- Build relationship/community: This is another great app to build a community that puts an emphasis on growth. The biggest growth factor for a TikTok account is by picking a specific niche to post about. This helps the algorithm push content in this specific niche and optimize your audience expansion.
- Ease of viralbility: TikTok’s algorithm is famous for pushing content to wider audiences for smaller creators. This is a great way to spread the word or collaborate with a well-known camp influencer to spread the word about your camp.
How to promote your summer camp by optimizing Google:
So if you have a blog on your website, now is the time to optimize your posts and advertise your offerings with paid Google ads.
Google Ads:
Have a budget set aside for online advertising on google. Use this feature to target specific audiences, areas, and interest groups that align with your camp campaign. Be specific with your ads by creating separate ad sets for different types of aspects of your camp. People want to find exactly what they are searching for, so be specific instead of having one generic ad encompassing the camp. If you provide a wakeboarding camp, make an ad set based on that and other specialty camps.
SEO:
Search Engine Optimization is crucial in helping your page, or blog posts land at the top of a search on google. You can do so by providing specific keywords within this specific topic. This needs to be more specific than “summer camp 2021.” Emphasize what types of camps you are running and the area its located. This will help push your content since there are less competitive posts on more specified topics.
Be sure to be thorough when making content about a topic or your camp session. For more marketing tips on this specific topic, check out this SEO tutorial video by Brian Dean.
How to promote your summer camp with Email Marketing:
Do people still use emails for marketing? Of course! And is it effective? YES! This needs to be paired up with social media marketing. Social media platforms can help drive traffic to your site but may not be enough to turn them into conversions. Email marketing has been known for having high conversion rates and return on investment. This is due to the professional and personal nature of email marketing. The quality of the information in emails tends to be higher and more filtered. You are likely to have signed up for email newsletters yourself.
List:
Gather a list of emails on your page or from previous camps and start email campaigning. It’s cost-effective and convenient. Most customers prefer to receive promotional sales through emails.
Campaigns:
Email campaigns can include links, videos, and promotions that lead to a landing page or your page.
Utilizing all three of these powerful tactics will enhance your presence online, generate traffic and promote your camp! Let us know which tactic works best for you!
