Biggest Summer Ever! Tips From A Marketing Pro

My name is Paige and I am the Director of Marketing & Communications for SC Camps & Retreat Ministries. I work full time handling anything that falls into the category of marketing or communications and I absolutely love it! It has definitely taken some time to get into ‘my groove’ and learn what works best for me and for Asbury Hills. We are so incredibly blessed to be in a season of growth, allowing us to experience our largest summer to date. We have watched our registration numbers soar past what we could have imagined! There have been quite a few things that have worked really well for Asbury Hills and then a few things that didn’t work so well. I want to share with you some tips and tricks I’ve learned along the way that may help bring your ministry to new levels, too.

What has worked for us:

–Figure out where the majority of your campers are finding out about your ministry
We have a question on our registration form that asks parents to tell us where they heard about Asbury Hills. The options are camp fair, from a friend, my church, Parent magazine, social media, and website. Now, this is not a required section, so of the 1253 campers we had this summer, only about 35% actually responded to the question. (This may be because we have a lot of returning campers, so they may not see the relevance of the question.) While that does skew the numbers, the results make a lot of sense. According to our data, 60% of our campers hear about Asbury Hills from a friend, 33% hear about Asbury Hills in their church and the rest is either from a camp fair, Parent magazine ads, social media or our website. Once I get an idea of where the majority of our campers come from, I get to planning how to better market to those places and then the places where we aren’t showing quite as high of a referral rate.

—Put more (time, effort, money, etc.) into where you get the majority of your campers
Clearly we get a ton of campers from friends of campers. I do a few things to fuel this, including mailings, social media posts, and e-newsletter blasts. For example, when I mail out our summer brochure, I send 2 brochures and a little postcard in an envelope to each camper. Not only do our campers get excited about new brochures, they also get excited about sharing those brochures, which is why we send one for them and one for a friend. The postcard with the 2 brochures explains that.

We are lucky to have a super supportive United Methodist Conference here in South Carolina. Aside from friends, churches are where a lot of our campers hear about Asbury Hills. In late fall/early winter I put together a ‘recruiting team’ of previous-year staffers who had a good rapport with campers. I train and send them out to churches to speak/share about Asbury Hills.

—Figure out ways to fuel the places you don’t get as many campers from
I am constantly working to grow our social media reach because I am fully aware that our social media platforms are tools to retain our campers.  We have started attending more camp fairs (I send those recruiting team folks to these) to increase our presence.

—Plan plan plan!
I have a plan for everything! Social media plan, marketing plan, blog post plan, newsletter plan—you name it, I probably have a plan for it. Having a plan keeps me on track and holds me accountable to follow through. There are so many ways to develop your plans, so take time to figure out what works best for you. Creating a plan for yourself allows you to see in front of you want needs to be done. 

What NOT to do:

—Don't have a social media plan
We have a pretty good following on social media and like I mentioned before, social media is a good platform to retain campers/families. My first full year in this position, I just posted on social media whenever I had something to post. This made our presence inconsistent and very hit or miss with interactions. Now, I have a detailed and up to date social media plan that I stick to like glue! There is a lot I could say on this subject alone but just know it took a good year to figure out what works best for me, Asbury Hills, and our followers. 

—Let your website become outdated
Our website has evolved over the years and my knowledge on it has evolved, too. I realized very quickly that not keeping it up to date and regularly checking the links can hinder even just a few registrations. We all know EVERY registration counts! Example: keeping a banner about Open House up after the event has passed or page links not working properly.

—Don't track your links and analytics 
Before I realized that social media platforms and Google provide you with analytics if you just set it up, I was shooting in the dark with our posts and updates. Now I comb through all of our analytics on all social media platforms to see exactly who looks at our posts, how old they are, when they look at it, and if they interact or not. There are also quite a few programs you can use to track clickable links. One of my favorite pastimes is looking at those analytics! 

—Forget the stories

In the camping business, we don’t necessarily sell product; we sell experiences and stories! Other people’s stories and experiences are what get families to register their children for camp. They want their kid to experience what the others do. The moment I switched my brain from ‘sell registrations’ to ‘sell Asbury Hills stories’, I started to get a better hold on our ministry and mission.

Adapting to growth

In the introduction I mentioned that our ministry has seen tremendous growth in recent years. Last year we had 1122 campers and that was one of the biggest summers we have ever had.  This summer we had 1253! Along with this amazing increase have been some challenges that pushed us to adapt. Here are a few things that we needed to do a bit differently:

Train our seasonal staff to be flexible

Staff have to be flexible enough as it is, but with more campers than we expected, folks had to really step out of their comfort zone and support each other. We call it ‘good growing pains’!

Time management

With more campers than expected, we had to be more organized and pull together as a team to use our time well.

Pour into EVERYONE; promote self-care

We can’t minister and serve our campers if we aren’t spiritually fed and taking care of ourselves. This is something we tell our seasonal staff a whole lot: take care of yourself!

Determine actual max capacities

With the influx of registrations, our full time staff had to determine what our ‘sweet spot was’ with camper numbers and ratios. How many is too many campers, that the mission and ministry could be impacted negatively? Do we have enough staff to keep our ratios in check? Do we have additional staff on standby should we need more? The answer was “yes” to those last two because our Summer Camp Director, Sarah, planned for it. We set our goal at 1150 campers, so when we started tracking that we were going to surpass that, Sarah started implementing plans to ensure our ministry wasn’t hindered.

Hopes and plans for seasons to come

I have already worked on getting a social media plan set for the next year, along with a marketing plan tracking into 2020. As a full time staff, we plan our summer themes about a year in advance, giving me ample time to put together print materials, marketing plans, etc. My hope is to stay ahead in our marketing by maintaining my social media and marketing plans, reading as much as I can on marketing trends, and constantly staying in communication with our full time staff on their needs.. 

Maybe you don’t have a full time ‘Paige’ focused on your camp’s marketing and communications. Here are some options that don’t require a lot of resources:

—Start with learning your audience. Who are you trying to reach and why?

You can learn your audience by evaluating who calls your office asking questions, seeing who follows and interacts with your camp on social media, getting to know the type of campers your camp attracts and learning your staff (full time and seasonal). In my experience, I can reach campers on Instagram and Twitter while reaching their parents on Facebook. When you go to create a webpage or update your current one, you’ll want to keep it user- friendly to whomever you are trying to reach/whoever will be using it most.

—Create a presence on Instagram and Facebook. Already have it? Keep it consistent.

Do you have a summer staffer eager to help; maybe someone studying marketing or communications? Have them set up social media accounts. These are FREE platforms that college aged summer staffers are well versed in. With the insights/analytics tool on business accounts in both of these platforms, you can see exactly who is looking at/interacting with posts, when they are looking at them, and where they are from. It can get tricky allowing a summer staffer to run those social media accounts, so be sure to document and implement guidelines and expectations.

—Create interesting content for your platforms.

Take lots of photos and post them! (Always be sure you have a parent’s permission, of course.) You don’t need a fancy camera or photographer for social media—Instagram and Facebook are made to work well with smartphones.  People like to see happy campers doing fun things. Walk around during activities and get a few good shots to post! I’d suggest starting with ‘Happy Monday’ or ‘Yay for Friday’ posts.

— Encourage your staff to gather stories.

Ask staff (and volunteers) to write down their favorite stories from the summer. Maybe even bribe them with an item from the camp store in exchange for a marketing-worthy story. (We do this and it works great!) Just by asking for the story, you save yourself time because you didn’t have to come up with the content. You also got your staff involved and there is nothing campers want more than to hear from/about their counselors. Use those stories for when you are speaking to groups about your ministry, creating a blog post, posting a photo on Instagram, encouraging your staff or just sharing your camp in general!

—Send thank you notes.

Who doesn’t love happy mail?! Any chance I get, I send a thank you note—handwritten, of course.  Did you have volunteers at camp? Thank them. Did you visit a church to share about your camp? Thank them. Did you meet new families at a camp fair? Thank them for their time. Thank you notes go a long way and the word spreads about your hospitality. Plus, you now have that address to add to any other mailings you want to send (with the proper permission, of course).

—Welcome campers or retreat groups.

New registration? Send them a welcome postcard. Get some printed ahead of time to mail out as the registrations come in. This will not only get those campers or retreat groups excited about camp but will help them feel welcomed. When people feel welcomed or valued, they want to stick around. You may get lucky and they may show their friends!

—Subscribe to other camp newsletters.

Even if you don’t send a newsletter out to your camp family, subscribe to your favorite camp newsletters. This gives you an inside look at what is working for other camps, how they are reaching their camp family and will hopefully give you some ideas to utilize at your own camp.

—Don't be afraid to ask for help—I sure did!

This camping community is FULL of folks who have been there, done that and are ready to share.

When it comes down to it, you have to focus on building your camp family, keeping your existing camp family connected, and continuing to add members to your camp family. My biggest prayer is that the Lord will grant me the knowledge and courage to maximize our ministry resources while growing God’s kingdom. I hope I’ve inspired you to go out and build your camp family, pour into and nourish your camp family, and always be ready to add more!

Paige Railey is the Marketing Director for South Carolina Camps & Retreat Ministries, serving Asbury Hills Camp & Retreat Center and Camp Providence Day Camp. She grew up going to summer camp and spent college summers working on summer staff, and she can’t imagine her life without the impact of camp. Outside of camp, you’ll find Paige painting, drawing or photographing a wedding.

All photo credits to Spencer Willoughby, Asbury Hills.