I wrote a blog post on our small business consulting blog about making it easy to find your business. I think that every lesson from that article applies to camp but in an unusual way.
Camps often have more than one "place" with a winter office and a summer location.
Here are the suggestions:
- Optimize your webpage for local
- Optimize local search profiles
- Get proactive in ratings and reviews
- Get listings and mentions
- Spread the local social love
(this list comes out of a great article called 5 Ways to Get Found Online in Your Town by marketing master, John Jantsch)
With camps that have more than one location (a winter office and a summer site) you should consider carefully what you do in Step 2 - Optimize local search profiles (ie. Google Places).
3 Things to Consider When Adding Your Camp To Local Search
- Which address will parents be searching for most - the winter office to drop off a cheque (Cheques? How many parents use cheques anymore?) or the summer location?
- Are camp tours an important part of the decision-making process for parents?
- If there ever was an emergency (even something as simple as a tonsillitis and a child needed to go home to recuperate) would it help parents' stress-level to search to find directions to where the camp is or where the winter office is?
It's important to keep our clients in mind when we make these decisions.
(**Bonus: Read the Walking Maverick article for the Secret Google Places trick)