Your Job: Make other's lives easier - it will impress parents

Marketing Your Summer Camp is Easy When You Focus on Your Clients

Most camps find it very hard to stick out (among camps, let alone the other summer activities available).   There will always be another camp that is willing to run cheaper with better toys. 

{I heard a wise man once say: there will always be someone willing to go into bankruptcy faster than you.]

So How Do We Compete?

You be more useful. You strive to make families lives easier in everything you do.

In his amazing book Youtility, Jay Baer said there are 2 ways to stand out in a busy marketing place: 

• be amazing (go viral) - you can do it once or twice but it's really not sustainable
• be helpful.  This job you were born to do.

I found this scan on my computer today and it inspired my thinking.  This is a hand-drawn map of Huntsville, Ontario - the small town near our camp.    This map was handed down year to year from one summer administrator to the next.  This is a survival guide for the person responsible for all of the town runs each week. 

What can you hand to your parents to show them that you know what they're going through?

Essential Tools: Canva.com for FAAAAST creation of posters, social media photos, etc.

Getting Things Done as a Camp Director is Easier with this Essential Tool

I haven't written about Canva.com on the blog yet.  I can't believe it!   I've shared this tip with tons of directors this summer.

Canva is a simple editing tool for creating great, beautiful posters, Facebook headers, Instagram pictures with text over them, Pinterest images.   Almost any thing you can think of! It's FAST.

To start using Canva (once you've got your account set up) you pick the kind of design you need (see picture above). It will then show you a ton of designs that you can use as starting off points.   

Usually I pick the one that most suits what I'm looking for and then I put my own spin on it.  Those designs are really well done so you may choose one that will fit perfectly from the start. 

You can use the background image that has been provided or upload your own.  Some of those backgrounds are free but many are stock photos/designs that you can purchase when you finalize your poster. 

I usually upload my own images from the folder if great camp pictures that the CampHackers all share.  That means that the majority of my designs are free.

Check out some of the designs that we've made on Canva that have been featured on the CampHacker Instagram account.

Thriving as a Camp Professional in the Fall - Getting Things Done Right

The Off-Season isn’t getting any longer...

Summer Camp Pro from Cairn Family of Camps

Camp people handle the end of the summer in lots of ways. Some leave town for vacation the day after camp ends. Others cozy up in their homes and turn on Netflix and catch up on sleep for days on end. Some camps turn around and start with rental groups or schools right away. Still other camp pros manage to plug away for a luxurious nine to five schedule while their peers have disappeared for the week.

I tend to fall into the category of needing a week to clean, reorganize, and shut the door on the summer. Camp is like school in that it is cyclical in its work flow. There is a definitive beginning and end to a summer. As soon as the last staff member departs the parking lot on closing day, I often feel exhausted at the fact that it is now time to start assembling my team for the next year.

I tell my staff that marketing for next summer begins the day campers arrive this summer. Though I have been looking towards next summer a whole bunch before the current one comes to a close, there are some absolute musts that all camp professionals should do prior to charging forward with the next year.

Absolute Musts Before Starting to Think About Next Season

1. Stop working. Seriously. Stop. A few days away from work, away from the facility, and away from your email are critical to processing. A director’s job is to be able to take a step back and it is hard to do that when you are still in the throes. I find that I need a few days before all the lost and found emails and requests for recommendations quit streaming in. About a week after camp ends is when I take my time to have a camp-free weekend. I try to connect with one of my many friends working other cool jobs--whitewater rafting? A zipline tour? A massage? Reward yourself for a job well done and do something that will truly take your mind off camp.

2. Rest. Though we have trained ourselves to function on very little sleep, camp directors are far more pleasant and happy when we have had a full night’s rest. Every year, I get caught off-guard by how exhausted I am during the month of August. The sleep deficit will catch up with you--so expect it. If you insist on working, bust out the hammock and allow yourself to take a rest hour every day for at least a week.

3. Get your work space off-season ready. I am a nester. That means that by the end of the summer, my office tends to resemble that of a horrifying episode of Hoarders. File all that paperwork. Throw away materials you don’t need. And if you are feeling it, have a cathartic bonfire with all those staff manuals and training schedules that were left behind.

4. Tidy up loose ends. Call the parent that gave you a negative evaluation. Answer the emails that are still in your “Starred” folder. It’s hard to have closure when there are little nagging things bringing you down. Often these will be the points that need to be improved upon going forward.

5. Write down your thoughts on rehiring staff. Your feelings tend to be much stronger at the end of the summer than they will be when they finally submit their applications in March. You don’t have to necessarily make hiring decisions, but write down what it is that staff need to work on before they would be considered for a position. Then you can discuss these in interviews or have them available when turning somebody down.

6. Visit another camp. It doesn’t have to be a formal visit. Whatever the occasion, take the time to visit another facility, whether they are running program or not, because there is much to be learned by simply seeing what others do and how their facility is set up. Have coffee with the director or bring them some fresh produce (because after a summer of camp food, I want nothing more than delicious fresh fruits and veggies) and talk about one another’s areas of excellence and areas for improvement.

7. Debrief. Get your entire year-round team together and talk about how the summer went. So many programs skip this step and jump in to doing things the way they have always done them. The ability to gain perspectives across the levels of administration and across your programs will lead to insights that will be valuable to making camp great. Many accreditation programs require some sort of annual review of incident reports or policies so this is an easy way to ensure that occurs.

Ruby Compton, CampHacker & Camp Code podcaster

Onward with next summer and happy off-season to you all.

~ Ruby

[note from Travis: Thanks to CampHacker Ruby Compton, program director at Green River Preserve in North Carolina, and all-star co-host of the Camp Code podcast, for writing this article.  We look forward to many more wise thoughts from Ruby!

You can subscribe to Camp Code, our podcast full of amazing ideas for summer camp staff training for free.  Click to Subscribe in iTunes.]

What that parent is thinking could change your summer camp [HINT: finding out is easy]

5 Ways Mid-Week Survey's Can Help Your Day Camp

Do you look to your camp families for feedback through surveys? As consumers, we receive survey requests all the time - on our receipts, in email, on a postcard etc. As a day-camp, we've used customer feedback surveys in the past to insure that our camp families were completely satisfied with a their child's experience after a week at camp. Sending surveys at the end of the week offered us some very valuable feedback on staff, location, and other suggestions on how we could improve the program. This year at The Handwork Studio, we implemented a mid-week survey and we saw instantaneous, real-time feedback on our camp programs. Below I've listed 5 ways the mid-week parent feedback survey to parents can help improve your day camp program.

1. Create better experiences

While we work hard to make sure that every single child and their parents had the most amazing week at camp, sometimes this is isn't the case. Sending a survey late on Tuesday helped us identify areas where a camper might not have been having the best possible experience and we could come in and make their time with us better. Sometimes it could be as simple as identifying a certain skill that the child was excited about learning. Whatever the circumstance may be, sending the survey before the camper leaves camp for the week is a sure fire way to turn around a situation and create better experiences for your campers and their parents. Even in the event that the parent and camper are happy, by taking any input they have and letting them know they've been heard, we are creating a memorable customer service experience for the the parents.

2. Understand how your parents perceive your camp

With multiple locations, our Camp Director can't be everywhere at the same time. The surveys we sent out helped us gather important feedback on how our parents were interacting with the staff. We were able to identify what the parent's expectations of staff were, where we needed to make adjustment, and generally overall how well of a job our counselors were doing to deliver amazing experiences to our parents and campers. In addition to this, the surveys also helps us collect some amazing testimonials about our camp programs that we can use in for the next summer.

3. Develop deeper relationships with your camp families

As we get responses back from each of our surveys, we are reaching out to each family that submitted feedback to thank them for their input and acknowledge that we've heard them. With the responses where parents are not completely happy our team collaborates to resolve the issue at hand as quickly and effectively as possible. Surveys have helped us take a more personal approach with our families. We are reaching out to them more and developing long lasting relationships. Parents are grateful for the responses we give them and we've heard from them that they are more likely to recommend us to a colleague or friend based on our quick and timely responses. Camp is a very personal business, and mid-week surveys provide our team another touch point with parents. As we gather the responses and respond to the families we are also able to identify the sites that are doing amazing work and acknowledge those teams during the week. Our site directors and counselors love hearing the feedback as much as we do! Giving all types of feedback to counsellors  in real time can be invigorating after many weeks of camp and can give the Camp Director insight into problem counsellors.

4. Gather valuable suggestions on how to be better

At The Handwork Studio, we are always striving to be better, do better and create amazing experiences in camp. Our surveys have helped us better understand what is important to parents and their children. It also awards us the opportunity to respond to ideas that parents have suggested. Parents want to be heard. Their investment in our program is an investment in their child, and we want to provide them a place to share their thoughts. Our mid-week surveys are the most ideal avenue for this feedback. At the end of the camp season, we'll take all of the feedback and put it into one document to see where we can continue to improve our program.

5. Identify areas to adapt your staff training for the next year.

Staff training is at the core of how we launch our camp programs each year. While we might think we've covered everything, there might be a few areas where we can spend more time. The feedback from parents helps us better understand how we can tweak our staff training for next year or continue to supply training resources throughout the the summer. The surveys also give us real-life documented examples of parent feedback that we can incorporate into future camp training.

Sending customer feedback surveys early in the week has been a game-changer for our camp. We are much more connected to our parents and are able to resolve any issues in an effective and timely manner. We are collecting real-time feedback while simultaneously ensuring that both the camper and their parents are completely satisfied with their time at our camp!

Do you use summer camp surveys for your day camp? Share your experience with sending camp surveys in the comments below!

---------

[from Travis:   This article comes to us from Megan DiFeo, curriculum & marketing director at The Handwork Studio.  Thanks, Megan!

About The Handwork Studio

The Handwork Studio LLC is a kids' needle arts and fashion studio. Our purpose is to pass down the tradition of teaching practical arts such as knitting, crocheting, hand and machine sewing, embroidery, quilting, fashion and crafts in a fun and relaxed environment. Our staff is comprised of professional artists, instructors and skilled teachers, dedicated to making each student feel special. Headquartered just outside of Philadelphia in Narberth, PA, we operate summer camps in 30 locations in seven states, bringing our brand of needle arts fun to over 3,000 campers every year. Learn more at thehandworkstudio.com.]

Setting camp marketing goals we know we can reach

Setting camp marketing goals for 2015 and beyond

Hello, Camp Pros!

Your old pal James Davis, here, and I'm excited to share how we set marketing and camper week goals from year to year - I hope you find these ideas as useful as I did when I first learned them!

As we all transition out of summer camp season, close down our program areas, break down those last camper and parent evaluations, and reflect on the summer’s great successes and failures, we all know that we’ll be faced with an altogether different challenge come the Fall.

That challenge? Getting more kids to camp next year than we had this year.

Now, a lot of us report directly to a board of trustees, or perhaps a senior staff person, who will come to us and ask something to the tune of: “How many camper weeks do you think we’ll have next summer?”

And we’ll laugh nervously and change the subject.

Well, we’ll actually probably answer the question. But I think we can answer a little bit more accurately than we usually do. I’ll explain.

The problem with results-oriented goal setting

You see, the goal setting stage for marketing season is absolutely critical. But setting goals around acquiring certain numbers of campers often times isn’t very helpful.

Setting goals around acquiring a certain number of campers is a results-oriented goal, and not a process-oriented goal, and it has a number of different pitfalls.

               1.   Our goals will be largely arbitrary.

We have no idea how the economy will change in the next year, what new summer camp options might come up, or if Oprah will come out and say that every single kid needs to go to camp THIS SUMMER! (emphasis hers). Given how little we can project about larger demographic trends, sticking our finger in the air and guessing at a number can be extremely difficult. Even the biggest businesses in the world come in ahead of or behind their guidance, and they are paying out an incredible amount of money each year for accurate forecasts. What makes us think we can guess any better than they can?

      2.   Reaching our goals can make us get complacent.

Say you’re at a camp that did 500 camper weeks last summer, and your goal is to do 550 camper weeks next summer. You’re rolling out your marketing campaign, and notice that with 2 months to go to before camp, you’re already at 550 weeks. Everyone around the office is happy about hitting this goal, and the natural inclination will be to be just a little bit less hungry in the pursuit of that next group of 50 campers.

      3.    Missing our goals can make us feel lousy for no reason.

Even worse, say you’re 2 days away from the beginning of staff training and you’ve booked 510 camper weeks. You’re scrambling, knowing that the goal was supposed to be 550 weeks, and know that you’re going to have some explaining to do as to why you didn’t hit your goal. You know – that same goal that was basically pulled out of thin air with no real data to support it.

      4.   Results-based goals don’t tell us how to get where we’re going.

The idea here is simple – if my marketing director comes to me and says, “My goal is 550 camper weeks next year,” there isn’t a lot of conversation to be had. Am I to assume she was a failure if she missed her goal? A huge success if she hits her goal? How will I know if she missed her goal as a result of her doing, or external factors?

And this is the problem with targeting a certain result.

This isn't to say that looking at results after the fact shouldn't happen. Examining our results is an important part of evaluating the effectiveness of our processes. It's targeting specific arbitrary results and getting disappointed when we don't hit them that causes stagnation.

So what does lead to the best results AND processes? 

Process-Oriented Goal Setting

The concept of process-oriented goal setting is also an easy one. Instead of saying "I will receive X result," we say instead, "I will complete X process."

For an example of some process-based goals, here you go:

1. Do all of the things suggested in the CampHacker.tv marketing calendar.
2. Have our summer camp brochure for next year done by Nov. 1st.
3. Try 2 new forms of online paid advertising, and track the results.
4. Study local demographics, and get flyers into at least 2 new school districts this year.
5. Plan 5 home parties with camper families from last year.
6. Speak in 25 churches between now and next year (if one was running a religious camp).
7. Write 2 blog posts a month to help with Search Engine Optimization.
8. Implement 2 ideas from Travis and Blake’s webinar on filling your camper slots at the last minute.

Etcetera, etcetera.

When we worked with process-oriented goals during my first marketing season here, we blew past our board’s results-oriented goal by more than 100 camper weeks. When we worked with them this last year, we missed the board’s results-oriented goal, but still felt great about the process. 

If you're into results-oriented goal setting - keep it. But think about tying in some process-oriented goal setting as well. I think you'll find that, in the end, focusing on processes is what puts more bodies in more beds, allowing you to change more lives in the process. And that, my friends, is what it's all about.