Blog

Heading Into Summer: What’s New at Summer Camps in 2017

The weather is warming up, school is letting out and you can just feel that summer is in the air! This year the American Camp Association reports that more than 14 million children will attend camp in the U.S. at one of the more than 14,000 day and resident camps. While many things about the unique summer camp industry remain the same, there are a few interesting changes this summer. Camp tuition prices are rising, making the potential customer base for...

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Advertising During The Summer for Summer Camps

Many camps stop advertising during the summer. I've written in detail before about why you shouldn't do that, but if you camp decides to try out during summer advertising below is a great plan to follow: Promote your best content to friends of fans With daily posting during the summer you should have a lot of new content coming out! Use this content and promote it to your friends of current fans in target zip codes. We want potential customers...

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Quick Tips for Phone Call Follow Up

Phone follow up is absolutely crucial for summer camps reaching out to prospective families. We have included some of our favorite follow up tips below. Phone Call Follow Up Quick Tips: Avoid the opening statement blunder: “I was calling to follow up on your info request.” “I am calling to see if you had any questions.’ “I just wanted to make sure you got my e-mail.” “The reason for my follow up was to see if you had come to a...

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During Summer Marketing Strategy

Ever since I started Social Summer Camp, I’ve been baffled at how summer camps focus on marketing and recruiting all winter and spring long, only to completely stop marketing when summer starts. This isn’t just bad business, this is a crucial mistake! Summer is THE most important marketing time of the year. During this time, we have an amazing opportunity to amplify your message to the friends and family of your campers and significantly grow word of mouth. What we do...

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Lead Form Ads Come to Instagram

If you have been a loyal Facebook Lead Form Ad user like we have, today brings great news! Lead Form Ads are now available on Instagram. You create the ad similar to a Facebook Lead Form Ad, but now you will want to select the placement of "Instagram" when you edit the placements. Here is the official news from Facebook: "Lead ads are now available on Instagram, a popular mobile app used by more than 600 million people each month. 60% of...

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Ads are Coming to Facebook Live

Does your camp love Facebook Live? I have seen some amazing use cases where camps are using Facebook Live to introduce staff, give a virtual tour of camp or just chat with prospective and current camp families. We've enjoyed great live video now, but ads are coming to this fantastic Facebook product. According to USA Today: "The company Thursday announced new initiatives to put more TV commercial-style ad breaks in live videos, and will begin testing ad breaks in traditional News Feed...

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Share Multiple Photos in One Instagram Post

If you have ever felt like you might be over-posting on Instagram, this update will be very helpful for you! According to Instagram: "Starting today, you can share multiple photos and videos in one post on Instagram. With this update, you no longer have to choose the single best photo or video from an experience you want to remember. Now, you can combine up to 10 photos and videos in one post and swipe through to see them all." When you upload a...

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Facebook Introduces Automated Ad Rules

Less busy work, more optimization - that’s the goal of Facebook’s new Automated Rules tool for ads. Using this new feature, you can create rules and resulting actions to automatically apply to ads. Last Fall, Facebook introduced this new feature to help marketers speed up the ad optimization process. If you’re like most people, you probably spend a lot of time checking in on your ad performance. Now, Facebook can carry some of that weight to make your marketing duties a...

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Saving Our Summer Camp Clients Money

A lot of people think that when you hire a camp consultant you are going to spend a lot of money. While this may be true (you do spend money on ads and consulting), I've found that most of my clients do end up saving money in some way or another while working with Social Summer Camp. Recently, I took on a new client who was running AdWords by himself. He hired us because he wanted to be more efficient with...

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5 Changes Facebook Made to Your Business Page

You may have noticed a few notable changes on your business page over the summer. Facebook rolled out a number of new features in July, causing the way business pages look, feel and function to be different. Here’s some highlights from those changes: 1. Cover Photos If you designed your cover photo to accommodate for the square where your Facebook profile photo once lived, it’s probably time for an update. Your profile photo no longer sits on the bottom left portion...

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