Blog

Signing Up New Campers: A Social Summer Camp Case Study

Our number one focus at Social Summer Camp is helping our customers sign up new campers. Today I am so excited to present some anonymous results from one of our clients. All of their leads came directly from Facebook Ads and Google AdWords. This camp was able to sign up 9 families at a cost per customer of just over $1,000. These are fantastic results for camps, who have a lifetime value of MUCH larger than $1,000 a camper. If you aren't...

Read More

Facebook Carousel Ads

One of the most exciting advertising updates from this Summer has been the launch of Facebook's Carousel Ad Unit! This is a great ad unit for summer camps who have a goal of driving traffic to their website. The ad unit lets you showcase 3-5 images and links within a single ad unit to direct people to specific locations on your website. I especially love this ad unit for camp's who are advertising multiple objectives of "types" of camps. You can...

Read More

We’ll take care of it!

I recently read a post by Seth Godin that had me thinking about how we try to operate at Social Summer Camp. Here is what the post said: "There are endless opportunities for people and organizations that can reliably and fairly take a problem off our hands. "I'll take care of it," and I'll do it well, at least as well as you can, for a price that won't make you feel stupid. "I'll take care of it," and I won't come...

Read More

Missing Opportunities During The Summer

I've mentioned it a few times before, but summer should be the biggest time for marketing your summer camp. During the summer I spend a lot of time looking at what other camps are doing and, of course, refining the strategies of my current clients. I've noticed a few things that really back up my recommendation for how important summer marketing can be. 1. Many camps are not posting during the summer, but the ones who are see large increases in...

Read More

Summer is here!

We absolutely love summer at Social Summer Camp (no surprise, we are camp people after all!). It's hard to believe that another summer is upon us and that our 40+ clients are in their "playoff" season. As a part of our services during the summer we help camps reach a few of their marketing goals. We help summer camps: 1. Get their best summer content out to their current families 2. Get more parents to share their best summer content 3. Reach more people...

Read More

GIFs on Facebook

This is sort of a silly update, but I want to always keep you informed on what is hip in social media! :) You can now post GIFs to Facebook and they will show up both on desktop and mobile! Even though GIF links currently only work on personal profiles and not on pages, I am sure it is only a matter of time before you can use them on your page as well. Not sure what a GIF is? Take a...

Read More

Social Media for Summer Camps During the Summer

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the summer is the best time to market your summer camp. If you have ever wondered when the best time to start a social media program is, the answer is right now! Here are some of the benefits of marketing during the summer: 1. You have a large audience- Parents, friends, aunts and uncles are all online looking for information about what their camper is up to! This is your best chance...

Read More

Using the right image for your Facebook ads

Using the right image for your Facebook ads is really important! It is one of the most important levers you can pull in making sure that your ads reach more people and perform well. Luckily summer camps have great images from their summer photographers, which means they always have an arsenal of photos to use for Facebook posts. Still, I see camps all of the time using images that don’t perform well on Facebook. Here are five quick tips to make...

Read More

Tumblr: An opportunity for summer camps in 2015

I really think that Tumblr will be a huge opportunity for camps in 2015. To give you an idea of some Tumblr blogs that are very popular, here are the top 25 viral Tumblrs from the year. Tumblr is dominated by a younger, female audience, which makes it perfect for a lot of summer camp's target audiences. From their webpage: "Tumblr has over 200 million blogs to date. Tumblr was one of the fastest growing platforms in 2014. Its audience is 51% female and 55% between the...

Read More

Promoted Tweets on Twitter for Summer Camps

A lot of camps have recently been asking me about Promoted Tweets on Twitter. These are essentially just Twitter ads that are promoted to reach a specific target audience. Twitter recently analyzed 200,000 promoted tweets and shared some best practices with the public that I am now sharing with you. 1. Be brief: "Stay under 100 characters per tweet, which Twitter says gets 18% more engagement. For an even more effective campaign, Twitter suggests aiming for three to six Promoted Tweets...

Read More