How to Build Your Camp’s Online Presence

August 1, 2024

With the internet in our pockets and engrained in our day-to-day lives, camps cannot afford to skip out on building an online presence. The internet is like the ultimate campfire, a place to welcome old and new campers and bolster their spirit. 

As valuable as word of mouth is, not everyone will find your camp through friends and family. Those that do will likely still do their research. That journey usually begins with a quick Google search. That's why a strong online presence is a cornerstone for camp success.

Prep Your Camp's Digital Firepit (Establish an Online Presence)

You cannot build a safe and successful campfire without preparing the ground first. To create a strong online presence, a camp needs a user-friendly, modern website and active social media accounts.

Establishing Your Camp Identity

Your website is a great place to host all of the elements of your story. You can explain your camp's history, activities, leadership style, safety measures, and the fun and transformative experiences you provide. Using real pictures of your camp and sharing personal stories will build trust. This helps parents feel sure that your team has made a safe and enjoyable place for their children or family to experience.

Finding Your Camp’s Voice

Social media gives your camp a day-to-day voice in the lives of camp families and the public. Sharing stories about camp traditions, activities, experiences, and team members can create excitement. This helps build a sense of community before campers arrive and long after they leave.

10 Helpful Tips to Fuel the Digital Campfire!

(Increase Online Traffic & Performance)

In a world where information flies around faster than a kid on a zip line, having a consistent and strong online presence a great way to fuel your camp's success.

Next, let’s explore a few ways to stoke that digital campfire!

1. Define a Brand Strategy for Your Camp:

Start with a well-defined brand strategy that outlines your camp’s unique mission, values, ideal campers, and what their guardians (who make the buying decision) are looking for. A brand strategy should guide all your communications and interactions, including your online efforts.

2. Create a Unique Brand Identity & Experience:

Develop a distinct brand identity that includes a memorable logo, color palette, and typography. Ensure that this branding toolkit is used consistently across all online interactions. This way, your camp’s communications will have similar visuals and tone. This applies to your website, social media, and emails. It also includes parts of the real-life experiences you plan like banners or printouts. This kit not only adds a nice professional touch to your work, but it also makes it harder for others to pretend to be you.

3. Prioritize Responsive, Mobile-Friendly Design:

Over half of web searches happen from a mobile device like a phone or tablet. Your camp’s website and registration needs to be mobile-friendly and user-friendly. A website is often the first point of contact between your camp and potential camp families. To nurture that budding relationship, their visit should be welcoming, easy to navigate, and engaging to look at.

4. Optimize your Camp's SEO:

Here are some easy steps to improve your SEO without hiring an expert! Consider how people will find your camp online.

A Google Business profile is a place where you can add pictures and reviews. You can also link your website and social media accounts. Make sure you claim and verify your camp address on Google Maps too. This will help with searches for "Camps near." A precise location will make Google Maps better for navigation when attendees need directions.

When building your website, include important search words and phrases in H1 headings and your URLs to get higher natural search rankings. Want to show up in a specific search such as “best summer camp in Colorado”? Write a blog titled “Why [CampName] is the best summer camp in Colorado”. If you have good testimonials, create a landing page. Name it “Why Customers Say [CampName] is the Best Summer Camp in Colorado.” Let your customers' words do the talking!

5. Creative & Interactive Content:

Create a content marketing plan. This plan should have landing pages, blogs, videos, photo galleries, infographics, polls, and social media posts. These tools will help you showcase your camp online. Use this content to provide engagement opportunities and valuable insights into camp experiences.

6. Camp Communications & Email Marketing:

Build and nurture your camp family contacts. Check in with your camp families from time to time. Make sure their contact information is correct. This includes phone numbers, emails, and addresses.

Make sure your camp staff knows the email address you use for communications. This way, they can tell customers to add it to their contacts! This helps emails get successfully delivered to inboxes.

To prevent your camp families from getting tired of a constant stream of emails, plan your messages carefully. Decide what needs a separate email and what can be grouped into a regular newsletter or multi-item update.

7. Strategic Online Advertising:

For new camps, camps changing their brand, or camps needing help with enrollment, online advertising is very useful. It helps your team quickly target a larger number of people matching a certain description.

Google and social media ads can be geared toward people of certain demographics such as age, interests, and location. Targeting the right audience with an ad can easily boost registrations. The ad should feel like an extension of your digital space (landing page, website, socials). When someone clicks on it, they shouldn’t question or be confused about where they land.

8. Customer Reviews and Testimonials:

Take advantage of word of mouth. People will always trust the word of a friend or a peer over your marketing materials. This is why your camp needs to collect, encourage, and leverage customer reviews and testimonials across your content. Positive reviews build trust and credibility and even great responses to negative reviews can work in your favor.

9. Community Building with Social Media:

Your followers will not see every social post you make. But your posts will pop up in their feed from time to time. Regularly posting updates increases your chances of reaching your followers and target audience. A well-run social media platform can create a sense of community. It lets camp families connect and share experiences with you and others through comments or groups. Maintain a consistent presence and engage. Don't be afraid to ask for participation. Post fun and exciting content that people want to share. Make sure to respond to comments and messages quickly.

10. Monitor Your Online Reputation:

Monitor your camp reputation online by searching your camp name and reviewing the first few pages of search results. Pay attention to news articles by setting up a Google Alert for mentions of your camp or local topics. If there is no news happening naturally, create some excitement by connecting with local groups or news outlets. Try your hand at engaging online with industry experts and community influencers! You’re doing awesome stuff! Share it.

Ready to get to work?

Great! We hope we've given you some actionable advice.
As you build your digital campfire, check out our innovative camp registration software. It's already optimized to help boost your camp's online presence with custom branding tools and a mobile-friendly design!

We would love to hear about how you fuel your online presence! Share our article using the icons below! Mention @icamppro to tell us about your camp’s digital success!