A classic scene from a classic movie...
It's laughable...the waitresses inflexibility and the silly restaurant menu policies. It's easy to make fun of but I wonder how many camps and conferences are actually doing the same thing.
Remember, you are there to serve the customer. Not the other way around.
For years, the 5 P's (Product, People, Place, Price, and Promotion) have been taught as the backbone of any marketing strategy or structure. Yesterday, Seth said you can forget the 5 P's and look at these instead:
I agree with him. These five constitute the building blocks of any effective marketing plan.
DATA The data is the stuff you can see. What are your customers doing? How are they acting or interacting with your organization or program? What do they like or dislike? What do they ask about? Data is the information marketers and programmers either use to complain about how their customers don't get it or they use the information to get actually better (hopefully).
STORIES Chances are, if your camp or conference center is more than just a couple of years old, it's the stories (the beginnings of valuable camp traditions) that people talk about, not the facilities or the campfires. Stories are how we interact as people. Every program has a story. Every building has a story. Every camper has a story. It's how all those stories interact with one another that has real value for you as a camp or conference marketer. Do you know your stories?
It's these two--Data and Stories that form the foundation for any marketing campaign. You can't plan without an intimate knowledge of these two things, and having knowledge about one isn't much good without knowledge about the other. Now, once you have the foundation, you can begin to build.
PRODUCTS (and Services) Seth calls the products the physical manifestations of the stories. Your products are your programs...those things you offer to the public. Hopefully you aren't still trapped in the box of offering average programs to average people. The real successes are found not in the middle of the curve (average) but at the edges (niche). It's always better the be the very best in a small market than settling for just being one of the crowd in a big market. Do your products match your story?
INTERACTIONS These are all the ways you touch your customer--brochures, website, media ads, phone, email, etc. It's the interactions that really hold all the rest together. You could design great a great program, promote it with a killer web site but if the person who answers the phone doesn't understand the part he or she plays, the ball is dropped. Remember, everyone on your staff works in the marketing department. Doing it right is just as easy (many times) as doing it wrong. It's just a choice you and your staff make.
CONNECTIONS This is the highest level you can achieve. If you do everything else right, you might actually be able to see this one work. Connections, real connections, with your customer are the goal of every campaign. To get "buy in" from your tribe...those people who love you, who speak your language, who tell your stories. But to watch as your customers connect with each other and talk and share their stories about you...that's special.
So, when you are meeting with your staff, here are some questions you've got to be asking yourself: Do our interactions lead to connections? Does our data and our stories match the programs we are offering? Are we listening to what our customers are trying to tell us (by watching carefully what they are doing)?
Chances are...you're spending most of your time (and marketing budget) on the interactions. But without the context--or the foundation of the other four why bother? You've probably got bits and pieces of the 5 blocks, but getting them working together is the secret.
I know it might sound funny to those of you who know me personally for me to actually riff about a razor. I mean...hey...I've been on about a twice a week schedule for years. But after several weeks of ripping my whiskers out by the roots with a too-dull razor, I finally broke down over the weekend and bought some new blades.
I got home from the store and without thinking, threw the package in the bathroom drawer. This morning, I tried to open the package to get a new blade. I tried and tried. You see, this is one of those products that have gone the way of the heavy duty plastic packaging.
There was no way I could tear it open. I looked on the back for a clue and found the "use scissors to open" message and a dotted line to show those who are too ignorant to know otherwise, exactly where to cut. I don't know if you are like me, but I don't keep scissors in my bathroom...or my bedroom...or upstairs in my house. So I looked for the next best thing. I found a small set of cuticle scissors that promptly broke when I tried to apply them to the heavy duty wrapping.
I did get the job started by "clipping" the plastic with some toenail clippers. But amazingly, even after I started the job there was no way I was going to rip that plastic open. You can see by the photo that I was mangling the job but the space-aged polymer was holding fast.
Unbelievable. Yes, I'm sure that this plastic wrapping is an inexpensive way for Gillette to go. And I'm sure with other products, it helps to curb shoplifting. But what happened to the customer here? Are you telling me that you are going through all the trouble of manufacturing a product, packaging it, shipping it, then displaying it (not to mention the millions in advertising) only for the experience to breakdown once you actually get the product to my bathroom? Like I said...unbelievable. Unless of course Gillette doesn't care what happens after the product is out of the store.
It's easy to pick on Gillette for being so ignorant of the customer experience (not with the product itself...but with the dang packaging!) But are you in the same boat. Take a hard look at your programs, your facilities, your food service, your registration process, your web site. Are those things set up and designed to be easiest for you or for your customer?
Listen to your customers. More than two or three complaints about the same issue and you need to make some changes. Once the season quiets down a bit, take a day and break down each of the facets of the customer experience in your organization. Include the folks who spend the day on the phone with your customers. Include the folks who respond to emails and letters. These things are too important to let slide. You need to be on top of this.
In this day and age customer loyalty is fleeting. There are simply too many choices out there to put up with shoddy customer attentiveness. Maybe I'll try Schick.
The other day I mentioned the book "In Search of Excellence." Here's more on excellence from the man himself... (thanks to Michele Miller for the heads up!)
Back in the 80s with books like "In Search of Excellence" and others, it was all the rage to sit down with your key staff and or board of directors and spend the time necessary to hammer out a mission statement. The process, if done right, was usually arduous and took a ton of time, caused a great deal of introspection and soul searching. But what you came away with was a powerful document. Sadly, many camps, ministries and businesses would take that document, frame it and put it in a high traffic area then promptly go back to doing what they'd always done, the way they'd always done it. It wasn't a living, breathing, working document. It was a trophy, awarded for a hard days work.
Now, a simple straight forward list of values, core to the company or ministry is a great example of a tool that can actually guide you. Obviously, it's all about the mindset. The core values can be hung on the wall and forgotten just like a mission statement. But short, bulleted, easy to grasp statements can hit you (and stick!), making it much easier to incorporate into the daily fabric of life in your company, ministry, camp or conference.
Take a look at the 10 core values from Zappos.com:
As I read these, they could do for almost any company or ministry. Because they've become part of the "corporate culture" at Zappos and not just a framed document on the wall is to their credit.
Take a look at those strong action verbs; deliver, embrace, create, pursue, build, do. These values don't only inspire and encourage, they challenge.
Maybe it's time to take a fresh look at your dusty mission statement and create a list of core values that you can live by, work by, minister by. Stretch yourself to write a list that will push you into more than you are right now, to become the person and the organization God created you to be.
Do you love the
camping ministry? Do you love helping people? I'm looking for a
full-time member resources assistant. This is an entry-level position
so you don’t need experience or even expertise, but you’ve got to have
the right tools: you love people, you love to solve problems, and you
love to learn.
This position would require working closely with 3CA members
via phone and e-mail, and assisting others on the member resources
team. You’d be serving in a Christian environment with a group of folks
who are passionate about helping those who minister in the outdoors.
If
you're interested in joining our team, send your resume to Michael Staires.
I'm thinking today about summer camp. I spent 20 summers working at camp and even today, my summer internal clock is synced up with camp. Meal time, morning flag, cabin clean up, etc. it's all in a day of camp...even today.
Selection of compelling photos on your web site can be a tricky thing. You've got so little time to make a connection, it's critical that you create immediate interest or "scent" with your visitor.
To better draw in your desired target, try these two simple techniques.
"Franking" Robert Frank is a photographer who is famous as much for what he leaves out of a photograph as for what he puts into it. In this photo, called "Parade, Hoboken, New Jersey"
he draws interest and curiosity by NOT showing the women's faces in the windows.
Here's an example of a great "camp" photo using this technique.
Not putting people in the canoe causes your web site visitor to imagine themselves in that canoe and quietly paddling out beyond the island in the distance.
"Portal Photography" is a technique using arches, windows, doorways...anything that creates a "tunnel" to draw the eye into the photograph. Of course the most powerful portal you can find is the human eye. Look at this photo. The human eye, particularly a child's eye, is almost irresistible to most people.
By selecting the right photos for your web pages you can create scent for visitors and give them a reason to linger.
According to the
3CA members that participated in our 2008 Summer Attendance Survey,
attendance patterns for this summer seem to be following closely those
of last summer. Although the sample size is too small for us to make
statements about the entire industry, 3CA reports that 53 percent of
camps that participated in the survey say they’re between 76 and 100
percent of capacity this year. Twenty-five percent of participants had
an expected attendance increase from summer 2007 of 1 to 10 percent,
while 26 percent anticipated their numbers would stay the same.
However, about 12 percent reported their numbers have dropped 1 to 10
percent as compared to last summer; 14 percent reported that their
numbers dropped 1 to 10 percent from 2006 to 2007. Only seven percent
of the camps say their attendance is up 11 to 25 percent this year,
which is down substantially from the 20 percent experiencing the same
increase last year. It appears that camps and conferences need to
continue focus on aggressive marketing in order to help them close the
gap between capacity and occupancy.
