Congratulations, you’re on the marketing team

It’s been a mantra of sorts for the last decade or so when I talk with church or camp leaders about the realities of communications, marketing, media, hospitality, etc. While I’m going to guess very few of you actually have “marketing” in your title or even your job description, you’re on the marketing team. Every one of you.

Marketing, at its foundation, is about influence and the truth is, one way or the other, you are telling the story of the people and places you are connected with and represent. You are marketing, through action and inaction, intentional and unintentional. When it comes to why, how, and who you market to, choose intentional.

The value of tools you can actually use

Over the past week, I got to read the Camper Recruitment and Retention Playbook by Travis Allison from Go Camp Pro and Joanna Warren Smith from Camp Consulting. This tool is designed as a working playbook for camps who care about the exponential impact that can happen when camper numbers grow. Simply put, as they say on the site, it is built to make your camp job easier.

In short, this playbook gets 5 stars. Below I’ll share a few key things I like about it and one thing I don’t. First, here’s the quick frame of how the playbook is structured. It starts with a welcome and purpose letter from each author. Both Travis and Joanna have depth and breadth of experience in camping, while also being savvy in the kinds of things it takes to make an organization sustainable. Next, you’ll find a page full of clear actions to maximize how you use the playbook, followed by a call to set clear goals and objectives, with trackable numbers attached to them (just the kinds of things board members and supporters love).

Then, the month-by-month what to do and when to do it begins. This is the meat of the book and where it truly feels like a playbook  – a set of situational considerations and actions that you, as a leader, can use to direct yourself and your team toward the actions that will have the most impact.

The deepest value in this playbook is in two things. First, it helps you remove from vocabulary the phrase that so many camp leaders who “aren’t marketers” utter on the regular, “We don’t know what we don’t know.” Second, any tool for any purpose is only as valuable as its usability, and this is a tool you can actually use, right now, starting today. Here are some things I love in this playbook.

Top 5 Camp Parent Needs
One of my favorite parts of the book is the section in Joanna’s opening letter called the Top 5 Camp Parent Needs (page 4). We wrote a couple of  weeks ago about parent perspectives from this past summer, have talked on our podcast about parent connections more than once, and have a whole camp insights experience focused on them. These needs came directly from Focus Groups of camper parents sharing candid ideas and feedback on their camp experiences. Parents are one of our primary constituents as the key decision makers when it comes to choosing camp or not, so their perspective really matters. This section includes five super-clear things parents need from camp and how to address them.

Plenty o’ Grace
I appreciate that there is plenty of grace for leaders who live in realities of limited capacity. Capacity can mean multiple things, and often camps are limited in at least two, if not all of these: time, funds, people, and knowledge. The phrase “in a perfect world” comes up a few times, with encouragement to start when you can, to do what you can, and not to do what you can’t, or at least can’t yet.

Month-by-Month Framework
The bulk of the book lays out a clear framework for each month of the year, particularly the non-summer season, beginning in September and pushing through May, while also calling out things to do during the summer. I’ve told ministry leaders I connect with that communication happens before, during, and after and all of those phases have critical value, not just the “advertising” up front. Each month includes a few key things:

• A section of what to focus on that month
• A checklist of actions for each of the 5 critical target audiences for recruiting and retention driven marketing
• A clear path of things to make happen that month
• A worksheet of statistics to track
• Plus, additional resources are referenced, linked, or shared by QR code throughout the playbook

Marketing Dictionary
This is exactly what it sounds like, a nice clear list of terms and phases and what they mean in the context of the camp industry. Some are specific to the industry like “CAC: Cost of Aquisition of Camper” and “CLV: Camp Lifetime Value” and some you could find elsewhere. This section helps things make sense.

The Thing I Don’t Like
While I’m being a little facetious, the thing I dislike most is that I didn’t have something like this when I was a camp director. It’s true. Like many of us, I spent lots of time going “If we could only…” or “If we have more…” or “I wish I knew how to…” I love guessing and testing and trying things, and this tool encourages that, but having a framework to start from is unbelievably helpful, especially for those already at or near the end of their capacity bucket.

Really, the “downfall” of anything like this is that you have to put in the work to make it impactful, and that’s not really a knock on the tool, but a chance to get clear on priorities, and to put effort into the ones that matter most.

Less about the tools, more about the box

It’s worth noting that there isn’t anything in the playbook that you couldn’t necessarily find through a lot of book reading and internet searching and trial and error. Tools like this exist in other spaces, but it’s often not just about the tools, but the way they are organized in the box that helps them be truly usable. You could find all the different kinds of hammers and screwdrivers you want at your hardware store of choice, but when someone helps you to know when and where to use which tool and lays them out nicely in the toolbox for you, it saves time, energy, and money while increasing impact.

Through the resources found right in the playbook, and the library of other bonus material you are given access to, you have things you can make your own and use at your next staff meeting.

IMHO: It’s actually not about “tools” at all

Here’s where I have had some interesting discussions with church and camp leaders. They often ask “what tool or platform should I use for _________?!” Before talking specifics, I encourage them to make a shift in perspective when it comes to communications and marketing. I ask them to think about all of these things less as tools to be used, and more as spaces to be entered. When we tell stories, share opportunities, and call people to actions, we’re entering space occupied by their brains and hearts and souls and often joined by those they care about.

Marketing is creating space for relationship.

And that is what we’re after: ever-deepening relationships with campers and families and communities. So whether its navigating which social media platforms or email marketing systems or design software or signage or whatever other decisions we’re making about these relationship-vessels, we can stop picking up and putting down “tools” and start doing what we do best – being caring humans in connection with each other and the world around us.

Start when you start

By the time you read through this, you could have already gotten deep into the playbook, so here’s your call to consider purchasing, reading, and putting into action the valuable resources and action steps found in The Camper Recruitment and Retention Playbook. As Travis and Joanna say on page 9, you start when you start, and maybe that’s today.

– Jared Rendell, Sacred Playgrounds