Marketing Camp

Why Bother!!?

1. Competition growing –

Why would young people choose camp over larger events?

• Different relationships with leaders

• Personal development and meeting with God.

• Attractive to non Christians

• Venue

• Don’t need to be part of a large group

• Soul Survivour etc may appeal to Churches however Large events and group trips may not appeal to all young people.

2. Camp will die without our inputs:

Camp is competing with modern society values – Is camp or even God less relevant in lives of todays young people?
Camp is also facing issues like health and safety and other red tape and  regulations?
Camp has to continue to be seen to be making a difference on all levels.  It won’t survive just because it has done so over the past 60 years.

How much better is a full camp to both run and be part of!!

How should we market ourselves.

We have to know what young people want.  Staying in tents – I don’t think so. 

So we have to mass sell what is appealing:

Location, activities, food, relationships, time with God and discussions and seminars etc.

We can sell on a personal (one to one)  level the emotional and real stuff:
Staying in tents  IS  cool
Showering in streams
Meeting with God and being able to form and discuss relationships.
No Mobile phones

Who to? 

Ideally we want to aim at younger people 13s with church families who have just started to grow out of the young camps.  If we had a camp say of 50% of this demographic then we may retain  say 25%, however those are likely to regenerate new campers from friends therefore making up numbers again.  This will then propagate forward etc.
We then make camp intake healthy for another 4-5years?  However we constantly need to fill the gaps as those campers grow and ultimately move on.

So why not lets just go to the churches and get them to sell camp to their youth!!??
 
Selling to Churches and Youth leaders? – LA has a great database of churches and we have marketed to these.  More often these churches will be sending their young people to a tried and tested or larger and established camp.  Why change?

Also if you were a youth leader think about what you would choose.  The larger event where you can take a large group or a smaller event which is new untested and possibly slightly out of your control.

Also as a Youth leader you want to be seen to be working during the summer (quiet) months.  So what would be worse than getting rid of all your youth and leaving you kicking your heals with no work during the summer.   (PCC’s do notice these things!)

From past experience, marketing  to the churches or even the youth worker from cold is likely to have a low success rate.  

However if there is a personal recommendation  or contact within a church or another local church then the success rate of getting people from that group to come to Lee Abbey YC is much higher.

Its fairly safe to say most of the new people we have seen at camp have some sort of close personal connection with Lee Abbey or the YC. 

This is why its so important our leaders are active in their churches to keep pushing and telling people about camp.  Eventually people will listen. 

Example:

Our church (numbers and deatils are approx). 

Year 1 Clare and myself (plus 1 camper, came to camp by chance without knowing us). 
Yr 2  2 Campers plus 2 more leaders
Yr 3  7 Campers  
This Year  2 Cheeses, 5Leaders and possibly 8 – 10 Campers.  Some of which are able to be leaders next year, plus 4 -5,  12 year olds who have shown commitment for 2009!!  However all of this has developed in a church where the new vicar initially was not interested in Lee Abbey!!  This is how strong recommendation can be and the effect of having

What does Work!

Selling to young people on a one to one level.   As  leaders we need to mass market the obvious good stuff about camp  and introduce young people to camp on a personal basis revealing to them your enthusiasm and emotion about camp,  how it changes lives how good it really is to Play Pudux and shower in a stream.  This is going to light up eyes and stir emotions and win the hearts of young people and get them to sign up!

Set up a evening at your local church to tell people about camp,  then follow this up and talk to people afterwards and sell on a personal level. 

This is obviously a higher labour intensive way of marketing camp but the yield is going to be much higher.

What can you do?

• We know how good camp is!  So tell everybody. 

• Organise Camp PR eves or part of a youth meeting evening. 

• Contact local churches and talk to the youth leaders.

• Wear your LA T-shirts! 

• If you meet a Christian from another church, ask them about their youth group. Etc

• Tell campers to market to their friends.  (Be persistent here!)

• Ask young people if they are coming to camp this year.  They will say no, so leave it a week and ask again.  After a while they will avoid you or give it a go.

• Sound enthusiastic about camp.

• Talk to parents.

• Never Hand out one flier.

• Always follow up.

Many of our  leaders may be students!! 

This is good and bad. 

Good:  You may have access to 2 churches both home and college
Bad: You are likely to have few relationships with families at college churches.

Its important to try and build relationships and talk to your college youth leaders, don’t give up!

 What about the “We send our youth to….”

Many churches have this attitude however again don’t give up, turn it to your advantage.  The local youth leaders would like to have you believe all their young people cant get enough of what the YL has planned and invested in.  However the reality is the not all the Youth will be available to go to those camps and they may not appeal.  Lee Abbey YC by its nature is the ideal solution for these Young People.  You don’t need to go as a large group, you will make new friends easily and it will appeal on a more personal level.  So if you come across the “we go to…”  situation think of it as an opportunity!!

So finally!!

We need your help.

Over the past few years we (LA) has found that selling to the churches youth leaders etc just isn’t effective.  We need to touch the heart of the young people themselves.  We need to talk to them personally and engage them with the enthusiasm of you the leader  and also let them see how great camp is as a whole experience.   Its one to one selling.  So if you run a LA promo video, try and follow it up with personal contact afterwards.  Its very labour intensive but worth while.

Everybody needs to help!  If you are not the sort of person that can approach people cold then we understand thats not your gift but you can still help by telling us about the churches in your area and the Youth groups and leaders.

What can we do to help?

Ruston, Emma and Brett  are going to head up a marketing team. 

Need leaders help.  
To form a data base of contacts for Youth leaders and churches local to you so we have 1. personal contact  / source of reference 2.  If need be someone that can visit the church to tell them more about camp.

Want to develop the 6 reservations idea.  (a tent)
We can approach a contact and offer them 6 places 
Reserve this for a couple of weeks and then we can follow this up. 
Give them incentives to fill these places.

Remember what a full camp is like,  how many more lives it will change!
Changing lives since 1948!!