The key to small business success is not a matter of cutting costs or raising prices. First and foremost, it is a matter of satisfying your customers in a manner that leaves your competitors behind. One of several highly effective ways of doing this is to engage local businesses that offer products or services that appeal to your customers.

If you run a campground, it is your responsibility to know your guests. When they leave your park for a day or an evening, where to they go? What are the types of businesses that appeal to their needs and interests? If a guest asks you for directions to the nearest supermarket or asks for a referral to a local Mexican restaurant, you are probably prepared with a recommendation and a set of directions. The important question is whether you “wing” your response each time or have a formally established referral system in place.

What Is Good for Your Customers Is Best for You

You may already be providing a rudimentary referral service of sorts if you have a bulletin board in your office area that includes local business cards, if you have a display rack of local business brochures, or if you have a site map that is supported by local advertising. Those all make sense, and they are helpful ways of generating awareness for those businesses, but it takes far more than awareness to really build a synergy between your park and nearby businesses. After all, if name awareness was all that it took, all that any business would need would be a sign at the road and a parking lot large enough to handle the endless influx of traffic. We all know that it does not work quite that simply.

Over the years, a number of companies have successfully run localized or regionalized direct mail advertising campaigns that provide offers from area businesses that are willing to offer incentives in order to reach new customers. Particularly when your business is attracting a pool of new potential customers from outside of the area, local businesses need your help to direct those people to their doors.

Offer Incentives

Although the direct mail campaigns have been successful over the years, rising postage costs and the relatively low response rates for offers that are not targeted to specific groups of likely consumers have taken their toll in favor of more cost-effective approaches. The same thing applies to local newspaper coupons, victims of declining circulation and the fact that so few people actually read newspapers today. The company that markets regional Entertainment coupon books in 41 states plus the District of Columbia and Canada gets people to pay $12.00 per annual coupon book or $19.99 per year for their mobile app. In addition, many supermarket chains now offer loyalty and rewards programs that include discounts on local businesses and services, and many local radio and television stations offer discounted gift certificates for a full range of local businesses. (In my market, the usual discount is 30% off face value.) One thing that all of these programs have in common is that they are offering some sort of discount in order to incentivize new and return customers to favor participating local businesses.

Make This Work to Your Advantage

Rather than asking local businesses to pay for the privilege of reaching your clientele, offer them a free opportunity to reach your campers in exchange for offering them some sort of monetary discount or incentive. Each offer must have real value, but may very well be the same sort of deal that they might already offer under other circumstances. In other words, it is a price that they are willing to pay in exchange for bringing in a new customer (or an entirely family of customers). Each offer should be in the form of a coupon (which visually creates the impression of real value) that is then bound together with the other offers into a booklet that you provide to each arriving guest at the time of registration. (You might also provide one booklet per month to your seasonal guests.)

The important thing to remember is not to pass these out prior to arrival (at a winter camping show, for example) because you want to be certain that they are used by your actual guests, not somebody who ultimately decides to stay at another resort on down the road. The cover of the booklet should show the total cash value of the combined offers, and you should include this discount booklet in the list of amenities that your park offers its guests. The result is not only an incentive for your campers to patronize participating businesses (in a way that those businesses can actually measure), but also an incentive for those same campers to actually stay at your park.

Identifying Your Prospects

As I mentioned earlier, it is your responsibility to know your guests. Basically, any local business offering a product or service that is of interest to your guests should be invited to participate, and any business that is already participating in another incentive program has demonstrated its interest in generating new customers. Refer to the incentive programs in your local market to find your “A List” of business to contact. That list will include – but be far from limited to – the following types of businesses:

• Restaurants • Ice Cream Stands • Supermarkets • Farm Stands • Retail Stores •
• Golf Courses • Driving Ranges • Mini Golf Courses • Indoor and Outdoor Paintball •
• Bowling Centers • Go-Kart Tracks • Skating Rinks • Batting Cages • Fishing Charters •
• Amusement & Theme Parks • Water Parks • Speedways • Tourist Attractions •
• Craft Breweries • Wineries • Factory Tours • Music Festivals •
• RV Dealerships • RV Repair Centers • Auto Repair Centers •
• Boarding Kennels • Pet Grooming • Veterinary Services •
• Movie Theaters • Museums • Historic Sites •

Why it All Works So Perfectly

Guess what? If you persuade your guests to patronize even a fraction of the local businesses who participate in your incentive program, you may have also given them a list of good reasons to extend their stay or to return for another stay at your park. Coupon redemptions will also have given you an opportunity to prove your park’s merit to your business partners in this endeavor, leading to the potential for further cooperative ventures. Wouldn’t it be nice for your park to be the “official campground” of the big nearby theme park or motor speedway? Or for your local supermarket chain to include your park in its loyalty and rewards program? Or for the local brewery and winery to run a tasting event at your park? Or for the local pet grooming facility to come to your park for on-site grooming days? The potential is only limited by your imagination, your belief in your business, and your ability to persuade fellow businesses to get on board.