It is well-known among businesses of all sizes and across all industries that it is far easier to get an existing customer to renew their business relationship with a company than it is to find and build new customers from scratch, the difference between customer retention and customer acquisition. For a campground, the existing customer base consists of seasonal campers and transient guests who have stayed at your park within the past one to three years and who enjoyed their stay. Statistics indicate that there is up to a 70% likelihood of getting an existing customer to return, while getting a new prospect to turn into an actual customer only occurs from 5% to 20% of the time. The rate of success is contingent upon the quality and volume of your marketing efforts, and acquiring those new customers can incur a cost of up to 7X more than the cost of getting an existing customer to stay with your business, according to research by Bain & Company published in Forbes. Considering those acquisition costs, it should be pretty clear that even a small increase in customer retention can increase overall profits by a substantial margin. Why is it then that most businesses spend more time and money on acquiring new business than focusing on retaining their existing customers? It just doesn’t make sense.

The loss of customers for various reasons is referred to as “churn” or attrition. The term originated with the process for making butter by agitating milk and cream. Without agitation, those ingredients will never turn to butter. It is easy to surmise the importance of preemptively knowing if there are any factors that are agitating your existing customer base, which I have noted consists of guests “who enjoyed their stay.” Your office and registration desk can be very busy at the time of your guests’ arrival, particularly on weekends; however, departures are usually far less hectic. Take advantage of that opportunity to avoid self-checkouts and to try to engage each guest with a brief exit interview. If a stop in your office is not required, catch those guests at your exit gate, asking them if they enjoyed their stay and if there is anything that could have been done to make their stay more enjoyable. If nothing else, they will appreciate that you took the time to ask. Keep track of this feedback, along with any comments that make their way onto online review sites, and take corrective measures if necessary.

Some businesses have notoriously high rates of churn, while others have high levels of customer loyalty. For example, with the exception of users of customer loyalty cards, most people have no loyalty to one brand of gasoline over another, generally accepting that 87 octane unleaded regular is the same just about everywhere, making buying decisions primarily based upon price and how close their tanks are to being empty. Even businesses with historically high rates of customer loyalty can see that situation change overnight when a monkey wrench gets thrown into the works.

Nobody Likes Change

In the outdoor hospitality industry today there is an unprecedented drop in customer loyalty that is accompanying changes in ownership. If a nearby campground has changed hands, particularly if it has evolved from family-owned to corporate ownership, customer dissatisfaction is almost a certainty. Rate increases, newly added fees, and indifferent management all present the milk and cream that you can churn into butter. In many instances, the new owners are obsessed with making infrastructure improvements that rationalize rate increases when the customers they inherited were quite satisfied with the status quo. In other instances, they will literally force out seasonal campers in favor of more profitable transient campsites. If you have the capacity to fill seasonal sites, turn on a “welcome” sign while your competitor is showing those customers the exit.

When management is separate from ownership, there is usually little incentive to work toward long-term success. Management is unlikely to be performing the exit interviews that you should be conducting, and it may be turning a blind eye to online reviews and complaints. Your knowledge of the specific dissatisfactions will allow you to significantly boost the new customer acquisition rate well above the 5% to 20% norm. Just because campers are unhappy with management and new policies down the road does not mean that they are ready to give up on camping. They simply need to know that you are better prepared to respond to their needs, while offering proximity to the same amenities and nearby attractions that they have grown to appreciate.

Although you will no doubt hear word of mouth, go online and search for “(name of campground) complaints” or “(name of campground) reviews” to get a snapshot of major points of dissatisfaction. Look for complaints on campground review sites but also on Yelp, TripAdvisor, and the Better Business Bureau. If there is a preponderance of negative reviews, you can easily identify your opportunities to expand your customer base. Here are excerpts of actual reviews of various parks that recently changed hands:

“Been coming here for 5 years, I used to think this place was the best for family fun but like all things usually do service and accommodations are getting worse and worse. To start with I reserved a premium pull through spot in February for this weekend. I had to pay $50 just to assure I have the spot I reserved. What’s the point of a reservation if you have to pay extra to reserve the spot you selected? Golf cart rentals are higher than average now and if you want to play mini golf you have to pay, when it used to be free.”

“We have been coming here for years, and never had the experience we did this last visit. The campground has gone downhill. Staff is no longer friendly and welcoming as they used to be. This place was once a great relaxing place to vacation but that it no longer the case. We spoke with some folks at the pool that live there, and was told they are also having issues with new management and was sad to hear it was happening to visitors also. Needless to say that was my last trip there!”

“I booked a reservation today, where during the process you pick your site. Once I booked it, the system came up with an extra $100 fee to lock your site. I did not think anything of it and continued. When I printed my reservation confirmation the number of my site was missing. I then called to find out and was informed that you get whatever site is available unless you pay the additional $100 fee. I then asked to cancel the reservation and got everything back except for a $20 cancellation fee. I asked for a supervisor, and the lady said she was a supervisor and would not refund me fully even though I just made the reservation less than 90 minutes earlier. This just left a horrible feeling. Makes me think all they are interested in is money and not good customer service. It is a shame because it was going to be a group of us, but I called the other 4 couples and told them not to book. We will go to another campground.”

“My husband (now deceased) and I purchased a park model at a campground that this company now owns in June of 2020. We paid a premium price (well over its value) for this particular park model because its location in the campground. The park was then bought out by the new owners at the end of last year. Yesterday we received a letter via email informing us that not only are they eliminating our site from even being a possible location for a park model/seasonal lease, but we would have to sell it through the park’s RV sales lot, will have to pay to move it to that lot, and any likely buyer will have no chance of being able to use it anywhere within the park. We will likely lose at least $20,000 when all is said and done.”

There are patterns in those complaints, mostly involving increased fees and indifferent management. Times are changing, but not necessarily for the better. As always, change can present opportunities for well-informed business owners. Now is perhaps the best time in years to churn some butter!

For any business, the home run measure of success for any marketing tool is the generation of an immediate sale. Sometimes that means the purchase of an item or the ordering of a service. In the hospitality industry, that immediate sale translates into a reservation for a stay. Those are the home runs, but the game is won in multiple innings, the cumulative effect of singles, doubles, runs batted in, and strike-outs.

What are those lesser, long-term measures of marketing success that, taken cumulatively, can often exceed the impact of the immediate sales? Allow me to outline a few of them.

Engagement

Engagement is the encouragement of long-term customer loyalty. It can be argued that short-term sales can sometimes be in conflict with the interests of long-term customer engagement. For example, coercing an immediate sale through the use of deep discounting will almost never lead to long-term customer loyalty. Rather, it likely leads to either one-time sales or the development of customers who will only purchase again when you offer another deep discount. Customer engagement can be built through expertise in your field, the presentation of useful information, the delivery of frequently updated content, and interaction with your customer base.

Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is essentially the development of a company’s name recognition and reputation. It is far easier to accomplish for an established name brand with hundreds or thousands of locations to build brand awareness than it is for an individual start-up business. Think in terms of McDonald’s versus Charlie’s Burger Joint. Brand awareness goes beyond simple name recognition. It requires that consumers not only recognize your business name but also that they will be more likely to recall the name in the future and correctly associate it with the special attributes of your business. For example, you might be one of a dozen and a half campgrounds in the area, but you want to be remembered as THE place to camp in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I have routinely documented instances where a campground that changed its name over 10 years ago continues to get business from people who recall the old business name (and are directed to the park’s website via the old URL, which we maintain.)

Customer Evangelism

Customer evangelism is good old word-of-mouth advertising on steroids. The term has obvious biblical origins, where surrogates are engaged to spread the good news, in this case regarding your business. Evangelists do not take their roles lightly, and they do not agree to take on their responsibilities without first being truly converted themselves. They have to really believe in a product or service before they will agree to act as voluntary advocates on your behalf. Their evangelism can take many forms, from direct referrals to social media posts to loyalty programs to affinity groups. A park’s seasonal campers might be one such affinity group. The bottom line is that any of these are unpaid customers who are perhaps your company’s best possible spokespersons, primarily because they are spreading the word based upon their authentic personal beliefs.

Customer Loyalty

Sharing some characteristics with both engagement and evangelism, customer loyalty is the result of an ongoing reassurance that your business is meeting the needs of its existing customers. A new website, an eye-catching billboard, or a well-crafted video or TV commercial can serve to not only generate new business but to reassure your existing customers that they made the right decision in choosing your business. Make them proud of their decision and help to give them a sense of belonging and involvement. This, in turn, is an added step toward taking loyalty to the next step … evangelism.

Lead Generation

Sometimes potential customers are not ready to make an immediate purchase or buying decision. For example, it is not easy to persuade people to buy snowmobiles in the summer. Beyond the attempt at timing your marketing efforts for when they will be the most effective, lead generation is a means of qualifying a broad list of prospective customers into a narrower list that is more likely to make a future purchase. Do you ask them to become involved? Try to encourage people to subscribe to your newsletter, join your e-mail list, or sign up for special offers and incentives. In any case, a potential customer who has taken the initiative of any such “next step” is that much closer to becoming an actual customer.

In summary, do not be discouraged if every marketing effort does not translate into immediately measurable sales. Marketing is a cumulative, long-term effort, not some sort of “all your eggs in one basket”, “get rich quick” scheme. Present your business in a professional, consistent manner, and it will eventually reap the rewards of a bountiful harvest.

Most advertising is intended to build long-term brand awareness and customer loyalty, factors that are not measurable in immediate sales numbers. At other times, advertising is intended to generate a more immediate short-term response. This is the kind of advertising that is typified by the weekly department store or supermarket circular, with a list of specific items and prices. For a campground owner, both types of advertising will work, although short-term offers are generally far more effective after long-term brand awareness has already kicked in.

Let’s say it’s a Thursday morning, and you have 8 vacant campsites and 2 rentals available for the upcoming weekend. Leaving them unoccupied is lost income, and it is time to spring into action. If your average camping fee is $40.00 per night and your cabin rentals are $80.00 per night, just those vacancies on a Friday and Saturday night represent $960.00 in income, prior to any residual sales in your store, snack bar, game room, and elsewhere.

There are many cost-effective ways to reach people who are likely to respond to your offers, including newsletters, Tweets, and Facebook posts. The prerequisite is that you need a significant number of newsletter subscribers or followers on social media like Twitter or Facebook. If few people see your message, even an extraordinarily high response rate will generate little in terms of actual results. For a small business, that magic minimum number is generally in the 800 – 1,000 person range. With those 8 sites and 2 rentals to book, if your message reaches 1,000 people, you only need to attain a very realistic 1% rate of response. Building a significant number of people who will be likely to respond to your offers takes a combination of time and ingenuity, with ingenuity speeding up the process.

Building Your Numbers

Your first step is to grow the numbers of people who are subscribing to your newsletter or following your social media posts. Build your newsletter base by asking people to opt in during the online reservation process, asking them to “join your list” when they visit your booth at camping shows (preferably in real time, providing them with a laptop or tablet with Internet access), and including a sign-up form on your website. On Facebook, give people an incentive to “like” your page (but do not use “fangating” to force them to like the page in order to obtain the incentive). Encourage your followers to “share” and “retweet” your posts, helping to spread your message. Facebook Advertising is a highly effective and fairly inexpensive way to expand your reach. Just be sure to choose your demographics very carefully and always pay per click, not per impression. Of course, links to your social media pages should always be prominently featured on your website.

Very importantly, once you have gotten people to agree to receive your newsletter or to follow your posts, you must not abuse nor squander that privilege. Always provide timely and useful information that answers the reader’s question, “What’s in it for me?” Engage your followers, and get them excited about what you have to say. That generally means that you are providing them with some sort of offer that makes them feel like an “insider” who is receiving special treatment. Ideally, they will like what they read so much that they will look forward to hearing from you on a regular basis. Incidentally, that “regular basis” should usually not exceed once or twice a month for newsletters, three times a week for Facebook posts, and once or twice a day for Tweets. On one hand, you want to keep in touch, in order to avoid being forgotten. On the other hand, you do not want to become like an elderly uncle who seems to visit so often that he wears out his welcome. You work too hard to build a base of followers to see them unsubscribe or “unlike” your page.

Crafting Messages with a Sense of Urgency

Once you have the numbers of people within reach, it is time to present your followers with messages that will generate the desired response. There are generally three ways to accomplish this:

• “Use it or lose it” limited time offers.
• Limited availability.
• Special bonus incentives.

Vacancies “this weekend” definitely constitute limited time offers, and “only three sites available” represents limited availability. Limited time offers have been a staple of price/item advertising for decades. Retail sales always have expiration dates, with occasional exceptions such as JC Penney’s disastrous attempt at giving itself a makeover and “retraining” its customers back in 2012. Even auctions on eBay generally show last-minute surges in bidding in the closing minutes (and seconds) of the sale of a popular item. On the other hand, if you have purchased airline tickets recently, you may have noticed that the airlines will often indicate countdown numbers such as the “last 2 seats” (true or untrue) for a given flight. That is an example of generating sales based upon limited availability.

Perhaps even more effective are special bonus incentives. In fact, special bonus incentives can be remarkably effective when combined with either a limited time offer or limited availability. What kind of incentive could help to persuade people to reserve those vacant sites? Experiment with different offers to find ones that fit. Examples might include free early check-in (which costs you nothing), a free bundle of firewood (particularly popular with tent sites), waiving the fee for additional family members (within limits), or a free one-hour boat rental (during certain times when you know that your boats would likely be tied to a dock). Maybe list three bonus options, and let people choose the one that they want. It has been proven that there is always magic in giving people a choice of three.

Rich or poor, from all walks of life, every human being likes to get a deal … or at least be given that impression. Once again, your ingenuity comes into play to make your advertising message both compelling and successful. Give it a try!