One of the most important parts of growing your camp is marketing. With the right marketing strategy, you can bring new families into the fold while celebrating your loyal campers.

Before you think about your strategy and tactics, it is important to remember the audience for your marketing. At this point, millennials are taking over as the parenting generation. In 2023, TIME reported that there were more than 22 million millennial parents currently with 9,000 babies being born to millennials every day.

Therefore, if you are marketing your camp to the parents of children, you should be creating marketing that speaks to millennials. To do this successfully, keep these elements in mind.

Marketing Tips for Millennial Parents

• Focus on fun. TIME also reported that 61 percent of millennial parents surveyed believe that “kids need more unstructured playtime.” Highlight the fun that children will have at camp to get these families interested.
• Highlight the experience. When interviewed, millennial parents report being more interested in providing experiences rather than physical items for their children. In your marketing materials, showcase what their children will experience and learn at your camp.
• Offer 24/7 booking. Millennials are digital natives and need to be able to register their children for camp the same way they order food and clothes online. In fact, in our analysis of 10.9 million camp and activity bookings made on Sawyer in 2024, we found that 69 percent were made on mobile! Let prospective customers know that they can book with you on any device and watch your registrations increase.

Social Media Marketing for Kids Camps

Social media is a very important platform when marketing a kids camp. In 2023, the University of Michigan surveyed parents and found that 80 percent of parents use social media to discuss parenting topics and get advice, suggestions, and tips from other parents. Drilling down deeper, Pew Research found that 79 percent of parents surveyed said that they get useful information from social media. Consider these recommendations when you set up social media marketing for your kids camp.

• Use high-quality photos. Professional photos are best, but you don’t need to pay for high quality photos. These days, you can get high quality photos using your own personal smartphone. You want parents to see that you are professional in everything you do. Remember to always get permission from a parent or guardian before using a child’s picture in any type of promotional material. 
• Showcase user-generated content. Ask families to share pictures in photo contests, reshare positive reviews, and get the excitement flowing with social media takeovers. This content might be the first impression a parent will get of your camp, so make sure they are full of smiling faces and happy stories!
• Interact with families. Social media is such a great tool because you can easily interact with potential and current campers’ families. By making connections, you are increasing the likelihood that they sign up for camp and refer friends. 

Advertising for Kids Camps

Google Ads are an incredibly useful, and often cost-efficient, marketing tool for camps. Google Ads follow a Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising model, allowing business owners to bid on search terms, rank higher, and pay for the clicks their ads receive. There is no minimum spending requirement and you are in control of the copy, assets, and settings for your ads. You can choose where your ad appears, set a budget that works for you, and measure impact with analytics.

Email Marketing for Kids Camps

If you already have a list of email addresses from previous summers or from community events, email marketing is a great option for your kids camp. Email marketing can be difficult since consumers these days are bombarded by emails, but if you keep these tips and tricks in mind, you can stand out from the noise.

• Hook the reader with a strong subject line. If you can get the reader to open your email, you have won half the battle. Strong subject lines create a sense of urgency, intrigue the reader, and showcase your value. Here are a couple of examples:
  • Only 25 spots left for camp this summer!
  • Book now! Camps are almost full
  • Ready for your child to have the best summer?
  • See what families have to say about our camp
  • Learn about our expert instructors/counselors
• Offer incentives. If you can provide discounts or other incentives, email is a great place to do that. And if you are offering these, you can really hook the reader by including that info in the subject line! 
• Get right to the point. People are busy and they don’t have time to read long emails. With email marketing, it is important to keep it short. Tell them why you are emailing, explain your value propositions, and give them an easy way to book.
• Include a call-to-action (CTA). At the end of your marketing email, use a strong CTA that encourages the reader to make a decision. Sometimes, the decision will be registering for your camp. However, other times it might make more sense for the CTA to be “schedule a call” or “learn more” if the reader is not yet ready to make a purchase.

Make Connections with Schools

Making connections with schools is a great way to build customer trust, increase your enrollment numbers, and find new families in your community. As children move up in grades and enter the school systems, school connections are the gifts that keep on giving.

But, how do you actually make connections with schools? Here are some of our top tips.

• Find the right contacts. Try reaching out to members of the school board, administrators at the school, and/or the PTA to start the conversation.
• Write a strong outreach email. Be straightforward and polite with a strong subject line. Start the email with an introduction of yourself and your camp and an explanation of what you are offering. Let them know why their students would benefit from your camp and how you can make life easier for the school, too. End your email by thanking them for their time and let them know how they can get in touch with you to continue the conversation.
• Join community events. Signing up for community and school events can help you get face time in and make connections with local schools and families. Run a booth, collect email addresses, and watch the camp bookings come in.

We created an outreach email generator to help you save time and make connections more easily with local schools. If you are looking for more camp marketing tips for 2025, check out our Ultimate Guide to Marketing Your Kids Camp.

This article was sponsored by Sawyer. Sawyer is an all-in-one camp registration and management software that helps camp owners and children’s activity providers efficiently run their businesses so they can spend more time doing what they love. 

Lizzie is the senior manager of content marketing for Sawyer. She helps connect camp owners and educators with the resources they need so they can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time working with children. A lifelong lover of camp as both a camper and counselor, Lizzie is thrilled that she gets to spend her days helping providers discover and use Sawyer to make camp more accessible.

Periodically, the American Camp Association (ACA) makes timely and relevant information about products and services available to its members so they can make informed decisions for their camps. However, ACA does not endorse products, services, or companies.