When it comes to growing and sustaining your campground’s customer base, marketing is the key to success. But since there are so many ways to reach your audience these days, you should consider—what kind of marketing generates the most engagement? To answer this question, think about how many of your guests read any signs or rules at your property. Very few people read lengthy content anymore, so it’s important to reach guests through their preferred method of gathering information - photos and videos!

Using photos and videos as a main driver for your property’s marketing will allow you to create a visual story that shows people why they should stay with you. Nowadays, your property’s first impression takes place before guests arrive at your park *(it actually happens when they see that first photo or video online!)* which makes it extremely important to ensure you have high-quality images that give an accurate and up-to-date representation of the place they’ll be visiting. Mark Koep, CEO and Founder of Campground Views and recent guest speaker on our On Air with RMS webinar series, shared a stat from a Google report that 73% of affluent travelers (travelers that make more than $120k per year) would book immediately upon seeing a good video of a park.

With this in mind, you should make a plan for, creating or updating your property’s visual assets, whether you do it yourself or hire a photographer or videographer to document your park for you. Start by mapping out which areas need to get filmed or photographed, including every available site, views from each site, your entrance, any special offerings, etc. Even if you’re not a confident photographer, any photos are better than no media at all, and will greatly enhance your marketing.

💡 TIP: Any iPhone camera is just as high quality, if not better, than a professional camera. Save yourself the hassle of worrying about equipment and use the mobile device in your hand to start promoting your property.

Videos are another great way to get people interested in your park. YouTube is the second most visited website in the world - so use this to your advantage! Create a video promoting your property and share it on YouTube. Koep shared that best practices for naming your video are to include the name of your property, the location of your property and a nearby landmark. For example, “Desert RV Park located in Yucca Valley, CA near Joshua Tree National Park.” This will help your video rank on both YouTube and Google, increasing the number of potential guests that will view it.

Once these visual assets have been captured, the next step is to share them everywhere! The most important place to start is your property’s website. Choose one photo that best represents your property to be the main photo on your website’s homepage, the first thing online visitors should see.. Next, create a gallery page with all remaining and relevant media, including descriptions of where on your property those photos and videos were taken.

If you were able to obtain images of each site, upload those images to your internet booking engine (IBE) so guests can see exactly what they are booking. Make sure your reservation system provider offers this functionality to help maximize your direct online bookings.. Your reservation system should also offer guests the option to book online through an interactive map, and the likelihood of guests booking a specific site is much higher if it has an image attached to it.

Once your website has been updated with fresh property photos and videos, the next step is sharing those visual assets on third party platforms, including your property page on social media (i.e. Facebook) and your listings on search engines (Google) and OTAs (Tripadvisor)There are multiple sites that travelers use to find RV parks and campgrounds that allow properties to list their information. A few to consider advertising your property on include:

- Tripadvisor
- CampgroundViews
- CampgroundReviews
- The Dyrt
- AllStays

Photos and videos are phenomenal ways to entice guests to stay at your property and maximize your reservations. For additional information on using photos and videos to enhance your marketing, watch On Air with RMS: Episode 4 featuring Mark Koep, CEO and Founder of Campground Views, and Erin Philips, RMS Marketing Manager, here: https://www.rmsnorthamerica.com/product/resource/on-air-with-rms-episode-4

About RMS

As a leading provider of property management systems to the hospitality industry for more than 30 years, RMS supports 6,000 properties worldwide and offers business insights, best practices, and innovative software to help hospitality businesses meet their strategic goals. For more information, please visit http://rmsnorthamerica.com/.