Plan For A Successful Summer Dance Camp

It’s summer time! For some that means a few week off before kicking things off for fall. For others this time of year means CAMPS! If you’re considering starting a summer camp next year, we have some tips to get you started.

Set Your Dates Early

If your families are anything like ours, you’ll start getting summer camp questions in December. We don’t have our heads wrapped around summer camps at that point, but families like to plan their summer vacations early. Planning around camps is part of what families do. You don’t need to have themes or internal schedules mapped out at this point. You should know which weeks you will be offering camps so you can let families know and they can plan around your camps. We recommend sending out a “Save The Date” email in December. It should include the camp dates and the registration period. If you know your camp themes already, include them. If not, dates are fine and add something like “details coming soon”.

Set A Registration Date

Our current summer camp registration period starts March 1. This date works well for us for multiple reasons. However, I would recommend opening your registration period much earlier. Particularly if you’re a newer or smaller studio, or if this is your first year offering camps. You will want as much of an early start over other camps as possible. Our first year we opened registration on Feb 1. It took about 2-3 months to fill our camps from that date. We moved our registration dates back as we learned our studio patterns. We realized that we had enough in-house interest in our camps that we didn’t need to advertise to outside families. It now takes us about 2-3 days to sell out 3 weeks of camps. As you learn your own patterns you can set a date that works best for you.

Marketing Ideas

The first year we offered summer camps we started advertising in January. Our local mall hosts a summer camp fair every year. We paid about $200 for table and took our marketing materials with us. There were about 25-30 other programs there. There were karate camps, dance camps, preschool camps, lego camps, coding camps, and everything in between. So there were lots of families that came out and it was good exposure for our program. Check your area to see if anyone is putting together a similar event. It’s a great way to expose your camp and your studio to more people.

Use the power of your own website! People often forget that their own website can be a powerful marketing tool. Create a page on your website that is dedicated to summer camps. This page can be up year round. Optimize it so that search engines will find it. Outside of your current students and people hearing about your camps from friends, most people will turn to Google to find local camps. If you have a page that is optimized for that search, you will appear in the search results. In most cases this is free to do, unless you’re paying a web designer for updates.

While we’re on the subject of Google, Google Adwords can be a very powerful marketing tool as well. If you are unfamiliar with Adwords there are tons of tutorials online to help you get started. You pay per click, and bid on the amount you want to pay per click. You show up at the top of search results or in the right column of a search page. Done properly, this is one of the most effective marketing tools at your disposal.

Email is also important. We have already discussed emailing your families a “Save The Date”. It’s also a good idea to send a reminder email about a week before your registration period opens. We also have an email that goes out the day registration opens. We go as far as saying registration will open at 10:00am the morning of March 1. Our form isn’t live until that moment. When the form goes live we have an email go out with a link to inform families that it’s time to sign up. Usually within the first minute we see a wave of registrations. That continues in bursts until the camps are sold out within 2-3 days. I feel it’s important to make your program feel in demand. Even if you’re new or just a smaller studio, make people feel like they need to sign up or they will miss out on their chance. Setting specific dates and times for registration and sending out those reminder emails with things like “Space is limited”, “Don’t miss out”, “Spots fill quickly” can create a sense of urgency in families. If you don’t create that sense of urgency your families won’t feel the need to register in a timely manner.

Non-Refundable Deposits

This is very important. I don’t know of any camps in our area, dance or otherwise that do not require a non-refundable deposit. Some even require you pay in full up front. It’s impossible to plan a camp without knowing your budget or number of kids. A deposit also makes people think twice about pulling out of camps for silly reasons. Our deposit is 50%. Our camps cost $330 for the week, so families get charged $165 at sign up and we auto-charge their account for the remaining balance on July 1 (the month of camp).  Some families may still pull out last minute for emergencies or last minute vacation plans. If that does happen, this is where having wait lists comes in handy. You can then rotate in the next family in line when you have a sudden opening. You keep the original deposit from the first family, and you also make the full tuition from the new family that takes their place.

How much should you charge for camps?

Like so many other topics this will all come down to your individual area and demographics. Research your area and compare summer camps of all kinds, not just dance camps. If parents are willing to pay “x” amount for a science or sports camp, they should be willing to pay the same “x” amount for your camps. That being said, don’t cut yourself short. If you have faith in your quality of service and the quality of the camp, charge what it’s worth. Find the median price of camps in your area and charge appropriately.

In our area summer camps that run M-F from 9am-3pm like ours can range anywhere from $250 up to $450 per week or more. Child care is expensive and parents are willing to pay it in the summer. We charge $330 for one week of camp and require a 50% non-refundable deposit at sign up. We cap our registrations at 17 campers per week and run 3 weeks in July. Regardless of area though I do not see how you charge less than $250 for a week for a full day camp. If you break down the hours (30) you are charging less than $10/hr for care. Good luck finding a babysitter at that price, let alone a reliable one!

Want a full summer camp plan and curriculum?

We are planning to sell our summer camp plans soon. We’ll layout every hour of the day for you along with ideas for activities, songs, staffing, themes, snacks, and everything else you need to run a smooth camp. REGISTER TODAY and be among the first to get access. Registration is free and it will give you access to all our resources. We will email everyone when it’s ready.

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