Whether you’re just beginning your journey to offering a sports camp or clinic to your community or you’re a well-seasoned veteran, the steps you need to take for success can become muddled, confusing and sometimes a bit daunting. You’ve secured a location, chosen what sport you will focus on, gotten your license and bought all the food and drink you need to keep participants fed and hydrated, but there’s so much more involved when it comes to putting your program on the path to victory. Check out our five helpful tips for running a successful sports camp or clinic that are sure to help you score big.
1. Make Registration Easy
Registering participants for sports camps or clinics needs to be as smooth and as simple as possible for parents. It’s likely guardians are just as on-the-go and active as the participants, and offering them a streamlined online registration process that they can complete from any smart devices will make filling your sports camp a home run.
By utilizing a fully integrated online registration platform, you’re offering parents peace of mind and freedom to focus on the myriad of other things that come with raising kids—and the easier you make the registration process, the more likely parents are to register their kids and tell their friends.
2. Create and Implement Liability Waivers and Forms
When it comes to running a sports camp or clinic, liability waivers and forms are necessary. Not just to ensure you ‘ve covered your program from all angles but to gather important information and data about your participants as well. Need to know what your participants may be allergic to or if they have any medical information that needs to be considered for your camp or clinic? Include it in your forms for parents to fill out when registering their children. Need to have some liability waivers signed before your sports camp or clinic begin? Add it to the registration process. It’s that easy! And the best part? If you’re using the right camp management software, you can have it all in one place—both the creation of the forms (templates, too)! and the completed forms from parents.
3. Include a Local Sports Celebrity or Role Model
If it’s within your budget, consider featuring a local sports celebrity or role model at your sports camp or clinic. This will help boost your camp’s or clinic’s presence because they can share information about the program on their social media channels for all their followers to see and get excited about. Reach out to a professional athlete in your area or even a high school or collegiate player from your city that can speak at your camp or clinic and give participants tips and tricks for becoming better at their sport.
4. Sell Merchandise
One of the best ways to gain an additional revenue is to sell merchandise specific to your sports camp or clinic. From apparel to gear, you can have everything participants need and even include the ability to shop your merchandise during registration, making it even easier for parents to do everything they need to quickly, efficiently and hassle-free.
Not all management software is created equal, but having one that also includes the capability to update merchandise quantities after purchase and keeps track of your most sold-out products and remaining inventory is a plus. That way you can easily determine which merchandise needs to be reduced or increased—cutting tedious administrative work and giving you more time to focus on making sure your sports camp or clinic is ready for game time.
5. Advertise
Even though you might post about your sports camp or clinic on your organization’s social channels, that doesn’t mean everyone who could be interested in what you have to offer is aware. The best way to get the word out is by advertising across the social channels your organization uses regularly, like on Facebook and Instagram, by sending out emails to highly segmented lists—that is, if you have an email list of prospects already.
You might also want to consider reaching out to schools in your area to see if you can place an advertisement in their newsletters (physical or email), as well as placing an advertisement in your local newspaper.
ACTIVE Makes Running a Sports Camp or Clinic a Breeze
Running a sports camp or clinic has never been easier when you have ACTIVE Network in your corner. Camp & Class Manager has everything you need to go for the gold and build a community of champions with streamlined online registration, easy-to-use marketing and communication tools, flexible reporting and online tracking, and the ability to sell merchandise all within one amazing solution. Connect with us today to see how Camp & Class Manager can set your sports camp or clinic up for success!
