Steps to Jump Starting Your Brand Marketing

1. Gather your data: What do your campers' evaluations say about the camp store?

2. Re-examine your inventory: How attractive is your logo, and does it communicate your niche, what merchandise sold and what didn’t, how attractive are the colors, what sizes sold out first, can you track the ages of who bought what?

3. Surf the Web to look at other on-line camp stores: What kinds merchandise are being promoted. What is on clearance. What is sold out?

4. Contact your vendors to ask what is new in camp merchandise and ask what they can do for you that can help you promote your brand. Tell them you are ready for a camp store makeover and ask them what they would recommend based on what they have sold to the most profitable camp stores.

5. Infuse your mailings with camp store promotions: Registrations, confirmations, holiday suggestions. Using postcards to promote traffic to your camp Web site and online camp store can yield great dividends.

6. Location, location, location: How many times will campers, staff and parents walk by your camp store? Maybe there is a better location that will encourage more customer traffic.

7. Are your staff members also customers? Offer staff discounts and solicit their opinions about what they want to buy.