Cross Promoting Your Park

In a previous post I wrote about adding value to your membership through giving member rates to other park's members to gain special rates for your members.  In a similar manner you can work with other business and entities to promote and add value to your park's programs.  Working out relationships with the YMCA, Boys and Girls' Club, Rec Departments and similar businesses can help create needed hype, PR, and entrances.  In developing relationships and programs specifically targeting these types of teen and pre-teen groups you can get a good, monitored group of kids into the park for a session and hopefully generate the type of experience that will make these kids want to keep coming back.  Fostering relationships like these with religious groups, boy scouts, or whomever is another important way that you can promote you park, and help other groups provide activities for their kids.  In reality all they need are your waiver forms, pricing, a list of "good to have" items, and times of your sessions.  They will provide the van, a staff person, and the kids.  Producing a package to meet the needs of the administration of Parks departments and other groups can make many of these events happen for you.  Everyone wants an easy sell to the kids and by finding out what the group needs to be successful, you can establish these cross-promoting type of events.  I call these cross-promoting events because the parks departments and youth groups want to look good to parents and teens.  So they need to promote programs that are safe, organized, clean, and fun.  In doing this they get more business and you get more business.  For religious groups you can even schedule after hour events where they can listen to the music they want, without bothering your other customers.  By catering special rates for return groups like this, events can be a constant flow of money.  In many of these types of events, non-skaters come as well and they usually buy food and drinks and pay into the "group price" just like everyone else.  Put in the time to produce flyers and mailers to address these groups and you'll find that it pays off after just a few groups get going.
     In a similar way you can cross promote your park with other groups at outside venues.  Many times events are looking for entertainment.  By putting together a skate/bike team, some portable ramps, and an "event" program, you can promote your park and get paid to do so.  Events like trade shows, sports expos, concerts and the like are areas that would enjoy having the entertainment and often pay for your efforts.  At the event you promote your park, give away some cheap t shirts, stickers, raffle some old inventory (tax advantage-expense).  Your skate/demo team will love showing off for the crowd.  When we did events like this for RCSP we even had an old beater of a car that we destroyed then brought to the junk yard for recycling cash.  These sort of events are time consuming, but fun to put on and create a big buzz for your park.
     Lastly you can promote your park at area skateshops.  Put together good looking and easy to manage flyers and promotional material and go to area shops and see if they won't post them up for you.  Often these parks have a table where you can put stuff like this.  By developing relationships with local skateshops, you can cross-promote with them.  In the end, while you may compete with them for your shop sales, their clientele is often very loyal, and you don't really hurt their sales.  Develop cross-promotions with them.  Get them to sponsor an event like a best of the shop rider comp, or have them sponsor some pro tour at the park with an autograph signing at their shop after.  These events can benefit you both and in the end you are both serving the same market.  What these promotions do is make you look like you are "pro skating/biking/inline" rather than a money-grubbing isolationist. Good PR is worth the money!
     You are in a business with a fickle audience.  The appearance of "in-it-for-the-money" can really hurt your business with a large portion of the skating/biking crowd.  By working with groups to help them provide services at your park you win a double victory for your business.  Not only are you generating income, but you are also promoting your park.  This promotion is building good-will in the community.  Other shops send you business, you send them business.  This may sound very socialist, but I believe you need to be seen as a force for skating and biking in your community.  You only get to be perceived as that when you are promoting for the good of the sport, and in ways that make sense to everyone involved.  By making it easy for others to promote themselves, you score valuable PR and promote yourself.

Membership Checking System

If you don't have a system for checking members into your park, then you need one.  You could take a look out at the park any day of the week and see how many people are there, but could you tell were they are coming from, whether there are up to date addresses and emergency forms on file, when their birthday is?  There are many things that your membership program can do for you including most recent visits, how often patrons visit, and linked to point of sale (pos) programs can tell your their buying patterns.  Looking into this info every quarter could really help you understand where you need to improve your marketing, outreach, or services.  Using this data is what Google and Walmart do very well.  On a smaller scale you can personalize sales to match patterns you find in the data, you can add birthday notes, send renewal membership notices, or other customizable promotions.  In many of these membership tracking programs you can have debit accounts for the kids so parents can load money onto their account for food.  You can customize them to make reporting easier so your understanding of what your patrons do helps you serve them better and in turn, make better buying decisions and sales decisions.  If every person who came to your park had info entered into your program, you would have a large pool of information and potential to work off of for your business.  Setting up the system is a lot of work, but much of it can be done by the people working the front desk or other areas of the park that don't have busy daily routines or those that have down time.  By steadily increasing what you know about your patrons, you can better serve their needs and increase what you understand about their buying, and visiting the park habits.  This way when a non-member comes in and you get their name into the computer, you could then have a conversation about how many times they have come and how buying a membership is a good thing for them.  While all this might sound daunting, taking small steps will get you a long way quickly.