Setting your year's goals and benchmarks

Now that the new year has turned, and the holiday vacation rush has come to an end you should set goals and benchmarks for the year.  With another (or just one) year behind you, it is possible to now look at the year, it's ups and downs and take that information to make plans for this year.  Make sure that you make time for yourself to do this especially if you are manning some part of the park.  If there are slow days or closed days, use these times to gather your information together, look at your receipts, and plan your year accordingly.  Here are some of the typical things you should be looking at:

Busy Times versus Slow Times - more than anecdotal information, you want to really see where your slowdowns are and where you were busy.  What patterns arise?  If the start of September is slow,  figure out why.  If summer was slow here and there, try to look for other things going on like July 4th, or lots of people going on vacation at the start of August.  If things were busy, like June or 2 weeks in March, try to see why.  Then, when you have an understanding of the year, figure out what you can do to increase slow times and monetize busy times better.

Membership, Entrance Data and Promotions- Since you have data from your computer entrance program (hopefully), you can mine this data to help you either resell memberships, or get members to come back for a visit.  If you haven't been doing this, try to set it up so you can get this data.  You can get data on members and non-members if you have a check in your system for waivers.  If you don't have this set up, do so. It could be the way to get more money out of each and every visitor to your park.  What is a membership worth?  What if you tracked it versus a non-member?  Create a non-member card (make it cheap with either a number to be keyed in or a barcode to be scanned.  This way when they come in you can quickly check that the person has a waiver on file.  It will also allow you to track their visits and if you see they are coming often, or that they have a birthday, or that they haven't been back in months (through data analysis from your membership software) you can send a note to these people whether they are members or not.  A discount entrance ticket, a "come in raffle", a note on a pro demo or what not is good advertising and cost effective.  You can even track how often these promos work so that this time next year you can stop sending stuff to skaters who have moved on.  Using member data and tracking can help you better see how often members come in and how much they spend.  You can offer discounts with a membership that allows you to see how much and how effective these programs are.  So go to your data to figure out ways to get people back in, ways to upsell them more stuff, or and create promotions that work.

Review How Your Workers Work - If you hire staff, you need to ensure you are getting the most out of them as possible.  Perform a review of expectation and areas of needs for the park that might be addressed by your hired staff.  If you have someone who is really tech savvy then they could be tapped to update your Facebook, twitter, Instagram, and website.  If you have others who are sitting around reading Thrasher while on duty, maybe a cleaning or mending project could be completed.  Filing and data entry is always needed.

Review Areas of Park - Does no one ever go on one of the ramps?  Is it used enough to warrant the space used.  Space in the skatepark is like money.  If skaters aren't using it, it is wasting money.  It may be a great thing to have a 12' tall vert ramp, but if only 5 people use it a year, that space is losing money.  Survey skaters about their favorite parts of the park, study where they skate the most and see if you can't create more spaces that help sell entrances.  Similarly if you have shop that people don't use enough it might be time to pull the plug.  The costs of keeping it open should be paid for by sales, if not, it needs to go.  Skaters are loyal to their shops so if you aren't getting market share for your shop, either you need to change what you are doing there or get out of the business.  Review of areas where money goes can help you create a lean and profitable park.  You can't afford to have a shop or a ramp that doesn't support itself.  The things need to be an attraction that draws people to your park to spend money, that is why you are in "business".

Make New Things- What is going to be your fresh addition this year?  A new type of contest?  A new ramp? A new Free day?  A new connection with the community?  Figure out new things and see how they can be rolled out and promoted.  Being new, relevant, or cutting edge can help keep people interested in your park.  One idea - DJ night - try it for a few weeks, then stop and see if it works so you either pull the plug or keep it going.

Take time to Recharge - Schedule a vacation for yourself now.  Have something to look forward to that rewards all your hard work.

Use The Holidays to Celebrate

Often times we come to the end of the year and things heat up in the skatepark.  Lots of kids coming in with the bad weather, lots of vacation times, sales and park rentals.  But make sure that with all the things going on you take the time to celebrate your people.  A holiday party is a great way of letting your workers and your people whom you feel add so much value to your park know you appreciate them, their commitment, and their efforts.  It's ok to close early one day during the holidays, many stores do.  Celebrations can be at the park if you all like to skate, they can be at a restaurant, your home,  the bowling alley, or a bar.  Depending on who your workers are, you can set the event to be the type of celebration they'd enjoy.  Make sure you get some unique gifts to give out, and something for everyone like a hoodie, special order hat, or something.  There are many ways to celebrate the season and your people so take the time to show you care.  It is ok to do your celebrations after the holidays especially if people you ask can't make it.

The holidays can also be a good time to celebrate your members.  I have written often about how to make your memberships "value added".  Having a member celebration day with lots of extras, a DJ, a raffle, some special food or other offering goes a long way to making those members feel a part of something special.  While you could be monetizing the time, spending some money to make people feel like a part of something special can go a long way to making your park work financially.  If you think about what it could mean to you, each member that talks you park up positively, whether they come down regularly or not is free advertising.  Word of mouth is a "viral" loop you need to create to get people in the door and excited about springing for the extra membership cost.  So a special holiday member party is a good way of helping create and keep the positive buzz about your park.

Happy Holidays.  I hope you can make 2015 the best one yet!

Vacation Time is GO Time

If you ever wondered why some kids only come down once a month or once a year to your park, maybe you need to wow them every time they are there.  This sounds like a lot of work, but really what I am talking about is the little things, the things that matter to a customer.  How do your people interact with the skaters and the parents?  Can they improve?  How clean is the park?  Can it be cleaner?  Fresh paint, new trash can lids, and new posters can really make a difference.  Could you spend a few hours patching things a little before the vacation holidays to make the park shine for the guests that haven't been able to come since their last school break?  Could you get your screw gun out and make a new little fun box, pull out an old rail, put in a little vert extension on the mini-ramp?  These little tweaks aren't going to put your business over the edge cost wise but they could very well be the difference in getting repeat customers.  So part of your go-plan should include tidying up for the crowds, and re-emphasizing customer service and friendliness to you staff.

As long as we are on plans for retraining your staff, a holiday membership drive could be another needed emphasis this xmas.  Every entrance should have membership details in their hands.  What sort of cheap advertising can you get them to take home?  How about a calendar of events, or a calendar of park photos, friends and associates of theirs ripping it up at your park.  Bulk orders of these bring your cost per person down, and what a great add on to that membership.  While you're at it, why not blow up some kid photos to poster size and decorate your park with them?  If you have someone on staff with a great camera, pay them to take some photos and throw the stuff together.  It is well worth the effort and the employee will really enjoy the "promotion".  With all the new people coming down with their friends from out of town, make the most of their visit to encourage them to be members, talk the park up, and come back again!  Happy Holidays.

Promote Skatepark Memberships by adding value, events!

Often we look at membership as either an exclusive way of dealing with people, such as in gym memberships, or as a price break mechanism like in grocery stores.  In the gym membership model, people are necessarily excluded because of spacing issues and the rest are roped into constant fees.  In the more often thought of structure for memberships skateparks offer discounts for members.  Like loyalty cards at the grocery store, there is one cost for members, and another cost for others.  Many of these programs offer rewards, which I have not seen offered by skateparks.  Often the memberships allows the skatepark to send mail, email or other stuff to the members (don't forget the opt out option), and this is often in keeping with other loyalty programs.  But if this is the model, then rewarding people for loyalty should also be in the making.  Tracking visits, purchases, and the like should be a routine system designed into the memberships.  Adding these tracking systems is likely part of most membership software reports and can be monitored through non-digital means with a punch card.  This would be easy enough for visits and could be duplicated with skateshop purchases and justified at the end of the month by an employee relatively quickly.  These incentives give the member a feeling of worth, identity, and "loyalty".  Future purchases might not be made at the park because of personal circumstances, but when someone gets close to a "goal", this could be a decisive issue in a purchase decision.  Similarly, a program like this allows the owner to keep memberships real, constant, and worthwhile.  This topic reflects a desire to make the most of "member services" so that the additional costs of a membership provides real value beyond just cheaper entrance rates.  Having so many benefits that you would need a brochure to list them makes a membership more valuable.

Adding events that are geared toward members really adds value to these memberships as well.  These events can be as simple as member discount day, to more elaborate as member only contests or parties.  While many of us would ask why a business would want to offer such a money losing event such as a free party at the park, I would suggest that there are more than one way to pay for these events such as exclusive product sponsorships, or the like.  None the less, think of a member party as a way of invigorating your membership, promoting membership sales, and creating a good feeling about your park.  A similar way to get members to feel like they matter to your business would be to invite them to an all member meeting.  This meeting could be a way for members to add their ideas on the business, or a way for you to see if a new pricing for memberships could work.  Those of you who read the last posting on memberships would know that if you are in business already, changing park policy could be tricky.  Calling a meeting and seeing what the members could do, or would pay for such a privilege would help in selling the idea, getting feedback, and/or testing the waters.  Don't forget that the way to most people's hearts is through their stomachs, so feed them.

Obviously there are many things that can be done with memberships that can help create good feelings with your members and their parks.  Think of ways to make your memberships special.  And as I have said always, if you have memberships, get your staff on board to selling them every visit and checking them every visit.  Show that theses are important.  Good Luck!

As a note, the spa-usa.org offers an insurance program for skateparks that involves personally insuring individual skaters.  Memberships can offer this as part of their pricing.  More on this at a later date.