So now you’ve profiled the right size, type and value of campsite for sale to fulfil your earning expectations –
…next is to plan it’s presentation to paying guests.
Estimating Online Market Size
Much like with our earnings estimation exercise, we start with the big picture and work backwards.
In other words, we reverse engineer our final figure.
Before trying to work out a realistic share of the market, you start by estimating the entire market size.
And let’s face it, the internet is the no. 1 method for potential guests across the country doing their research.
But the question is: “How many people exactly are potentially looking for your campsite?”
Here’s a quick formula for how you get to that figure…
1. Understand how people search (use Google):
People use Google to perform research.
To obtain information which helps make decision.
Making an informed decision for a campsite booking could make:
(a) all the difference to the enjoyment of the experience, plus;
(b) could assist the customer in getting best value on the deal.
Research isn’t a one-off occasion either…here’s an example holiday booking customer journey illustrated by Google:
In the example above, the holiday guest ‘Kendra’ actioned over 700 ‘digital touchpoints’ (inc. searches, web visits, video views and clicks) within 5 months of online research before booking here holiday.
Amongst those 700 digital touchpoints were 52 Google searches.
Google Maps was the #1 most visited web app, followed by providers, Google Search and OTA (online travel agencies).
Also, a shortlist of up to 8 accommodation options were considered.
From this, you can take away the following ‘must-haves’ for marketing your campsite online:
- Invest in a decent brand and website
- Optimise your website for appearing prominently in Google Search
- Populate your campsite business website with content that sells your value proposition
- Make sure you can be easily found using Google Maps
- Register some availability with OTAs like https://campsites.co.uk
- Partner with other holiday providers in the area for referral web traffic
- Land some PR spots in relevant Lifestyle publications
- Maintain visible social media profiles
2. Choose your county, narrow down & get an estimate
The first criteria prospective guests will use when searching for a campsite is location.
If they are new to camping in your region, they might begin with a broad search like:
‘Campsite in Devon’
Such a search phrase in the online marketing industry is termed a ‘keyword’ – key or important as it were to your target audience searcher.
Using a software tool like ahref’s Free Keyword generator you can get an estimate for the number of people typing that phrase into Google on a monthly basis.
Being located, for example, in Brixham (Devon) your larger catchment area would be Devon.
Typing “campsite in devon” into the ahrefs Keyword Generator Tool, we get the following average monthly Google Search estimate:
Not only does the tool give us an estimate for the main keyword itself, but also related keywords such as:
“campsite in devon with swimming pool”
…which attracts some 70 searchers (or potential customers if that description applies to your campsite).
Beyond this, (in the example of your campsite in Brixham, Devon), you’ll no doubt want your campsite website also to show for search terms or keywords like:
Typing this into the tool, we can see a significant amount of monthly searches for:
“campsites in brixham”
In fact this search term attracts 250 monthly visitors (potential customers) per month, on average. This is half of the overall searches for the whole of Devon county.
3. Modify your search
Searchers with savvy are very specific with what they type into Google.
Their subject knowledge leads them to demand of Google a more precise set of results.
Not only this, but the more specific the search typed in typically suggests a potential searcher who is closer to making a buying or booking decision.
Let’s take the example of a husband and father looking to make a campsite booking for his family.
He and his wife know Devon is their chosen county, but as yet are not set on exactly where.
The take to Google to research, beginning with ‘campsites in Devon’.
They view the first few results on Google and examine what’s on offer.
Problem is, he find all sorts of campsites catering to all sorts of audiences.
So, he decides to narrow down…
He now types in:
“best campsites in devon for families”
He discovers a few more he didn’t know about, plus they are family-friendly
He wants to take his campervan and notices not all his shortlisted sites would accept that.
So he narrows down again, typing:
“campsites in devon for campervans”
Now, he gets results that complement search even more – giving him more viable booking options.
And finally, a plus point would be a swimming pool and in Brixham. So he types in:
“campsites in brixham with a swimming pool”
(This is an example digital journey experienced by a potential customer and the related Google search terms used to support their decision.)
Your job is to consider ALL the permutations searched for and to optimize your website for appearing prominently.
4. Use content marketing for lead generation
All the above now leaves you with the task of maximising the visibility of your campsite online.
This will lead to a sustainable market share.
So, having researched the search terms your target market are actively typing in every day – you can now target those Google results pages with CONTENT.
This is known as content marketing.
As defined by Content Marketing Institute:
“Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
In other words, feeding your target market’s hunger for research and assisting them to make a buying decision (ultimately profiting from the outcome yourself).
The modern day version of signposting what you do and benefiting from the commercial traffic.
And with content marketing, you should always use your website as the primary vehicle for content.
Why?
This gives you much more control and ownership over the content produced.
Ultimately, content is more profitable in your own website than in someone else’s.
Continuing with the example of your campsite in Brixham, Devon…
…your prospective customer, the husband and father used the following keywords in his Google research:
“best campsites in devon for families”
“campsites in devon for campervans”
“campsites in brixham with a swimming pool”
Assuming your campsite in Brixham ticked all those boxes – you’d definitely want to show up on the Google Search page for all those searches.
This maximises your incoming website visitors, potential books and earnings.
Next, you need to decide what type of content is required for best results.
The answer here lies in the purpose.
The purpose of all content marketing is to help the researcher make a buying decision.
This context, therefore, dictates the nature of the content.
Here’s how:
Our potential customer, the husband and father looking to book a holiday for his family is researching.
But with the intention of eventually making a booking.
His goal has a value (a happy holiday for his family), therefore he’s willing to spend the time and effort to do his research for the best outcome.
However, there is a limit to his patience. Life is busy and booking a holiday is not the most pressing priority.
In fact, a holiday is an expense – albeit a worthwhile one if you get it right.
His risks are:
- missing better campsites than the one he booked
- paying more than he should have
- failing to maximise all the potential value that he could have i.e. amenities and activities
- scrapping the preferred camping idea for another holiday type
- not booking at all
So during his research via Google he has certain questions that he want direct answers to for building up his knowledge on what’s available.
This will lead him to make a confident decision.
And the sooner, the better. A holiday booking is a time-sensitive purchase. Every minute counts in the lead up.
Framed by the potential customer’s need for:
- answers to questions
- time efficiency
You would do best to produce content that:
- gets straight to the point of competently answering potential customers’ questions
- delivers the answers in the most appropriate, digestible and memorable way
Going back to your list of keywords, here are some example types of content that might hit the mark:
- best campsites in devon for families –
- Content recommendation: an expanded list of campsites as personally recommended by other families, ranked by visitors. Verified reviews would help them decide which is truly ‘best’.
- campsites in devon for campervans –
- Content recommendation: a simple shopping list style presentation with campsites that fit the bill. Perhaps with a photo gallery from campervan owners of their vans on your site, or a list of well-considered FAQs.
- campsites in brixham with a pool –
- Content recommendation: another list of relevant sites, but this time headed up with an interview from previous guests talking about what they liked most about your swimming pool facilities and experience.
Additional ideas for expanding your reach…
Would potential campers willing to visit Paignton, Totnes or Dartmouth consider visiting your Brixham site instead?
Possibly. They’re neighbouring areas and Brixham has it’s own appeal.
Why not publish lists on your website promoting reputable sites in neighbouring towns, with a twist…
…asking the question: “If you’re considering Paignton, meet some families that say Brixham is better!”
Perhaps publish 3 Q&A style interviews taken with visiting families to your campsite sharing why they would recommend Brixham and specifically, staying at your campsite.
Here’s why recommendations are vital:
Shoppers that clicked a product recommendation are nearly 2x more likely to come back to the webshop – 37% of shoppers that clicked a recommendation during their first visit returned, compared to just 19% of shoppers that didn’t click a recommendation during their first visit (clerk.io).
Visitors who interact with reviews and customer questions and answers are 105% more likely to purchase while visiting. (Bazaarvoice).
Online Competitive Analysis
To generate a share of the market online – you’ve got to be visible.
This process requires patience.
Plus, a ready supply of best practice.
And none better place to observe best practice than observing the best in the business.
This is the art of online competitive analysis.
For example, let’s say you’re looking to start a campsite in Cromer, Norfolk.
Typing ‘campsite in Cromer’ into Google Search will reveal the most prominent choices on the 1st results page.
Amongst the top 3 campsite businesses featuring on Google page 1 Manor Farm Caravan and Camping Site.
It’s the only family-run site of the lot.
The other sites are clearly owned medium sized commercial entities.
Taking a look Manor Farm as a model example, there’s a lot to learn for incorporating into your own efforts.
Using Ubersuggest online marketing analytical tool, you can quickly get an estimate of the overall search performance of a website like Manor Farm:
Above, Ubersuggest delivers a monthly estimate of naturally derived Google search traffic to be comfortably over 3,000 visits to the Manor Farm website.
Note: this monthly traffic estimate has some caveats attached – (1) this doesn’t guarantee all visits are from customers ready to book, (2) neither does it mean that this figure is generated EVERY month, (3) nor does this figure include visits from people who come to the website WITHOUT searching via Google i.e. regulars…
This number does provide a ballpark expected figure however for the type of search traffic the Manor Farm website attracts via Google Search alone.
Nice to know…
…but the next obvious question would be:
“What are people typing into Google to find Manor Farm over 3,000 times a month?!”
Here’s where Ubersuggest increases in value by providing the 1st clue to the mystery of Manor Farm search traffic:
The above table gives a small insight into the Manor Farm website pages the generate the highest number of visitors from Google Search.
The top 5 are:
- The home page
- Useful links page
- A blog article covering the Cromer Carnival 2022
- The general prices page
- A landing page promoting campsite prices in a local area called Mundesley
And now to pinpoint the keywords or search terms that relate to all that traffic:
Looking through the list the majority keywords used by searchers to find Manor Farm via Google are what we call ‘branded keywords’.
In other words, keywords that are centred around the name of the business.
Therefore, these searchers are already familiar with the campsite and are using Google as a shortcut to the relevant related information.
That said, not all the main keywords are like this.
Among the list above we also find 2 keywords (one of which grosses 4,400 searches per month) that are not Manor Farm related.
‘camping east runton’
‘camping cromer’
Also, referring to the table above which displayed the top pages by Google traffic one of the pages on there gives note to another popular keyword that Manor Farm must be visible for not included in the table above.
Going by the page URL destination…
‘manorfarmcampsite.co.uk/prices/mundesley/’
…the keyword that relates to the traffic attracted by this page would be something like:
‘prices for campsites in Mundesley’
Checking Google we see the following:
Manor Farm campsite is right there amongst the top results on the 1st page of search results.
So, what do we learn from this exercise using Ubersuggest analytical software?
Two main lessons:
(1) Developing a reputable business that becomes synonymous with camping amongst your target audience is your no.1 marketing ploy.
(2) Choosing some well thought-out local camping related phrases that might be popular among your target audience will help you obtain greater market share.
Now, that’s Google Search covered.
But are there any other website traffic sources that we should be aware of that reputable sites like Manor Farm benefit from?
Using Ahrefs backlink analytical software we are able to identify major web traffic referral sources to the Manor Farm website.
Below, revealed by Ahrefs backlink analytical software that are responsible for referring a steady flow of incoming visitors to the Manor Farm website (potential guests simply click through from the referring site & reach Manor Farm site):
#1 The Guardian Online – 965 web site visits referred every month
(*The referring page is an article entitled, “10 of the best UK campsites: reader’s travel tips”)
#2 The Standard Online 66 web site visits referred every month & The Little Beach Bell Company 412 web site visits referred every month
(*The Standard Online referring page is an article entitled, “Staycation: Complete guide to booking a campervan holiday in the UK this summer.” The other site is a tent hire website homepage which carries a link to the Manor Farm site.)
#3 Flashpacking Family 2245 web site visits referred every month
(*This referring page belongs to a blog called Flash Packing Family and takes the form of a post called, “55+ Stunning UK Coastal Campsites You Don’t Want To Miss”.)
#4 Experience Norfolk 72 web site visits referred every month
(*The referring page on the Experience Norfolk website is a business directory entry.)
Together, these 5 articles posted on other websites produce *3,348 website visits from potential new guests EVERY month (*average).
That’s 40,176 website visitors per year.
An equivalent number of web visits the business gets from Google.
Granted, the Google traffic will be more targeted (in other words by nature more likely to be people looking for a campsite in that locality) and therefore will convert more custom.
But of the 40K website visitors generated from these other sites, it’s likely that Manor Farm experience a fair amount of business – if not free nationwide PR & brand awareness.
A decent edge gained over the competition.
Campsite bookings
Your campsite is like an empty cup.
Fill it – and you’ll enjoy the results.
Leave it empty and it becomes a taunt on a hot day when your thirst arises.
Bookings generally will fall into 1 of 2 categories:
- New Bookings (from guests who have never stayed with you before)
- Repeat Bookings (from guests who have already stayed with you before)
New bookings present the potential for making new revenue streams and attracting repeat future custom.
Repeat bookings present maximum profitability, or recurring money from regulars who require no new effort to convert.
Both have their perks.
Making bookings
Bookings are made remotely, in advance.
Quite different to walk ins with a shop, let’s say.
The channels by which books are made will differ from site to site.
But for the purpose of your campsite business, the typical choices (but by no means exhaustive) are:
- phone
- website
- 3rd party platform
In all of the above cases, there is an intermediary suite of software and hardware that not only facilitates the communication, but also handles the financial transaction.
- Payments taken over the phone require:
- phone & virtual terminal
- Payments taken via a website require:
- eCommerce engine & payment gateway provider
- Payments taken via 3rd party platform:
- registered web account with the platform provider
Each methods has its pros and cons, but ultimately the customer’s preference or convenience rules.
The more flexibility you can offer in relation to booking, the odds are that you’ll score more bookings.
However, from a profitability point of view the direct and hand’s off methods are the least costly.
This brings your ‘direct cost of sales’ down (more on this later on in the profit & loss subsection of the Financial Plan chapter).
To see how this might look like in the light of a head-to-head cost comparison, take a look at the example costs below:
[A] Phone booking costs using Sum up virtual terminal:
Virtual terminal transaction fee:
- 2.95% + 25p
Cost of your time to take a 5 minute booking call:
- If you converted 1 in 3 calling prospective customers into new bookings, it would take you on average 15 minutes to score a new booking by phone.
- Your time costed in at £12 per hour (let’s say) – each booking made by you over the phone would also carry £3.00 direct labour cost.
- If the booking value was £175.00 for 7 nights using an electric pitch (like it is on the Manor Farm website), overall cost of the telephone booking would be:
Total direct cost of phone booking:
= ((£175.00 x 0.0295) + £0.25) + £3.00
= *£8.41 direct cost per phone booking
(* the cost of the phone call or proportional landline hire cost is not added as this is considered a standard business overhead regardless of taking phone bookings.)
[B] Internet booking costs using Stripe and Woocommerce:
Stripe transaction fees:
- 1.4% +20p
Total direct cost of website booking:
= ((£175.00 x 0.014) + £0.20)
= *£2.65 direct cost per website booking
(* the cost of the website hosting or maintenance cost is not added as this is considered a standard business overhead regardless of taking website bookings. Plus, if bookings made by EU or foreign nationals via international payment cards, the higher transactional percentage of 2.9% applies.)
[C] 3rd party / online travel agency (OTA) booking e.g. www.campsites.co.uk:
Sales commission fee:
10% + VAT
Total direct cost of OTA platform booking:
= ((£175.00 x 0.10) x 1.20)
= £21.00
On the face of it, the website bookings channel seems to be the most profitable.
Caveat
Whilst the comparison above does take into account channel fees, what it doesn’t add in are the costs of generating traffic to stimulate the booking.
For example:
Repeat booking from existing customer
(a) if a telephone booking was performed by a repeat customer arranging their ‘usual’ pitch with you – then there is no direct cost involved in an existing customer picking up the phone to call you….
The cost is £8.41.
New booking from a new customer clicking a Google Paid Ad
(b) if a website booking was performed by a 1st time customer who found you via a Google Advert (rather than the natural or organic Google search listings) at the cost per click of £0.80 per click and a booking conversion rate of 10% i.e. 1 in 10 clicks resulting in a booking…
The cost is £2.65 + 8.00 = £10.65.
Now, website bookings would appear quite expensive by comparison.
*Note: there 2 ways that businesses like yours can generate traffic via Google search.
(1) Organic search: pages that naturally appear on the 1st page of Google search results for relevant search terms simply because Google have evaluated your page to be great value to searchers. The cost is zero – it’s completely FREE.
(2) Paid search: adverts that are strategically placed ‘around’ the naturally occurring Google page 1 search results related to relevant search terms. These cost of these adverts is variable and sold via auction – charged per click. i.e. once bidded for and won, Google will place your ad on the relevant search page and charge your payment card each time a searcher clicks your ad to visit your website. In a word, PAID (traffic).
Other points to add on bookings
Online travel agencies (OTA) are expensive per sale.
At £21.00 commission (per booking of £175.00) compared with £2.65 via your own website’s natural/organic Google rankings is a HUGE gulf.
However, volume is also to be weighed up.
Here’s what I mean – let’s take a look at www.campsites.co.uk website traffic figures:
This OTA (www.campsites.co.uk) attracts over 4.5million visitors via the natural or organic Google search rankings EVERY month.
It achieves such amazing results by a 2 part combination strategy:
Firstly, it published more pages on campsites in the UK than any other website out there (and so it should with a name like Campsites.co.uk):
Sheer volume of pages publishing UK campsites
Running a quick ‘site command’ in Google for www.campsites.co.uk – the search engine tells us that there are over 30,000 published pages in that website.
Comparing that to a single campsite like Manor Farm:
Even rounding up the Manor Farm Campsite web page count to 100 pages, we find the OTA (online travel agency) www.campsites.co.uk to have over 300 times the pages in Google search.
Couple that with a well organised navigational structure and good value information and services on the pages & Google’s natural ranking evaluation has greatly favoured the OTA website in it’s rankings.
Here are just some of (…but the highest grossing…) keyword search terms that www.campsites.co.uk appears top of on Google page 1:
This list of keyword searches are the very best in the industry.
At the top of the tree each keyword generates as much as 450,000 Google searches every month.
If each keyword represent a single page of the website – and the website has over 30,000 pages – you can quickly see how their 4.5million search visits a month is generated.
(Sheer volume and simple maths.)
But well targeted, precisely effected and backed by a 3rd party booking model a high cash generative business with very low overheads.
Suffice to say, www.campsites.co.uk have gathered together by far – the LARGEST share of the UK campsite market via their website.
Now returning to our Manor Farm Campsite example, if a potential customer types…
‘campsites in Norfolk’ into Google
Here’s what they receive:
Right at the top, is www.campsites.co.uk – out in the clear and ahead of the rest of the marketplace, by miles.
Using Ahref’s Keyword Planner Tool, we can examine the potential number of visitors that the keyword, “campsites in norfolk” generates:
That’s 1,500 potential campsite guests using that search term EVERY month (on average).
PLUS, there are the numerous variations on the theme like, “campsites in norfolk broads” for example which wade in with a healthy contribution.
All in, it’s safe to assume something in the region of about 5,000+ search visits for Norfolk related camping search terms per month that are up to compete for.
And www.campsites.co.uk (by ranking position on Google) will get the lion’s share of that.
As for Manor Farm’s ranking on Google for the search term “campsites in norfolk” – they are found (or rather, not found by potential customers) at the bottom of the 4th page of Google search results:
Safe to say – Manor Farm Campsite will generate 0 search visits from this specific (…yet high volume…) search term.
That said, for Manor Farm Campsite this is perhaps their most profitable keyword by monthly search volume.
With a conversion rate of say 2% of all visits to this keyword converting into a booking that’s a potential 30 visits per month they are missing out on from the primary keyword “campsites in norfolk” alone…
…let alone all the variations too.
Granted, from our earlier analysis we concluded that Manor Farm Campsite generates a combined:
~6,000 search and referral traffic visitors every month (*not accounting for guests who directly visit the website WITHOUT search or referral aka ‘regulars’.)
Altogether with ‘regulars’, Manor Farm Campsite might convert some 300 bookings per month.
With about 150 serviced pitches and an unknown number of unserviced pitches – you can see that they still have booking capacity to receive more.
Their options for instantly generating more bookings to fill up unoccupied pitches are few…
Either:
(1) Advertise – ideally, via Google
(2) Tap into the already established market share of an OTA like, www.campsites.co.uk
The Google ads route…
…charges money upfront BEFORE you secure bookings. Plus, you’ve got the hassle of linking your debit or credit card, setting up the system, placing your bids, drafting your advert, designing a landing page, monitoring performance etc.
The OTA…
…takes their fee by commission AFTER you secure bookings. They take care of ALL the marketing and bookings and pay you the customer’s money (minus commission).
Most campsite businesses take the lower risk OTA route – seeing their 10% + VAT per booking as a measly sum for taking away all the trouble of the DIY route.
But then again, why do you have to choose ‘either’ / ‘or’?
Many adopt both – and actually spread there risk.
Plus, there are some unexpected benefits.
Direct bookings – The Billboard Effect
If you sign up to an OTA like www.campsites.co.uk there is an unexpected benefit that boosts your profitability – and evens out their overall cost.
It’s called the Billboard effect.
(Source: Cornell School of Hotel Administration, Harvard)
Coined by Chris Anderson Ph.D. – the Billboard Effect was discovered through scrupulous study of web traffic that arose from hospitality establishments that signed up to OTA services, like www.campsites.co.uk
The study concluded that hospitality vendors who registered with OTAs experienced a consistent increase non-OTA bookings via their own website as a result.
Why?
Potential guests visiting an OTA page will do their due diligence on the suggested campsites listed by returning to Google and typing in the campsite of interest.
When the potential guest searches the campsite of interest, the first result they see is the campsite’s own business website.
And given the option (…and a price incentive always helps…), many potential guests will enquire and rather book with the campsite directly (via their own website) than with the OTA.
Bookings Engine & 3rd Party Platforms
So, it’s therefore a big advantage for your campsite business (regardless of if you are leaning toward an OTA based marketing strategy or a direct bookings) to invest in a well-presented, highly converting website with booking engine integrated.
If you’re new to this, then you’ll have to factor in the cost of a professional web developer to help you.
If you’re IT proficiency is good enough, there are many cost effective solutions on the market using a variety of web builders and eCommerce platforms like, Woocommerce for WordPress, for example.
Taking the DIY route can save your hundred’s if not thousands of pounds in the long run.
However, delving into how you’d go about setting up is beyond the scope of this course.
But the important point to remember is that a highly converting campsite booking website will make you money EVEN IF you choose to go the OTA-only marketing route.
The Billboard Effect is your proof.
Sales Payments
Taking payments online requires a payment gateway account.
Payment gateways are the digital commerce payment processors that safely and reliably take customer card payments and make them available to us business users.
Companies like Paypal, Wordpay and Stripe to name a few have carved out this niche and are now synonymous with getting paid online.
You’ll need to analyse the pros and cons with each provider and once decided – sign up.
Typically, they earn their money by either up front fees, commission or a combination of both so you;’ll need to work out which will be best value for you.
Also, of course, considering the various service options and unique benefits of each provider.
Further reading: https://www.wildapricot.com/blog/online-payment-services
Synced Bookkeeping
Dampening down on your administrative overheads will be a big profit pick-up for your campsite business.
Less time making or coping records into your various systems will free up more time and effort elsewhere.
Adopting a financial bookkeeping platform that syncs well with your payment processor and booking software via simple automated routines will keep your financial diligence watertight.
Further reading: https://startups.co.uk/accounting/best-accounting-software-small-businesses/
On-boarding
As with distributing any website based system – to achieve best results with the users, you’ll need to invest in some onboarding resources.
These are the helpful ‘signposts’ that beginners use when getting to grips with a new system that help them orient their way round.
Whether:
- screen shots
- step by step tutorials
- knowledge base
- video screencasts
…these useful assists help to build confidence among your userbase.
The benefit is increase sales and profitability through are better informed audience who know how to book with confidence via your website.
Further reading: https://herothemes.com/blog/knowledge-centered-support/
Customer service
Finally, always account within your administrative overhead of taking bookings – an element of direct customer service.
Even with all the best software plugged in, you can never do away with 1-to-1 customer service.
Good customer service helps increase bookings and to retain custom.
Very profitable in it’s own right.
But doing it skilfully saves both time and money.
Further reading: https://herothemes.com/blog/build-a-customer-engagement-system/
Go To Part 9: https://smallholdingsforsale.co.uk/courses/campsite-audience-relations