6 Campground Marketing Tips From Operators Who Are Filling Sites

For most campground operators, marketing tends to stay in that third spot on the priority list. Something more urgent always seems to crop up, whether that be a maintenance issue, a staffing gap, or a peak weekend bearing down. Marketing is what you get to when everything else is under control.

The problem is that everything else is never fully under control, so marketing keeps getting pushed…and bookings stay lower than they should be. 

In a recent Campspot webinar, Matt Whitermore of Unhitched and Climb Capital and Grethel Kauss from TRG Living dove into how campground operators can change that and bring your marketing strategy up to speed. Let’s get into it.

First, Don’t Turn on the Faucet Too Soon

Before anything else, Matt echoed the common concern that comes with pumping up your marketing.

“There’s a lot of apprehension, as there should be, about marketing,” he said, “because you turn on that marketing faucet too soon, you might get bad reviews, and then all bets are off. A steady stream of bad reviews is going to be a killer for an operation.”

This is the right order of operations: get your guest experience dialed in first. Make sure your campground staff is trained, your sites are clean, your communication is responsive, and your booking process is smooth. Then market.

You only get one chance to make a first impression, and in the age of Google reviews and TripAdvisor, a bad first impression gets documented publicly.

When you are ready, here’s where to focus.

Social Media: It’s About Community, Not Just Content

As always, engagement is the name of the game. Grethel put it this way: 

Social media algorithms reward engagement. More importantly, responding to comments and actually talking to people builds the kind of community feel that’s central to the camping experience itself. Your social presence should feel like an extension of the hospitality you offer on-site.

On TikTok specifically, Grethel’s advice was to lean into the on-site experience. “If you have a guest that’s in your campground and they wanna know what amenities you have, make a short little video about your bath houses,” she said. “If you have reliable WiFi, make sure you make a video about that. And if you have a rustic campground, lean into that…make a video about the rustic feel and how close you are to the woods.”

Matt added a practical note on production: you don’t need a videographer or expensive equipment. Authentic videos made with your phone can go a long way, as long as you build it into the daily routine: grab a cool video, post it, engage.

He also flagged something often overlooked. “You can do as much damage on social media (in a good way) through your engagement with local businesses and your followers as you can through actual posting.” 

Partner with local restaurants, shops, and attractions for giveaways and cross-promotion as a low-cost, high-reach tactic.

Don’t Ignore OTAs

Both Matt and Grethel mentioned that many parks are too dependent on one or two booking channels. Grethel specifically called out the opportunity to open the door to OTAs, like VRBO, Booking.com, and Campspot Marketplace.

Be findable wherever your guests are looking. Different traveler segments use different platforms; don’t lose out on a guest who would have booked with you, but never did because you weren’t on the platform they searched on.

Connect Marketing to Your Revenue Data

This is where most parks have a huge opportunity. Matt described his approach: 

“The big unlock is—once you get marketing dialed in—connecting that marketing automation and intelligence into your revenue management, and vice versa. You’re tracking your booking windows, your RevPAS, your ADR, your occupancy—and you’ve got all these different levers you can pull.”

For example, if you’re inside a two-week booking window and occupancy is looking thin, that’s the moment to trigger a campaign—a targeted email blast, promo code, or social push. Campspot’s reporting gives you the data to know when that moment is coming. The question is whether your marketing operation is set up to respond to it.

Watch the full conversation now: Good Parks vs. Great Parks

Use AI to Work Smarter

Grethel mentioned she’s using AI tools to build content calendars, analyze what marketing techniques are working across platforms, and create automations that scale her team’s output.

This is increasingly accessible for operators of any size. AI can help you draft social captions, write email subject line variations, summarize guest review themes, and map out a content calendar in a fraction of the time it used to take. 

To be clear, it won’t replace the authentic, on-property content that performs best, but it can dramatically reduce the administrative burden of staying consistent. 

Reputation Management Is Marketing Too

Grethel made a point that doesn’t always get categorized as marketing but absolutely should. 

Reviews influence booking decisions more than almost any ad you’ll run. Ask for them, create the conditions for them, and respond to them publicly in ways that signal to future guests that management is engaged and accountable.

A post-stay email with a simple review request, sent at the right moment (Campspot can automate this), is one of the most reliable ways to build review volume consistently over time.

Where to Start

Marketing has a lot of moving parts, and no park is going to tackle all of it at once. The good news is you don’t have to. Start with the thing that’s most broken. If you’re not responding to inquiries fast enough, fix that first. If your social presence is nonexistent, pick one platform and be consistent. If you’ve never sent a post-stay email, set one up this week.

The operators who are winning at marketing layered it over time—getting the story clear, then the channels, then the automation—until it started working together.

As Matt put it, “You gotta know your niche. You gotta own it.” Start with that as your foundation, and then amplify.

Want to hear Matt and Gretel go deeper on what’s working in campground marketing right now? Watch the full webinar replay.