Book Notes: The Referral Engine - Chapter 1

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting my notes from The Referral Engine by John Jantsch.  It’s a great book for camp professionals.  We all hope that our camper families and alumni speak about the importance of summer camp. 

The question though is presented in the first chapter, “The Realities of Referrals.”

Jantsch writes "This is somewhat puzzling. How can a business owner know that word of mouth is so powerful and then do so little to take advantage of it?" (11) 

Whenever you ask camp professionals, they all say their biggest marketing tool is their word of mouth.  It’s a simple concept: provide a great camp experience and your campers will bring their friends next summer.  How many camps though help and encourage families to send them new campers? How many use alumni, the people who are most passionate about their camp, recruit children to get the same experience? How many directors tell parents what to look for when picking a summer camp?  How many camps use their campers and parents words to promote what they are doing?

Comments

[John Jantsch]

Hey Dan, love that you are applying this to a specific industry - should be fun to read the entire series.