Blog

Facebook Repeals its Text in Ads Restrictions

This month, Facebook officially removed its 20% text rule in advertising. If you’ve ever wanted to promote a graphic with details and information, this is pretty big news. For years, Facebook penalized advertisers for publishing ads that consisted of more than 20% text, meaning an ad image could not be more than 1/5th text. If text took up more than 20% of the ad image, Facebook would not allow it to run. But now, that rule is dead. What does...

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You’ve Cancelled Summer Camp – Now What?

You have been forced to cancel summer camp because of the coronavirus and all of the uncertainties that come with it. You are probably asking yourself what your next steps should be. Now is more important than ever to make a calendar for announcements a month in advance. You can create the calendar two months in advance if you know when you have virtual event dates, fundraising updates, or announcements. You will have fewer photos to choose from for content, so...

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Changes Are Coming to Facebook’s Mobile Ads

In just a few weeks Facebook is changing the text and aspect ratios for ads on its Mobile News Feed. The updates roll out on August 19, 2019, and aim to “match the look and feel of the new Facebook design introduced earlier this year.” This may seem like just another of the hundreds of updates Facebook rolls out annually, but these changes are important for online advertisers to understand and embrace. There are a few key changes to the...

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As Snapchat’s Losses Continue to Climb, Instagram’s Stories Soar

Last November, Instagram launched Stories, a feature that closely resembled the photo and video sharing application Snapchat. Since then, Snapchat has experienced a decline in daily users and engagement. This has led many to believe that the relatively new Instagram feature encouraged users to stay on the application instead of using Snapchat for their temporary video and photo postings. What might have caused this shift from Snapchat to Instagram Stories? First, Instagram users are much easier to locate than Snapchat users. If...

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Heading Into Summer: What’s New at Summer Camps in 2017

The weather is warming up, school is letting out and you can just feel that summer is in the air! This year the American Camp Association reports that more than 14 million children will attend camp in the U.S. at one of the more than 14,000 day and resident camps. While many things about the unique summer camp industry remain the same, there are a few interesting changes this summer. Camp tuition prices are rising, making the potential customer base for...

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Ads are Coming to Facebook Live

Does your camp love Facebook Live? I have seen some amazing use cases where camps are using Facebook Live to introduce staff, give a virtual tour of camp or just chat with prospective and current camp families. We've enjoyed great live video now, but ads are coming to this fantastic Facebook product. According to USA Today: "The company Thursday announced new initiatives to put more TV commercial-style ad breaks in live videos, and will begin testing ad breaks in traditional News Feed...

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Facebook Live Video for Summer Camps

Recently Facebook launched a live video platform. This platform is similar to periscope in that you can broadcast at any time you want directly from your Facebook page. Since this is a new tool for Facebook, they have been giving a lot of distribution (and even a notification) to brands that are using the live video option. If you are headed up to camp or have some exciting summer camp news to share, I definitely recommend trying out this awesome tool!...

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Updates to Facebook Lead Form Ad

Facebook Lead Form Ads have been an incredible marketing solution for summer camps and this past week Facebook made some really useful changes. These changes should help make these ads even more powerful. According to Facebook you can now:  Save time with duplicate forms "In order to save time and effort, advertisers can now duplicate lead ad forms and edit specific fields across ad sets and campaigns. For example, if an advertiser is running a global lead ad campaign that requires specific...

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Signing Up New Campers: A Social Summer Camp Case Study

Our number one focus at Social Summer Camp is helping our customers sign up new campers. Today I am so excited to present some anonymous results from one of our clients. All of their leads came directly from Facebook Ads and Google AdWords. This camp was able to sign up 9 families at a cost per customer of just over $1,000. These are fantastic results for camps, who have a lifetime value of MUCH larger than $1,000 a camper. If you aren't...

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