Merry Christmas and Happy holidays. It is the December 2022 episode, and we're excited to have our special guest, Teresa Stoffel, who is an RV Park campground expert. She is a consultant. She's had so much experience working on and managing RV parks. She has a lot of great information about how to do a store correctly, as well. So tune in for all of that.
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We're always going to have some news that has caught our attention and we wrap it up with our awesome marketing tip. And this one's going to be about social media content strategy. So, you know, that's important. Thanks for being with us and we're looking forward to a great 2023 as well.
Here we have our website, Restrelaxroi.com. Check it out. You can download our free ultimate RV park marketing checklist. Have it, take it to with. It what you will hopefully learn and better yourself in your park and your marketing. What do we do with the M5 system? So this is where we put all these pieces together to improve it parks entire marketing operations. So we start with a reputation. We move on to resell, reach, and retarget. Those are the four areas that we primarily focus on.
You can check out our blog. And while you're checking things out, this is like you're at the grocery store. You're going to check out the Instagram and our social media. Be sure to follow us if you haven't already. We'd love to connect with you. Now we're on to the next thing.
December 2022 RV Park News
It's the Woodalls Campground Magazine, December 2022 edition. The thing that caught my attention, it's close to my heart and on one level was about the owner's perspective and Brazilian immigrants rehab in this part. Why that touches my heart, so to speak, is because my mother-in-law is an immigrant from South America. She's from Colombia.
The other thing that's going on right now that I'm interested in is the World Cup and Brazil is doing awesome at that as well. So take a look at this story. They're over in Lake Melton, Ohio, and they have a 200 site campground. And so it's just a great story about them moving in from Brazil in 2000 and having success in the campground RV park space.
Another story that caught our attention was what it takes to be an outdoor hospitality industry supplier, according to Camp Spot CEO. Camp Spots making a lot of noise in a good way in the industry, and they were awarded the supplier of the year from ARVC. Take a look at what Michael Scheinman has to say about being a supplier and being successful at it. That's the news for today.
Hats Off to Teresa Stoffel
Mark Rowan: Well, welcome to the Park Pod. In this episode, we're glad to have Teresa Stoffel. Did I get right? Yeah, we just went over it. I wanted to make sure that I didn't forget immediately. Teresa has been in the industry for a long time, helping in many different ways, and so we're glad to have you just introduce yourself. Just tell us who you are.
Teresa Stoffel: I'm Teresa Stoffel, like you said, and I've actually been working with campgrounds for over a decade now and do a lot of work as we were full time RVers, my husband and I. So I learned the business and also I'll do marketing and social media specialist.
Mark Rowan: Where are you located right now? Where's your base of operations today?
Teresa Stoffel: Right now I'm in south Texas. I'm six tenths of a mile from the border. Don't believe everything you hear. We love it down here. And economically, it is very inexpensive to live in south Texas. And where I'm at in what they call the RGV, Rio Grande Valley. There are over 305 RV and mobile home parks in this area, and it's a small area to have that, but it's a great area to live in. The people are wonderful, and we've done it all. We've been in every place you can for wintering, and we love this one the best. So we actually bought a small home here now.
Mark Rowan: You said ten years you've been helping out different parks. What was it that initially brought you to the RV park industry?
Teresa Stoffel: Well, we always liked our being ourselves. My husband and I had a small rig, and we had this huge house and no kids in the house anymore and started looking at, you know, we both had been truck drivers. I was a truck driver for 26 years by myself. Didn't go with anybody and would see the signs. You'd be going down the interstate and there would be this sign saying, this attraction here. Well, you can't take a big truck there, you know. So I started making a list, and my husband had his own list unbeknownst to me.
We decided to retire early from truck driving. We sold our big house and we went from a little 28 foot travel trailer to a 41 foot fifth wheel. We lived in that until just recently, we've lived in that full time. We enjoy the travel, obviously. That's why we have the jobs in the travel industry. Delivering and transporting was the extra work, but also transported RVs as well. So I thought, well, I'll try and be a work camper because I'm kind of a workaholic. Just a little secret. I started working with a couple of different groups, one of them being KOA. KOA drew me in because of my very first project that I did for them. Do you want to know what that was?
Mark Rowan: I do want to know that, and the people want to know.
Teresa Stoffel: It was creating a store for a campground that only had a small shelving unit, just one little like a lot of campgrounds mom and pops have just one little wall that might have some things on it that you might need while you're camping. They had space. I got in and did research and found out what sells best in the campground store. My very first store was a complete success.
They've now since expanded to add more food items than actual food that's made right there in the store. But the original start was, what do kids want? What do families want? What do retirees want? What do they want when they walk into a campground store? Because I'd been places and we've been traveling, and I knew what I wanted to find in the store, and they usually didn't have it. That was a big thing for me to make sure that that added convenience for the folks coming in. If you're going to be hospitality, you need to be all the way hospitality. That was huge. That's how I got started.
I have helped many campground owners since create stores, making sure they have what they need. The number one thing you don't have in a campground store is an umbrella. You don't need an umbrella. Don't buy 40 umbrellas thinking you're going to sell them. If you're camping, you don't want an umbrella. That is the number one thing that does not sell in a campground. Now, if yours is different, I want to know about it. Because this has been over a decade now, and they don't sell. The different things of knowing what to put in a store, which most people don't really know. They think about what they like, but they don't think about as a whole of what you need to provide.
Mark Rowan: We'll get back to the store here in a minute. I've got a couple of other things we want to touch on. Give us some of your other job titles that you've had while working in the RV park industry.
Teresa Stoffel: Well, I still am an entertainment promoter. I promote entertainers that are looking for winter work, especially. We all think entertainers make tons and tons of money. Since being in the industry, I found out, no, they don't. For instance, a Garth Brooks concert will be like, $65 for a ticket. Garth might get eight of that. That money doesn't really go to the entertainer. We all think, oh, my gosh, you know, they make so much money, but it's really not true. I do that.
I also do social media marketing for several RV parks. You would never know that I'm running their social media site because I come from them and it's all places I have stayed. I'm well aware of where their operations are and how they treat their customers. I don't volunteer to do anybody that I don't know. I've had folks invite me to their park just so that I can help them out with their social media. They want to have someone that understands them and understands their customers. I'm not a huge, giant corporation. If you've checked into it as an RV park owner, you know that some can charge $2,000 a month for just for social media. I don't do that. I just do it by the post and it's a very small amount of money. I try to be as helpful as I can to keep more people coming into camping. \I've got a couple of other jobs, as well. One of my other jobs is to do promotions for events for different RV parks. I've done promotions for KOA. They've had some jamborees and things they've gotten together that needed some promotions. I created events and help out with that. Through that I fell into being a wagon master for Grand Design. I also do that every year and I help other wagon masters. I have quite a variety of things I do, but I'm busy and I like to be busy.
Mark Rowan: You're very well rounded consultant in the industry. People can definitely get a lot from you. The central theme of what we wanted to talk about today was just other ways that besides bookings that an RV park, resort, campground can get more revenue. You mentioned the store. Talk a little bit about that and maybe some other areas that a park can just, like I said, generate as much revenue as they can.
Teresa Stoffel: I had a personal success not too long ago. A couple of years ago, I dealt with an owner who I've happened to be friends with because we stayed there off and on over the years and we are pretty good friends. S she ended up breaking an ankle and she said, OK, you're general manager of my park. OK, no problem.
As I looked at her books and I looked at things she was doing, she's like a lot of owners, afraid to raise the rates because I'm going to lose those customers. Some parks, they'll raise them every year, which they see that and they can do that in their market. They know what their market is better than anybody. But she was in a market near a metro city and not raising the rates. Of course they were booked a lot, but I looked at how much income they could make if they even just raised at $5 a night. She was so afraid to do it. But she's like, you're in charge. I don't care. I can't be there. I'm at home resting up and healing. Just take over. And this happened in May, right before Memorial Day.
I had the whole summer to show her what her part could do. I doubled their income that year, and it was just doing minor things. If you look at it, the minor things that you do to increase your revenue is going to be maybe that small increase in overnight gas, or how many people are we allowing per site? Instead of allowing eight people on the site, maybe say, okay, four adults, four kids.
If the kids are over 16, they're using as much utilities as the adults are, maybe you start charging $5 a person. I know of some places that charge $15 a person. Some only allow two adults and four kids, and then anything over that, it's $10 or $15 a person. You have to pay for your utilities if you're not charging for electric because you don't have people there at long term stay, and this is your overnight transient guest, you're going to be looking at, how much is this really costing me for them to stay? A lot of owners have never sat down and actually figured it out. They just go, "Well, I'm getting money in for the night. I'm good, you know."
I encourage owners to actually look at what it does cost them per week for electricity. If they have someone come and stay for five days, how much is that electricity costing them? How much of a percentage do you want to keep versus do you want to lose? That's really important because a lot of owners never look at that. They just go, I'm so happy I got occupancy. They're just so happy to have people there.
If you want to increase occupancy, the best thing to do is get your advertising in your social media. All elements of this occasionally do a Tik Tok video. If you don't know what that is, it's a video service. Do some kind of a YouTube video to put something out there about the park. Even if you just go around with your camera around your park and say, this is what our park looks like, a three minute video can bring in a bunch of people, but also don't do it and go, "well, here's our park, and, you know, this is where we have this." You got to be like, "yeah, look, this is what we've done," and be excited about what you're doing. I know that after you've owned for a long time, and I know some owners have owned for 30 years, have owned the same campground. They get to the point where they're not excited about it, and that shows through. When that shows through, you're not going to book reservations.
The number one thing I recommend for everything, especially the mom and pops that they don't want to do it, is to get into getting online reservations. It's not that hard to do. There are several out there, one that I've dealt with in particular that I promote, and I think you've interviewed him. It's Powered by Park. It's a great company. It's fairly new. It doesn't cost the campground owner anything. It's free to them and designed for you. They even do a map for you if you want. They do whatever you need them to do, which is great.
They're young guys and they know what they're doing. Best advertising you can do. If you're afraid, which many are afraid of doing online thing. If you have a website, you don't need to be afraid. All it is is a matter of adding that button in their online reservations and then that's going to bring in more money. You're going to allow them to book ahead of time. That money is coming in daily because they're making reservations. Even right now in what most consider the off season. I know several that are open year round up north that right now are pulling in money for next summer. You're constantly having a stream of revenue. There's another great way to concentrate on bringing in the money that you want for your revenue. That's important.
Mark Rowan: That's a good step right there. As far as a store, this is just kind of something I thought of the blue. Is there an item or a type of item that you've seen that you recommended over and over again that sells really well?
Teresa Stoffel: Number one, ice cream. It doesn't matter what part of the country you're in, always have ice cream. That's the number one seller. I even know one park that they just go to Dollar General and buy the paddle pops and stick them in for a dollar a piece. It always makes you money and it's always something they're looking for.
Mark Rowan: Now do you see that still being the case? Even when it's maybe not hot weather seasons, ice cream still goes pretty well.
Teresa Stoffel: It does. Then what you need to add in as you need to buy a pizza oven and have pizza, even if it's frozen pizza. Number one is Tony's is the best frozen pizza there is. That's across the country, across the board. I have tried it in different stores across the country and it is number one in the pizza oven, a commercial pizza oven. You think, oh my God, I can't afford that. $136 is about the average price for one of them, and it takes about eight minutes in the pizza oven. You can either do it for them or you can have instructions for them to do it themselves. It's very easy. It's hard to get burned with those things because you have to actually stick your hand in the oven to get it burned. There's not a lot of risk involved with that. Just have to make sure you clean it every night before you close up.
Mark Rowan: We know the whole thing is the best way to someone's heart is through their stomach.
Teresa Stoffel: That's the other thing. Let me mention one of the other things I would have, as well is a cappuccino machine. Now, to lease one of those might be a little more expensive than to just outright buy one. I haven't looked at the prices of them lately. They used to run anywhere from $200 to $500. You would have a choice of two flavors or three flavors. You buy a pre-made powder, which most of your food supply company. If you use Cisco or you use one of the grocery store suppliers, they have that where you can purchase whatever flavor. French vanilla is number one, mocha number two. If you wanted to put that in as well, anything with drinks like that is a high dollar, you're going to get a higher percentage because that mark up on those is so much higher. Depending on your area, the markup can be anywhere from 100% to 300%. That's going to be a great income as well.
Teresa Stoffel: Same thing with the opposite from hot to cold, the slushy machine. You can get a slushy machine. They do take maintenance. You have to at least once a week, completely clean them out. But once you know how to do it, it doesn't take that long. And slushies, I mean, you're paying pennies for a 16 ounce cup of slushy. Paying pennies, and you can charge two and a half dollars for it or more. We all know that in the industry that drinks anything like that to drink, they're going to be a big money maker. Ice cream, depending on your area, might not be the big money maker, but that might be your loss leader. That's why you bring people in, because you got the ice cream, but then they start seeing all the stuff on your shelves and they buy more.
Mark Rowan: What about hats? This is Hats Off. We're always asking people, do you have a hat that we can get?
Teresa Stoffel: Yes. Okay. This is the thing. There's so many distributors of hats, it depends on where you're going to purchase them. I know that Wilcore is a big supplier for campground stores, and I don't have anything against Wilcore, but their markup for you to buy wholesale is outrageous. Find a local company, a local embroidery, maybe there's an embroidery studio near you. You take your design to them and bring it in and you usually can get the hat that cost, and you're not going to have to mark them up so high. Any time you see a hat, and this is kind of crazy, but any time they're over $10, they're not going to sell. You want to keep your costs as low as you can to produce them. Also keep in mind that you're not going to make as much money off the sale of a hat. But with the hat, you also get free advertising. There's a give and take there with that.
Same thing with T-shirts. With T- shirts, you find a local. Don't purchase through one of these large companies. Don't do VistaPrint. Do that. Not only that, you're supporting your local economy. You're supporting and they're going to in turn promote you as well. You're supporting them, they're going to support you. Somebody says to them, hey, I'm looking for a place to camp. They're going to say, oh, my customers down the road here go there. You got to think of it that way.
A lot of times we don't want to deal with that because there's a lot of SKUs. With hats you don't have as many SKUs. T-shirts you, got to look at, how many kids size do I get? How many extra, extra larges do I need? You have to charge a little bit more because the T-shirts do cost more the bigger they are. You have to look at that. The average T-shirt price across the board is $19.95 for an adult T-shirt. Usually I've seen $21.95 on the larger sizes. Then I see $14.95 for any kids sizes.
That's an average price across the board. Everywhere I go, I look and I keep track of what I see, what people are charging. Across the nation that's what I've seen is the $19.95 for a T-shirt hats, usually $9.99. Then you see a hat for $26 and go, what? If you turn it over and you look inside, you realize that that $26 hat was from some big corporation and that's why they're charging so much.
Mark Rowan: The more recognizable a brand, in general, the more you could charge. If you're a big destination like Disney. Disney can charge pretty much whatever they want at their park, right? If you get to Disney realm, then you charge $40 for a hat or whatever, right. You got to look at those kind of things as well.
Teresa Stoffel: The Nike or the Under Armor, one of those. Of course, people are willing to pay for that. When you're trying to promote your park, you want them to buy and promote for you. The other number one thing for promotions that I have been requested more often than not is to have window stickers. You know how Salt Life just all of a sudden appeared and became Salt Life was huge. Well, those same kind of window stickers for your park can be very advantageous because you will see someone going down the road will see that in the back. You pull in the same gas station, he's like, hey, where's that? What is that?
You've got that opportunity just because you have that sticker. Somebody finds out about of you and I say anything, we see. You got to remember that's going to be your marketing point there. That is huge. I get asked that a lot. Do you have a sticker? A lot of folks, we've all seen them, the VW van that has 42,000 stickers on the back.
Mark Rowan: We're over here by Outer Banks. You see tons of people with the white, and they're from all over, right? Just white with black letters. Because people do they're like, "oh, I know where that is. But what's that?"
Teresa Stoffel: That's an inexpensive thing that you can get a lot of times you can get those for $0.25 to $0.50 apiece. If you buy 100 of them and you decide, I'm just going to give them away, you can do that, or you can turn around and sell them for $2 because people like to say, hey, this is where I was. Let's think about that. You spent $0.50 on it and you just made a $1.50. For everyone you sell, if you have 100 of them or even a thousand, the more you buy with those, the cheaper the price is going to be, of course.
Another one is promote your Facebook page. Put your Facebook out there, get it out there, put it on things, put it on when you sell your T-shirts, have your logo on the back and your Facebook page on the front, or vice versa. Put that out there. Use your Facebook page. If you have Twitter, if you have Instagram, we don't know what's going to happen when it's Instagram. If you have those social media outlets, advertise them. If you're not talking about what you have every single day, you're not getting it out there. If you're just sitting back going, waiting for that phone to call, waiting for that email or that online reservation, you're not going to have full occupancy in your park.
Mark Rowan: That's all a lot of great information. For those that are watching, you may need to come back and go through that more than once for a newbie park owner. As I've talked to many people the last two years, a lot of people even before that have been getting into ownership and investing those kinds of things with RV parks. What's one thing that you would really advise a new owner about just running an RV park business?
Teresa Stoffel: First thing is to make sure it's clean, number one. If you read a lot of reviews and you're looking at that's always mentioned in the reviews, the bathrooms were sparkling, their building was great, whatever it might be. The campground wasn't full of trash.
If you're buying a park that's already established, look back at the reviews that the park had before. Consider changing the name if it's really bad. I know a few campground owners bought into some parks that just haven't been taken care of in years. First thing they did was change the name. They changed their whole branding, their design. Everything in the park started to change.
If they've got fire pits that are rusting out, look at those little, minute things. When I pull in as an RV or what am I looking at? I'm looking at where I plug in, where I hook up my sewer and my water. What is that equipment like? Is it clean? Do I want to hook up my water? Does it look good? You want to make sure that you look at it from an RV or point of view. So I'm going to pull in. What is the site looked like to me? Is it clear where I'm supposed to pull my region into? Is there grass? There is a weeds in the grass. Is there a cigarette glass in that grass?
Because unbeknownst to a lot of owners, there's a fact out there. I can't remember where I read it now. It's like 50% of RVers have a smoker. I was like, what? That's a lot. I was surprised by that. We've got to check those little things. If you have a laundromat at your park, which many do they have a few machines, make sure it's clean. Make sure that they'll take the money that you got to put in. If you have the credit card system, make sure it's working. A lot of times, these little things we overlook are going to give us those bad reviews when they come in.
Make sure they understand your rules, have your rules written. I've seen a lot of parts where the rules are on the back of the receipt. When the receipt is printed out here, you have the receipt, and then you point out to them on the back. By the way, here are all our rules. If there's specific ones, like I think the top ones are dog poop and speeding, make sure you point that out. We have a five and a half mile an hour speed limit, or nine and a half mile an hour speed limit, what that might be. Make sure you point that out to them. Make sure you're clear when they check in that you're happy that they're here. "Welcome to our park. We're glad to have you. If there's anything we can do while you're here, call this number or come to the office for whatever you need."
If you have those services like delivery of firewood, delivery of ice, folks love that. Delivery of pizza. I think I mentioned that before. I'm not hungry, but I mentioned that. But you know, it's one of those things. If you have those services, make sure you mention it to the folks when they check in. Now if they're doing an online reservation, make a decision as to whether you're going to allow them to go straight to their site. Have that map that's going to show up when they make the online reservation. Make sure that's there so they know where they're going.
A lot of people say, I don't do that because it's too much. I'm afraid they're going to go in the wrong spot or bother somebody or get hung up in the park. If that's the case, then make sure that it says on your online reservation summary, you have to stop at the office to check in. It's very important. Then you can take them by the hand and say, this is the way you go and point out where they need to go.
Depends on the size of your park, too. If you have a park that only has maybe 40 or 50 spots, your model is going to look way different than a park that has 350 spots. You have to make sure that there are top I say top five things that are most important to you as a new owner. I know number one, you want to make some money. We see lots of parks do that. Let's think about what are the five top things that we want to do for our customers, how do we want to serve our customers? That's the best thing to look at.
Make sure that person working at your desk knows what to do. Don't just hire a work camper and say, here you go, this is what you do. You know the system, so I'll let you go. Don't do that. Make sure that you let them know they need to smile. They need to have an attitude of, we are so happy you're here. If you can't get that person at your desk, you're better off doing it yourself. You need to make sure that you know that your first impressions are everything. We've heard that for years.
Mark Rowan: Pay attention to what she's saying. We're wrapping up our time together, Teresa, but we want to end on a favorite RV or camping experience that you've had over the years. Share with us a fond memory you have.
Teresa Stoffel: Probably one of my best memories was where I was work camping at Leavenworth, Washington. People wonder if I thought I was in Kansas, but it's actually in Washington and it's in the middle of the there's mountains all around. It's a beautiful area similar to the area in my background, which is by Virginia City. You get there and it's just such a beautiful feeling when you're there. We have never been there before, but it was on our list of places to go and we decided to work camp. There's a KOA there and they've now since remodeled.
When I came in, they were doing a new store and the manager that was in the process of purchasing all the items for the store, I got some input on it and made a beautiful store. When we were done, it was so awesome. Right along that ran the Wenatchee River. So you could go on floating doing that. I've never done any tubing before anything, let alone on white water. Never done anything like this. We had to challenge my husband with security at night, and we had the challenge of a forest fire during the time we were there.
That was interesting. Very cool to watch the they would have a helicopter come in with a big bucket, dip into the Wenatchee River and take off with it. And we had some smoke. But you know what? It was probably the best camping experience I've ever had was being up there in the pines.
We had a bear that came to visit us regularly, because as we're campers, you don't always get the best spots in the campground. We were back in what they call the Boneyard. Many of you have been at a campground and don't know that that area where all the junk and the dumpsters, all the equipment and all that is called the Boneyard. Well, the Boneyard had some munchies in there in the dumpster every week, so the forest rangers thought it was probably a young bear. He came, we were sitting around. We had a campfire going, and we saw him walk by, and it was kind of like he just waved at us as he went, and he went right to the back, and that's what where we got to watch him eat. Of course, we had to call the forest ranger because it is a champion and you got to be careful. Many of them are domesticated because they're close to these metro areas.
What an awesome sight to see those mountains up above you and several of our folks that came and stayed with us would go up in the mountains hiking, get up all the way to the Permafrost. And it was just amazing. I mean, just beautiful. Beautiful site over our lifetime. Camping, going out, being full time RVs, and also at one point being an overweight truck driver. The best part of life has been the creation of everything that God put on the surface for us to see. And the scenery, like my sunrise back there. That's what I love about being in the industry, being involved with folks. And sometimes you might have to help someone recognize that beauty. They sometimes don't see it. And so that's my goal is to make sure that anyone that gets a camper, anything that they're camping on or has a tent, get out there and see this country that we have that we're blessed to have.
Mark Rowan: Well, Theresa, if someone wants to get a hold of you, how would they do that? You got a lot of great knowledge to share. What's the best way?
Teresa Stoffel: Actually, the best way is email me at [email protected] spelling my name out. You can message me on Facebook anytime. If you need help with a Facebook page, let me know if I can help you with that. It's very important to have one if you don't, so definitely email me and see if I can help you get it one started. Absolutely the one to do that.
Mark Rowan: You're speaking our language as far as social media and all that kind of stuff. We obviously, as a marketing provider are big proponents of all those things. Theresa, we're so thankful that you were able to spend some time with us, share a lot of wisdom and knowledge on the industry. We'll definitely be keeping in touch and seeing how things go along. Everyone else out there, thanks for tuning in and happy trails.
R&R ROI Marketing Tip
We got this tip from our most recent webinar, which was how to drive more visitors and guests with social media. We're talking about content strategy. The first thing you do for any strategy is set the goals. What are you trying to accomplish? Once you know that you can begin to implement the plan, you're going to research your target audience and know as much about who your guests are, because that really determines what the best target platforms are going to be for you.
55 plus: maybe you're looking at Facebook more than anything else. Maybe your young families would be Instagram, potentially, and Facebook younger than that. Maybe singles, millennials, Generation Z TikTok could be the one for you. Then you're going to set up the tracking for your metrics. If you don't measure that or you're not able to track, you're not able to grow. Create engaging content, that's what this whole thing is about, right? Making sure that your social media has things that entertain, inform or educate your audience. Then you can plan all that on an editorial calendar and schedule those out.
Be ahead of the game when it comes to these types of things. Don't just wing it per se. Then, like we said, you've got that tracking, you're going to measure that and you're going to improve as you do these things. There you go. If you have questions, let us know, we can help.
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