Buckle up; this is a long and somewhat interesting story. Admittedly, that’s a little biased since it’s my own story, but here we go anyways. It all began back in 2009 when our humble company was a video blog and nothing more. Since then we’ve grown to be the #1 most trusted source for Campgrounds & RV Parks looking for next-generation marketing.
Hold on, though; I am getting ahead of myself. My name is Brian Searl, and I used to work for CBS News, the Cleveland Indians, and Fox Sports Ohio. My background is in video, and I love to explore new places around the world. When our humble company first began, it was a combination of those two passions. I worked with dozens of museums, tourism bureaus, theme parks, professional sports teams and more to create editorial videos that showcased their best attributes to our audience on YouTube.
At that time I was rocking more than one million video views and having a blast. We were flying to almost any city I wanted to film a series of videos on their hotels and attractions. It was at that point that I cold-called a man named Mike Gast, who was and still is the Vice President of Communications at KOA.
Mike may remember this differently, but I recall that it took me at least four different emails to get his attention and convince him to let me do a video of one of their campgrounds. In the end, he sent us to the corporate-owned park at Sugarloaf Key for our first video. I’m reasonably sure he liked the result because over the next two years he gave us vouchers to do the same thing for around 75 other KOA parks up and down the east coast.
In the course of doing this, we stumbled onto one campground in Kentucky who was paying one of their workers $10/week to manage their Facebook account. It turns out she didn’t know what she was doing, and so I offered to help. I told him for $50/month, a number born out of the $10/week he was paying her, that I would help him post on Facebook as well as respond to comments and questions from his campers.
Back then I was no expert in social media, but I was doing it regularly for Insider Perks. I began to talk to other parks as we continued our journey and within less than a year we had started posted and managing social media for almost 40 KOA franchises. Needless to say that we were a tad unprepared for that kind of business but it worked.
From there I kept adding more services. Over the next few years, I was a voracious reader, consuming every marketing article I could find. Our approach was refined continuously in an attempt to provide the best and most valuable services possible. We made a bunch of mistakes along the way, but we did our best to learn from them and move on.
Today our focus is on providing the digital marketing solutions you need to succeed as a campground owner in today’s world. From software that will help you monitor everything that is being said about you online to social posting and website design.
A word of caution, though, before you think about working with us. We put forth a considerable effort to provide excellent customer service. That means we’re going to communicate with you and explain things that you never thought any company would. It’s a dramatic change from being a ‘client’ at most companies to being a ‘partner’ with us.
We hope you’ll join us in a future filled with endless possibilities.