What Does Lazy Look Like In 2012?
posted by Scott on Wednesday, October 26th, 2011 at 2:33 PM under Uncategorized
One of my favorite camp conference sessions ever came last year as Bob Ditter delivered an EPIC pre-conference session on Understanding Today’s Children at the Tri-State Camp Conference. Everything he discussed was stuff I had heard before but like most great speakers, it clicked right than and there for me. The world around us is very different than it was a year or two ago and in everything we do, as a business, a camp or even as a parent – we need to make adjustments based on this knowledge.
We’ve spent a lot of time discussing this in the Camp Craze Offices over the last few weeks and trying to come up with unique and innovative ways to help our clients understand people and answer some of the questions that continue to come into our office on a daily basis. For instance:
- Why does it take FOREVER for Domestic and International Staff to complete their Staff Applications AND Why does it take forever for them to get their forms in?
- Why aren’t we generating more LEADS through our website?
- How and where can we reach more prospective camp families online, particularly Mom?
Now, take a look at those three questions I’ve listed above and than consider that the most popular item on the market right now is a smartphone that can text for you, can look things up on the internet for you, can change appointments for you etc. It’s the iPhone and it’s ridiculous. Now look at those three questions again. Can you kind of understand why it takes forever for a potential or current staff member to fill out their applications or submit their forms? Can you understand why you may not be generating more leads through your website? Do you understand the correlation of more Moms being mobile and therefore being harder to find? It is because Technology has made us lazy and brands are getting smarter.
Instead of trying to grab important information from prospects through long-winded applications or surveys, companies have integrated with Social Media, especially Facebook to reach a target market, collect their basic information through application and development and be satisfied with less – for the time being. Eventually brands learn more about their consumers through interaction and essentially walking them through the process of eventually buying.
Consumers want things to be short and sweet. They are more likely to sign up for an e-mail than they are to sit there for five minutes filling out a “Request Information Form.”
With more people each day turning to new technology like Siri and Apples iPhone or iPad – we need to make these simple adjustments to continue and generate leads. This will come with instant gratification and minimal effort for prospects visiting your website, parents looking to enroll their kids, and staff looking to apply for a summer job.
I don’t even think we can call it laziness anymore – it’s just people going with trends. Users have significantly higher expectations on all of us and they feel as though the technology and user experience that they see each day on Facebook, Twitter, and now in the development of smartphone technology, should carry into every industry. Which makes me think – are WE the lazy ones that we haven’t caught on?
This debate is certainly To Be Continued…
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Scott Rosenbluth is the Founder/CEO of Camp Craze, INC. and Craze Interactive. You can follow Scott on Twitter under the handle @sbluth.
