32 RV park marketing ideas worth the effort
Grouped by cost and effort, each with an honest caveat. Plus the popular ideas that mostly do not pay off, which most lists leave out.
By Korey Brooks · Published August 29, 2026
Most marketing idea lists are useless because everything on them sounds equally good. An idea costing nothing sits beside one costing thousands, with no indication which is which or what either actually does.
Every idea below carries an effort level and a caveat. A few are marked as usually not worth doing, which is the part that makes a list like this worth reading.
Free, and do these first (1 to 8)
- Ask every eligible departing guest for an honest review. Often the first item worth doing on this entire page. It compounds and it costs nothing.
- Reply to every review, positive and negative. Replies are read by the next camper rather than the reviewer.
- Correct the Google profile hours, including gate hours and seasonal closure. Wrong hours turn campers away at the worst moment.
- Put current rates on the website as numbers. A marketplace shows a price; a site saying call for rates loses that comparison.
- State maximum rig length by site type. A hard filter that most park sites never answer.
- Fix the voicemail greeting. Season, hours, when messages are checked, booking link. Two minutes.
- Test the booking link by following it. A broken one is invisible from the park's side.
- Ask arriving guests how they found the park, and log it. The only booking attribution a park reliably gets.
Caveat on all eight: none of these are exciting, and every one of them is worth more than anything below.
Google profile (9 to 13)
- Add a proper photo set: entrance, each site type, hookups, bathhouse, laundry. Effort: an afternoon.
- Check the primary category is what the park actually is, and re-check annually since the list changes.
- Hunt for duplicate listings under the current and any previous business name. Caveat: merge rather than delete, or reviews are lost.
- Move the map pin to the entrance campers use, not the property centre.
- Post once or twice a month about something real. Caveat: useful for readers, not a published ranking lever.
Reviews (14 to 17)
- Put a review QR code at the counter and on a departure card. Caveat: nothing about stars or incentives printed near it.
- Automate the request on a checkout trigger, so it survives the busy weeks.
- Send one reminder to guests who have not responded. One, not three.
- Read the last fifty reviews in one sitting and fix whatever keeps coming up. Often the most valuable hour on this list.
Website (18 to 22)
- Write a real directions page with the approach for a large rig and the route to avoid.
- Add a park map showing the layout and site numbering.
- Compress the photos. Uncompressed camera files are the usual cause of a slow park site.
- Add a long-term or monthly page if the park offers those. The largest single content gap at most parks.
- Write one destination page for a place guests genuinely come for. Caveat: one, properly, not twelve cloned.
Repeat guests (23 to 25)
- Ask at checkout whether they want the same week next year. One sentence, converts better than any campaign.
- Keep a record of who stayed and which site they liked.
- Email past guests before booking opens. Caveat: consent rules apply, and an unsubscribe link is not optional.
Filling the quiet times (26 to 29)
- Publish a page for the recurring local event that fills the park, well ahead of it.
- Offer a longer-stay rate for midweek rather than discounting single nights. Discounts train the market; longer stays change the guest.
- Contact local employers and project managers where the park suits work crews.
- Give shoulder season a reason: autumn colour, spring fishing, a quieter park as the point.
Local partnerships (30 to 32)
- Get listed on the county or state tourism site. Usually free, genuinely used by travellers.
- Join the chamber of commerce, mainly for the relationships that produce other mentions.
- Arrange a mutual mention with a nearby attraction or venue the park genuinely serves.
Paid, and only after the above
Paid search can work for a park with unfilled midweek or shoulder capacity and sound fundamentals already in place. The intent is high and the spend can be switched off.
Say a park has thin reviews, a stale profile, or no rates on the website. Paid traffic then sends more campers to its weakest surface. That is an expensive way to discover a problem the first eight items would have fixed for free.
Ideas that usually are not worth it. Most lists include these, so it is worth saying why they are absent above.
Bulk directory submissions. Volume, not results, and correcting the listings later is harder than creating them was.
Printed brochures for racks. Expensive per booking and impossible to measure at most parks.
A social media presence for its own sake. It can work for parks with genuine community and events. For most it becomes an abandoned page that reads worse than none.
Loyalty punch cards. Rarely the reason anyone returns, and easy to confuse with review incentives, which are prohibited.
Discounting across the board. Cuts the rate on nights that would have sold, and teaches guests to wait.
How to choose from this list
Do not attempt all thirty-two. Pick according to which occupancy problem the park actually has, which is diagnosed in how to increase RV park occupancy.
For most parks the honest order is: the eight free items first, then whichever group matches the diagnosed problem, then paid only if the fundamentals are genuinely in place.
A twelve-month version of that, with the recurring work on a calendar, is the marketing plan template.
Find out which of these the park needs first.
The free Park Visibility Audit looks at the park the way a camper searching from three states away would, and names the largest gap rather than handing over a list.
Prefer email? Write to info@fillmypark.com