How to Develop an All-Encompassing Parks and Recreation Marketing Strategy

With the rise of digital publications and virtual content, parks and recreation departments across the world have been forced to adapt their marketing strategies beyond traditional (and often costly) printed formats in order to reach more community members and increase program engagement. As a result, many parks and recreation organizations have been working to find new, unique ways to publish content digitally and achieve optimal exposure.

In this guide, we will dive into how Issuu can transform your parks and recreation marketing strategy through our unique ability to bring your content (program guides, yearly reports, brochures, etc.) and social media efforts to life. Without further ado, grab a pen or pencil and a piece of paper, and let’s get started revitalizing your marketing agenda as well as planning results-driven content for the remainder of the year. As Leslie Knope says in the Parks and Recreation sitcom, "Hobbies: Organizing my agenda. Wait. That doesn't sound fun . . . Jammin' on my planner!"

Promoting Content With Issuu

Issuu hosts a number of valuable features that make parks and recreation content distribution convenient and effective. Firstly, Issuu offers a full screen sharing experience, allowing for optimal engagement and a distraction-free environment. In turn, full screen sharing enables your catalog to take on a much more captivating and stimulating form for readers, thereby driving marketing success.

Moreover, Issuu’s “embed links and video feature” gives you the opportunity to include important information directly in your catalog. Embedding brochures, branding, and/or external websites (i.e, your city’s park and recreation home page or a link to an activity sign-up page) can be a useful way to cultivate a broader audience as well as generate interest in your park and recreation department’s offerings.

You can also use Issuu’s “embed on website” feature which allows you to keep your own website as the primary distribution outlet. By embedding your Issuu content onto your website, you can take advantage of your already existing website traffic to increase the number of community members that read your latest program as well as preserve the same layout/format that your readers are accustomed to.

Unlike traditional printed forms, our digital statistics features allow you to track real-time data and properly evaluate the overall effectiveness of your marketing strategy. Issuu offers beneficial insight into your parks and recreation catalog’s audience as well as provides you access to graphs and other visuals as a means of determining trends in impressions, reads, read-time, clicks and more. This is a great way to decide whether adjustments in content need to be made in order to increase relevance and take into consideration your audience’s preferences.

Optimize Your Park and Recreation Department’s Social Presence With Issuu

In addition to catalogs, Issuu’s visual stories feature can help you to stimulate traffic to park and recreation social media channels and further increase engagement. With Issuu, you can create visually appealing, motion-graphic stories for Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. Notably, our software allows you to drag and drop images from your catalog to create on-brand social content. Professional stories are more important than ever and can be a great way to get your parks and recreation content noticed by both those in and out of your jurisdiction. After you’re finished creating your visual story with Issuu, simply download and share to your preferred social media platform.

Along with visual stories, consider utilizing our article stories generator. Our system automatically generates individual pieces of content from your collective catalog, which can then be shared on social media platforms. Alternatively, you can also create your own article stories by selecting certain pieces and images from the catalog to be grouped together. In combination with visual stories, article stories are an effective way to share relevant content on a continuous basis and gain traction in your marketing efforts.

Parks and Recreation Customer Success Stories & Testimonials

Many parks and recreation organizations across the United States are already taking advantage of Issuu’s services to distribute their catalogs and brochures. Check out some of our valued parks and recreation customers below and see how they have been able to optimize their content and marketing efforts with Issuu:

Along with other users on the list, Boise Parks and Recreation and Evanston Parks and Recreation are able to utilize a number of Issuu features in order to maximize their outreach. For example, Boise Parks and Recreation has been able to use Issuu’s “embed links” feature, enabling them to link their social channels directly into their activity guide, which makes it straightforward for readers to find and follow their social media pages. This department also has linked sign up pages directly into the guide, creating a seamless transition from simply reading to actually registering for an activity. In addition, Evanston Parks and Recreation has embedded their Issuu guide directly onto their personal website, allowing for readers to easily maneuver between reading the content and signing up for events.

Not only has Issuu started to cultivate a large community of parks and recreation departments, but we also greatly value feedback and have been fortunate enough to sit down with representatives from parks and recreation organizations to hear and understand their experiences with our software. Thomas Romano from the Lexington, Massachusetts Parks and Recreation department described his favorite Issuu feature as “I like to look at the [analytics page] to see how many people read it, for how long they did . . . I use that information to build future brochures and figure out how many people read it compared to how many registrations we had.” We are looking forward to working directly with even more parks and recreation organizations to address both their complements and recommendations as we continue to expand our services to this sector.

Conclusion You’ve reached the end of our guide to developing an all-encompassing parks and recreation marketing strategy using Issuu. Through our wide variety of services along with our unparalleled commitment to customer satisfaction, we believe that Issuu is the future for parks and recreation publications and content and can be a tremendous asset for your marketing efforts.

Interested in learning more? Check out all of the helpful publishing resources on the Issuu blog and start your Issuu journey today!