Analyzing Top Performing Deals Categories: 5 of 7 in a series

A healthy deals mix is a key trait of any successful deals site particularly when you’re trying to reach a broad audience. Within the main seven categories (restaurants, retail, travel, recreation, events, beauty and service), there are certain businesses you probably haven’t thought of that your program should be targeting. To help you get a better understanding of these categories, we’re writing a series of articles that highlights the best performing subcategories and what advertisers you should be focusing on. So far we have analyzed the beauty, travel, retail, service, events and restaurant categories. Now, let’s dive into the recreation category to see where you should be focusing your efforts.

Recreation Mix by Total Revenue

We divided recreation into seven subcategories: activity centers, attractions, bowling, golf, lessons, summer camps and wineries. The recreation category shows us what your audience enjoys for relaxation and fun, and with local media reaching an audience that is mature, affluent and often households with families, this category can be particularly effective at driving revenue for your program.

Golf is a top performer taking up 45% of the revenue from the recreation category. Golf deals almost always perform well, especially in the spring and summer. One way to give a golf deal extra appeal is to run it around a major golf tournament in order leverage buzz for the event. Rounding out the top three subcategories are activity centers and attractions, which make up 20% and 19% of the revenue respectfully. Both of these are geared towards families, so if your audience is family-oriented, attractions and activity centers can be great subcategories to throw into your deals mix. When considering attraction deals, look for anything that’s within a 2-3 hour driving distance from your market. Some of the less conventional attractions can be a great excursion for a family looking to entertain their kids during the summer. A great example of this comes from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch where they targeted the local Museum of Transportation just before summer and ran a very successful deal with them.

Average Recreation Revenue Per Deal

Attractions certainly distinguish themselves as a revenue generator and top performer, but when it comes to what rakes in the most revenue per deal, the real surprise here is wineries! Despite being a high performer, wineries only make up 4% of the total revenue of recreation deals, so there’s definitely an opportunity to target them. We’ve seen winery deals do especially well when offered as a getaway package. There is an opportunity to create a more experiential deal when working with a winery. Think about including perks like transportation or a meal. This approach is similar to what makes regional travel deals excel.

Recreation Average Price Points
See bar graph below.

Besides performance and mix, we also took at look at average revenue for these categories and there was a big stand-out: summer camps. With the average price point at $109, they tend to be on the higher side, but sell incredibly well. The trick to being successful with summer camp deals is to plan early and get them in front of your audience in March and April when parents are making summer plans. So, targeting them early, even around the start of the year, is a good way to get ahead.
This is a key point for any deals affected by seasonality such as golf, retail or travel.

Final Thoughts

The recreation category is all about what your audience likes to do for fun. Given the audience that media companies bring, the fact that golf, wineries and attractions are the top subcategories isn’t a surprise. Golf and winery deals tend to skew towards older and more affluent subscribers while attractions certainly appeal to the families in your market. So, get out there, have some fun and lock in some recreation deals today!

Check out the other category breakdowns: beauty, travel, retail, service, events and restaurants.