Jul 22

7 Firearm & Hunting Digital Marketing Factors You Can’t Ignore

The term digital marketing gets thrown around quite a bit in the firearms and hunting industry. You know you need to “go” digital, but are still unsure what going *digital* exactly means or how to integrate these tactics with your current pre-paid outbound ad spend.

Digital marketing is an all-encompassing term that uses strategies like inbound marketing and content marketing or tactics like banner advertising, PPC (pay-per-click), SEO (search engine optimization) SEM (search engine marketing), social media and video, specifically on the internet to market products and services. Digital is not print magazine advertising, billboard, radio, tradeshow or T.V. Although digital is used to promote or augment these traditional mass marketing methods towards the desired result e.g. more sales, these methods are often difficult to measure.

Digital marketing budgets continue to increase as a preferred method of marketing and advertising by senior executives because of digitals’ ability to prove ROI. (Source: HubSpot)

According to the latest survey, more than two-thirds of Americans own smartphones. More people are shopping online—up 14% from 298.3 billion in 2015. (Source: Internet Retailer) And now for the first time over 50% of all web traffic is from mobile.

I would also add—just as an observation—more hunters and shooters are taking their smartphones into duck blinds, deer stands, and gun ranges. They’re searching for tips, products, and information while participating in outdoor activities. They are also comparing prices with other retailers online while shopping in-store.

Photo credit: Bass Pro Shops

Although many customers still prefer to shop in-store—customers are increasingly buying firearms, ammo, hunting supplies and accessories directly online. (Source: NSSF)

With over 70% of the sales process starting online and digital marketing becoming something hunting and firearm brands can no longer ignore—here are seven factors necessary to making the move to “digital.”

1. Website: Build a mobile-friendly digital hub

Some of the biggest names in the industry still have yet to move towards a mobile-friendly or otherwise known as a responsive web page format (websites that scale with screen size). Did you know that Google—who controls over 60% (Source: Search Engine Land) of all web search traffic—favors websites that are mobile-friendly? 74 percent of mobile users will leave unresponsive sites. And nearly a fourth of all Internet users access the Internet solely through mobile devices.

If you haven’t made the move to a mobile-friendly website, this should be your number one priority because right now you’re losing out on hundreds to thousands of potential customers, subscribers, and sales.

A recent Google survey of mobile users found that 72 percent of mobile users say it’s important to them that websites are mobile-friendly, yet 96 percent have visited a site that doesn’t work well on their device. Almost three-quarters of respondents said they are more likely to revisit a mobile-friendly site. Users are five times more likely to abandon the task they are trying to complete if the site isn’t optimized for mobile use, with 79 percent saying they will go back to search and try to find another site to meet their needs.

Almost three-quarters of respondents said they are more likely to revisit a mobile-friendly site. Users are five times more likely to abandon the task they are trying to complete if the site isn’t optimized for mobile use, with 79 percent saying they will go back to search and try to find another site to meet their needs. (Source: Search Engine Watch)

If this is starting to make you feel uncomfortable—there are several ways to get “mobile-friendly” fast. A complete website redesign is usually what’s required, but you can convert your current static website through making a few changes in your CSS (cascading style sheets) which means just changing your site’s code to percentages rather than fixed heights and widths. Talk to your web designer/developer on what it would take to make these changes if a web redesign isn’t possible.

2. Content: Build a robust content library

Starting with your positioning and brand strategy, create your content: downloadable offers, photos, and imagery. Start with your FAQs. How many of those questions can be turned into articles, how-to’s and videos?

Invest in professional photography and helpful search engine optimized blog articles and content, to begin building a digital foundation that can be grown and improved over time. The best part about content is that it can be tested, used across multiple formats and eventually retargeted. This can save time and money in the long run. Distribute this content far and wide through blog posts, email, social media, trade shows, dealer training, T.V. commercials and even in your sales process. Just like the print advertising you’re used to—think of content as “small ads” that “pull” your prospects to your brand through entertainment, education, and information—instead of “pushing” a message.

Photo credit: Springfield Armory

3. Social Media: Use a mix of “push” and “pull”

One way to expand your shares and likes as well as drive traffic to your website is by having a good mix of helpful content in addition to the news, events and giveaways you’re most likely posting now. Brands that have this figured out are not only “pushing” their products but are also “pulling” their customers to them by helping them to become better at their identified interests. See Springfield Armory’s Facebook feed for a good example.

“If you’re not heading in the direction of digital in the hunting and firearms industry, your brand is being left behind, and thousands if not millions of dollars are not making it into your company’s bank account.”

As mentioned above, you can only grow your audience and brand so far on social media with what you’ve been doing which most likely consists of “pushing” your product(s) with photos, videos, giveaways or questions i.e. “who’s going hunting this weekend?” Sure these posts are fun and sometimes drives engagement, but this doesn’t keep your brand relevant. Seek to add value and information to your Facebook, Twitter or Instagram feeds. Add in a video from Facebook Live to increase engagement. Aim to make your customers better, smarter and more informed. Your brand should be seen as “the expert” in your category. These tactics will pay dividends when your prospects or customers start looking to purchase that new optic, handguard, suppressor, lower, backpack, etc.

Photo credit: Stag Arms

4. Email Marketing: Your most effective channel

Email marketing is more powerful than it’s ever been. The reason is clear–for ten years in a row, email is the channel generating the highest ROI for marketers. For every $1 spent, email marketing generates $38 in ROI. When you want to grow your business, acquire new customers, launch a new product, offer a promotion, you turn to email. Why? Because email delivers better than any other channel. Email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter. (Source: Campaign Monitor) And as discussed in my last post, 7 Ways to Deepen your Digital Marketing Footprint, email marketing is the main mechanism to build and stay in contact with your audience.

5. Landing Pages: Capture your audience

Landing pages are used to capture user data, such as a name and email address. The sole purpose of the page is to collect information that will allow you to market to and connect with the prospect at a subsequent time. As such, a lead capture page will contain a form along with a description of what you’ll get in return for submitting your personal data. (Source: Unbounce)

There are many uses for landing pages:

Ebook or whitepaper
Giveaways
Discount coupon/voucher
Contest entry
Free trial
Notification of a future product launch

While most companies don’t see an increase in leads when increasing their total number of landing pages from 1-5 to 6-10, companies do see a 55% increase in leads when increasing their number of landing pages from 10 to 15. (Source: HubSpot)

6. SEO: Don’t miss out on organic traffic

SEO is becoming an increasingly overlooked way to drive more traffic and sales to industry websites. Top brands are missing out on traffic that typically total in the tens of thousands because they don’t rank for the terms their prospective customers are searching for. This leaves open opportunities for your competitors to outrank you in the digital space. People are no longer just searching Google, Bing or Yahoo—they’re also searching Facebook, Twitter, Gun District, YouTube, forums and other networks as well.

Start by conducting what search terms classify your products and what will drive the most traffic with tools like Moz, SEMRush or Wordtracker. Most offer a free 30-day trial.

Here are a few examples of how many leading industry product search words you may be missing out on per month:

hunting scope: 4,400
ar15: 110,000
ak47: 49,500
gun safe: 90,500
hunting knife: 6,600
suppressor: 12,100
silencer: 9,900
hunting backpack: 1,600

(Source: HubSpot’s keyword tool)

7. Analytics: Measure your results

Do you know what your bounce rate is? Do you also know if your social media likes or shares are translating into sales? Analytics are critical in any digital firearm or hunting marketing strategy because it allows you to track what’s working and what’s not. Analytics allow you to make better decisions like how much ROI your marketing is providing.

The ability to track and measure your marketing is perhaps the greatest benefit to going digital. This is especially beneficial for brands that run an online store.

Click here to get Google Analytics installed to begin measuring your website’s efficiency if you haven’t already. Without analytics, you’re flying blind.

Overall, most industry brands have a long way to go. Those who start now will be in a position to add a valuable revenue channel to their company’s bottom line and leave their competition in the dust. By building in the above seven factors, you’ll be well on your way to “going digital.”

Jul 07

firearm-inbound-outbound-marketing-tactics

How To Use Outbound Tactics To Accelerate Your Inbound Firearm Marketing Efforts

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Hunting

If you’re one of those brands that work within the heavily saturated and competitive AR, optics, suppressors, hunting or concealed carry categories—an inbound marketing as a standalone strategy may not be enough for your brand to break through the clutter and stand out in a timely manner.

Inbound marketing takes time to build—but with the help of outbound marketing tactics—results can be accelerated. We all know that outbound ad spend is still a “needed” channel within the industry—but with the future belonging to those who are going digital, some brands getting to the game late will need to play a little catch-up as discussed in my last article about native advertising.

In this post, I want to discuss how familiar outbound tactics like PPC (pay-per-click) can accelerate your inbound marketing efforts to bust through the clutter and supercharge your inbound marketing program.

1. Inbound marketing takes a long time

In the beginning, an inbound marketing program works like a slow moving train. When it leaves the station, it’s moving at a snails pace, but over time—as your efforts gain momentum— traffic, leads, and sales start to pick up speed that produces long lasting results. Typical inbound marketing campaigns can take up to 9-12 months to achieve their full potential, especially if you’re starting from scratch. This is partly due to the strategic nature involved in creating relevant and educational content about your products and the time it takes for Google to index and rank those helpful blog articles. When inbound is fully implemented—meaning you’ve built out your sales funnel, have at least 10-15 offers, 30-50 good optimized blog articles and lead capturing workflows—it puts your brand on the fast track to real marketing efficiency. But sometimes your marketing can’t wait that long—the VP of Marketing wants results now. This is where outbound comes in and acts like an accelerator.

2. Use outbound tactics to accelerate your inbound marketing efforts

Unfortunately, for most hunting and firearm brands, Google, Instagram and Facebook PPC are not reliable (or available) options for marketers looking to purchase ad space due to these networks’ ban on firearm related products. Plus, some of these methods may cannibalize your dealers marketing efforts and relationships.

However, by advertising your content instead of your product as a way to attract prospects, drive website traffic, leads and subscribers—you can bypass some of these restrictions altogether. Or in other words, instead of being found organically through a keyword search or a Facebook post, you can advertise your content instead of “pushing” your product directly. See the ad by Amtech suppressors.

By placing paid or earned media, you can add a boost to your campaigns, test messages and get results faster.

3. Use the firearms marketing matrix to understand how inbound/outbound work together

A lot of times we get fixated and stuck on old strategies that are losing their effectiveness, and can’t see the full picture of what an integrated strategy of inbound and outbound looks like.

The below graphic titled the “Firearms/Hunting Marketing Matrix” gives a good visual on how to visualize the pieces on how your outbound and inbound fit together.

This visual was inspired by this matrix by First10 and Smart Insights.

Due to the experiential nature of the shooting, hunting, and firearms industry, a lot of attention and money is invested in the entertainment quadrant of the matrix. Print, social media, T.V. advertising, apps, etc., all provide the “emotional” component of your marketing strategy to gain awareness but lack the “rational” component for your buyer to make an informed decision and trust your offering.

To break through people’s ad blockers and move your prospect(s) to the convert stage more efficiently, a “rational” inbound component is needed to educate your prospect(s). By having the right mix of inbound and outbound content, you are accelerating your marketing efforts that give you the cold hard data you need to make better “entertainment” marketing decisions.

In conclusion, if you’re stuck in a highly competitive category and looking to turn on the benefits of an inbound marketing strategy but need to start showing results sooner rather than later, consider budgeting outbound ad spend that drives traffic to your blog posts and content offers to supercharge your results.

Jun 19

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4 Ideas for Your Hunting and Firearms Black Friday Campaign

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Hunting

The biggest shopping weekend of the year is coming up and now is the time to begin preparing.

U.S. Thanksgiving and Black Friday online sales last year totaled over $1.7 Billion in 2015. And with background checks setting new records in the firearm industry last year with 185K, you can bet that this year is going to be just as good or better. And a few industry resources of mine mentioned to me, although unverified—

“For the first time, more people shopped online than store purchases”
(Black Friday 2015 –Dick’s Sporting Goods)

Assuming you’ve defined an offer on your website, whether it’s free shipping, a sales discount or you’ve arranged some kind of offer with your dealers, there is much you can do to boost this year’s Black Friday sales to get a piece of the action.

Below are four ideas to help you move the needle for your hunting, outdoor or firearms business—based on latest online retail statistics and what other savvy companies are doing to boost Black Friday sales.

1. Segment your email campaign
If you’re planning to send a blanket email to your subscriber list, you may want to take a step back and reevaluate. Sending blanket emails may work if you sell only one multi-use product, but if you have multiple buyer personas, who buy your product—you’ll need to segment those customers and tailor those messages to their preferences to make your email campaign more effective.

According to Mailchimp, segmented emails perform markedly better than non-segmented emails:

14.1% more opens
59.82% more clicks
8.86% lower unsubscribes

“When we first started with digital marketing, we were one of those companies that would send a one-size-fits-all message to everyone,” says Matteo Recanatini, Beretta’s Digital & Ecommerce Manager. “We needed a more effective way to identify the different lifestyles and preferences of our customers and deliver content that actually mattered to them through different channels.” (Source: Hubspot)

What if I haven’t been segmenting?
If you haven’t been segmenting your contacts through some kind of marketing automation software, and you have no idea who your subscribers are, then the next best thing is to get busy setting up individual landing pages per persona and offer an incentive or discount code so you can begin gathering this information. Create a form on your landing page that asks what their interests are and how they use your product for better understanding. After the initial blast, be ready to send a personalized email to those segments to increase engagement. Once they fill out the form, direct them to a thank you page for them to claim their offer, whether it’s an ebook, whitepaper or even a coupon code. Your product may be one-size-fits-all, but your customers may have different interests. Figure out what those differences are and create personalized emails based on solving their problems or providing solutions while attaching a discounted sales price.

Don’t forget an attention-grabbing subject line.
Subject lines are critical—33 percent of subscribers decide whether or not to open your email based on the subject line alone. With email volumes increasing exponentially around the holidays, your subject line needs to work even harder to get potential shoppers to open your email and take action.

Stand out: Using emoji can boost open rates.
Be festive: Beyond emoji, use words like “Holiday Sale” for promotions. Holiday-themed open rates tended to be higher.
Ask a question: “Ready to knock out your holiday shopping?” or “What will you do with your 50 percent off holiday coupon?”
Make it urgent: Emphasize pending deadlines like “Cyber Monday Sale ends today” or “Holiday door-busters till noon only.”

(Source: iMedia)

2. Send dealer locations
For hunting or firearms manufacturers who choose to downplay their online sales, you may want to help your dealers out by sending their offers to your subscriber list and then segment those dealers by location, so your subscribers know where to go to buy your products. Create some urgency around the sale and send them the address and store hours so they know where to go. This can also help you build stronger relationships with your most important buyers and show you care about them.

3. Put your deals on the home page
Americans plan to do almost half of their holiday shopping online this year, and one in five of those who own smartphones will use them to purchase holiday merchandise, the highest since NRF first asked in 2011. (Source: NRF)

If you have a website that is somewhat extensive, you may want to run your deals directly on your home page with a quick checkout option or link to your dealer locator. Make it simple and quick to take advantage of the shopping frenzy.

4. Get mobile now
For the first time, online traffic from mobile devices outpaced traditional PCs on Thanksgiving Day. As IBM predicted within one percent of accuracy, Thanksgiving Day reached a new mobile tipping point with smartphones and tablets accounting for 52.1 percent of all online traffic. Overall Thanksgiving online sales were up 14.3 percent compared to 2013. (Source: IBM)

If you haven’t gotten your website converted to a responsive platform—meaning that it renders well on tablet and mobile devices—you’ve limited your brand’s ability to take advantage of almost half of all internet traffic and potential online sales. (Source: Search Engine Land) The best hunting and firearm websites in the industry have converted over and so should you as soon as possible if you haven’t already.

Men say they always use mobile devices to check prices while shopping in stores versus just five percent of women. (Source: Kellogg Shopper Index)

Mobile will play a critical shopping role today, Saturday, and Sunday, with an estimated 60 million consumers planning to use their devices to shop, research purchases, or seek retailer information. (Source: InMobi)

If your site isn’t mobile, a quick fix is to redirect all web queries to a mobile-optimized page using the keywords of your deals during Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday and place your offers directly on that page.

Don’t forget to utilize your social media channels to amplify your sales and drive traffic.

So in conclusion, segment your emails to increase engagement, help your dealers out, put your deals on your home page for fast and easy checkout and make sure your site is mobile-ready to capture those in-store searches.

Jun 07

3 Things Firearm Marketers Can Improve

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Shooting

There are some things you just can’t change. From increased government regulations, internal politics, everything going digital or the IT guy who won’t upgrade your website—the firearms industry contains much of the same roadblocks and beaver dams as other marketers face, but with a few twists.

This industry is unique from other industries because unlike a tech or shoe company that is unregulated—we must abide by certain industry imperatives that hinder our ideas and abilities to improve or attain our goals.

Thinking about some of these imperatives and roadblocks on my way to NRA a few weeks ago, I came away with three things I feel we as marketers can do better in the firearms industry that will improve the individual brands we manage and perhaps the industry as a whole from a digital marketing perspective.

Shipping and faster delivery of goods

Digital has acclimated the public to expect instant results and quick responses. The commerce world is trying hard to keep up, and the delay is justified. Physical products take time to deliver, and right now there’s not a clear answer on how to speed up the process. However, because the larger industry knows that this is the key to success and driving the competitive market, the truncation of purchase fulfillment is a huge trend any e-commerce marketer should have a keen eye on. (Source: iMedia)

There isn’t much that can be done in the way of speeding firearms to responsible customers when they have to go through the background check process. Some states like Hawaii, Colorado and California require a 10+ day waiting period. It can be months for NFA items.

But when it comes to selling your other non-FFL items online (accessories, apparel, etc.), much can be done to create a better customer experience that may help offset delayed online firearm purchases.

Taken from a study done by eConsultantcy, when asked what would lead or has led to a recommendation of a retailer, the availability of free shipping or discounted shipping is the top factor.

Timely arrival of shipments and free or easy returns were the next most important factors.

“Since 41% of shoppers said ‘receiving my product when expected’ led them to recommend a retailer, both proactive communication regarding delivery time and reliable delivery are critical aspects to a positive customer experience.”

By implementing free shipping, communicating the expected delivery time, free returns and a way for easy exchange, you can increase your customer’s view of your brand. Brands will never be able to ship firearms directly to customer’s residences, but they can speed up their fulfillment processes in-house. Starting with an effective website and a well-managed fulfillment process is the first step.

Complacent dealers are also a source of frustration for your customers. They may receive your product on time, but it ends up sitting in the backroom without the dealer notifying the customer. Don’t leave this important step to the dealer. Make sure to follow up with your customer to let them know their product is available for transfer. Find the bottlenecks and work with your dealers to improve over time—then track customer satisfaction.

Personalization

Personalization is a symbiotic relationship. On one side you, the marketer, are providing a spot-on experience for consumers that makes them feel understood, valued, and connected. It’s a positive engagement that’s borderline electric for the visitor. Don’t you get a little jolt when you’re served up an article, product recommendation, or email that’s perfectly aligned with your wants and needs?

On the other side are the consumers who, in exchange for this warm and fuzzy experience, reward you with more meaningful engagement, quicker conversions, higher cart values, increased spend, and ongoing loyalty. They’re happy with the relevant experience you’ve delivered. They dive in deeper. You collect more data points and create greater relevance. The cycle continues. That’s the personalization payoff. (Source: Adobe)

Your brand likely has a 5–20 percent chance of selling to a new prospect versus 60–70 percent for an existing consumer. Compound that with the fact that, on average, 55 percent of marketing budgets are spent on new customer acquisition, and it’s no surprise that increasing loyalty among existing users can reduce costs by as much as 10 percent. (Source: 5OneMedia)

Building a mutually beneficial relationship with your customer should be a priority that will increase profits. Why don’t most marketers engage in personalization? I think most don’t know where to start and for others it’s about getting over the hurdle of understanding who their customer is. You may be able to boast a large following on Facebook—but do you know who those people are? Facebook likes are considered vanity metrics that provide some indication of how your brand is perceived, but how are those likes and shares translating into revenue?

There are numerous tools out there to help you get better at personalization, and it begins with surveying your audience. Leveraging social media is one way to proceed. Tools like Social Mention, Talkwalker, Hootsuite, and Hubspot’s social media inbox monitoring tool, can help you get a better grasp on who makes up your audience. Survey Monkey is also a very inexpensive tool to start asking your customer questions to form your buyer personas that in turn will be used to develop your inbound and outbound marketing strategies. Having a firm grasp on your audience is the first step in getting your marketing right.

Point of purchase

When I think of a gun shop, the same image always comes to mind: barred windows, dusty racks, scratched glass counters and unfriendly customer service—at least in my town. Now contrast this experience with the soaring grandiose trade show booths of SHOT Show. Recall the experiences of being in those booths (if you were able to get out and walk the floor). How did they make you feel? Shouldn’t those same experiences be applied to every firearm retail environment?

One gun store getting it right is The Athena Gun Club in Houston.

If you’re a gun dealer reading this article, take note. If you want to be the dominant dealer in your area, attract a younger customer and be a “shooting destination”—investing in your retail environment is something you should highly consider, and as marketers, we should highly encourage. We know we’re getting past the point were our typical demographic is defined as the white, 55-year-old male. We have to begin thinking more seriously (and with dollars) about how we can attract the next generation of gun enthusiasts by integrating our brands into the retail environment to create a cohesive brand experience.

Beretta Gallery

Four retail environmental factors that form an engaging retail atmosphere are:

Aesthetic drives experience – colors, texture, lighting, even smell—allows for a better and more welcoming experience that makes the customer comfortable. Your mood changes when you’re in an engaging environment—like staying at a luxury hotel. It allows your visitor to “open” up and drop their guard. It makes them feel good and perhaps more inclined to buy.
Contributes value – The experience is informative, enjoyable and memorable. “People will forget what you say, but not how you make them feel.”
Sends an aspirational message – The atmosphere you create says something about what you’re trying to communicate. Are you high-tech and polished, or 1990?
Affinity – Points 1-3 make it harder for the person not to come back when faced with apathy, laziness or other options (Source: Forbes)

Another idea is to place a kiosk in your dealers that help the customer learn more about your products. This can help aid in a less than ideal dealer experience.

A quality and reliable product will always sell itself. As marketers, we have to make sure that a clear brand impression is sustained throughout the buying process and well after purchase. Faster delivery, personalization and point of purchase are only three areas that can make a big impact on your bottom line. What are your thoughts?

May 18

Native Advertising And What It Means For Firearm Marketing

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Hunting

According to the latest data from NSSF and Forbes, the number of gun manufacturers has surged by 25.8% since 2012. Standing out and getting the attention of your prospective customers has steadily gotten more difficult over the past four years, especially for companies just starting out.

As I discussed in my last article, 7 Ways to Deepen Your Firearms Digital Marketing Footprint—more and more content is being created in the hunting and firearms industry, and we are eventually reaching a state called “content shock,” —if we haven’t already. As we get closer to content shock, brands will need to create 10x better content than their competitors or risk losing out on cost-effective content marketing opportunities to build their audiences through SEO and social media channels.

Early adopters of content and inbound marketing have benefitted immensely. Just look at Beretta. Or how Stag Arms used their inbound marketing efforts to rank for the keyword “AR15,” which gets over 110,000 visits per month. Although many segments of the industry still exist to take advantage of content, others will become more saturated and harder to leverage.

If you’ve found yourself in a highly competitive category (e.g. MSRs, Optics, Self-Defense or Hunting)—I want to discuss a new marketing tactic taking shape called “native advertising” and how this emerging trend can help you build your brand and tap into audiences more efficiently.

1. What is native advertising?

First, let’s unpack the word “native,” so it’s not so confusing. Native means to belong to. It means being a part of something as if it’s supposed to be there. So let’s say a gun company wanted to place a native ad on Guns&Ammo.com (G&A). G&A has over 115K followers on Twitter and 786K on Facebook and gets over 1,129,000 visits per month. (Source: Outdoor Sportsman Group)

The gun company would first write in the style that G&A readers are accustomed to. They would make it look the same as well. Think fonts, colors, style, branding etc. So, in the end, you have an entertaining, helpful and relevant piece of content (video, blog or infographic) that looks like it came from G&A but is really from the gun manufacturer.

But wait, isn’t this sponsored content or what is called an advertorial? Not really, here’s why.

Almost half of consumers have no idea what native advertising is and of those consumers who do, 50% are skeptical. (Source: Wordstream) It also allows the gun company to tap into G&A’s audience with the goal of looking like a trusted piece of content from G&A rather than an untrusted advertorial or sponsored piece.

The key difference is that the native ad looks like it came from the publisher, not the advertiser. This breaks through peoples’ B.S. detectors and garners brand trust to a group of prospective customers the gun company otherwise would not have gotten access to.

2. Benefits of native advertising

Today’s businesses are seeing a shift in how consumers prefer to learn about brands. Click-through rates for banner ads were at 9 percent in 2000; today, they’re less than 1 percent. (Source: Forbes) Which is why content has become so effective. As a result, companies have turned to native advertising to promote their brands. So far, it’s proving more successful than traditional online advertising:

People view native ads 53 percent more frequently than traditional ads.
Native advertising can increase brand lift by as much as 82 percent.
Purchase intent is 53 percent higher when consumers click on native ads instead of traditional ads.
Native ads containing rich media can boost conversion by as much as 60 percent.
The native advertising industry will reach $4.6 billion in revenue by 2017.
57% of publishers have a dedicated editorial team to create content readers will care about, leaving publishers in full control, not brands, which ultimately benefits readers.
People view native ads 53% more than banner ads.

3. Best practices for native advertising

According to Gemini, Yahoo’s native advertising platform—there are eight best practices marketers should be aware of when composing native ads. These are imperative, as the FCC is cracking down on native advertising because some can be seen as deceptive.

Use people-based images
Showcase your logo
Add a “Sponsored” label to video ads
Place the “$” symbol and a CTA on native mobile ads
Trim native video ads to 15 seconds
Add a brand mention
Opt for auto-play, making sound an option
Provide an option for “more”

And for an extra boost, try native video.

In a case study by Nielsen and Sharethrough, native video advertising outperformed pre-roll ads for five advertisers, regardless of the campaign’s category or marketing objective. For instance, the findings from the test campaign, whose primary marketing objective was to drive brand favorability, showed that:

Native ads generated 82% brand lift among users exposed to the ads.
Pre-roll units generated 2.1% brand lift among users exposed to the ads.

According to Chad Pollitt, in his ebook Native Advertising Manifesto, which I highly suggest you check out, says:

Sponsored content and native advertising does for B2B marketers what display advertising can do for B2C brands – drive ROI-producing traffic at scale. Cost per clicks or cost per thousand impressions are generally much less for native advertising.

David Ogilvy, the “father of advertising,” once said, “It has been found that the less an advertisement looks like an advertisement and the more it looks like an editorial, the more readers stop, look and read.”

This is precisely what native advertising and sponsored content does for top funnel content marketers. It’s ideal, too, because it’s exactly what these marketers want from their content – to be read.

Tradeshow, email, print, and video/television advertising continue to be the mainstay of how firearm and hunting manufacturers create demand in the marketplace. But with the influx of new companies and increased competition—native advertising will become a valuable option for savvier marketers in the coming years.

Mar 27

Are You Losing Your Opportunity To Compete Digitally?

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Hunting

There are hundreds or maybe even thousands of product review sites and online magazines that create content (video, blogs, articles, etc.) in one form or the other about hunting or firearms. From how-tos to the best tricks and tips—the SHOT industry has no shortage of content. A quick search on Google for any topic about firearms or hunting brings back millions of results.

With all of this content being created—manufacturers and business service providers looking to begin a content or inbound marketing program might be asking: “Why create content when all of these other publishers are creating it for us?” “Besides, how many times can you write about “How to Skin a Deer” or “What Are The Best Guns for Concealed Carry?” It seems like everyone in the industry has written on these topics at one time or another.

In this post, I want to give you three reasons why you should still consider creating your own branded content in a time of content overload.

In his post, The Big Flaw with “Content Shock” and the Way We See Content Marketing, Marcus Sheridan, President of the Sales Lion, a content marketing and sales consultancy says, you can boil content marketing down into 3 simple words:

Listening
Communicating
Teaching

1. Listening

Listening will always be critical in business. Content creation allows you to demonstrate that you are actively listening to your customers. The firearms and hunting industry is hyper-competitive and finding ways to stand out are getting slimmer as more and more noise is being created.

Your brand’s ability to demonstrate that you are listening to your customers is a new and evolving competitive factor you will need to incorporate into your marketing strategy. This also needs to be apparent in the content you create.

2. Communicating

Effective communication will always dramatically impact consumers. Branded content from the manufacturer itself—not content created by industry publishers—is a trend that we are starting to see more and more of as mentioned in my last post: 7 Need To Know Firearm Inbound Marketing Indicators.

Mossberg, for example, continues to create their own content at a fierce pace. Mossberg (a $10-50M company) is actively investing in Mossberg-branded content that is communicating value, insight and expertise that is sure to be attracting new customers and retaining old ones.

Public information provided by Alexa

According to the public information traffic ranking service provided by Alexa, Mossberg’s traffic and social networks continue to grow at a rate of 37-47% respectfully (Source: Hubspot and Alexa). Mossberg will continue to grow their online footprint that expands their audience, reach and rank. This will leave little room for other shotgun manufacturers to obtain top keywords in the future. Mossberg ranks 5th for the search word “Shotgun” that receives over 49,500 searches per month. Imagine what 49,500 visits to your website a month could do for your business. (Source: Hubspot)

Additional benefits of creating your branded content:

Generates rich organic and return traffic to your website
Content lasts longer and can be repurposed
Builds your audience over time
Improves search engine rankings
Grows social media channels
Produces a qualified and robust email marketing list

Content also benefits your dealers, distributors and wholesalers. The more you can educate your target market on your products the more likely you will be able to increase sales, which leads me to the next point.

3. Teaching

Powerful teaching will always be the key to generating consumer trust and action. Even though much has been written on just about every topic in the industry—there is still ample opportunity to rise above the noise to carve out your brand’s voice. By teaching your customers about your manufacturing processes, materials, and extensive product testing, you help your customers understand why your prices may be higher, and that backs up your claims. This also provides some transparency along with relevant and helpful content that solves your customer’s most burning questions. You’ll be able to build deeper relationships and garner more trust, which we all know leads to more sales.

This approach bodes well for manufacturers looking to reach the new generation of hunters and shooters who rely more on their digital devices than the old methods of TV, trade show and print.

firearms-hunting-content-inbound-marketing

Content grows with time

There is a lot of content being written in the industry. But, there still is ample opportunities for brands to get in on the digital gold rush by starting now.

Thanks to Marcus Sheridan for providing a much needed perspective on industries facing content overload.

What do you think about this blog post and the points it raise? Please comment below.

Feb 28

7 Need To Know Firearm Inbound Marketing Indicators

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Hunting

Inbound marketing in the hunting, firearms, and outdoor industry is starting to grow. More and more brands like Havalon, Beretta, Springfield, Mossberg and others are integrating inbound marketing (sometimes confused with content marketing) into their outbound marketing budgets (print, t.v. and tradeshow). Content marketing is defined as “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience—and ultimately, to drive profitable customer interaction.” (Source: CMI) Inbound marketing earns the attention of customers, makes the company easy to be found, and draws customers to your website by producing interesting content.

Buying firearms and hunting equipment is a long sales process due to cost, and the hundreds of choices buyers have to choose from. Inbound by nature is a highly effective methodology in educating your customers, dealers, distributors, and wholesalers about your products and brand that can speed up the buying process.

In this post, I share seven indicators I’ve seen that will determine the difference between a stellar inbound marketing program or a mediocre one.

1. Low Saturation Index
A quick search on Google will reveal the amount of content you must contend with when starting an inbound marketing program of your own. Mark Schaefer calls this “content shock”—which means that there is so much content, that we simply don’t have the capacity to consume it all. When creating content, make sure that your brand has unique topics that you can bring to the table that will attract, convert, close and delight your customers.

2. Product-Market Fit
Does your product or service provide value to your customer? The quicker your customer can understand the value, the more you know your product has achieved product-market fit. Without an understanding of who your customer is and the problem your product or service solves—it will be very difficult to focus your content that will generate traffic, links, shares and the sales you’re looking for. (Source: Entrepreneur)

3. Audience
Great content marketers find their niche, and then write the heck out of the content that fits it. (Source: Outbrain) Does your brand own a niche in the industry that no one else serves? Can your content capitalize on creating a community of customers who are loyal to your brand that you can turn in to evangelists? We are fortunate in this industry to have many social media outlets and networks like AR15.com, Gun District, LinkedIn Groups and others that allow manufacturers to reach a captive audience of gun and hunting enthusiasts. Building a community of customers is also important that many top brands lack.

4. Web Domain
Did you just launch your website? The chances are that Google (the leading search engine with 89% of total web search traffic) may not index your domain for an entire year. I’ve seen first hand that when new websites are launched. Google keeps relevant blog posts and pages off the first page of results; keeping your site from gaining rankings. If this is the case, you may need to supplement your inbound marketing efforts with PPC and other outbound methods until your rankings improve.

5. Poor Competitor Content
Great content marketing starts with great content—and lots of it. (Source: Hubspot) A quick look at your competitors will reveal advantages or disadvantages that you can capitalize on or leverage. For example, if their content is poorly written, inconsistent, boring, self-promotional and doesn’t provide any real value—you have the opportunity to capture search engine rankings—which will benefit your efforts and customer preference when people are online looking for your kind of product.

6. Strong References
Another key component of inbound marketing is having strong references to draw from. Utilize others’ blogs and industry resources to back up your claims to ensure the information you are providing is accurate and relevant. This creates trust and credibility.

7. Price
The price of your products will also influence the success of your inbound marketing efforts. As noted above, inbound will work better when goods and services are above the $250 threshold. Products at this price point force consumers to examine products more carefully—opposite of an impulse buy. If you can’t determine what the buyers journey is from awareness to purchase, chances are you have a product that wouldn’t work well with inbound marketing.

By understanding how much content saturation is in your segment, your product/market fit, audience, web domain age, competitor weaknesses, availability of reliable references and a considered price point will help you create a more effective inbound marketing strategy.

Feb 10

4 Simple Ways to Differentiate Your Brand’s Voice

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Hunting

Brand voice is often misunderstood and encompasses a long list of steps to get it right. But it doesn’t have to be so exhaustive if you’re just starting out, or if you’re just looking to narrow the focus of your current brand to achieve greater differentiation in the marketplace.

Brand voice is not what you say in your copy, but how you say it. Just like your logo, imagery, font style, colors, booth design or the guy with the beard in your ad; brand voice helps your brand cut through the clutter and stand out against other competing hunting, firearms and outdoor brands.

This article assumes you’ve taken the time to research and create your buyer personas. If you don’t know what a buyer persona is or what that means, check out this article. In this post, I want to give you four simple steps to help you focus your brand voice.

“The art of marketing is the art of brand building. If you are not a brand you are a commodity. Then price is everything and the low-cost producer is the only winner.”
–Philip Kotler, Professor at the Kellogg School of Management

1. Go back to the beginning.
To figure out your brand voice, you need to go back to the beginning. Why was your company started? What problem does your products solve? What were the founder’s spark and reasons (besides making money) for going all in on their dream to bring your company to where it is today? This story, no matter how boring or exciting it is, creates the foundation for your brand’s voice which is a crucial starting point.

Action Item: Fill in the blank.

My brand’s products solve ________ in the marketplace.
I want my brand to make people feel _______.
I want people to _______ when they come into contact with my brand.
Three words that describe my brand are _______ , _______ , and _______.
I don’t want my brand to be like________.

(Source: Muse)

Your brand can’t be something you’re not. Be true to who you are. There’s no one like you or the people who make up your company’s history and story.

2. Define your values.
You most likely have a grasp on your company culture. (Or if you’re just starting out, what you might like it to be someday.) A company’s values are typically on full display in meetings, Friday night after work and how people act when things go wrong. How do people respond to emails? What are some of the things hanging up around the office? Do the people who work in your office use the same colloquialisms, slang, and buzzwords? By mere observation, you can begin to pull out some of the values you all collectively share by the way you work.

A tone of voice both embodies and expresses the brand’s personality and the set of values. It’s about the people that make up the brand – the things that drive them, their loves and hates, and what they want to share with the world. (Source: Distilled)

Action Item: Reference Duck Dynasty
An excellent example of how to understand brand values is to watch an episode of Duck Dynasty. I chose Duck Commander because it’s a hunting company we all get to have an inside look at. It doesn’t take long to figure out what values Willie, Jase, Martin, Jep, Phil, and Godwin live by—and how those values integrate and define their company’s brand voice.

Photo Credit: New York Times

Action Item:
Think about the values that define your company then boil them down to three to four words. See the examples below:

• Apple: innovate, inspire, dream.
• Duck Commander: faith, family, ducks.
• Red Bull: adventure, try, adrenaline.

3. What does your brand look, act, and sound like?
To start bringing it all together, it’s important to relate your brand voice to real-world archetypes you already know and trust and by adding in your brand’s unique twist. Answer the questions below.

If you could have a celebrity be your spokesperson for your company, who would it be?
If your brand was a car, what car would it be?
If your brand was a band? What would it sound like?

Example:

Our brand is Clint Eastwood, driving down the road in a ‘69 Camero Super Sport listening to AC/DC holding (enter your brand’s product).

By using this example, you can begin to shape your brand’s voice that creates real differentiation in the marketplace. Use this brand voice statement to inform your copywriters and designers to help them in their ideation and the creative direction of your brand.

4. Bring your brand to life in your copy and imagery.
Now that you know your company’s origins, the collective values of your people and have given it some real-world representation, it’s now time to integrate it into your copy and brand standards. Don’t get all hung up on doing this perfect right out of the gate. It will take time to perfect, but with a little practice, your brand’s voice will begin to take shape. It’s also helpful to think and identify other brands who have similar voices.

A word of caution. Always use correct grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Failure to do so will cause a piece of copy to come across as amateur and untrustworthy. Use a tool like Grammarly to perfect your writing.

Experiment and add in the below elements (if they align with your brand’s voice) after you’ve written a concise piece of copy.

Use (and commit) to humor
Sometimes swear words work (sparingly, of course)
Add in your company’s slang words
Use double negatives
Be bold and opinionated
Add in some creative or big vocabulary words
Bold statements
Descriptive analogies
Use the same words consistently
Use pronouns for style
Break some grammar rules

(Source: Distilled)

As marketers or business owners, it’s easy to get wrapped around the axle on what constitutes brand voice. By looking at your company’s origins, your company culture, and building some example archetypes, you’ll be able to shape your copy that gives it a real personality that connects with your target buyer personas.

Feb 03

drone-video-firearms-hunting-outdoor-marketing2

5 Reasons To Use Drones In Your Next Hunting or Outdoor Marketing Video

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Hunting

Videos will be responsible for nearly three-quarters of all internet traffic by 2017, potentially outpacing brands’ investment in them.

Last year, it was reported that 70 percent of marketers are making video content a priority. The latest data suggests companies should begin to consider a larger investment in video marketing if they want to generate more traffic, leads and purchases through their websites. (Source: Syndacast)

Consider these facts:

54% of senior executives share work-related videos with colleagues, at least, weekly.
93% of marketers use video for online marketing, sales or communication.
65% of video viewers watch more than 3/4 of a video.
52% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with best ROI.
50% of online video now accounts for 50% of all mobile traffic.
78% of people watch videos online every week.
B2B and B2C marketers all over the world say video is the top 3 most effective social media marketing tactic.
(Source: Hubspot)

Below is a guest post by our friends at Birds Eye of Big Sky—an unmanned aerial videography company based in Missoula, Montana whose recent work includes projects for National Geographic, PBS, HBO and the movie “The Revenant.”

If you’re interested in how you can bring a new level of interest, excitement and competitive edge to your firearms, hunting or outdoor brand through the use of drones, here are five reasons to consider a drone for your next content or inbound marketing video.

1. Scenic Landscapes Can Be Captured Economically Using a High-Quality Cinematic Drone

The latest high-end drones enable you to obtain stunning aerial capture of the natural environment of your product being used in that setting. Showcase your product in the spectacular outdoors and catch the eye of the visitor to your site with panoramic sweeping views or action sequences captured via the drone platform. Most hunters and outdoor enthusiasts are there because of the beauty of the natural settings in which they use your product—reward their visit to your site with gorgeous views and engaging imagery that shows your product in action.

2. Exciting Angles and Cinematic Production Value

Unique and exciting angles and perspectives can be obtained by videographers using drones. You may not immediately notice it, but many recent television commercials, internet content, and even feature films are being photographed using drones because of their unique and exciting capabilities. Imagine your product being used on a mountainous ridge, a moving vehicle, down range or boat in a scenic locale, or shot through a forested trail by a drone in the air. The possible perspectives are limited only by your imagination (and the skills of your camera crew).

3. Increase Visits and Purchases

Because of the notoriety of drones in the public eye, by using drone photography in your marketing efforts, you will grab the attention of viewers who will be drawn to your advertising message simply by the fact that drones have been used in the production of your video. According to data from Syndacast, videos will be responsible for 74 percent of all internet traffic by 2017. Website visitors are 64% more likely to buy a product on an online retail site after watching a video. In addition, visitors who view videos stay on the site an average of 2 minutes longer than those who don’t view videos (Source: comScore)

4. Show your Customers that you are Cutting-Edge and Modern

Because drones are new, high tech, and perceived as innovative and cutting-edge, your use of drones shows your customers that you are a modern, forward-thinking organization that embraces new technology and ideas. This will create a perception in the viewer/customer that they are dealing with a market leader and innovator. If being perceived as such is an important part of your corporate image, then you should consider using the drones in the production of your next branding/marketing video production.

drone-video-firearms-hunting-outdoor-marketing

Photo Credit: Birds Eye of Big Sky

5. Show your Support to Preserve, Protect and Promote Wildlife and Fishing Habitats and Conservation

Drones are now used in a myriad of ways by researchers, fish and game authorities, conservationists and others to study ways to improve wildlife and fishing habitats, monitor the environment, research migratory, feeding and reproductive behavior, and many other functions. All of these efforts will benefit wildlife and fish populations and habitats, and thus enhance hunting and fishing opportunities and enjoyment. By embracing the use of the drone technology, your company is implicitly cooperating with researchers and scientists in the modernization and improvement of tools and techniques to improve the natural world for all to enjoy, now and in the future for the benefit of future generations.

To learn more about Birds Eye of Big Sky, please visit their website: https://www.birdseyeofbigsky.com

By Edward Meier
Birds Eye of Big Sky

Jan 26

5 Key Marketing Takeaways From SHOT Show 2016

By Joshua Claflin Firearms Marketing

By now your feet have hopefully gone back to their original shape, and your head has cleared from the craziness of what ended up being an epic SHOT Show 2016.

I logged over 20,000 steps and 11 miles on my Garmin between Thursday and Friday and thought I was able to get into every major exhibit on the main floor. I kept my schedule open on Thursday to catch up with friends, track down Willie, Jase, Goodwin and Martin for an autograph, take in Dana Loesch’s live radio broadcast and as luck would have it, run into Kyle Lamb and Jim Shockey.

Now that the show is over, and you begin to re-group and think about next year’s show (yes, it’s time to start getting ready). I wanted to share a few of my thoughts from a marketing perspective on the event and give you a few takeaways on how you can make next year’s SHOT Show even better.

1. Creative marketing concepts in exhibits
The exhibits I felt that had the most energy and excitement were the booths that incorporated an original concept that brought their brand story to life. They somehow tapped into my craw to create an extremely memorable experience. Not only did these concept exhibits pick up media attention—but they also seemed to be having the most fun. The three most interesting exhibits I experienced were: CAA/Kalashnikov USA, Battle Arms Development, and SilencerCo.

CAA/Kalashnikov’s exhibit was like stepping into an underground Slavic dance club. Hard white floors, high ceilings, AKs on the walls and the contrasting American/Russian imagery and other European-type aesthetics added to the experience. For a brief moment, I felt like I was somewhere else other than Las Vegas.

Battle Arms Development’s mad scientist theme featured employees wearing white lab coats under blue lighting which created a similar vibe to CAA—but more science-fiction-like. The added Star Wars and super-hero themed rifles made the exhibit absorbing and engaging.

SilencerCo’s booth had a covered walk-in that integrated seamlessly with their ‘Fight the Noise’ campaign along with their catalog, booth staff, past year’s advertising campaign and website. With a gray spray-painted outdoor scene and impressive imagery, the booth was also very experiential that brought the brand to life. Darren Jones, Media Relations and Sales with SilencerCo, said, “This show has been completely overwhelming—in a good way. We’ve had tremendous response to our newly launched products, and it will probably be one of our best years ever. We fully expect the ball to keep rolling.” (Source: NSSF)

Photo credit: SilencerCo.

Takeaway: The highly saturated MSR segment and burgeoning suppressor segment will become increasingly harder for brands to stand out. Consider integrating a theme into next year’s booth that incorporates and aligns with your brand’s story to make it more attractive. Introduce your theme in your advertising and digital marketing over the next 11 months. Take your booth visitors out of SHOT Show and into your brand’s world. This would play exceptionally well down on the first level where the exhibits aren’t as exciting.

2. Sig Sauer goes big

Photo Credit: Fox News

This second point also ties into #1. The exhibit that stood out head and shoulders above all others on the main floor was Sig Sauer. If you saw it, you know what I’m talking about. It was unbelievable. Sig looks to be doubling down on their repositioning effort as a “total system provider.”

“Obviously, SHOT Show is important to us,” said Tom Taylor, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Sig Sauer. “We made a huge investment in the booth because we want our customers to know that we are a total system provider. And it was evident from the crowd in the booth that the effort wasn’t lost on anyone.” (Source: NSSF)

Takeaway: To make a lasting statement—go big! (if you got an extra few million dollars in your budget).

3. Busyness hindered social media
I frequently posted on Twitter and couldn’t help but notice that a lot of brands were not engaging with the network as much as I expected. There were two hashtags being used: #shotshow (23,699 tweets) and #shotshow2016 (14,345 tweets)—which fragmented the feed and caused some confusion on which one to follow. Some brands I noticed didn’t use the show’s hashtag at all. Instagram got 55,555 posts.—and noticed that #shotshow wasn’t even trending on Facebook. In comparison, events become trending topics on Twitter when they have over 50K followers. So the question I ask is ‘why wasn’t there more tweets/posts!?’

A few thoughts:

It was a really busy show. A lot of my friends and client’s booths—where I got a chance to get behind the counter—were jammed packed. Buyers were lining up which barely gave us time to talk. Mike Schwiebert, Vice President of Marketing for Weatherby, put the show in context by saying, “In my 17 years of working SHOT Shows with Weatherby, this is perhaps the busiest show I’ve ever had.”
Perhaps the industry still doesn’t understand the power and opportunity of these networks and how to use them effectively during trade shows—or they just don’t care.
Businesses who cater to the military and law enforcement may be frowned upon. Most manufacturers who work with three letter agencies, choose not to engage with social media—for obvious reasons.
It will be interesting to compare this year with next year’s event.

Takeaway: Using conference hashtags are important because it allows you to reach a larger audience. Even though the show was busy, there exists an opportunity to stand out by posting to social media more regularly throughout the week to drive traffic to your website and booth. Other exhibitors don’t seem to be taking advantage of this opportunity. Maybe you can?

4. Trending: lightweight and quiet
I noticed a lot of companies incorporating carbon fiber into their platforms like Christensen Arms’ CA-15 VTAC as well as suppression like the new Maxim 9 by SilcencerCo., and Daniel Defense’ 300 BLK integrally suppressed rifle—the DDM4 ISR300. Patrick Woods from Spring Guns & Ammo said, “One of the biggest innovations he saw was lighter-weight long guns. “There’s a lot of new rails out that are much, much lighter, that still provide the modularity that people are looking for in an AR-15, and are still incredibly durable and rigid.”

Takeaway: How can you begin to integrate lightweight materials into your product offerings? Knife handles, tactical gear, holsters, cans, hand guards, stocks, barrels, mags, etc.? This may be worth taking a look at.

5. The industry is strong and “on alert.”
Paul Pluff, Director, Marketing Communications with Smith & Wesson, said, “This is the premier show for us, and once again this has been a very busy time. The response to our new products has been fantastic, and based on what we’re seeing; we’re very much looking forward to the year ahead.” (Source: NSSF)

With the ever-increasing attacks on our industry from the administration and the anti-gun/hunting groups—the industry remains extremely strong. I was surprised by some who suggested to “hold back” on spending for development and hiring until things pan out in Washington. I can see their point, and most likely many will heed the advice. However, rewards always favor the risk takers. We have to be “on alert” as NSSF President Sanetti suggests, but we must also continue to push and grow our businesses regardless of the political climate. I expect many forward-thinking manufacturers to continue with their plans irrespective of the industry warnings and threats we face this year.

Takeaway: We are always going to have opposition to our industry, lifestyle and heritage. But it shouldn’t stymie innovation and manufacturers’ plans to continue with their development plans. To do so would mean to admit defeat.

To wrap up, exhibits who integrated creative concepts had greater interest, use social media in future shows to help your brand gain greater awareness, lightweight, and quieter products are on the rise, and with a strong industry powered by some of the smartest and bravest people in the world who keep this country safe (collectively and individually) 2016 looks to be a great year.

What were some of your takeaways? Please comment below.

Dec 12

What Marketing Automation Tool Is Right For Your Firearms Company?

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Hunting

Will 2016 be the year you make the move to inbound marketing? Several of the industries top manufacturers like Beretta, Mossberg, Stag Arms and Springfield Armory have engaged in marketing automation with more soon to follow. Companies are 3x as likely to see higher ROI on inbound marketing campaigns than on outbound. Will you be the first in your category?

I am typically asked about the differences between HubSpot and other marketing automation tools for inbound marketing. If you’re someone evaluating marketing automation software the list of options gets fairly long: Marketo, Pardot, Eloqua, Oracle, NetResults, SAS, SilverPop, LeadFormix and more… Each have different price points, contact and email limits and other factors that affect your budget and the potential success of your inbound campaigns—but who to choose?

As an inbound marketing agency in the hunting, outdoor and firearms industry, we wanted the best solution for our own business and our clients—which is why we chose HubSpot. After being with HubSpot for the past two years, here are seven points for you to consider if you’re evaluating marketing automation for your online marketing efforts.

1. All in one
We’ve been conducting “disjointed” inbound marketing for many years for businesses in the form of SEO, landing pages, email, blogging, CTAs and content offers. We made the investment in HubSpot in January 2014 to tie all our online marketing efforts together. It allows us to save immense amounts of time and cost to handle all our inbound marketing activities from one online source; instead of needing five different applications for SEO research, email/workflows, forms, analytics and social media management. Another great feature about HubSpot is the iPhone App. Marketers who check their metrics 3x+ times a week are over 20% more likely to achieve positive ROI. This is why the iPhone app is great as it allows us to keep tabs on our client’s campaign activities on the go—allowing our team to access campaign metrics in real-time.

2. Cutting edge sales/marketing training
What attracted us to HubSpot is their sales and marketing support. There is a steep learning curve to doing inbound marketing, but the support, video training, and weekly consultations have made it easier for us to learn and teach our clients about inbound marketing. As a Certified Hubspot Partner Agency, we receive monthly training on the latest marketing and sales techniques from the marketing industry’s leading experts that help us market our client’s products and services more effectively.

This is a key benefit to our clients. Even though we have degrees in marketing or business and years of experience in marketing—being on the cutting edge and up-to-date on the latest sales and marketing trends is immensely valuable. With the increasing level of complexity in marketing: social, mobile, technology, shifting demographics, etc., I feel HubSpot is at the forefront of providing their customers the best possible training and support to navigate the changing landscape.

3. Voted #1 by marketers
HubSpot coined the word inbound marketing and defined an entirely new category like Coke, Band-Aid and Kleenex. HubSpot can also boast that they are the #1 marketing software voted by marketers.

4. They have our back, we have yours
As a HubSpot agency partner, we have their backing with all our clients’ inbound marketing efforts. Our dedicated account rep and sales manager are there to help us with all our questions, problems and issues. When our clients hire us, they also get HubSpot’s amazing staff, support and inbound marketing expertise.

5. Awesome people
Another reason we went with Hubspot is their people. They really “get it” and are there to help businesses like yours (and mine) succeed in inbound marketing.

6. You get what you pay for
There are obviously other software companies that have lower price points with features similar to HubSpot. But what you don’t get is a sense that other companies are serious about helping their clients. With HubSpot, when you commit with them, they go all in with you—to me as a marketer and business owner—that’s really big. This attitude is uniformly passed down to our clients

7. Inbound and internet marketing is the future
To do internet or inbound marketing requires a shift in thinking to be successful. Companies who have made this shift are reporting amazing results (See the Beretta case study). PPC, radio, print advertising, trade shows, cold calling, etc. come at higher costs now-a-days with fewer returns. According to a recent study done by IBM, 86% of CEO’s are demanding more marketing ROI. Inbound marketing on average costs 62% less per lead than traditional outbound methods—which makes committing to inbound marketing very attractive.

HubSpot’s methodology, training, people, support and software has given us the ability to prove ROI in greater ways than ever before to our clients. Due to the fact that buying a firearm is a considered buying process, inbound marketing is a perfect methodology for conducting online marketing. Bottom line, HubSpot is an amazing company with an amazing product which is why we chose it over other marketing automation companies.

Dec 04

How To Do Traditional Firearms Marketing the Inbound Way

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Hunting

There are several ways to construct a marketing campaign for your hunting or firearms product. Most of the time, you gather your team in a room, pound out some ideas—based around a new product release—and figure out a way on how to best bring it to the masses. Sometimes this is driven by your ad rep at Guns & Ammo or Field & Stream calling to make you aware that their full-page Spring ad deadline is looming (that costs $5,000 bucks) and that “there’s still space available.”

So you get busy creating the messaging, source the photography and get the designer to pull it all together to submit your files 2 minutes before the 5 PM deadline.

Few weeks go by as you wait in expectation for the ad to drop expecting a sales boost and… nothing. You see a slight bump in website traffic, but little to no sales. Sound familiar?

In this post, I want to give you three quick points on how to combine traditional “outbound” marketing tactics with inbound marketing tactics to help you create more effective traditional marketing campaigns that optimizes your marketing dollars and sales.

1. Create a backbone strategy with inbound marketing

Inbound marketing is a long-term strategy that is formed around your ideal customer (or buyer persona) that focuses specifically on how to solve their problems or how to improve their job, hunting or shooting experience. This is a drastic departure from the typical marketing strategies were it’s all about how cool the product is, the latest review or how superior it is to other products. This kind of messaging is getting old and everyone uses it. Inbound is about building trust and being helpful. This allows your marketing and sales to stand out and has been proven to be more effective instead of the “say it and spray it” method of most “interruptive” traditional marketing methods.

An inbound marketing strategy then uses six web-based components that consist of: 1. Content (blogs, videos, webinars, ebooks and whitepapers), 2. SEO, 3. Email marketing, 4. Social media, 5. CTAs and 6. Landing pages. These components form the framework when marketing online. Since inbound is entirely web-based, it’s completely measurable. This allows your marketing team to analyze what pieces of content and messages are working and what are not.

Since inbound marketing revolves around goals, ROI and analytics—this gives your marketing team a highly effective strategy that becomes the hub for all your marketing activities, including print, T.V, trade show and radio.

Example of print ad with inbound offer.

2. Create relevant offers and include them in your ads

Buying ads or TV spots can build your brand’s awareness and can bring short-term sales, but often times it’s very hard to measure.

One of the ways you can gauge your ads’ effectiveness is by placing a free downloadable offer on it that drives your audience to your website.

By creating helpful downloadable offers like catalogs, spec guides, hunting tips or in this example: “The Beginner’s Guide to Pheasant Hunting” your personas will be enticed to exchange their contact information for your offer allowing you to communicate with them further. Use a vanity URL like www.yourfirstshotgun.com/hunt and a specialized call in number to track engagement.

3. Track ROI, analyze and adjust

So what did that $5000 full page get you? The chances are that if you properly identified your audience, utilized a targeted publication and included a downloadable offer, you will generate traffic and sales. At the minimum you grew your email marketing list from prospects who downloaded your offer for future lead nurturing.

If you did not achieve the results you wanted, you might need to go back and rethink your positioning, message and drill more into defining your persona. If it worked, rinse and repeat.

By combining the tactics of traditional “outbound” marketing with inbound marketing, you will find you have more data to rely on to make your advertising campaigns more effective. Use these three points for your radio, trade show and TV campaigns as well.

Nov 02

growth-driven-design-firearms-web-design

How to Use Growth-Driven Web Design To Build Your Firearms Business

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Hunting

If you’re a firearms manufacturer or work for one, you’re most likely familiar with the term “Agile.” If you’re not, here’s a quick primer: In regards to product development, Agile is a process that says you will make incremental iterations along a timeline based on wish lists or goals for your product (or service) in short development cycles, learning and improving as you go based on customer feedback.

Contrast this with traditional approaches to firearm manufacturing—were it’s an all or nothing approach to product development, which is typically how most manufacturers’ processes go.

With manufacturing going through massive transformation (Source: McKinsey), process and management terms like Agile, Scrum, Six Sigma and Lean—are becoming more commonplace and accepted manufacturing processes due to rapidly changing consumer behaviors of personalization, faster delivery, and customization.

Steve Denning from Forbes writes: “One would think that with the declining returns from traditional business strategy the need to become more agile would be obvious and that firms would be embracing the radical management practices and values of Agile. Yet even today, Agile is largely ignored by senior management and business schools. In some ways, Agile remains the best-kept management secret on the planet.”

But what does “Agile” have to do with your website?

Your website is the hardest working sales person in your company. Here’s why:

It doesn’t go home at night
It’s working 24/7/365 for your business
It is the hub of all your marketing and advertising activities
57% of the sales cycle is over before a dealer or customer contacts/purchases from you because they visited your website first (Source: CEB)
80-90% of your customers research products online before purchasing (Source: Retailing Today)
It is the basis of all your social media efforts
It can reach more interested dealers, distributors and customers than any trade show, print ad or T.V. show
It’s the source of building a viable email marketing list
Every customer interaction can be tracked

And the list goes on and on. With more and more of your customers researching and buying firearms and accessories online first (Source: NSSF), your website should—and if not—be your hardest working sales person.

In this post, I want to introduce you to a different way of thinking about your next firearm website design (that you most likely are dreading) and how you can approach it in an “agile-way” that is more budget-friendly, produces greater results and is based on your customer rather than assumptions.

Traditional Web Design

For a long time, the all-or-nothing approach to web development has been the standard. A typical project starts out with you knowing that your company’s website is outdated and needs to be redesigned.

So you go searching online for a design agency to develop the site. You narrow it down to 3 firms and choose one based on price, capability and delivery.

Typical website design costs range somewhere between $10,000 to $80,000+. This means you have to come up with a large sum of capital up front and then devote 3-4 months of your time to the project. Your site goes live—most likely over budget and out of scope—and then it sits there for 2-3 years until you have to redesign again.

But there is a bigger problem.

How will you know that the website you just launched is the best possible performing website that achieves your revenue goals and provides you a return on your investment? With a traditional approach, you base your firearm website design on a hypothesis of what will work—not what’s been proven. And this is why the traditional approach to web development is broken.

Growth-Driven Web Design

Now let’s apply an “agile” approach, or what is called by Luke Summerfield, Growth-Driven Design to web design and development.

In a growth driven design model or GDD, you do everything in a traditional web design model, except you adjust and build your website in short intervals over time based on user feedback, not assumptions of what your users want.

There are three main benefits to Growth-Driven Design:

Minimize risk associated with traditional web design
You work to avoid the risks of traditional web design by taking a systematic approach to shorten the time to launch, focusing on real impact and continuous learning and improvement.
Continuously learn and improve
You are constantly researching, testing and learning about your visitors to inform on-going website improvements. Through continuous improvements, you can reach peak performance.
As you learn, inform marketing and sales (and vice versa)
Growth-Driven Design is tightly integrated with inbound marketing & sales. What we learn about visitors helps inform and improve marketing & sales strategies and tactics (and vice versa).

The GDD process is much more effective, and it turns your website into a sales and marketing machine that is constantly improving over time versus leaving your website to drift over the next 2-3 years like most companies in the industry do. (Source: Luke Summerfield)

The Growth-Driven Design Process

Instead of going through the long traditional web design process of one and done, with GDD—you focus on creating strategy first, getting online quickly with the bare minimum requirements—and then iterate over the course of the next year as you plan, develop, learn and transfer your understanding to marketing and sales as you go, then rinse and repeat.

growth-driven-firearms-website-design

1. Strategy
In the strategy phase, you do everything in the traditional web design process but, prioritize what you need now, and what you will need later allowing you to get online faster.

Goals
Personas
Website & Analytics Audit
User Experience Research
Fundamental Assumptions
Global & Page Strategy
Brainstorm Wishlist

2. Launch Pad Site
In the launch pad phase, you go live with your new website with the bare minimum requirements based on what has worked in the past. This typically involves listing all your best selling products (or services), adding new photography, new design template(s) and some new content or positioning messages.

Map out process: Messaging, copy, wireframes, UX, design, develop, Q&A
Collaborate with team based on specific customer/client and action items

3. Plan, Develop, Learn and Transfer
After the launch pad site has been launched, using tools like heat mapping, usability testing, analytics and qualitative customer feedback, you build and improve your website. Also worth mentioning is the SEO benefits that keeps your content fresh, which according to MOZ, allows you to rank higher on Google.

If you realize the importance of how your website can grow your business, Growth-Driven Design offers a greater opportunity for forward-thinking firearm companies to engage their customers with an increased level of customer satisfaction, communication, product development and brand building that in the end ultimately saves you time, cost and grows your business more effectively.

So to sum up, Growth-Driven Design:

Gets your new website launched faster
Takes a phased approach that helps your budget
Is based on user feedback, not assumptions
Is constantly being improved over time (content, functions, features, modules, etc.)
Works with single stakeholders within your company one at a time, minimizing internal conflict and achieving each department’s goals more effectively
Less up-front cost and risk

If you’re interested in learning more about GDD and if it might be a good fit for your firearms business, download the eBook below. I’d also be happy to take whatever questions you have to help improve your current website and inbound marketing efforts.

Related Resources:

Summerfield, Luke. Rethinking Web Design Webinar
(Accessed October 30, 2015) https://www.growthdrivendesign.com

Oct 26

hunting-firearms-content-marketing-small-budget

How to Get Started with Inbound Marketing on a Small Budget

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Hunting

For some hunting, outdoor or firearms manufacturers, getting started with inbound marketing may be too much at this point in your company’s history.

You’re serious about growth and have thought a lot about your goals, but you just don’t have the resources to go all in on hiring an agency were typical retainers start at $3,200 a month. Plus the purchase of a full-blown marketing automation software platform like HubSpot, Marketo or Pardot is out of reach to do it right.

So what do you do when you’re ready to start inbound marketing, but you just don’t have the resources to pull the trigger?

In this post, I’m going to give you four steps on how to start inbound marketing on $1,500/mo. or less that can jump start your digital marketing strategy of attracting visitors to your website, converting visitors to leads and leads to customers.

1. Design an “inbound-ready” website that enables conversion
The best websites in the industry have three things in common in addition to being e-commerce enabled. One, they have a blog that is active and is—at minimum—updated weekly with helpful, relevant content that speaks to your customers or buyer personas. Blogging also builds links and increases your search engine rankings which means more traffic.

Two, they have social share buttons attached to content that increases the likelihood of your content getting shared over social media networks like Facebook and Twitter where hunters, fisherman, and shooters hang out.

And three, they have downloadable offers with landing pages to capture visitor information so you can continue to market your product and services to them after they have shown interest and left your website.

By having the minimal aspects above in place, your website meets the basic criteria of what it means to have an “inbound-ready” website. Only through content offers (whitepapers, ebooks, videos, case studies, etc.) will you be able to convert visitors into leads that will provide the necessary contacts to build a viable email marketing list of prospective customers.

But that’s only the beginning of what it means to be “inbound.”

2. Install lead intelligence
You can’t do inbound successfully unless you have set goals and have a tracking and analytical tool that allows you to test and see what content is working and what isn’t—in real-time. Google Analytics is great, but you need a tool that tells you a little more about your prospects. Like how they found you and what they’re interested in.

Leadin is a free and simple tracking tool that allows you to see who’s on your website specifically and provides the context of what your visitors are interested in. It can also tell you what pages they visited, what offers they downloaded and what social media channels they are on so you can potentially engage in a more meaningful trust-building conversation. No more guessing who is on your website and where your traffic is coming from, and did I mention it is free?

3. Create basic lead nurturing workflows
Another powerful feature with LeadIn is that no matter what form your visitors fill out on your website they are automatically added to your favorite email marketing programs like MailChimp or Constant Contact instantly. This allows you to define simple automated workflows that nurture your leads through your sales funnel. So for example, if you have a contact who has visited your website 15 times but has not purchased that $1800 rifle, but has downloaded a spec sheet, you may want to send him/her a series of emails to help him figure out what rifle is the best for him or why your rifle is better than your competitors.

Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective marketing channels available. (Source: McKinsey & Co.) Some studies suggest that it’s 40 times better at acquiring new customers than Facebook and Twitter. Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads. (Source DemandGen).

Leadin Contact Intelligence

4. Analyze performance
One of the biggest features of marketing automation software is that it centralizes all your contacts in one place, versus having it spread all over your inbox sporadically when a form is submitted. It allows you to organize, track and analyze the performance of your campaigns and hone your messaging to make it more effective.

Leadin also gives you an understanding of your contacts and demonstrates the value of inbound marketing analytics.

The whole point of doing inbound marketing versus the traditional approach i.e. trade show, magazine, and T.V advertising and for some—cold calling, is to reach your customers at the right place at the right time, and this is online when your prospects are actively searching for a solution to their problem.

You may be getting excited right now—but a word of caution. The above steps will give you a starting point to doing and learning inbound, but it doesn’t take the place of a full inbound marketing program.

This smaller approach or “Inbound Lite” doesn’t take into account the time-saving features of building landing pages, list segmentation, campaigns, social monitoring, comprehensive workflow analytics and search engine optimization intelligence found in marketing automation software. But with the right mindset and some of these budget-friendly tools in place—you can be on your way to doing inbound.

Oct 19

Is Inbound Marketing Right Firearms Business

Is Inbound Marketing Right For My Firearms or Hunting Business?

By Joshua Claflin Firearms and Hunting

Over 55% of today’s marketing budgets are being shifted from traditional marketing (print, trade show and TV) to content or inbound marketing (Source: CMI). As a business owner, business development or marketing professional in the hunting, outdoor or firearms industry, you may be wondering if inbound marketing is right for your business.

Inbound marketing is not a tactic or channel, but a methodology for savvy businesses who want to become more relevant and current with consumer trends and who recognize the importance of building longer relationships with their customers and getting more ROI from their marketing budgets.

In this post, I’ll give you 7 indicators why inbound marketing might be a good fit for your business.

1. You question the effectiveness of your current marketing
You spent $5000 on a Facebook campaign, but it only brought in a few customers. Your website traffic is on the decline because of recent Google algorithm changes and that full-page ad you ran in Guns & Ammo—well let’s just say it failed. Does this sound familiar? These are common problems for hunting, outdoor and firearms businesses trying to market in today’s competitive marketplace.

Due to changes in technology (Mobile, Internet, On-Demand, DVR, etc.), consumer behavior has shifted.

Instead of the traditional marketing practices of the last 100 years that beg, borrow or buy peoples’ attention, your customers now have the ability to choose where, when and how they hear your message. They can easily fast forward through commercials, skip an ad or flip to the next page. And with everyone head down on their iPhones, they may not see your message at all.

Inbound marketing, on the other hand, attracts customers who are already interested in learning about your products and who are motivated to finding a solution to their problems.

2. You’re willing to learn
At this point, you may have done some research on how inbound marketing works and may have already concluded that inbound might be a good fit. You know that inbound marketing:

costs 62% less per lead than traditional “outbound” marketing methods
has the ability to track how many website visits become leads and how many leads become customers
increases traffic by 55% via blogging
generates 3 times more leads per dollar spent
yields higher rankings on search engines
builds your brand
unlocks more marketing budget because it proves ROI

Through the process, you’re going to learn more about your customers and explore new ideas about your business you’ve not yet considered. This all creates and establishes thought leadership that pushes your brand to new heights and leaves your competitors in the dust.

3. You’re willing to change your thinking
In order to be successful in inbound, your company must change the way it thinks. The culture must evolve—starting from the CEO/owner down to your pro staff. The typical hope and pray approach to marketing can now be replaced by measurable analytics that show you what’s working and what’s not.

4. You’re willing to become a writer (or at least try)
You must be consistent and motivated to see the program through. This means blogging 1-2x a week at minimum. It means creating remarkable and relevant premium content in the form of ebooks, whitepapers, webinars and videos on a consistent basis. If you do not have the time to create content, ask an agency for help.

You may shutter at the thought of writing or blogging. However, once you begin most people find they thoroughly enjoy it. Think of it as your contribution and legacy to the industry. The old adage “it doesn’t exist, till you write it down” applies here.

5. You want to grow or sustain your business
For product companies in competitive categories like optics, lasers, accessories, knifes and MSRs, the ups and downs of sales and cash flow issues affects your company’s ability to plan for the future. Inbound has the potential to supply your business with a steady flow of new customers every month. By expanding your digital footprint online, your brand is in more places.

6. You have a long buyers’ journey
Segments that can benefit the most in the hunting, outdoor and firearms industry from inbound marketing are products that include a longer buyers journey. This is typically associated with products and services that cost over $250. With over 60% of all purchases beginning with an online search, companies looking to break away from the pack have ample opportunity to crush their competition and grab more market-share with inbound because it helps nurture your prospects through the sales funnel that provides valuable information for your customers to make informed decisions.

7. You’re in it for the long haul
Have you ever trained for a marathon? It takes about 3-4 months to create the endurance and fitness needed to cover the 26.2 miles on race day. The mindset of the inbound marketer is to consistently build—day after day, week after week, month after month—a foundation of valuable content that results in increased traffic, leads and customers over time. Depending on your website’s age, current rankings and functionality—inbound can take anywhere from 4 to 6 months to start showing results.

In conclusion, there is no doubt inbound marketing works when executed correctly. The Beretta case study demonstrates inbound’s effectiveness to build and sustain a steady flow of sales. Inbound marketing is a proven methodology for today’s consumer behavior—meeting them at the right place, at the right time and on their terms. If you’ve become a believer in inbound and are ready to change the way you think about marketing, are disciplined, motivated and committed for the long haul—then the benefits of inbound marketing are waiting for you.

Joshua Claflin

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