Outdoor Industry Marketing

Thousands of hunting, outdoor and firearms companies register for SHOT Show each year to showcase new products, evaluate the competition, network and work to sign new dealers/distributors for their products. SHOT Show is the eight largest trade show in the world with:

• 52,000 attendees
• 2,000+ media
• 115 countries

From booth design and construction, marketing collateral, travel, accommodations, sponsorships, and the hassle of transporting your products to and from SHOT Show costs can begin to pile up.

As a business owner, sale professional or outdoor industry marketing professional, you want to make the most out of your SHOT Show investment because so much goes into making it a success. For some companies, it’s the one and only chance they’ll have all year to make their sales quotas, determine if their new products have merit and to foster new business relationships.

For others, it’s just another marketing program to check off the list. In this post, I’ve outlined six consecutive ways to optimize your SHOT Show registration and ROI and get more out of next year’s SHOT Show (or any other hunting, outdoor and firearms industry trade show).

1. Calculate your SHOT Show Costs and ROI

With so much time, money and effort invested in SHOT Show—one might ask: Am I getting the most out of it? What am I missing? In order for the next 5 points to make sense, you need to start by understanding how to calculate your ROI so you have a benchmark on what you need to break even.
Use this simple equation: (Gross Profit – Marketing Expenses) / Marketing Expenses

**Example SHOT Show costs (Team of 8):

• 10×20 booth, design, production, registration and space: $40,000
• Party for team and A-list customers: $16,000
• Flights and travel: $7,000
• Accommodations: $15,960 ($399/night at the Palazzo)
• SWAG: $5,000
• Food/other: $20,000

Total Costs: $103,960
Gross Profits = $______

ROI = (Gross Profit – $103,960) / $100,000

*The above does not take into account the annualized return of a customer over time or (LTV).

Use this calculation to establish your benchmarks and sales goals. This can also help you decide whether or not SHOT Show is worth attending next year.

2. Attend SHOT Show Exhibitor Academy

If you’re new to attending a trade show, it can seem overwhelming. To make sure you’re well-prepared, the NSSF offers the SHOT Exhibitor Academy.

The SHOT Show Exhibitor Academy is specifically designed to help current exhibitors improve their overall SHOT Show experience, boost their return on investment (ROI), and maximize their exhibit’s impact. The best part? It’s completely free!

During this series, the NSSF (The Firearm Industry Trade Association), the organizers of the SHOT Show, along with hotel and contractor partners,  share their extensive knowledge on how to successfully exhibit, market, and present your products and services to the thousands of industry buyers who will be exploring the SHOT Show floor. Any exhibitor at the 2024 SHOT Show or a vendor at the 2024 Supplier Showcase can participate.

3. Know your prospects

Do you really know who your customers are? The answer is probably “yes,” but you need to take it a step further. Have you taken the time to understand what their pain points and biggest challenges are? Where do they go for information? What do they expect from a product or service like yours? By conducting research on your *ideal* customer, you’ll be able to have a more useful conversation with prospective distributors and dealers when it comes time to make the introduction. 

Whether you manufacture hunting knives, optics, rifles, tree stands or hunting apparel—knowing your buyer persona is the first step in getting a higher trade show ROI.

4. Create a downloadable offer to generate leads

Last year’s SHOT Show may have been a success, but did you connect with those prospects you didn’t have time to talk to? In the melee of the “gotta-meet-this guy,”  handshakes and small talk, you may have missed that one prospect that was ready to place a substantial purchase order. This is where creating a content offer comes into play. By creating an ebook, media kit, whitepaper or video that answers your prospects’ questions, you will be able to re-engage, hold their interest and attention through your website and track their responses by gathering their contact information in return for a free downloadable offer. This is a great way to maximize your lead generation efforts because it builds your brand and thought leadership—regardless of whether or not you scanned their badge.

5. Add CTAs to your SHOT Show Advertising

Now that you have a content offer, place a call to action (or CTA) on all of your SHOT Show materials and advertisements, including your business cards, pop-up banners, demo screens, catalog, brochure or dealer receipts. Add a call to action that tells your prospect what to do next by visiting your website to download your free offer. When you get them to your landing page, ask the right questions to understand who they are, what company they are with and what they are most interested in. This information will give you a good understanding of how to best approach them. Use other suggested offers to further their engagement.

6. Follow-up and utilize a CRM

After the show, be sure to follow-up promptly. Data has shown the faster you follow-up, the higher the likelihood you will convert your prospect to a customer. Utilize your CRM to close the loop on your prospects and to stay organized. This will also help you calculate ROI and LTV.

• 50% of sales go to the first salesperson to contact the prospect. (Source: Inside Sales)
• If you follow up with a web lead within 5 minutes, you’re nine times more likely to convert them. (Source: Inside Sales)

Don’t overlook social media—especially Instagram. SHOT Show is a great way to build your network for future social selling and content marketing initiatives. You should be creating stories and reels and posting your day’s activities to create some buzz. Just make sure you’re only taking pictures of your booth!

7. Nurture leads with email marketing

Sometimes your prospect may need a little nurturing to get them across the finish line, especially if you’re a new brand. This is where you can use their contact data to send emails for additional content offers in order to move them down your sales funnel. Create content based on the three buyer stages: Awareness –> Consideration –> Decision.

• Email marketing has a 2x higher ROI than cold calling, networking or trade shows. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)
• Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (Source: The Annuitas Group)

8. Is the cost of SHOT Show worth it?

For smaller, less-known brands, exhibiting at SHOT show is an immense expense that may bring little in return. Your marketing dollars could be better spent elsewhere over the year to build your brand’s awareness. When small brands and clients ask me about SHOT, my response is: “if you’re not there, you’re not there.”  It’s great to be with other people in the industry, see the latest products, catch up with friends, and meet new prospects and clients. However, if you walk away with no purchase orders, media coverage, a valuable contact, or feeling like it wasn’t worth it—you may want to use your marketing budget to invest in improving your product or building your brand. Try attending again in a year or two so you’ll have a good group of dealers who are interested in seeing and buying your product to make your SHOT show worth it.

If you have attended SHOT Show (or are considering registering), you know the chaos, cost and exhaustion it takes to attend, exhibit and finish successfully. You can maximize your lead generation efforts by calculating your ROI, establishing your buyer persona, creating a downloadable offer on your website, adding CTAs to your trade show collateral, following up promptly, utilizing your CRM and nurturing leads through email marketing. These tactics will give you a better ROI at your next big industry trade show.

Need help with SHOT Show? We offer booth design services, collateral design, CRM setup and more! Contact us today!

It’s a well-known fact in the outdoor industry marketing circles that acquiring new customers costs more than retaining existing ones. This is why the most successful brands in our industry prioritize customer experience and service. So, how do they go about achieving this? It all starts with implementing a centralized Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system tailored for outdoor brands.

If you’re contemplating the use of a CRM to streamline your data management, this blog post will outline the advantages of using it for your outdoor, hunting, or shooting sports business. It will provide clarity, organization, and scalability to your operations, which is especially valuable in these uncertain times and amid the growing influence of artificial intelligence.

One of the most popular CRM systems available today is HubSpot’s CRM. HubSpot CRM offers a “single source of truth” that empowers your front-office teams (marketing, sales, and support) to strengthen their relationships with customers and deliver an exceptional experience.

Below, we’ll explore seven benefits that can elevate your business’s customer experience to a whole new level and contribute to more profound and widespread growth when using HubSpot.

1. A Comprehensive Dashboard CRM for Outdoor Brands

One of the key benefits of the HubSpot CRM is its comprehensive dashboard. The dashboard provides a complete overview of your customer interactions, sales pipeline, and marketing activities. You can see the status of every lead and customer in your system, including where they are in the sales or support process, what actions they have engaged in, and what communications they have received. This makes it easier for sales, marketing, operations and support teams to collaborate and work together towards a common goal.

Real industry application: You’re a business owner of a trigger manufacturing company and you have a lot on your plate. A CRM will make things easier by tracking your contacts and customers, automating administrative tasks, and sending email campaigns to keep online sales flowing — all using the same tool, with one login.

2. Easy to Use CRM for Outdoor Brands

The HubSpot CRM is user-friendly and easy to use, even for people who aren’t necessarily tech savvy like your customer service rep. It has an intuitive interface makes it easy to navigate and use all the features. You can quickly add new contacts, create tasks, set reminders, and manage your support and sales pipeline. The platform is also customizable, allowing you to tailor it to your needs.

Real industry application: Say “so long” to messy spreadsheets and time wasted on menial tasks. HubSpot CRM features a full suite of sales productivity tools so you can sell more and work less.

3. Centralized Database

With HubSpot CRM, you can store all your customer data in one central location. It becomes your “single source of truth” for your business. If things aren’t going well, or you start to feel some upward or downward trends, your CRM will be able to tell you. This means you can access all the information you need about a customer, including their contact details, past interactions, and communication history, returns and support requests all in one place. This saves time and eliminates the need for manual data entry—reducing the risk of errors.

Real industry application:  If you’re a retailer, media company, distributor, OEM, or manufacturer, having your contacts all in one place will allow you and your team members to take action on sales, marketing, operations and support activities more clearly and centralize your internal communications for your team, especially for sales calls, events, campaigns, show projects, product launches and business development. 

4. Sales Automation

HubSpot CRM automates many of the repetitive tasks involved in the sales process. For example, you can set up automatic email sequences, schedule follow-up tasks, and create custom workflows that trigger actions based on customer behavior. This streamlines your sales process, making it more efficient and effective.

Real industry application:  Sales leaders can easily follow-up with calls, create and send meeting invites, and send contracts and payment links that save time. Use automation to speed up the process and create a more professional sales experience. 

5. Seamless Integration

The HubSpot CRM integrates seamlessly with other HubSpot tools, including Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, and Service Hub. This means that you can create a unified customer experience across all touch points. For example, you can create targeted email campaigns using the Marketing Hub and track their performance using the CRM. You can also integrate with other systems like your ERP, ecommerce store and countless other apps. 

Real industry application: As your enterprise grows and inventory management becomes more complex, you can utilize HubSpot to sync orders, pre-orders, online orders and other data points for easier inventory management. 

6. Valuable Insights

The HubSpot CRM for Outdoor Brands provides valuable insights into your customer interactions and sales pipeline. You can generate reports on sales activities, track the performance of your marketing campaigns, and gain insights into customer behavior. This information can be used to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions that improve customer engagement.

Real industry application:  Sometimes, one major deal can make or break this year’s sales goals. HubSpot provides actionable insight into leads/prospects so your follow-up calls can be approached with more understanding to close the deal. Built in reports allow you to also understand customer sentiment through Net Promotor Score (NPS) which can help you forecast sales. 

7. Cost-Effective CRM for Outdoor Brands

HubSpot CRM is a cost-effective solution for businesses of all sizes. The platform offers a free version with basic features, making it accessible to small businesses and startups. Then, as your business grows, you can upgrade to the paid version to access more advanced features. You can begin to calculate ROI on customer service improvements and increase in repeat and new sales. 

Real industry application: Smaller businesses don’t have to break the bank on software that doesn’t deliver ROI. HubSpot offers flexible plans to scale with your organization when you’re ready. By starting now, you’ll be well-positioned in 1-3 years from now when you break 1M in sales.

In conclusion, the HubSpot CRM for Outdoor Brands is a powerful tool that can help businesses of all sizes manage their customer relationships more effectively. With its comprehensive dashboard, user-friendly interface, centralized database, sales automation, seamless integration, valuable insights, and cost-effectiveness, the HubSpot CRM is a worthwhile investment for any business looking to improve customer engagement and drive growth. 

Ready to see what HubSpot CRM can do for your business? Sign up below or contact us with your questions!

When it comes to tracking digital marketing in the outdoor hunting and shooting sports industry, it’s easy to get confused with what metrics matter most. A lot of times we think we are tracking the correct metrics or ‘key performance indicators’ for improvement—but get lost in the pretty charts and graphs of what are commonly referred to as ‘vanity metrics’ that can lead outdoor industry marketing managers astray.

In this post, I want to give you a practical way on how to track, measure and report on your online efforts using a scorecard we use with our clients to prove the efficacy of our digital marketing efforts. The scorecard also helps us to understand where our strategy needs improvement and what to adjust over the course of our campaign(s).

So let’s dive in!

1. What is a KPI?
A key performance indicator (KPI) is a business metric used to evaluate factors that are crucial to the success of an organization. KPIs differ per organization; firearm businesses’ KPIs may be net revenue or a customer loyalty metric, while the government might consider unemployment rates, or non-profits, donations.

In digital marketing, there are three classes of KPIs we recommend you pay attention to.

A. Mechanical KPIs
Mechanical KPIs deal with the performance of your digital hub, or in other words—your website. Four critical KPIs to gauge are:

• Organic traffic – The number of strangers visiting your website of their own free will that found you on the first page of search engine pages vs. paid where you paid to be on the first page.
• Bounce rates – Bounce rate is one of the most misunderstood metrics. Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits (or web sessions). It is the number of visits in which a person leaves your website from the landing page without browsing any further. A good industry bounce rate to aim for is 20-30%. To decrease bounce rates, entice your users to click to a second page on your website.
• Website Grader – Your website must be fast and load under 3 seconds and meet these basic standards. 
• Search engine optimization –Does your website meet the minimum criteria to be considered optimized?

A fast-loading, search engine (and don’t forget mobile) optimized website is the first step in ensuring a strong digital marketing foundation.

B. Website Conversion KPIs
Website conversion KPIs deal with how well your site is changing traffic into leads and nurturing them for customer conversion. Here is a list of conversion KPIs and how to improve them.

• Returning visitors – Add a blog and other fresh content to keep your prospects coming back.
• Visitor-to-lead conversion rate – Create problem-solving offers with landing pages and forms to convert visitors into leads.
• Lead-to-customer conversion rate – Does your shopping cart get above a 2% conversion rate? 
• CLV– Customer lifetime value (CLV or often CLTV), is a prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer.
• CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost can be calculated by simply dividing all the costs spent on acquiring more customers (marketing expenses) by the number of customers acquired in the period the money was spent. For example, if a company spent $100 on marketing in a year and received 100 customers in the same year, their CAC is $1.00. (Source: Kissmetrics)
• Workflow conversion rates – Research from Gleanster suggests that, even when it comes to qualified leads, more than 50% of leads aren’t ready to buy on the day they first convert on your site. If you call up these leads and push them into making a decision right away, you will likely lose them. Workflows help by nurturing these leads through an automated workflow that are based on a series of actions taken by leads on your website with the goal of nurturing them to customers or warming the sale. Make sure to track these steps and optimize for each stage.

You can also conduct A/B testing on small tweaks to your website that can be tracked over time, so you know if your metrics are improving or declining.

C. Brand KPIs
In the digital space (websites, mobile, social media, text, blogs, forums, etc.), it’s much easier to track brand engagement and understand if your brand is taking hold in your customer’s minds. One way is to monitor customer interactions and comments on social media or through Google Alerts. Record how many positive and negative social signals (likes, shares, retweets, and mentions) are posted about your firearm, ammunition or hunting product and track over time.

A few relevant brand KPIs are:

• Direct traffic – Direct traffic comes from people who actively type in your brand’s name from memory, giving you a good indication of how well your prospects remember your products/services.
• Brand mentions – How many people out there are posting positive or negative comments about your brand or product?
• Network growth – Are your networks growing across your social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn)?
• Blog subscribers – Are people finding your content interesting and signing up to receive more?

2. What KPIs don’t matter?
In the firearm and hunting industry, we are up to our eyeballs in statistics. From FFL registrations, background checks and the annual surveys released by the NSSF, these reports help us get our heads around how the industry is doing and how it relates to the health of our businesses. But there are some KPIs out there that just don’t matter.

Mentioned at the start of this post, vanity metrics are considered nice to have but don’t necessarily give us actionable data on making decisions about our marketing. Vanity metrics are things like registered users, time on site, pages/visits, downloads, and page views. They are easily manipulated and do not necessarily correlate to the numbers that matter: active users, engagement, the cost of getting new customers, and ultimately revenues and profits. (Source: Techcrunch )

I’ve talked to a lot of companies in the industry who consider Facebook and Instagram ‘Likes’ key metrics. But many struggle to tell me how many of those ‘Likes’ drive traffic, customers and sustained engagement.

Did you know that only 3% to 5% of your Facebook Page’s “fans” see the content you post? Regardless of how many people have clicked ‘Like’ once they’re on your brand’s page, the vast majority of them never return to the page itself and never see the content in their newsfeeds.

What to Measure Instead: % Feedback and Impressions

Use Facebook Insights, Facebook’s free analytics tool, to check which posts generate the highest level of engagement. The higher the level of engagement, the higher your EdgeRank score. (EdgeRank is kind of like SEO for Facebook newsfeeds) Think about the content and conversations that have the highest % feedback and impressions, and then come up with a plan for how you can replicate it. (Source: Hubspot)

Use data reports to analyze each channel

3. You can’t measure what you don’t track.
If you’ve ever tried losing weight, you know that every week you’ve got to stand on the scale to check your progress. Digital marketing is the same way. When it comes to tracking, there are a number of tools out there to use. We explicitly depend on Google Analytics and a paid software program called HubSpot.

When it comes to reporting, Google Analytics is way more powerful. It’s more flexible than HubSpot, and puts data in a granular, broken-down form. With Google, you can tell more about your online marketing and website mechanics as a whole, and you can slice the data in a million ways.

But, HubSpot shows you more about how individuals interact with your marketing and website. It lets you connect performance data to an individual lead, giving you insight into their specific journey, and helps you nurture them through the buying funnel. HubSpot is also better organized than Google, and will show you the need-to-know information about your marketing campaigns. (Source: Nectafy)

4. Track it with the scorecard.

Now that you got a good download on what the right and wrong KPIs are, let’s turn these metrics into something you can use.

A good place to start is by setting a SMART goal across the board at 20%. 20% is enough to cause you to feel a little pressure and angst, but it’s not so high that it’s out of reach. Digital marketing takes time, and it’s important that at each stage you test your efforts to see if they’re working or not—in a logical way (we’ll be discussing what to test in a future blog post).

In our scorecard, we’ve listed out most of the metrics stated above in a table to track over 6-months. Make sure to collect data from your sales team every month to accurately report revenue. Pay specific attention to increases and pieces of content that help you make actionable decisions.

By scorecard tracking, you’ll be able to more accurately gauge the performance of your digital marketing efforts and turn strategy into targets.

As marketers, we track so many different data points to better understand what’s working and what’s not that it can become easy to lose sight of what’s most important. Reporting on your business impact doesn’t mean you should no longer pay attention to site traffic, social shares, and conversion rates. It simply means that when reporting your results to your executives, it’s crucial to convey your performance in a way that your C-suite can get excited about.

Rather than talking about per-post Facebook engagement and other “vanity” metrics, use the six metrics we detail in the below cheat sheet to report on how your marketing programs led to new customers, lowered customer acquisition costs, or higher customer lifetime values. When you can present marketing metrics that resonate with your decision-makers, you’ll be in a much better position to make the case for budgets and strategies that will benefit your marketing team now and in the future.

Photo Credit: Chris Dorsey

Are you looking to take your online outdoor business to new heights? In the vast and captivating realm of the great outdoors, digital marketing plays a pivotal role in boosting your business growth. From hiking gear to hunting equipment, the outdoor industry is thriving. According to a recent report from Outdoor Retailer, outdoor participation grew 2.3% in 2022 to a record 168.1 million participants, which makes up 55% of the U.S. population over age 6. Hunting participation is also up according to the Council of Hunting and Shooting Sports. To fully tap into its potential, you need to unleash the power of outdoor industry marketing.

Whether you’re a small startup or a well-established brand, this comprehensive guide will provide you with all the necessary steps, tactics, and tools to start boosting your brand’s visibility and ultimately drive product sales.

I’ve accumulated over two decades of experience in the outdoor industry, and I invite you to review this guide of these tried-and-true marketing frameworks that have consistently delivered results for my marketing company and the clients we serve. We’ll also explore the essential elements you need to establish in order to connect with consumers effectively and drive business growth.

In this comprehensive guide, we will list the proven “must-do” frameworks to help you grow your business and provide a pro tip in each section. We will discuss:

Outdoor Industry Marketing Buyer Persona

Understanding the target audience in the outdoor industry

In the outdoor industry, assuming you have a product that solves a problem, the very first thing you must do is understand your target audience. The outdoor enthusiasts’ community is diverse and has many different subcultures, unfortunately, mostly divided by political associations. Thus, a deep understanding of your target audience is essential to tailor your message and effectively reach them.

After you’ve come up with a product to sell and the problem it solves, you need to dial in your target audience an to do that, you need to create buyer personas. This process involves creating fictional characters that represent your ideal customers. You can create these personas based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and other relevant factors.

Moreover, it’s crucial to research your target audience and gather insights from surveys, social media, and other sources. This process will help you understand their pain points, needs, and preferences. Once you have this information, you can develop marketing strategies that resonate with them.

Another important aspect of understanding your target audience is identifying the communication channels they use. For instance, younger outdoor enthusiasts tend to use social media like YouTube and Instagram more than traditional advertising channels. Therefore, your marketing efforts should focus on the social media platforms where your target audience is most active.

PRO TIP: Conduct customer interviews and enable self-identification in your website forms to speed up your process.

Clarify your message

Many outdoor brands struggle to engage their audiences and drive them to take action effectively. Achieving this goal can be challenging without a clear and persuasive message that resonates with your target audience. This is where StoryBrand’s BrandScript becomes valuable. By utilizing the StoryBrand 7-part framework to shape your message, you’ll gain clarity on what to convey about your brand and the sequence in which to convey it.

StoryBrand’s framework emphasizes the role of being the guide in your customer’s story rather than the hero, which prevents overwhelming your customers with excessive information. It will also provide the information to create your website’s wireframe, email automaton and other collateral as you build our your branding assets. To learn more, read more about how to utilize the power of story to clarify your message. 

PRO TIP: Play the guide in your customer’s story, not the hero.

Branding

Outdoor Industry Marketing Package Design (Summit Knife Co.)

Branding refers to the process of creating a distinct and recognizable identity for a product, service, company, or individual. It involves crafting a unique image, name, logo, one-liner, packaging, outdoor lifestyle photography and and overall perception that sets the entity apart from its competitors and makes it memorable to its target audience.

Effective branding is essential for several reasons:

1. Differentiation: In a crowded marketplace, branding helps a business or product stand out by highlighting its unique qualities and value proposition.
2. Recognition: A strong brand identity makes it easier for customers to identify and remember your product or company.
3. Trust and Credibility: A well-established brand often conveys trust and reliability. Customers are more likely to choose a brand they recognize and trust.
4. Customer Loyalty: Strong brands can build a loyal customer base who prefer your products or services over competitors.
5. Perceived Value: Branding can influence how customers perceive the value of your product. A strong brand can often command higher prices.
6. Consistency: Branding ensures that all aspects of your business, from marketing materials to customer service, convey a consistent message and experience.
7. Emotional Connection: Successful branding can create an emotional connection between the brand and its customers, fostering loyalty and advocacy.

Branding is about creating a unique and compelling identity that resonates with your target audience, builds trust, and helps your business or product succeed in a competitive marketplace. Don’t forget to take the time to develop your outdoor brand.

PRO TIP: Exceptional branding can be the decisive factor in elevating sales and ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction, transforming a good business into a great one.

Build your outdoor industry website

Outdoor Industry Marketing Website (TRACT Optics)

Building a website involves several steps, and the approach you take can vary depending on your goals, technical skills, and budget. Here’s a general guide to building a website:

Define Your Goals and Purpose

• Determine the purpose of your website (e.g., personal blog, business, e-commerce, portfolio).
• Identify your target audience’s problem and speak directly to it.

Choose a Domain Name

• Select a domain name (e.g., www.yourwebsite.com) that reflects your brand or content. Ensure it’s unique and easy to remember.

Select a Web Hosting Provider

• Choose a web hosting provider that suits your needs and budget. Popular options include HubSpot or WPEngine.

Choose a Website Building Platform

• Decide on the platform you’ll use to build your website. Popular options include:
  • HubSpot CMS: Is a fast-loading, easy to use drag-and-drop builder integrated into HubSpot’s overall CRM suite.
  • WordPress: Versatile, widely used, and suitable for various types of websites.
  • Website Builders: Such as Duda, BigCommerce, or Squarespace, which offer user-friendly, drag-and-drop interfaces.
  • Custom Development:  If you have coding skills, you can build a website from scratch.

Design Your Website

• Utilize your BrandScript from your messaging to outline your wireframe.
• Design a static layout/architecture using Adobe Illustrator before integrating into your theme.
• Select a theme or template for your website. Customize it to match your brand and style.
• Create a layout that is visually appealing and user-friendly.

Add Content

• Create and organize your website’s content, including text, images, videos, and other media.
• Ensure your content is engaging, informative, and relevant to your audience.

Optimize Your Product Pages

• Take pictures of your products on a clean white background.
• Write engaging descriptions that are optimized.
• Add lots specifications.

Optimize for SEO

• Implement on-page SEO techniques to improve your website’s visibility on search engines.
• Use relevant keywords, optimize images, and create a sitemap.

Configure Outdoor, Hunting or Firearms E-commerce Website Settings

• Set up essential settings, such as site title, tagline, and navigation menus.
• Configure security measures, like SSL certificates, to protect your site.
• Set up payment processors, shipping and tracking.

Test Your Website – Desktop, Mobile and Tablet

• Test your website across different browsers and devices to ensure it functions correctly and looks good everywhere.

Launch Your Website

• Once you’re satisfied with your website, it’s time to publish it to the internet.
• Promote your website through social media, email marketing, and other channels.

Monitor and Maintain

• Make sure to get web support to regularly update your website with fresh content and security patches.
• Monitor website analytics to track performance and make improvements.

Remember that building a website is an ongoing process, and it’s essential to keep it updated and responsive to user feedback and changing needs. If you’re not comfortable with technical aspects, consider hiring a web development agency or designer to assist you.

PRO TIP: Use a fast-loading six second looping video on your home page to engage your visitors.

Outdoor Industry Marketing Social Media (Brenton USA)

Utilizing social media for outdoor industry marketing

Social media is a powerful tool that can help you expand your reach and connect with your target audience. However, to effectively use social media for outdoor industry marketing, you need to understand the platforms your audience is most active on.

One of the most popular social media platforms for outdoor enthusiasts is Instagram. Instagram is a visual platform that allows you to share photos and videos of your products in use. To effectively use Instagram for outdoor industry marketing, you need to create a strong visual brand identity and regularly post high-quality content that resonates with your audience.

Another popular social media platform for outdoor industry marketing is Facebook. If you target an older audience, this is the place to find them (Source: Exposure). Facebook allows you to share a variety of content, including text, photos, videos, and links to your website. To effectively use Facebook for outdoor industry marketing, you need to create engaging content that encourages interaction with your audience.

YouTube is another social media platform that can be effective for outdoor industry marketing. YouTube allows you to share short videos and in depth content. To effectively use YouTube for outdoor industry marketing, you need to create concise, engaging content that encourages subscriptions and interaction with your audience and is another great channel to target older prospective customers.

PRO TIP: Invest in a generous budget to secure the services of a top-notch outdoor lifestyle photography who specializes in the outdoor industry.

Content marketing for outdoor businesses

Content marketing is a powerful tool that can help you attract and retain customers. Content marketing involves creating and sharing valuable content that educates and entertains your audience. Here are several tips for effective content marketing in the outdoor industry:

1. Share Stories and Experiences
Sharing stories and experiences is an effective way to connect with your audience on an emotional level. You can use storytelling to showcase the benefits of your products and how they can enhance outdoor experiences.

2. Provide Educational Content
Providing educational content is an effective way to establish your brand as an authority in the outdoor industry. You can create content that provides tips and advice related to outdoor activities, such as camping, hiking, hunting and fishing.

3. Create Product Reviews and Comparisons
Creating product reviews and comparisons is an effective way to showcase the features and benefits of your products. You can create reviews that highlight the strengths and weaknesses of your products and compare them to other products in the market.

4. Use Visuals
Using visuals is an effective way to capture the attention of your audience and showcase your products. You can use high-quality photos and videos to showcase your products in use and highlight their features and benefits.

PRO TIP: Produce concise videos, each lasting 60 seconds or less, containing valuable tips, and utilize them as YouTube shorts.

Leveraging influencer partnerships in the outdoor industry

Influencer partnerships are a powerful tool that can help you expand your reach and connect with your target audience. Influencers are individuals who have a significant following on social media and can influence the purchasing decisions of their followers.

 

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To effectively leverage influencer partnerships in the outdoor industry, you need to identify outdoor, hunting and firearm influencers who align with your brand values and target audience. You can reach out to influencers and offer them free products or compensation in exchange for promoting your products on their social media channels. We use a tool like Upfluence to identify influencers and engage them for campaigns.

When working with influencers, it’s important to establish clear expectations and guidelines for the partnership. You should also ensure that the influencers disclose their partnership with your brand to their followers to maintain transparency. This is an FTC requirement.

PRO TIP: Identify influencers with genuine influence who can actively promote your brand to their followers. The best influencers have built real trust with their followers.

Effective email marketing for outdoor businesses

Outdoor industry email marketing is a “must-do” framework that can help you connect with your audience and promote your products. More importantly, they keep your brand top of mind. Here are several tips for effective email marketing in the outdoor industry:

Outdoor Industry Marketing Email Examples (Steinel Ammo Co.)

1. Segment Your Email List
Segmenting your email list involves dividing your list into smaller groups based on demographics, interests, behaviors, or other relevant factors. This process allows you to tailor your message to each group and increase the effectiveness of your email campaigns.

2. Use Compelling Subject Lines
Using compelling subject lines is an effective way to capture the attention of your audience and increase open rates. Your subject lines should be concise, engaging, and relevant to the content of your email. Most email marketing programs like HubSpot have AI subject line generators linked to your CRM that tracks what resonates with your target audience.

3. Provide Value
Providing value is an effective way to establish trust and credibility with your audience. You can provide value by offering exclusive discounts, educational content, or other incentives that encourage engagement with your brand. Don’t just send offers or discounts, mix it up with content and incentives.

4. Use Eye-Catching Visuals
Using eye-catching visuals is an effective way to capture the attention of your audience and showcase your products. You can use high-quality photos and videos to highlight the features and benefits of your products and encourage engagement with your brand. Don’t just a photo in your email. Put in the work to create a professional looking design and watch your open and click through rates go up.

PRO TIP: Maintain consistency with a monthly routine of sending three emails: one featuring a blog post, another showcasing a customer testimonial, and the third offering a promotion.

How does your website stack up?

Optimizing SEO for outdoor industry websites

Optimizing your website for search engines is a “must do” to increase traffic and visibility. Here are several tips for optimizing SEO for outdoor industry websites:

1. Conduct Keyword Research
Keyword research involves identifying the keywords and phrases that your target audience uses to search for products or services related to your business. You can use keyword research tools to identify these keywords and optimize your website content accordingly.

2. Use Relevant Meta Tags
Using relevant meta tags is an effective way to provide search engines with information about your website content. You should use meta tags that accurately describe the content of your website and include relevant keywords.

3. Optimize and Create Website Content
Optimizing your website content involves using relevant keywords and providing high-quality, engaging content that resonates with your target audience. You should also ensure that your website is mobile-friendly, fast-loading, and easy to navigate. Add a blog to create fresh, keyword rich articles that generates traffic.

4. Build Backlinks
Building backlinks involves getting other websites to link to your website. Backlinks are an important factor in search engine rankings and can increase visibility and traffic to your website. You can build backlinks by creating high-quality content that other websites want to link to or by guest posting on other websites.

PRO TIP: The fastest route to establish SEO prominence is through the development of your brand, consistent content and the acquisition of backlinks.

Key marketing strategies for outdoor businesses

The outdoor industry is highly competitive, and your marketing efforts need to stand out to succeed. Once you build out the necessary elements, you’re going to want to expand into offline channels to meet your customers where they are. Here are several key marketing strategies that can help you grow your outdoor business:

1. Leverage User-Generated Content
User-generated content is a powerful marketing tool that can help you build trust and credibility with your audience. User-generated content includes photos, videos, and reviews created by your customers. Sharing this content on your website and social media channels can help promote your business and encourage others to engage with your brand.

To leverage user-generated content, you can create social media campaigns that encourage customers to share pictures of themselves using your products. You can also feature customer reviews on your website and social media channels.

Use Case: We organized a video contest for one of our clients, offering a free product valued at $179.00 as the prize. When we tracked the user-generated videos, we discovered that they generated a 5x return on the number of people who viewed these videos on Instagram.

2. Host/Attend Outdoor Events
Outdoor events are an excellent way to showcase your products and connect with your target audience. Hosting outdoor events can help you build brand awareness, generate leads, and increase sales. You can organize or sponsor events like camping trips, fishing tournaments, hiking excursions, short films and other outdoor activities that showcase your products.

3. Create Engaging Video Content
Video content is an effective way to showcase your products and connect with your audience. You can create videos that showcase your products in use, highlight the features and benefits of your products, and provide educational content related to outdoor activities.

4. Offer Special Deals and Promotions
Special deals and promotions can help you attract new customers and retain existing ones. You can offer discounts, free shipping, and other promotions to incentivize customers to purchase your products. These promotions can also help you build customer loyalty and increase revenue.

5. Collaborate with Other Outdoor Businesses
Collaborating with other outdoor businesses that align with your values can help you expand your reach and build brand awareness. You can partner with other businesses to create joint marketing campaigns, cross-promote each other’s products, and share marketing resources.

6. Traditional Marketing methods such as PR, print ads, billboards, and display ads still play a crucial role in the outdoor industry. However, these methods can be costly, and PR requires the expertise of someone with a vast network who can get your brand in front of the right publishers. At our agency, we strategically utilize these methods, but only when we have a sufficient budget and can prove ROI. Traditional marketing methods typically works for well-known brands.

7. Trade Shows can be costly but can offer many benefits. The SHOT Show (Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show) offers numerous benefits for professionals in the firearms and outdoor industry. It serves as a prime networking opportunity, allowing industry stakeholders to forge valuable connections. Attendees gain insights into the latest product innovations, industry trends, and regulatory updates. The show supports business growth by facilitating orders, distribution agreements, and market research. Educational sessions provide valuable knowledge, and it fosters responsible firearm use while promoting community building within the industry. Overall, the SHOT Show plays a pivotal role in advancing the interests of businesses and professionals in the shooting, hunting, and outdoor sectors. Learn more about how to ge more from SHOT Show costs and registration.

PRO TIP: Smaller shows and events provide fewer distractions and a greater focus on your brand.

Turn your outdoor customers into promoters

One often underestimated aspect of the outdoor industry is the development of a superior customer experience. Our typical approach to customer experience involves providing a contact number for customers to use in case they encounter issues or wish to initiate a return. However, it encompasses far more than this. Customers anticipate swift responses to their inquiries and value having well-informed staff available to assist them when seeking additional information. If you implement all the elements mentioned in this guide, the final step in outdoor industry marketing is to ensure that your customers remain loyal and become advocates for your brand. We suggest using the HubSpot CRM for outdoor brands to deliver an outstanding customer experience.

The top four benefits of the HubSpot CRM and Service Hub are:

1. Streamlined customer support: The Service Hub provides a unified inbox that consolidates all customer interactions from various channels, such as email, live chat, and social media. This allows your team to efficiently manage and respond to customer inquiries, resulting in improved customer satisfaction.

2. Knowledge base and self-service tools: With the Service Hub, you can create a knowledge base to provide customers with self-service resources like FAQs, articles, and tutorials. This empowers customers to find answers to their questions independently, reducing the need for repetitive support requests and freeing up your team’s time.

Turn your customers into promoters!

3. Ticketing and automation: The Service Hub offers a ticketing system that allows you to organize and prioritize customer issues. You can automate ticket creation, routing, and escalation based on predefined rules, ensuring that customer inquiries are handled promptly and efficiently.

4. Reporting and analytics: The Service Hub provides robust reporting and analytics features that give you insights into your team’s performance and customer satisfaction. You can track metrics like response times, resolution rates, and customer feedback, enabling you to identify areas for improvement and make data-driven decisions to enhance your customer service operations.

PRO TIP: Gather feedback from your customers to identify their primary pain points and empower them with self-service information. Integrating a chat feature on your website can lead to a 20% boost in sales.

Outdoor Industry Marketing Results

Tracking and analyzing outdoor industry marketing efforts

Tracking and analyzing your marketing efforts is essential to measure their effectiveness and make informed decisions. Here are several tools you can use to track and analyze your outdoor industry marketing efforts:

1. Analytics
Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to track website traffic, user behavior, and other metrics related to your website. You can use Google Analytics to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns and identify areas for improvement. However, you may want to consider other analytic tools like Independent Analytics, Databox or HubSpot.

2. Social Media Analytics
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter provide analytics tools that allow you to track engagement, reach, and other metrics related to your social media campaigns. You can use these tools to measure the effectiveness of your social media campaigns and optimize your strategy accordingly.

3. Email Marketing Analytics
Email marketing platforms like HubSpot provide analytics tools that allow you to track open rates, click-through rates, and other metrics related to your email campaigns. You can use these tools to measure the effectiveness of your email campaigns and optimize your strategy accordingly.

4. Survey regularly
Many companies overlook the importance of regularly gathering feedback from their customers. This oversight can lead to the development of unwanted products or, even worse, a lack of awareness about issues customers may encounter with their products. To avoid these pitfalls, it’s crucial to conduct annual or bi-annual customer surveys. At our company, we utilize HubSpot’s Service Hub to track various metrics, including chat performance, support tickets, Net Promoter Score (NPS), Customer Effort Score (CES), and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). These surveys play a pivotal role in helping us anticipate sales trends, gauge customer sentiment, and contribute to our collection of reviews and positive social media buzz.

5. ROI (return on investment)
Each marketing program you undertake should, at the very least, yield a return on your investment. If you invest $1, your goal should be to generate 3 to 5 times that amount in return. If these programs are not achieving that level of return, it’s essential to reevaluate your approach from the beginning to ensure you’ve done everything correctly. If not, consider surveying your customers to understand why they didn’t make a purchase and gather insights on how you can improve.

PRO TIP: You cannot enhance what you do not monitor and measure.

Conclusion: Thriving in the outdoor industry through strategic marketing

In conclusion, the outdoor industry is an immense and thriving market that presents many opportunities for growth. To fully tap into its potential, you need to unleash the power of outdoor industry marketing. By understanding your target audience, positioning, branding, messaging, website, leveraging social media, creating compelling content, and using other proven marketing strategies, you can grow your outdoor business and connect with consumers.

Remember to track and analyze your marketing efforts to measure their effectiveness and make informed decisions. As you embark on building these frameworks out, always stay true to your brand values and focus on providing service and value to your customers. With these insights and strategies, you can build a thriving business in the outdoors and make a lasting impact in the outdoor industry.

If you’ve been doing outdoor industry marketing a while, you may have noticed that the traction you once had is beginning to wane.

You’ve been able to build a sizeable email marketing list, your social media following has grown exponentially and you’ve been able to boost online sales through organic website traffic.

However, with the explosion of content in our industry, especially in the hunting, shooting sports, camping, and CCW segments—how can you continue to breath new life into your brand and content marketing to keep growing?

In this post, we look at lifestyle marketing—and how by integrating your customer’s narrative into your brand’s story—you can put your product into a context that goes beyond its features and benefits.

What is outdoor lifestyle marketing?

When thinking about a lifestyle, first think about what a lifestyle is. A lifestyle is a set of habits, attitudes, beliefs, interests, opinions, ideas and thoughts based on an individual’s unique God-given personality.

For example, you may define the outdoor lifestyle as:

• Adventure
• Free
• Family
• Discovery
• Conservation
• Escape

Or you may define the 16 million CCW holders lifestyle (Source: Axios) as:

• Freedom-loving
• Defensive
• Aware
• Protective
• Heroic
• Concerned

“Lifestyle brands define who people are and who they want or hope to be.”

Many industry brands solely focus on their product’s features, and minimize their customer’s lifestyle or don’t incorporate them at all into their marketing strategies. When attention to lifestyle is left out—brands miss out on a pathway to connect deeper with their customers. Lifestyle brands give your buyers a goal and vision to become something better. This aspirational aspect is what makes lifestyle marketing so effective. 

Exercise: How would you describe your outdoor lifestyle? What products represent how you live?

How do you build a outdoor lifestyle brand?

Turning a brand into a lifestyle brand takes some time. Consistent, intentional effort that is driven by your company’s leadership is key to permeating your company’s culture to drive authentic experiences. Below are six tactics to help you get started:

Know your Tribe
“Tribe,” coined by Seth Godin, states: “Tribe is any group of people, large or small, who are connected to one another, a leader, and an idea. For millions of years, humans have joined tribes, be they religious, ethnic, political, or even musical. It’s our nature. Now the Internet has eliminated the barriers of geography, cost, and time.” You must get to know your tribe as thoughtfully as possible to harness their pain points, interests and motivations—then you must lead them in the lifestyle your brand represents. 

Create awesome branding 
Brands that invoke the best visuals and messaging are more likely to garner emotional attachment. Almost all lifestyle brands have an active design component. A visually appealing logo/symbol of your brand that your tribe adopts will make them want to stick it on the back of their truck, or perhaps get a tattoo (just Google “Glock tattoo“).  

Invest in your culture
As your brand becomes more trusted, it’s important to show your people. Most companies in the hunting, shooting, and outdoor industry don’t show the people behind the scenes. The best cultures become the best lifestyle brands. Make sure they are living the lifestyle your brand embodies.

Leverage influencers
The lifestyle affinity is a natural fit for influencer marketing because your influencers are already living the lifestyle you want to integrate into your messaging. Your influencers can boost your content and storyline to their audiences through social media, garnering trust and expanding reach.

Create content
Content will continue to be an essential part of any digital or influencer marketing strategy for the foreseeable future, because of its effectiveness and long-term benefits. When creating content, don’t blow smoke about how great, amazing, game-changing, evolved, re-imagined, etc. your product is. Show how it improves your tribe’s lives without pushing your product.

Be present
Like any relationship, sometimes all it takes is showing up. Brand awareness is a key part of building a lifestyle brand, and this is where gorgeous cinematic hunting, camping or hiking video/photography and other tactics help you stay top of mind and part of people’s lives.

Four examples of outdoor lifestyle marketing brands

Beretta

Photo Credit: Beretta

Beretta’s lifestyle marketing consists of aligning their brand with an upper-class type of shooter and their experiences. The brand’s creative platform contains fonts that are clean and a color palette that suggests luxury. Their photography represents the customers they wish to align with that could be described as sophisticated, traditional and affluent—most likely influenced by the brand’s European origin. Part of what makes Beretta a lifestyle brand is its clothing line. Not only can you own and shoot the Berretta brand—but you can also wear it.

Beretta also integrates a robust content marketing program that adds value to its customers by helping them get better at their shooting and outdoor pursuits.

Sitka

Photo Credit: Sitka

Sitka Gear based in Bozeman, Montana is also a prime example of what it means to live the outdoor lifestyle. Sitka’s helpful articles, short films, and transparency in their design and manufacturing processes make it an excellent lifestyle brand. Much more than a camo company—their focus on their “Tribe” is based on their mission statement to “inspire, delight and enlighten hunters.” Their mission towards conservationism also gives the brand a much higher purpose, which makes it more attractive, exciting and admirable.

Yeti

Photo Source: Yeti

No other company in the outdoor world does a better job than Yeti in integrating their products into the outdoor lifestyle. Yeti seeks to touch every aspect of someone participating in the outdoor world through story-based content. From Spearfishers to Big Horn Sheep Hunters—Yeti is a brand built for the wild as stated in their tagline. I found it especially interesting that they also have a Spotify list with songs from a broad genre that puts music to the Yeti Lifestyle. This is just another way lifestyle brands are looking outside the traditional channels to build their names into their customer’s lives.

Magpul

Photo Credit: Magpul

There was some confusion a few years ago when Magpul decided to evolve their firearm accessories brand into a lifestyle brand with the addition of apparel like gloves, shirts, and pants. Magpul has now become more than just a company known for its magazines, stocks, and handguards.

Make the connection

When thinking through on how to align your brand with your customer’s lifestyle—you must begin with their characteristics, problems, challenges, hopes, fears, and dreams; and start to build your marketing strategy around them, not your product.

Seek to dramatize your material around their outdoor, hunting or shooting activities—but also look for other aspects that define them. For example, your imagery can speak to the pride they have as a first responder, their desires to spend more time with friends and family, a lost loved one (see Beyond the Roar by Leupold below), ambitions of climbing Mount Everest, adventure (see Weatherby Timeless Video) or hunting with their Son or Daughter. Anything your brand can do to take them out or into a place they want to be is a critical component of lifestyle marketing. Your brand must become a storyteller that allows your customer to see themselves as their best self. 

The below video by Leupold is a great example of engaging lifestyle storytelling.

“Lifestyle marketing must be somewhat mythical and paint a visual that seems almost dream-like while remaining brutally authentic.” 

Modern consumers who are empowered by digital technology are highly discerning. When you succeed in integrating your product seamlessly into their lives, becoming a natural part of their personal story, you won’t need to actively ask for their engagement. They’ll perceive your product as if they stumbled upon it, a perfect match for their self-image and place in the world.

If your content strategy needs a boost, perhaps lifestyle marketing is the tactic you need for continued success.

Article image source: Fluid Peak Productions a lifestyle marketing company.

Photo credit: Back Down South

Because content is the lifeblood of all your outdoor industry marketing it will be important to figure out how and where you will source it. 

Do people read blogs anymore?
In addition, when surveyed (29%) read blogs 1-4 times a month, 18% read every day, and only 17% never read blogs.

Studies shows business blogging and content creation leads to 55% more website visitors (Source: Hubspot). This one standalone fact is what makes creating content and writing blog posts so crucial when conducting content or inbound marketing. It’s nearly impossible to generate a steady flow of organic traffic and leads without content. By expanding your digital footprint with keyword rich blog posts, videos and downloadable offers, you create more ways for your prospective customers to find you.

In this post, if you’re a marketer or business owner starting an content marketing program in the outdoor, hunting or firearms industry—I’ll give you five places to find ideas for your content (blogs, videos and offers).

1. FAQs

The first step after you’ve identified your buyer persona(s) is to create a list of all the questions your customers ask about your product. This should give you a good list of about 10-20 topics to start. Answer every question you can think of that’s been asked by your customers—then write those answers into 500-2000 word blog posts on your website.

2. Insource

Your company or network is full of experts who know a thing or two about your products and how it works in context. Interview them on topics your customers are most interested about. For some firearm or hunting companies, your sponsored shooting team or pro staff can provide valuable insight and information on current trends; what’s happening at the range or in the field where hunters and shooters tend to talk about the latest and hottest products.

3. Crowdsource

Crowdsourcing allows you to obtain (information or input into a particular task or project) by enlisting the services of a number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via your social media channels, forums, or on your website directly. Start by asking your audience questions and allow them to answer it themselves. Then take their input and compose them into posts.

4. Outsource

When all else fails, you can outsource your content creation to an inbound marketing agency or hire writers from websites like Writer’s Access, BlogMutt and Content Writers. All have gun and hunting friendly writers available. Another great industry resource you may not have heard about is the Professional Outdoor Media Association. You can post project needs on their website that will enable you to get in contact with some of the industry’s best writers and photographers. 

5. Repurpose

If you already have content, you can reuse it. Have your outsourced writers transcript your videos into blogs. Create videos from your blog posts. Take a collection of blog posts and create an ebook out of them. Use some of your content as product promotions. The great thing about content creation is you can always recycle it. Don’t let any of your past content go to waste.

Bring it all together

Now that you have a good collection of content, begin thinking through how your content will pull your visitor through your sales funnel. The goal in inbound marketing is to provide relevant content that educates your prospect through the buying process and gives them the information they need to make an informed decision. Top of the funnel topics consist of how-to’s, and tips and tricks. Middle of the funnel content consists of in-depth whitepapers and product demos. Bottom of the funnel offers consist of pricing and case studies. Create these offers and send them to your leads via email using a program like MailChimp. 

Schedule your content into monthly chunks and campaigns to stay on track. Post to your social media accounts daily and send to your email subscribers on a consistent basis. Track effectiveness with Google analytics or with your marketing automation tool.

In conclusion, sourcing and writing content doesn’t have to be difficult. Taking the time to plan and schedule can help you create consistent and viable content for your inbound marketing program.

It is inevitable that at some point in your company’s history you will be faced with a outdoor and hunting logo redesign or a rebranding of your hunting, outdoor or shooting sports company.

Remember the good ole’ start-up days? It was a lot easier just to design a few concepts that made sense, approve it and get on with building your business. But now things are a little more complicated: you have thousands of customers, a few sub-brands, hundreds of employees counting on you and a few more competitors. Suddenly, that little insignificant symbol that no one thought twice about is a big deal.

For business owners or outdoor industry marketing managers, managing a logo redesign is a major change—and change is hard! To help you stay clear of any potential pitfalls, here are five things to keep in mind during the course of your next hunting, outdoor or firearms logo redesign project.

1. Get an outside perspective

When designing a new logo, it’s critical to start with an understanding of what your customers think about your current identity and brand. Their input will form the foundation of your creative brief and give substance to your efforts. Their answers may provide key insights that you otherwise would have missed.

For more information on interviewing your customers please see: 8 Ways to Build Your Hunting Brand

2. Identify your value propositions

If you’re designing a new outdoor and hunting logo without a solid understanding of what your brand stands for, it’s likely you’ll struggle to define accurately what your key differentiators are and what value you bring to the marketplace, your employees, customers, and channel partners. If you’re struggling to identify what your “why” is, it may indicate a deeper problem, and you may need to take a deeper look at your brand. Below is a TED talk from Simon Sinek that explains how to create a brand that dominates your category—worth the watch.

Remember, a logo is a representation of what you want to communicate and should be connected to your visual system or “kit of parts” i.e package design, trade show booth design, outdoor website design, product catalogs, advertising etc. A logo rarely functions on its own.

3. Write a concise outdoor and hunting creative brief

If points 1 and 2 (above) are not defined, then your creative brief will be filled with guesses and estimations. It’s possible to still create a logo, but you may be missing out on key insights that would be helpful to your design agency when they begin the project. A good creative brief contains the following points:

• Project summary
• Audience profile or buyer persona
• Perception/tone/guidelines
• What needs to be communicated
• Competitors
• Examples of logos you like/dislike

A detailed creative brief saves time, endless revisions and equips your branding agency with the right information to maximize the design process.

4. Don’t design your outdoor and hunting logo by committee

When you receive your first round of concepts back from your outdoor industry marketing agency don’t email it out to everyone in your company for feedback. Chances are you’ll get a hundred different suggestions and “advice” on what needs to be changed. Don’t include those who haven’t been involved in the process from the beginning.

The famous maxim: a camel was a horse designed by committee—is true in this situation. Form a select team of 2-4 people to help you choose the best logo for your company. Make sure all options have been vetted and are properly understood before presenting to your company’s stakeholders—then send out your top 2 choices to the company (if you want their involvement).

And as hard as it may seem, make sure to design your logo based on what your customers want and expect, and not so much on what you like.

5. Present your outdoor and hunting logo

Another reason not to send your concepts out to the company until you have a strong consensus of what the strongest 2 or 3 final concepts are—is to make sure each concept is explained properly.
Create a video or website  about what the new logo means and how it will look with the other parts of your visual system.

Redesigning a new logo is a challenging exercise. To get it right, you must take the time to talk to your customers, identify your value propositions, write an accurate and concise creative brief, collaborate internally and present the concepts thoroughly. By doing so, you will avoid these common logo redesign pitfalls.

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably struggled with or maybe even have gotten into an all-out inner-conflict over the cost of photos you should purchase for your website or upcoming outdoor industry marketing campaign.

Should you go cheap and pick some “canned” image from iStock that costs only $10—or go big with the $500 shot from Offset. Or go even bigger and hire a professional outdoor lifestyle photographer for $7-$10K? 

Photography, like good design and copywriting, should be viewed as an investment, not a budgetary line item. According to NewsCred:

• Articles that contain images get 94% more views than articles without.
• 40% of people will respond better to visual information than plain text.
• 93% of people say that visual imagery is the # 1-factor impacting purchasing decision.

In the fight to stand out in today’s crowded firearm, hunting, and outdoor marketplace, professional photography is just another way to differentiate and win more business by looking better and more credible than your competitors.

Good photography is essential to creating credibility, telling your brand’s story, creating a favorable impression, and engaging your customers.

Here is five ways quality photography influences buyer behavior in the outdoor industry.

Photo Credit: Fluid Peak Productions for Brenton USA

1. Creates a favorable first impression that engages your visitors

Humans are visual creatures. We like shiny and beautiful objects. Most of us process information based on what we see. 65 percent of us are visual learners, according to the Social Science Research Network. (Source: Forbes)

When was the last time you were driving and stopped to take in a gorgeous sunset over snow-capped mountains? If you live in the mountain States, this may be an everyday occurrence. The same goes with engaging photography. Stunning photos can stop you in your tracks and make you take notice. It creates a connection—stirs your soul, ignites your senses and gives you a feeling of peace, excitement or maybe even awe and gratitude.

Marketers should not discount the fact that professional photography can be that extra element that creates that emotional connection between your brand and your buyer.

Good photography can also have positive effects on your website metrics by reducing bounce rates, keeping visitors on your website longer and increasing repeat visitors.

2. Makes your brand trustworthy

Trust is a diminishing factor for most brands today. Increasingly, consumers are making decisions well before the actual moment of in-store or online purchase. In fact, 88% of consumers research before they buy, consulting an average of 10.4 sources. (Source: Google, Zero Moment of Truth)

A CEB study of more than 1,400 B2B customers across all industries revealed that 57% of a typical purchase decision is made before a customer even talks to a supplier. 

When every click and search counts, creating a viable and memorable impression through the use of good photography is crucial for influencing the customer purchase decision and building your brand and connecting with your customer’s outdoor or shooting lifestyle.

Photo Credit: Straight 8 Photography for F4 Defense

3. Creates style

Good photography sets a mood and creates a style of your brand. By utilizing people who resemble, look and act like your buyer personas, you can create a stronger connection with your customer.

So what makes a good photo? There are 5 rules of a composition according to Nikon that make a photo more interesting and engaging:

1. Use the rule of thirds
2. Watch horizontal and vertical lines
3. Have subjects looking off frame
4. Follow leading lines
5. Look for patterns and textures

Look for these elements when making a photo choice.

4. Imagery helps you communicate a story in thousand words in seven seconds

You can communicate more with imagery in seven seconds than in 1000 words. So when you put cheap looking “canned stock” on your site that isn’t interesting—thinking no one will notice—think again. A photo can potentially communicate all you want to say about your brand and how it will help your customer—in seconds. By choosing bad photos, it can also communicate things you don’t want to communicate—like cheap, unproven, unprofessional, etc. This ends up doing more harm than good. Good photography helps you communicate your solution quickly and more effectively. (Source: Assoc. for Psychological Science)

5. Look better than your competitors

Perception is reality—if you want to be the best, you have to look like it. By investing in good photography for your marketing programs and by taking professional product photos, you enhance the customer experience and push your brand head-and-shoulders above your competitors. When your competitors are cutting corners and using cheap photos, invest in quality imagery to stand out—it will pay dividends later. You certainly do not want to have the same cheap photos that your competitors are using either. It would be a tremendous embarrassment to show up at SHOT Show or Outdoor Retailer with the same booth photos as your competition—this has happened before.

Looking for quality stock photo agencies or photographers? Here is a list of our favorites:

• Offset
• Aurora
• Fluid Peak Collective
• Danger Soup
• Tony Bynum
• John Hafner
• Jason Swar

For websites who’ve been awarded the “best use of photography” checkout the Webby Awards.

In conclusion, when quality copy, dynamic design, and good photography work together, your brand image is more credible, engaging, creates a favorable first impression and aligns and appeals to your customer’s outdoor lifestyle. We highly recommend a sizeable photography budget when advising clients on their outdoor, hunting and shooting marketing endeavors.