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Outdoor Marketing

Jan 08
outdoor marketing 2023

5 Ways to Kick Off Your Outdoor, Hunting and Shooting Sports Marketing in 2023

By Outdoor Marketing

Now that it’s officially 2023, you’re undoubtedly itching to get your internet marketing plan firing on all cylinders, especially now that we’re getting news of a coming recession with economists predicting a 70% chance of economic downturn this year.

According to our sources and network of clients, the outdoor, hunting and shooting sports industry experienced a significant boost in online revenue, with an increase of 30-120% in e-commerce sales between 2020 and 2022.

Suppose you’re like most outdoor, hunting, and firearm business owners we talk with—in that case, you’re hoping to keep some of these record numbers, get off on the right foot, and overcome the setbacks, distractions, and inconsistencies that might have kept you from achieving your goals now that boom years of the lockdowns are over.

In this article, I’ll give you five ways to kick-start your outdoor marketing this year and what you should focus on most to improve your online efforts.

1. Get A Website Audit

A website audit is an in-depth look into your site’s HTML that reveals issues like search visibility, security, device compatibility, page loading speeds, mobile, and so on. With a few simple diagnostics, you might be able to identify problems costing you sales and search engine rankings you didn’t know you were missing. Take a look at these tools to get started:

If you need a more in-depth review, our experts are here to help.

2. Review Your Web Traffic Sources

Google continues to throw out algorithm updates that can significantly impact outdoor, hunting, and firearm business. That’s why now more than ever, you need to pay attention to where your web traffic is coming from. Look at your analytics dashboard to see which sources send the most visitors to your website.

How many people are finding your business’ website? What are they looking for, and where are they coming from? You can’t optimize your site for sales and conversions without knowing the answers to these questions, but lots of business owners are afraid to dig into their analytics to find the info they need. Some don’t even know! An experienced outdoor marketing team can help you decipher this information and turn it into actionable next steps. The outcomes can mean more search engine visibility and hence more sales.

3. Update Your Text and Images

Is the content on your website out of date? Do you have duplicated paragraphs between pages? January is the perfect time to review your text and images, ensuring they are all unique, compelling, and current. The last thing you want is to give customers the wrong impression because your images and messaging are out of date.

4. Fix Your Messaging

As the economy slows, it will be essential to capture your website visitors immediately.

Without a clear message, customers will ignore you. When you clarify your message using the StoryBrand Framework, orders and revenue increase.

A clear message on your website (what you are selling and why someone should buy it) is key to success. Your website should be able to pass the “grunt test.” Someone should be able to grunt what it is you sell. We utilize a process called StoryBrand to help clarify our client’s messaging that can help you with this.

Want to see how your messaging and marketing stacks up? Take this assessment.

CompNChoke Outdoor Web Design
Example of clear messaging on Comp N’ Choke

5. Put a Content Plan in Place

Internet marketing is all about growth and focus. It’s a day-by-day, brick-by-brick type of operation. If you genuinely want to make 2023 a productive year as far as your website is concerned, now is an excellent time to put a content/SEO plan and get an editorial calendar in place so you won’t have trouble generating blog posts, lifestyle photography, videos, social media posts and other forms of content once you get busy later in the year.

Before you know it, SHOT Show and another trade show season will be here—with it, another year of passed opportunities.

If you’re looking to make 2023 your best year ever—now is a great time to reach out to our team and schedule a free assessment. In just one short meeting, we’ll be able to show you what you need to put the power of the internet to work for your outdoor, hunting, or firearm business this year.

Get Free Assessment

Photo credit: Chris Dorsey

Oct 24
Outdoor Website Design

8 Things We Learned Over The Years About Outdoor Website Design

By Outdoor Marketing

Over the years, Garrison Everest has identified several factors that every outdoor website needs to be successful online. We’ve found (after completing over a hundred websites), brands who are meeting or exceeding their goals have these eight foundational website traits in common. By adhering to these basic premises, you will have a solid foundation to conduct digital marketing and grow your business more efficiently. 

outdoor-website-marketing-data1. Goals, KPIs, and Analytics

You can’t track what you don’t measure. Every website project should start with clear goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) on what you want to achieve. These goals need to be regularly tracked and reported on monthly. Having a good understanding of what metrics are important to you (visits, bounce rate, sales, shares, likes, clicks, subscriptions, conversations, etc.) will ultimately make your contact and sales generation more successful.

2. Credible Design, Photography and Copy

outdoor website lifestyle marketing

Engaging design, photography, and copy is a must in today’s digital environment. Canned stock photos will hinder the sales process and fail to build the necessary trust with your prospects. Short and concise copy—based on your buyer persona—is needed to grab and hold your visitor’s attention. Copy and imagery work together to tell your brand, product or services’ story—that ultimately spurs the sales process. Copy should be based on your prospect’s lifestyle and how you solve their problems.

3. WordPress Content Management System

WordPress is an online, open source website creation tool written in PHP. But in non-geek speak, it’s probably the most straightforward and most powerful blogging and website content management system (or CMS) in existence today. WordPress powers over 27 % of all websites on the web (Source: Tech Republic). It is easy to manage and scale as your business grows.

4. WooCommerce

For E-commerce installations, Garrison Everest strictly uses WooCommerce. WooCommerce powers over 28% of all online stores (Source: Pixelo). Plugin subscriptions are updated annually that add extra functionality to your website for a fraction of the cost. Plugins include shipment tracking, payment processing, deposits, email subscriptions, automation and more.

Automation and Abandoned Cart Email

For every 100 potential customers, 67 of them will leave without purchasing. How much would your revenues increase if you were capturing those sales instead of losing them? (Source: Shopify) An automation and abandoned cart email program can make your e-commerce store more profitable. And don’t forget to add an email subscription form for prospects to sign up for your blog and newsletter.

 

Outdoor Website

 

5. Fast and Secure Hosting

Garrison Everest partners with WP-Engine to power our client’s website. WP-Engine hosting comes with an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) that shows your visitors you are a credible and trustworthy business giving you a rankings boost on Google. Our hosting also employs a Content Delivery Network (CDN) that makes your site faster and more secure—making it less likely to be brought down by hackers.

6. SEO and Content

Depending on your segment in the outdoor industry, updating your website’s blog regularly (at least twice a month) will be necessary for you to build organic rankings, links and value on search engines.

Companies that blog have better marketing results. Specifically, the average company that blogs has:

  • 55% more visitors
  • 97% more  inbound links
  • 434% more  indexed pages

Websites that provide helpful and relevant content will rank higher. Value-added content will also help grow your social media networks. (Source: HubSpot)

heatmaps7. Ongoing testing

Most companies will invest a significant amount of capital in a website, launch it, and then do nothing with it for three years. To get the most out of your website, ongoing audits, user interaction testing, heat mapping, copy, SEO and design experiments should be conducted to optimize your brand’s most important sales channel.

8. Instant Messaging

Gone are the days of forms for potential prospects to contact you. Since we’ve added Drift, the world’s first and only conversational marketing and sales platform to our website and other client websites—we’ve seen an almost 80% increase of leads. When prospects hit your website, they are searching for a solution to a problem they’re having. At this moment in their buyer’s journey, they are in the exploratory phase and are looking for answers to your questions. Instant message meets them at the right place and the right time.  

By adding and conducting these eight components on your outdoor website, you will have a firm digital marketing foundation in which to build your online business.