Your hunting, outdoor or firearms company’s website is an immense investment of time and money in your ability to enhance your business and brand online. It must be responsive (mobile, tablet and desktop viewable), it must be easy to understand, informative and entertaining. However, most marketers and business owners in the industry minimize this aspect during the design phase and forget to think about how to effectively keep visitors coming back after they’ve visited. It’s typical to be more focused on graphics and aesthetics—but just having an awesome looking website will only get you so far in today’s digital environment. It doesn’t matter what size of a company you are—a small business of 10 employees or 5,000, every visit is an opportunity to build a relationship, customer or lifetime promoter of your brand. Below are six simple tips you can use to turn your website into a traffic and lead generating machine.
1. Write your content based on your customer
According to recent statistics, over 90% of visitors to your website never come back. The reason they don’t come back is because they didn’t find anything to keep them coming back. To keep them coming back, target three potential customers or buyer personas and write helpful, relevant content specifically for them—that solves a problem they have one at a time. Learn about their pain points, where they hang out on social media and how they talk. Implement this across every page of your website and watch those bounce rates decline.
2. Optimize your content
It goes without saying that all websites should be optimized, but I am always amazed on how many marketing people skip this crucial step. Today, Google accounts for over 65% of web searches. The most important aspects of your hunting and outdoor website for SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) are title tags. Make sure they accurately describe what your page is about with the keywords in the title and URL. The title tag should be under 60 characters and the description tag under 160 characters. Keep them short and pithy. Look to sprinkle your keywords throughout your page 2-3 times over 500 words—if it makes sense. Write naturally and don’t stuff your keywords. Write for humans, not search engines.
3. Create free downloadable content
60% of the sales cycle is over before a buyer talks to your salesperson. Consumers today behave in a way that requires you to establish trust. The years of broken brand promises by politicians, get rich quick schemes and magic pills have taken a toll on the consumer market and with the economy in its current state—consumers don’t blow money like they used to. No matter what type of product you sell, you are an expert in something. Write about it, package it and offer it to your customers. Parallel this with follow up emails and other content as you create it. This simple tip can begin building trust with your customers and will grease the wheels come hunting season.
4. Create a strong call-to-action
Make your downloadable content irresistible to your visitors. For example: “6 Elk Hunting Secrets from Today’s Top Trophy Hunters.” I think we’d all like to download and read this offer! If you are offering up relevant content that solves your customer’s problems, the call to action should be designed to entice them to fill out a form, send an email or pick up the phone and contact you. Experiment with different colors and different headlines to optimize your offers.
5. Blog weekly
Companies that blog receive 97% more inbound links. (HubSpot State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report) The more blogging you do, the higher your rankings will be on SERPS—which means more traffic—which means more customers. Almost everyone these days has a blog, but now it’s more important than ever to keep that content fresh and flowing. Make a commitment to start a blog and maintain it weekly. All content is not created the same. Make sure you are blogging on topics that solve your customer’s problems and use titles like “How-to’s”, “Tips on…”, and other enticing subject matter geared specifically for your audience. Google’s latest algorithm changes suggest that stagnant websites are no longer useful for users.
6. Get social
Social media has an 80% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing. (State of Inbound Marketing). Every page on your site should have a way for users to share content. If it’s not shareable, you loose out on your content being spread. Social media will become more important to hunting and outdoor brands than ever before. Try to personalize your posts as well. People want to work with people. The number of businesses that say Facebook is critical or important to their business has increased by 75%. Use social media to expand your message, expertise, and personality. The simple tips above you can begin to shape and optimize your hunting or outdoor business’ website for more traffic and leads.
