3 Ways To Modernize Outdoor Brands

[Netminder01]

Heya HuntWA -

My most recent blog posts focused on ways to help modernize the small to medium sized and mid-market businesses within outdoors, hunting, fishing, firearms, motorsports, and first responder industries via modern tech & marketing. These posts are aimed directly at outfitters, guides, shop owners but also non-profits like the RMEF, NWTF, NRA and mid-market brands like firearms + product manufacturers.

None of the posts are short reads, or intended to be so fill up your java and hopefully, enjoy.

THREE MODERN APPROACHES OUTDOOR BRANDS SHOULD EXPLORE  – Main setup page.

• Brand Retooling – Brand Retooling, Websites, Demographics, Search, Marketing Automation, Video, Content Marketing.
• Personalized Marketing – Beacons, Location Based Marketing, Wearable Integration, Sample Campaign using the approaching MTN Ops Total Archery Challenge
• Integrate The Next Era in Storytelling – The next era in Storytelling, Uncharted Virtual Reality w/ Jim Shockey, Haptics and Immersion.

All feedback and discussion welcome.

[Special T]

Thank you for this, I'll be studying up!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

[Fl0und3rz]

Nice.  Tagging for future.

[bearpaw]

I think I read through most of your articles, good stuff, glad to see your insight! I have to agree with at least a large part of it.

FYI- About a month ago Facebook quit letting me boost posts. Last week I noticed Google removed all my google adwords ads. I finally managed to get into my account and every ad was totally removed. I'm working on a strategy to counter this loss of advertising venues, but I shouldn't have to, none of my ads were anything different than I've been doing for years.

[Magnum_Willys]

Thank you for this, I'll be studying up!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

 

[Netminder01]

I think I read through most of your articles, good stuff, glad to see your insight! I have to agree with at least a large part of it.

FYI- About a month ago Facebook quit letting me boost posts. Last week I noticed Google removed all my google adwords ads. I finally managed to get into my account and every ad was totally removed. I'm working on a strategy to counter this loss of advertising venues, but I shouldn't have to, none of my ads were anything different than I've been doing for years.

Thanks Dale, glad you found it informative!

Outdoor advertising and the ad-tech is one issue, bias censorship is happening all over the place particularly to the hunting & firearms crowd.

[bearpaw]

I think I read through most of your articles, good stuff, glad to see your insight! I have to agree with at least a large part of it.

FYI- About a month ago Facebook quit letting me boost posts. Last week I noticed Google removed all my google adwords ads. I finally managed to get into my account and every ad was totally removed. I'm working on a strategy to counter this loss of advertising venues, but I shouldn't have to, none of my ads were anything different than I've been doing for years.

Thanks Dale, glad you found it informative!

Outdoor advertising and the ad-tech is one issue, bias censorship is happening all over the place particularly to the hunting & firearms crowd.

It's been several weeks since I tried to boost a post on facebook, last night I attempted to boost two posts, they actually approved them, maybe it depends who is doing the approvals?

[Netminder01]

I think I read through most of your articles, good stuff, glad to see your insight! I have to agree with at least a large part of it.

FYI- About a month ago Facebook quit letting me boost posts. Last week I noticed Google removed all my google adwords ads. I finally managed to get into my account and every ad was totally removed. I'm working on a strategy to counter this loss of advertising venues, but I shouldn't have to, none of my ads were anything different than I've been doing for years.

Thanks Dale, glad you found it informative!

Outdoor advertising and the ad-tech is one issue, bias censorship is happening all over the place particularly to the hunting & firearms crowd.

It's been several weeks since I tried to boost a post on facebook, last night I attempted to boost two posts, they actually approved them, maybe it depends who is doing the approvals?

Approvals are not the biggest issue per se, watch to see who engages w/ your posts and then if they engage on other BearPaw social channels, subscribe to newsletters or become a customer. This is where the hunting, firearms, etc industries are losing big time by social platforms strategically and intentionally damaging hunting, firearms brands through restricting modern business growth and waisting critical budget on failed marketing efforts.

You or someone you hired probably spent some time segmenting an audience you're trying to reach for BearPaw - aka, potential customers. I'm just guessing, but it's skewed male, 27-50 (ish), a certain level of discretionary income,  maybe even political leaning, hobbies that include hunting, shooting, etc and maybe lives in a certain location. Watch closely who actually engages with your ad, sponsored content, etc. This is where the robbery really happens, not content approvals as much.

You'll probably get a ton of unrelated even peculiar demographics reacting to your FB / Instagram buy. Dive into the people who are liking your posts and you'll find a bunch of shadow/fake people interacting w/ your content. Often times, they'll have a small social footprint or influence meaning, a low number of people following them and few posts of their own. Those profile types will be littered across your awareness/engagement KPI metrics from your social buy.

Facebook (and others) have created fake profiles w/ automated interactions with content via AI. Meaning, they no longer need real people with real profiles to "like" posts but each time the automated profile "likes" your content, they get paid either way - cha-ching! The problem to SMB's like BearPaw, is relevancy to your brand with customers who actually are looking for, or interested in a guided hunt. In other words, the people reacting to your post *should* have the best chance of converting into BearPaw customers over time when the reality is, they won't. We'd probably all be better served paying a recovering addict to stand on a busy street corner spinning a BearPaw sign than a small to medium business will get from social buys today. Big brands and big budgets, that's different, that all boils down to efficiency of acquiring followers/customers or customer acquisition costs (CAC).

Hunting/firearms brands who are paying for awareness / engagement looking to convert likes or PPC ads into customers are flushing large percentages of their marketing budget into the FB toilet realizing much weaker results, stagnating growth, etc. Compare your social buy with let's say, Planned Parenthood for the same ad, same budget. Believe me, the results are not even close.

It's a huge scam and we are all blindly trusting that it's all on the up and up when it's deliberately not. The very gatekeepers who'd prefer to take our rights away are the ones entrusted to enable effective marketing through social platforms. As a society, it's like we've all been fed the Blue pill from the Matrix when we should've all consumed the Red pill. If anyone believes it's on the up and up, you might also believe there was no bias influencing the Clinton email probe. 

Dale - I'd be interested to hear - if you'd like to share on this thread or privately, what the results/demographic skew ends up being for those that engage your social buy. You'll find what I mentioned above occurs more on Instagram (owned by FB) than FB proper. If I showed you some of the demographics that engaged on a historical buys for CRRNT it was as if I didn't go through the segmentation process at all.