The outdoors industry is as competitive it comes. Whether you’re a hunting guide, fishing charter, gear manufacturer, or retailer, gaining a foothold in the outdoors market is challenging. Luckily, there are tried-and-true methods to creating a business that stands out from the competition and reaches customers.
Follow these 7 steps to grow your hunting, fishing, and outdoors business and increase your profits.
#1 Define Your Goals
You can’t reach your goals if you don’t know what they are. Setting both long-term and daily goals for your business will help you focus your efforts in the right areas.
What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to be known for? How do you want to impact your customers, community, and/or the world?
If you haven’t already done so, draft a clear vision, mission, and purpose statement. Together, these will help guide your business practices and connect your customers to a higher cause.
#3 Choose Your Ideal Customer
Take your target audience a step further and develop 2-3 buyer personas based on your ideal customers.
A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. It is a complete character, with a name, occupation, personality, interests, goals, motivations, and problems.
Why create one? Because developing a buyer persona gets you past the superficial and digs into what makes your customers tick. If you know what frustrates your customers, you can solve those frustrations—and beat your competitors.
#4 Know Your Competition
You don’t need to know them on a personal level, but you do need to know who is currently meeting your target audience’s needs.
What do they offer? What makes them unique?
Analyzing the competition will reveal gaps in the market that your business can fill.
#5 Be Unique, Be Human
Every successful business has something that makes them different.
That difference can be a feature of the product or service itself. But more often that not, that difference lies elsewhere.
Some businesses differentiate themselves through values and promises, such as remarkable customer service. Others stand out because they support important causes.
The options are limitless. Just be sure that it aligns with your goals and values.
Customers today don’t like faceless corporations. They’d prefer to do business with people they like and relate to. Because of this, it is more important than ever to humanize your brand.
You can make your brand more human by giving it a personality. Choose traits that represent and resonate with your audience—and infuse all of your messaging and marketing with that personality.
#6 Use Language They Understand
When you go to a foreign country, you have to speak the language if you want to be understood and not ignored. The same goes for your business. The quickest way to be ignored is to use speech your audience doesn’t like or understand.
An academic or elitist audience is not going to listen to someone who consistently uses contractions, slang, or improper grammar. But a youthful, rebellious audience will not listen to someone who uses big words and stilted language. It is important to adopt your audience’s preferences.
#7 Tell a Story
Everyone loves a good story. Even more, everyone loves to be the hero of a story.
Customers respond to messaging that is about them. They don’t care about your business, product, or service. They care how your business can help them on their journey.
Craft a story that makes your customer the hero and your business the solution to their problem. Use that story to develop your messaging.
Following all these steps will help you create a brand with purpose and heart — and reach more customers effectively.