Waterfowl Hunting in Saskatchewan - Room for singles and doubles - Sep. 20th-22nd Oct. 11th-13th and Oct. 15th-17th.
- contact Prairie Rose Outfitters - 306-227-2822
Our Featured Outfitter: McKay's Sisip OutfittersSpecies Guided:
Moose, Whitetail Deer, Black Bear, Grouse, Duck
We will cover a variety of marketing topics here, all written to become actionable parts of your outfitter marketing plan. Topics we will cover will include online marketing, outdoors website design, print advertising, referral programs, target marketing, tradeshow marketing, marketing budgeting, and more.
We have been helping small businesses get a grip on their marketing planning and execution for over 20 years. We have written the articles here with a particular outdoors flair to add some levity and some relevance. We are confident that they will benefit your business if you are prepared to give them a try. So draw a bead on a more profitable future and get prepared to haul in more trophy sized customers!
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Target Marketing
Target Marketing is like choosing the right place to set up your hunting blind. Place it in the proper field and you can expect to have a shot at success. Place it in the wrong field and you will have wasted time and money. When you are setting up a blind, you probably do most of the following.
In the same way target marketing is done to improve your chance of successfully landing a customer. Where are your customers located? What do they read? Can you find a large gathering of potential customers? Are you prepared to tell them your story, to explain why someone should book with you? What makes your services more valuable? Are you using the right marketing tools?
Market Segmentation
A very important aspect of target marketing is known as market segmentation. This is the analytical task of dividing up the entire population into smaller groups with similar characteristics, based on some pre-determined criteria. Criteria often include demographic information such as age, profession, sex, income, education, location, etc. to assist in determining a more likely group of potential customers. Market segmentation can be helpful in your marketing if you can identify a "typical" customer that your services appeal strongly to, or if you have designed your services around a unique offering, such as a family fishing resort. Based on my own experiences, and conversations with outfitters, those customers that make use of outfitters tend to have a few common characteristics. While this is not an exact profile of every outfitter customer, here is a set of demographics that is commonly found:
male
40 to 50
married
higher than average income
university degree
owns a home
Seek Advice
That's a pretty broad range, likely representing some 20 to 25 million people in North America. So now what? If you know the kind of customer you want to attract, where do you find them? One of my fishing buddies always tells the same story when he's asked how to find fish in an unknown lake. He says, "research the lake on the internet, look at depth maps, satellite photos, then put the boat in the water, check the moon phases, turn on the sonar, then follow the two old local fellers in the 14 foot Lund with the 9.9 HP outboard cause they where the fish are. All the fancy tools are never better than someone who just plain knows where to go based on many many years of experience. The same is usually true of marketing. If you know someone who is successfully marketing to your customer base, seek their advice, seek their expertise. Your second best, but highly successful approach to target marketing, is to develop a marketing plan designed to appeal to the type of customers you want, and then use the right marketing mix to get your message to them. Here are a few suggested targeted marketing activities:
exhibit at local sportsman shows
speak at a gun club, hunting club, or fishing club
write articles for the local paper
purchase a list from a list broker and do a direct mail campaign
advertise your services in the state business magazine