S3 Outdoors Marketing

New Site: ClassifiedOutdoors.com

2012-02-28T14:29:00.000-08:00

We all tend to accumulate more gear than we need. Sometimes we buy a specialized piece of equipment for a specific hunting trip then long after the hunt is over it sits in our closet or our garage, never to be used again. At S3 Outdoors and Netnotic Marketing we have launched a new website to help you pass on your used gear to the next hunter, angler, or camper who is looking for what you don't need. The new site is ClassifiedOutdoors.com and is bound to become the new marketplace for outdoors gear.

In addition to the gear and equipment marketplace, we have set up sections where hunting outfitters and fishing guides can add their profiles and images including links to their website, Facebook and Twitter accounts.

We invite you check out ClassifiedOutdoors.com.

www.classifiedoutdoors.com

Early Canada Geese

2012-02-20T05:44:00.003-08:00

I was driving through Estevan, SK, today and I saw 2 Canada geese flying overhead. That seems a little unusual for February 19th. But then this has been an unusual weather year in Saskatchewan and in fact much of the prairies from Alberta to Manitoba and down into the norther U.S. states. We have had unusually warm weather and a very low amount of snow fall. Normally there are a few things that "turn on" the migration instinct in migratory birds. This includes both the time of year and local conditions. With fall approaching, a cold snap that freezes water or a heavy snow fall will send birds south in search of open water and easy to find food. However, there are often a select number of hearty Canada geese that ignore the "timing" signals and will stay in their summer homes as long as they can find open water and a source of food. In Saskatoon every year I notice a few flocks that use the open water of the North Saskatchewan river and make their daily journey to the fields searching for food. This can continue long into December. This winter it wasn't until we had a 6 inch snowfall and temperatures dipping into the minus 30's that the birds left. However, reports are that they went as far south as Regina area, when the weather turned back to balmy winter conditions with temperatures rising above freezing, and the birds have turned back.

I am currently on a trip to South Dakota and I am keeping my eyes out for open water and signs of waterfowl. Between Estevan, where they have the Shand Power Station keeping water open, and Great Falls, North Dakota, there have been no sightings yet. The fields are largely clear of snow so food would be available but I haven't seen any open water. Off to South Dakota tomorrow so we will see what the rest of the journey turns up.

Update: The drive to South Dakota was a snow and slush filled adventure as several inches of snow were falling between the south east of North Dakota and the north east of South Dakota. We finished the journal southward in Aberdeen, South Dakota, which is the self proclaimed pheasant capital. We did spot a number of pheasants both in the fields as well as in the air. But, back to the topic of waterfowl. With mild temperatures and sunshine there were small amounts of open water, a few small streams, but nothing that would attract and hold geese.

From Aberdeen, SD, we drove northwestward to Calgary, Alberta. In that roughly 1700 km of driving we did not spot anymore waterfowl. All of the visible water was frozen over. Upon reaching Calgary, did find some open water on the Bow River and there we spotted a few pairs of Great Canada Geese flying around. always in pairs.

The last leg of our journey was Calgary back to Saskatoon and even though the fields were largely snow free (source of food) the water was all frozen and the geese were no where to be seen.

Ram Outdoorsman TV Show Episode

2011-11-04T08:28:00.000-07:00

This fall (2011) we had the Ram Outdoorsman TV Show crew shoot an episode with Prairie Rose outfitters at our Champetre County Outpost Camp located just 20 minutes east of Saskatoon. I had a good variety of hunts planned for the 3 days that they were in camp. The group was led by Chris Dorsey, CEO of Orion Multimedia (the producers of the show). He was joined in the blinds by his brother Joe Dorsey, our field guide Richard, and three cameramen.

First of all, this was the second camera crew I had guided, having done a similar shoot with Ducks Unlimited TV just last year, generating enough footage for two episodes (see the Prairie Rose Outfitters web site for video clips). I know that a camera crew adds some challenges to setting up to shoot waterfowl. First of all, cameramen are hard to hide. They have bulky gear and they need to be raised up quite often to get the right angle. Second, with three shooters in the blinds, and 3 cameramen, that's a lot of big objects in the middle of the field. Lastly, for a waterfowl hunt to look good on TV, the action has to be close. A 50 yard shot looks like a 100 yard shot on TV and getting the birds close is what hunters want to see.

Our first shoot was a pea field that was loaded with thousands of mallard ducks the morning and night previous. It was still only mid season so many of the drakes were not fully greened out yet but you could see among the older drakes that the bright emerald green was there. We set up about a hundred yards from the main pond they were using as a drinking pond on their way between the roost pond and the feed field. We were able to place the blinds and cameramen in a lower lying area with the majority of the decoys in a slightly more visible location, with the cameramen covered in pea stubble Ghillie blankets. It was a clear morning and the sky began to brighten early, and with warm temperatures, the ducks were coming early. Another aspect of shooting a TV show is you need enough light for the cameras. We had ducks, after legal shooting time, but before there was good light for the cameras, landing and walking around in the decoys, within feet of the blinds. Once the cameramen gave the word that we had enough light, the shooting started and the limit of ducks was quickly reached.

That afternoon we switched modes to snow goose. With a full limit of ducks taken in the morning, snow geese were still legal to shoot. To do so, we needed to be East of the 106 longitude line and I had scouted a barley stubble field on the right side of the line earlier that day. We set up with our snow goose decoy set up and electronic calls, using a strip of dark weeds to place the blinds and cameras. And then we waited, and waited, while the snow geese jumped to the next field. They had been in the water just a mile and a half east of us for the late morning and early afternoon and decided to simply jump into the adjacent field, rather than return to the same field as the morning (as they usually, but not always, do). We watched as 5 to 6 thousand snow geese lifted off, flew a couple hundred yards and then set back down. We had zero shooting opportunities. With the large flock of geese only a short distance away, I did take a hike up the hill to the side, with a tree line and bushes for cover, with the still photographer for the shoot, Dusan Smetana. Dusan got in some amazing close up shots of a snow goose flock on the ground and as they danced around in the field, flying short hops within the field.

Day 2 and our target for the morning would be a field with a great opportunity for a truly mixed bag shoot. Another pea field a short drive to the south east had a great number of Canada geese, snow geese, and ducks. Great content for a TV show. So we set up with a decoy spread featuring all these species. The Canada geese decoys and mallards were arranged with the hunters in their blinds at the bottom of a V shaped layout and we scattered the snow goose decoys beginning 50 yards downwind behind the blinds. Snow are not fussy about landing with Canada geese but Canada geese typically will not fly over snows on the ground to land. We had another bright clear morning with birds flying early, well before good light for the cameras. Some of the best decoying bird flights happened before we had enough light to run the camera. When the light was ready, the wind had gone down and we knew we would have a tougher time getting the birds to work down low. The hunters passed on a lot of very killable shots which were well within shooting distance but which would appear like “skybusting” on camera. With expert calling by Richard, there were still some close up shooting opportunities. The end tally was 10 Canada geese including a pair of greater Canada’s, 7 snow geese, and 9 ducks.

After knocking down a large number of birds, you tend to lose track of the good shots and the great bird set ups but every now and then, there is bird you remember. One of the Canada Geese knocked down was what is known as a Quill Lakes goose. It is a greater Canada goose with special markings. Notice the white feathers on the leading edge of the wings, the white band across the breast, and the white stripe on the underside of the neck. Birds like this are pretty rare and are well remembered by those that shoot them.

For the afternoon and the next morning we wanted to feature the hunting opportunities for shooting ducks over water. We choose two different ponds, the first was mostly used by large ducks, Mallards, Gadwalls, some Pintails, and a few Canvasback. This pond was a roost pond for many of these ducks and we shot them as they returned from their evening feed. With very high water conditions in the area for the past few years, there is an abundance of water holes so we knew that anything we shot at would be unlikely to return later. We set out the floater decoys and let the birds work, shooting a few of the birds that really worked into the decoys well.

We took a slightly different approach Wednesday morning, the last hunt of the show. We had another pond picked out, but this one was frequented by a large number of teal, both green wing and blue wing teal. We gave the birds time in the morning to get off the water and out to the fields to feed. Then we followed in behind and set up with floater duck decoys and hid the shooters and cameramen in the tall grass surrounding the pond. Within 500 yards of the pond were 5 other ponds and watching the birds in this area over the past several weeks I knew that they liked to bounce from pond to pond. This again would mean that the birds had choices so if the saw a pond they didn’t like, or something out of place, it was not hard for them to find alternate water. The hunters were faced with the challenge of shooting the fast flying and erratic teal, and likely getting just one good pass with them. These birds come in silent and fast, and they have humbled many a hunter. After a few missed shots, they started to catch on and managed to knock down a good number of teal and a mix of a few other ducks.

The group poses at the end of a good hunt.

Look for the show to air on the Versus network, Ram Outdoorsman, in the 2011 season.

One Day Hunt

2011-11-02T13:24:00.000-07:00

I had a pair of hunters in for a day on a Saturday. They were the guys who run www.BoaterExam.com and www.HunterExam.com, Brent McNamee and Greg Gulliver. As I own and operate several outdoors websites (including www.s3outdoors.com, www.prairieoutdoors.com, www.huntsforsale.com, www.gooutdoorsidaho.com, www.huntingincanada.com, www.huntingincanada.info, and www.huntingincanada.net) which make use of their affiliate programs, I was very interested to get to know them better.

This was not an easy hunt, for a couple of reason. First, they wanted to hunt snow geese. Not a problem finding them, even in late October I found a field with approximately 10,000 snow geese and 5,000 ducks (both are estimates of course).

With only two hunters, plus me, putting out 500+ decoys for a snow goose shoot is a big task. Normally we will have 4 or more hunters plus myself plus a field guide. We were up for the task so out went the decoys. The other challenge was the weather, more specifically, the changing weather. I had checked the forecast the night before and it called for a strong northwest wind, perfect for where I wanted to set up with this group to use some natural cover. When we arrived, we had a light southeasterly wind, switching to northeasterly, then seeming to drop off completely, hardly enough to blow the straw I held up and dropped to the ground. Wind helps to orient the birds and bring them in to land from a consistent direction. We set up to the little bit of wind we had, next to a small pond, with our blinds set part way into the tall grass surrounding the pond as partial cover. The wind was going to cause problems later in the day.

Early in the year, birds will feed primarily in harvested pea fields. As the season progresses and they have cleaned out the peas, they will switch to barley amd wheat fields. This required a change in the spotting routine. From previous spotting trips, I knew where all the popular pea fields but now I had to follow the birds to new fields. As you can see from the picture above, I found them.

The birds moved later that morning, it was fully overcast, this will slow them down a bit. We had a few ducks, usually pairs or small groups, come and buzz the decoys, attracted by the mojo decoy's spinning wings. The shooters dropped few ducks in the early part of the day. At the same time, we could hear the snow geese on the water where they had spent the night, approximately a mile away. They were getting louder and seemed to be more excited. Soon they would be flying and Brent and Greg would have their first shots at snow geese. While both were experienced hunters, they had not hunted snow geese before. It wasn't too much longer and the first few small groups began to come check our spread out. The larger groups came of a look while a few singles were determined to join the flock on the ground. It was no surprise, when, after shooting the first few singles that came in range, we could see that they were juvenile snows. Typical activity for a single juvenile looking to join a flock. These are usually the easiest birds to shoot as they will continue to circle and drop lower with each pass.

We had a few groups of 5 or 6 birds commit to the decoys as well. With a little patience, the guys held off and let them work low enough and they shot a few birds that way. Then the weather started to change, mid morning, the wind began to swing to the north, and died down to almost nothing for a while. The birds began to approach the decoys from behind our right shoulders and shooting was impossible the way we had the blinds set up so we moved the blinds to the middle of the decoy set up and improved our chances, dropping a few more snow geese. Just when we thought we had the set up we wanted, the wind changed again, the temperature dropped, and it began to snow, lightly. The wind was picking up straight out of the west. The snow goose silo socks which were originally set to pick up the wind from the east were set completely wrong and many of them had spun around and were flapping like low flying kites, not looking at all like birds on the ground. The birds that did approach were flaring at 100 yards and the guys were not getting the shooting opportunities where they were sitting in the middle of the decoy spread. So I moved them, into the thick cover of the cattails around the pond, 50 yards closer to the birds and now they had some killable shots. Most of what they shot splashed hard into the pond, giving my dog Maddux a chance to work on her water retrieves. While they shot from the tall cover, I worked quickly to spin all the decoys the opposite way to use the wind properly. If we would have had this wind to start the day, it's no doubt we would have had snow geese on our doorstep and locked up to land, instead of the 50 yard shots they had to make. It was now time for a lunch break.

With only 3 decoys planters, and the days growing shorter, the decision was made to hunt the same field for the afternoon. Late in the season, there are fewer places to feed and we did have a large number of birds come to this field and flare off without getting shot at. I was confident the afternoon would give them the shooting they would need. Mid afternoon proved this to be right. I had watched the straggler birds working the decoys in the early afternoon and when the hunters returned, I dressed them in Ghillie jackets and put them at the back end of the decoy spread, to appear as piles of grass. With the strong wind at our back, the afternoon birds worked they way I expected and by the time the daylight was dropping low, they had reached their limits of ducks and snow geese.

A hard day of hunting, with some wind challenges, but overcoming the challenges of nature is why we hunt. If it was all easy, wouldn't it be a boring story to tell?

California Goose Busters

2011-11-02T06:28:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday evening, Ken, Ray and Gary arrived at Champetre County Outpost Camp after having spent 3 days shooting snow geese at our main camp located at the Quill Lakes. That evening the group shared the stories of the snow goose hunting and began building anticipation for the different hunt conditions around Champetre County. Thursday morning began the adventures, with a field hunt in the rolling hills located between two ponds. We were set up for Canada geese and ducks and they wasted no time on the ducks.

The geese were a bit skittish for some reason, often coming in with 150 to 200 yards then flaring off and moving to the west. They did manage to call a couple specks and a Canada into range and they all hit the ground after a few shotgun blasts. The ducks, however, were eager to join our decoys and came early to take a drink in the pond to the left and right of the hunters then jumped up to have a closer look at the decoys. By the time the shooting was done, a full limit of 32 ducks were down, a few of them had to be retrieved by my dog Maddux from the side ponds.

That evening we switched gears, back to snow geese. With a limit of ducks in the bag, and Canada's not legal to shoot in the afternoon (until October 15th), we loaded up the snow goose decoys and headed further east, to the other side of the 106 line. We found a spot in a barley field to hide in a tall section of cattails. I had spotted this field in the morning when I knew they would run out of their limit of ducks to shoot. We set out our snow goose silo sock decoys in a loose U shape to draw the birds to the middle of the blinds where we could concentrate some firepower on them. With 500 decoys working for us and good cover, we looked very appealling to the snow geese and the electronic calls helped convince them that this was a safe place to land. By the time the sun set, we had 40 snow geese on the ground.

Friday morning it was time again to concentrate on the Canada geese. While the guys had been knocking down snow geese the evening prior, I was finding the Canada geese in a pea field closer to the lodge. We set up with 100 big foot Canada decoys, 12 mallards full bodies on swivel sticks, and the mojo duck in front of us and an additional 100 snow goose silo sock another 75 yards behind us. With dark geese decoys out, we could not use the electronic snow goose calls. I knew we were in a great field for a true mixed bag hunt and the birds cooperated nicely. The ducks came in waves throughout the morning, being the first to fly and the first to die. Then we had Canada geese flying early that day as well, just shortly before sunrise and they started dropping early as well. The snow geese liked the spread as well and we had our opportunities on them. After the shooting was done, we had that mixed bad, 32 ducks (mostly mallards), 23 Canada geese, 2 specklebellies, and 22 snow geese, 79 waterfowl in total. Quite a morning.

Friday morning we again put Canada geese at the top of our list of birds to shoot and we had a good field of harvested lentils lined up. We had hunted earlier in the year, a few weeks ago, on other neighboring fields and there were good bird numbers around. This was the last hunt of the week so I did not need to go spotting this morning and had the good chance to instead set myself up sitting on the top of a hill about a mile south of the hunters where I could see the action. The Canada geese did what we expected. They came from the roost pond to the north west, passed low over the north end of the field, spotted the decoys, heard Richard calling them, and swung around to land into the north west wind. As they glided lower, I could watch them descend towards the decoys and the hunters below. Because of my distance from the hunters, and the time it took for sound to travel to me, I could watch through my binoculars as birds started to crumple in the air, then I would hear the shots. Pretty cool effect. They shot well, 39 Canada geese for the morning.

Richard is ready to carve the birds from the Thursday morning shoot.

Chris Curtin Group - October 2011

2011-10-16T06:13:00.000-07:00

First of all, let me say Chris Curtin certainly has a zest for hunting. As soon as the topic turns to hunting, his eyes light up and he dives head first into the discussion. You could tell his son Grant, his hunting partner on this trip, had the same interest in hunting but was a bit more reserved. The group hunted out of our Champetre County Outpost Camp location.

Saturday a.m. we set up in a pea field with a spread of 100 Big Foot Canada Geese decoys, 12 mallards on swivel sticks, and one battery powered mojo. The shooting started early, Canada's, to our surprise, were the first to return to the field, closely followed by a few ducks. The opening shooting was definitely a warm up round. The guns were blasting but the geese were not falling. We had three hunters in the field and one designated bird caller and shot caller, Richard. Jay Coulter had joined the father son group of Chris and Grant Curtin. Jay had been hunting at our main camp by Quill Lakes for a few days then traveled to Champetre to add some more hunting time and variety to hi trip. Spotting this particular field had been a bit challenging. If had begun to rain earlier in the day and by mid afternoon was raining hard and the dirt roads in the area were getting pretty greasy. Also, with hard rain, the birds tend to hunker down a bit and finding that best field becomes more challenging. This particular field had been a popular spot over the past week but nobody had set up and hunted it yet. A plus for the field is that it was one of the first pea fields on the flight path the birds had been taking from the roost pond. That gave us a chnace to pull in some birds as they headed out to their primary field. The shooting improved with the later groups of birds starting to fall more regularly. Nearly a limit of Canada geese were taken, final number was 20. In the words of the shooters, "we should have shot our limit, early".

With a full limit of ducks left on the books, we changed location for the afternoon and set up for the big numbers of Mallards in the area. We were only about a mile and a quarter from our morning spot, in another pea field, set between two ponds the ducks had been bouncing between the last few days. There were enough ducks in the area to believe that we could have set anywhere in the field and done well. Indeed, the ducks came from all direction to the decoy spread of 3 dozen scattered Canada Big Foots, 12 mallards on swivel sticks and the mojo. It didn’t take long. Before I had pulled the last of the trucks out of the area the ducks were pulled in by the mojo and Richard's calling and before long a limit of Mallards, with a couple pintails mixed in, were on the ground. We were back to the lodge early for supper and swapping stories of the days shooting. "Better shooting in the afternoon, definitely", was the consensus.

Sunday a.m. we had a lentil field planned. I had originally planned to shoot the field Saturday morning but with the hard rain on Friday that had continued into the night I was worried about the field conditions and our ability to get the trucks and decoy trailer to the spot up high in the field I wanted to get to. Sunday morning the field was in good shape and we had no problems getting to where the birds had been feeding both morning and evening the day before. There was plenty of water below us to the North and East and the roost pond was about 3 miles away so again we were expecting good opportunities. The decoy set up was the same as Saturday morning, with an adjustment to take advantage of the wind direction. We had an excellent morning with a limit of Canada geese knocked down and 17 ducks. That put us in a position for a decision regarding the afternoon hunt. We had an extra shooter who would be with us for the afternoon, so we had some more ducks we could shoot, or we could travel to the east and take on the snow geese. I had fields for both lined up. Reading the expressions on the faces of the hunters, I knew that ducks were the afternoon plan again.

We moved over one field from the Saturday afternoon hunt and worked on the same group of ducks, with similar results. The shooting started and the limit of ducks, 3 pintails and 15 mallards, was on the ground well before sundown was even close. We had shot this group of ducks and ponds now two evening in a row. Would we shoot it three in a row, or was that asking too much?

Monday a.m. we had a bit more of a drive ahead of us, but a field with great promise. I had selected a field just a few miles away from Meacham that had the best concentration of Canada's and ducks yet this year. It was a large field, actually running over about 3 quarter sections, big enough a couple of groups could successfully hunt it. To our surprise, that is exactly what happened. We had completed our set up and the hunters were waiting in the blinds for legal shooting light. I had just finished moving the trucks when I heard bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, nearby, but not from the direction of my hunters. Searching through the early morning light is spotted a second decoy spread, in the next quarter, consisting mostly of snow goose silo socks, but a good number of duck decoys as well. With the South wind direction that day, fortunately the wind would not blow the sound of our shots towards their area so two setups nearby should be okay. As it turned out, that was exactly the case. There was plenty of shooting happening from their blinds and we finished with 14 Canada's including two big greater Canada geese, 24 ducks, and 3 snow geese. We had added 24 of our full head silo sock decoys to our decoy spread, knowing there were good numbers of snows in the area. The other group did not seem to be attracting very many snow goose flocks to their spread despite a large number of snow goose decoys including 3 decoy rotators. However, by the amount of shooting, they either blasted a new hole in the ozone layer or also cam close to their limit of ducks. Once our hunters had reached their duck limit, and the Canada's in the air were few and far between, we picked up our gear and made our way back to camp. The other hunters were still positioned in their blinds so maybe they had decided to stay and try for the snows. I had wanted to find an opportunity to stop and talk with them as we were likely going to hunt the same area again and I didn’t want us in the same field again. I had talked with the land owner and he had given us both permission. About mid-morning a few good size flocks of snow geese gathered together in a field to the south of us. Watching them land, I knew we had our afternoon plan. Our limit of ducks had been reached, 3 days in a row. I did have another field for snows in mind but this one was better. I talked with the neighbor across the road from the field and they were nice enough to call the landowner for me, who lived in Saskatoon, and permission was granted for the barley field.

Monday p.m. was actually part of an extended hunt for the Curtin's. Originally they had booked a 2-1/2 day hunt, 3 mornings and 2 evening. They were having such a good time they extended their stay by a day by adding the Monday evening and Tuesday morning hunts. We pulled our full allotment of 500 plus snow goose decoys from the trailer and made excellent use of a rock pile for cover. We had left the lodge at 3:30 and we were fully set up by 4:25. A few flocks of Canada geese were flying at 4:30 as well as specklebellies, several flocks of 15 to 20. The first lone snow goose came by at 5:00 for a high level look, circled above the decoys a few times, but never in range. Maybe it was a scout. A few minutes later a flock of 50 snow geese flew over, full speed, headed elsewhere. The wind was strong enough to be helpful in the morning but was nothing more than a light SE breeze in the afternoon. Bright blue sky and light wind and 16 degrees C were all factors working against us. Our only advantage was location. First, we were positioned on the field where they had been sitting and feeding the morning before. Second, we were on the flight path back to the roost water where they had come from that morning. I had followed many flocks westward about 10 miles in the morning and had located a field shoot where they were landing. Unfortunately, the movement to the west was also a movement to the southwest and many birds left the area that day, with colder weather approaching, and we did not see the flocks return to the roost waters near Meacham. The first snow goose shot was about 5:15 pm. A single juvenile who was looking for a flock to join. It circled high but dropped just into range. A couple of long range shots dropped it to the water to our right where Maddux retrieved it with vigor. Many flocks flew over us, a thousand feet high, appearing to have migration on their mind. We were still waiting for that flock to come in low and commit to the decoys. Clear skies and a full moon may have triggered the birds to head to south. 5:36, after 10 flocks 1000 feet high, in cam another single, circling, in range, bang, bang, dead. The Canada geese kept pouring into the field we had shot in the morning. Hundreds by hundreds. They had been there in the morning as well and the evening before. I could hear shooting in several directions, likely other hunters hoping to do well on snow geese. I did not hear the sounds of success, the volley of 6 to 12 blasts that go off in 5 seconds bursts when many birds are in range. Instead I heard one or two at a time, suggesting hunters were shooting singles, like us. 5:54 and another lone snow goose. Circled, dropped, flared, circled, set it's wings and dropped down to shooting altitude and hit the ground after a couple shots. After picking up the bird, I heard Richard make the optimistic remark, "We are shooting 100% right now". Indeed, all 3 birds they pulled the trigger on, died.

Tuesday morning was the final shoot of the hunt. I had a field lined up that had been a favorite destination of snow geese, Canada geese, and mallards coming off of two separate sets of roost water. We took advantage of the tall weeds at the edge of the barley field for hiding our blinds. The wind was light and shifting from S to SE to NE, light enough that we ignored wind direction with the decoy orientation. The shooting started just before 7:00. The fog had held the ducks back just a bit. Spotting the field the past few days had shown approximately 10,000 snow geese, 500 to 1000 Canada's, and 5000 to 10,000 ducks on the field. We were set for a good shoot of mixed bag hunting. With the migratory activity of the snow geese the night prior, it was possible we would not see any snow geese. The night had been clear with a full moon and the snows had gained altitude and likely flew all night. Likely that would also bring more birds from the north but they may not be educated about this field yet. Our hunters had an early afternoon flight to catch so we had a short hunt planned. We were only a couple of miles from the Champetre County Lodge, which is quite common for hunting in the area. At 8:00, I finally heard the geese, directly overhead. I could hear wings flapping and the sound of air rushing over the wings, but due to the fog, i could not see them. They could not see the decoys either. As we had a spread of 100 Big Foot Canada's, 12 mallards on swivel sticks, 1 mojo, and about 5 dozen snow goose silo socks, we could not use electronic calls. The geese never found us in the fog but the ducks sure did. The ducks were roosting on ponds surrounding the field and they came in low and slow in the fog. By 9:00, the duck limits had been reach ed by the three hunters, 19 mallards and 5 pintails.

For more information and more pictures see our Champetre County Outpost Camp location.

Phil Allman Group - Sept. 2011

2011-09-20T05:57:00.000-07:00

The group had just finished up a 3 day hunt at our main camp at Dafoe, just off he west edge of Big Quill Lake. The group switched over to our Champetre County Outpost Camp to hunt the rest of the week. Our Wednesday night hunt was a pond in the center of a group of ponds with a good population of ducks bouncing between the ponds. The action was a bit sporadic with ducks coming in groups of 2 to 10 at a time. The pond had a fat U shape and we placed decoys at the bottom of the U and off to one side. Shooters were positioned in the middle of the U, a piece of land with tall grass, cattails, and some trees. A variety of species were buzzing around the pond including some challenging teal and gadwalls and mallards. By dark, the ducks were still filtering in, landing with the decoys as the dog swam around retrieving birds. 20 ducks was the final count.

The next morning we set up on a pea field with a few ponds and the wind at our backs. I had spotted this field the morning before with large numbers of snows and Canadas. We placed about 200 big foot decoys in the classic V pattern with the lay-down blinds near the base and a dozen duck decoys directly in front of us. We had to hold back the trigger on the first few groups of ducks until we passed legal shooting light and then the ducks started to fall. Not soon after we saw the first few Canadas coming in small groups of 2 to 10. The 20 k wind from the South help orient the birds to fly in front of us. With a clear sky in the forecast, we knew the best shooting would be in the early morning as the sun was rising. We finished with 15 ducks 18 snows 18 Canadas and 4 specks.

As we were discussing our evening hunt plans, I learned very quickly that this group was not afraid to burn gas or gunpowder. I had spotted a pair of pond 15 minutes to the east, that held promising numbers and they were game for the drive. Thursday night we tried a divide and conquer strategy on two duck ponds at either side of a field. The three guys positioned on the east were closing in on their limit of teal while the pair on the west pond had only had a few ducks to fire at. Eventually we brought them all together at the east pond and finished with 30 ducks, mostly teal.

Thursday night was the last hunt for two of the group as they had to return home early. That reduced our hunting party to 3 hunters. Friday morning we set up our Canada decoy spread on a pea field that was looking good for snows and Canadas. What we learned is that the frost the morning before started to really push the northern bird south towards us. Canadas started coming shortly after first light and kept coming. We shot our limit of Canada geese (3 hunters for 24 geese) by 7:00 am. The guys then moved down next to the pond nearby and worked to finish off their duck limit. They came up a little short, finishing with 20 ducks of their combined 24 duck limit. Included with the ducks and Canada geese that morning were 7 snow geese.

Friday evening we started off at the ponds near where we had field shot Thursday morning, but the action was slow. We made the decision to pull up and move for the last 1-1/2 hours of shooting light and went to another pond about 3 miles to the west. It was a good decision. A stealthy approach kept most of the ducks on the water as we got positioned in some natural cover. The spots were well chosen as most of the birds flew over our location and we quickly reached our limit of ducks, a mixture of teal, canvasback, a few mallards, a pintail, and a bufflehead.
Saturday morning was the last hunt with the group and we did not have the weather on our side. The morning sky was mostly clear and the winds were calm. With no wind, there was no movement in the decoys. We also had competition the next field over with another group of hunters and a decoy spread. We had an advantage in that one of our hunters, Keith Hutchinson from Tennessee was an excellent caller and managed to turn many a flock towards our decoys. The birds were also not as eager to use this field as they were the day before. We had found bird crap and feathers all over the field but most birds were feeding elsewhere. If it was any consolation to us, the competition hunting the next field did less shooting than we did.

By the end of the week, the group had hunted a wide variety of conditions, locations, and species. Hunts ranged from the snow goose heavy field shoots of the Quill Lakes area to the rolling hills and pothole ponds of Champetre County. The 100 bird shoots at Quill Lakes enter the Phil Allman group into the 100 Bird Club and the limits of Canada geese and ducks at Champetre County Outpost sent them home with many reasons to return next year.

Finding an Outfitter

2011-06-29T05:52:00.000-07:00

If you are ready to go hunting with an outfitter, the task of finding an outfitter can be a big job. Learning how to search for outfitters on the internet can lead you to days of searching and a confusing mix of websites to check out.

We have a better idea. Make use of the directory sites that cover your area or your hunting interest. Here are a few that we recommend:

HuntsForSale.com is a directory for outfitters to list their available hunting dates and open hunting tags
S3Outdoors.com includes a state by state hunting directory allowing you to search for outfitters and species combinations
PrairieOutdoors.com is focused on hunting outfitters in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Find an outfitter that matches your species preference and which province you select.

Of course, if you are looking to do some serious waterfowl hunting, the best place in the world is with Prairie Rose Outfitters.

Ducks Unlimited TV Shoot

2011-06-21T14:07:00.000-07:00

We spent about a day and a half prior to the Ducks Unlimited TV crew showing up. They arrived on Friday. I spent the Monday evening prior scouting with Keith Gerwing, who grew up in the area and lives there, to learn the area and see where the birds were. On Thursday I spent most of the day back out scouting to see if the birds were still in the same places and in the same numbers. Having seen increasing numbers in the same places, I was confident we were going to put the Ducks Unlimited TV crew in front of a good number of birds.

Thursday night the DU TV group arrived. First to arrive was Jeff Nelson. Jeff is the CEO of Ducks Unlimited Canada and took the time to drive from Winnipeg to join in the hunting as well as tour the local DU projects in the area. Later, the rest of the crew began to arrive, traveling from another location hunt in Alberta earlier in the week. The crew included the host of the show, Mike Checkett, the host in-training, Huntley Ritter, and the two cameramen.

Friday morning started a little off. We had lined up a large slough that a number of Canada's and mixed bag of ducks were using, and the field they were feeding in was just a mile over the hill. The wind was coming from the south west which made the point extending from the southern shore a prime shooting spot. Except, for what we didn't know. Because DU TV was shooting an episode, they wanted smaller water and what we had chosen did not provide hiding places for their cameramen. We moved up and over the hill to a smaller slough we had seen several hundred ducks drop into the evening before. Turns out, when the birds were done their morning feed, they wanted the bigger water and only a handful of birds put themselves in front of the DU guns and cameras.

That same evening we had another water shoot lined up. There were 5 small sloughs all nearby one another, with the feed field 2 miles away. With the wind still light from the south, the DU guys found some good cover in a reedy bump on the slough. Unfortunately, the ducks all gathered up in the north east finger of the slough, landing before they saw our decoys and attracting the following flocks. The did get a few mallards on the camera but most of the ducks chose other water that night.

Day 2 was a different story. We had spotted a stubble field 5 miles north of the previous morning spot that had several thousand Canada's feeding and many more moving in the area. Plans were made for an early morning field shoot. We arrived in the field about 5:00 am and it just felt like one of those good days was about to happen. A strong wind was blowing from the south. There was a great rock pile to hide a camera man behind the shooters, and the sky was partially overcast. We set up for Canada geese and ducks with a full assortment of full body Canada's, full body mallards, Canada goose silo socks and duck silo socks. The birds were cooperative and the DU shooters were on their marks. The strong wind brought the birds in slow. Also, with the windy conditions, the birds did not want to fly long distances to feed and they made an early commitment to the decoy spread. Another ideal factor was the birds kept coming in flocks of 5 to 25 birds, well spaced, not all at once. Smaller groups tend to decoy better and these birds were giving the shooter plenty of shots at 20 to 30 yards that these guys rarely missed.

For the afternoon we had a snow goose shoot lined up. We had several fields with great opportunity in the area so we choose the pea field with the greatest number of birds, even though it was over a half hour away. It was a good choice. We had seen roughly 20,000 snow geese on the field in mid morning and figured their water was the large slough to the north of the pea field they were feeding in. When we arrived in the afternoon, some of the birds had already gone out to feed and were scattered in the north and western edges of the field. We choose the south east corner, to stay as far away from the birds still on the water as possible, and scrambled to get out the 1000+ decoys. There was a small pond we used as the anchor point of the decoy spread and built a very crude, shallow U shape to give the birds a landing area in front of the shooters. We positioned 2 shooters in the left side of the U and 3 in the right side. Well, the left side was the hot seat. While we still had the trucks and trailers in the field, the birds started coming. Jeff scrambled to load up while a lone snow goose nearly hovered above him in the strong wind. One well placed blast and the first snow goose crumpled to the ground. While the cameras rolled, the birds started rolling in, mostly to the leftward side of the decoys.

What we didn't know when we spotted this field was that there was another slough to the south of the field that was roosting a huge flock of snows as well. We estimated that there must have been over 50,000 snow geese in the area in total. Where we were set up, the snows came from the south, with the wind, spotted the decoys and swung back around to glide slowly into the line of fire. The wind picked up as the afternoon went on and the birds seemed to be sitting on a stick for many a successful shot taken. I watched for several hours from a great vantage point about 300 yards away from the East as I watched wave after wave of snow geese come for a look. Because the Ducks Unlimited guys were shooting a TV episode, they passed up on a lot of shots most hunters would have taken, and many they could have taken successfully. As they explained, "the camera adds 20 yards, making a 40 yard shot look like a 60 yard shot. For this reason, they only pulled the trigger on geese in the 20 to 25 yard range, making for better footage. Had these guys opened up on all the shooting opportunities they had, they likely would have shot their limit of snow geese in less than an hour. For 5 guys shooting, that would have been 100 birds. They would have joined the Prairie Rose Outfitters 100 Bird Club. As it was, they were well into the 60's.

One mistake we made in the decoy set up was how we used the small water in the area. It was positioned about 150 yards ahead and to the right of the shooters in the right side of the spread. The water was a magnet for the ducks in the area and most of them stayed out of shooting range.

Day 3 was a strong finish. Nearby the field were we had shot the snows the afternoon before, we had lined up a field of Canada's and ducks, both numbering in the many thousands. Birds were working into that field from several directions the evening before and we beat them to it that morning. There was a narrow slough running South to North, a tree line on the East side of the field, and a hill to the West. With a south wind, we new we had a tunnel of a flight path for the birds. We set the shooters just off the water, with floaters on the water, full bodies on the water edge, and silo socks to the back of the spread, behind the shooters. The ducks came early and piled up on the ground, followed shortly after by seemingly alternating flocks of Canada's and snow geese. The variety was exceptional and filled out the footage the Ducks Unlimited crew needed for their episode. I actually am convinced they had more than enough footage from the first two days (especially day 2) and day 3 was shooting for the sport of it.

More about Prairie Rose Outfitters Waterfowl Hunting

Spring Snow Goose Hunting - Ken Fryer Group 2011

2011-06-21T07:42:00.000-07:00

On Wednesday, half the group arrived late afternoon, enough time for some spotting runs and pass shooting. The guys managed to knock down 10 snow geese in the warm up exercise to tomorrow's field shoot. The second half of the group came late Wednesday night and camp stories were already underway. Much of the discussion was around the number of birds in the area, where were we going to hunt in the morning, and of course, past stories from hunting these same fields over the years. The Ken Fryer group has been to Prairie Rose Outfitters for a number of years running and are familiar with the area and have a great track record of success, including membership in the "100 Bird Club" in both 2006 and 2010.

The night drew to a close near midnight, the smart ones had long since gone to bed. With a 3:00 am wake up call, it was a short night. Muffins and coffee jugs filled we were off to the fields by 3:30 am. Setting up for a Spring Snow Geese field shoot is a big undertaking with anywhere from 700 to 1000 decoys to deploy, the electronic calls, the shooting blinds, and the rotator decoys. With wet fields (more on that later) it was impossible to drive the truck and trailer to the spot and simply drop the decoys. We used the quad with two pull behind sleighs to transport the gear over several trips across the muddy field. By 5:00 am, everyone was set up, decoys ready, and the guns loaded, all but one. Richard, our visiting hunter from Kentucky, had left his gun in the truck and had to hike to the quad, drive to the truck, and return, while those in the blinds got a head start on the early flying snow geese. By the time Richard had returned, 10 birds were on the ground but he contributed to the pile with the next group of birds coming in, shooting a double, including a banded snow goose. By the time the shooting was done, we had 45 snow geese on the ground, a good start to the Spring Snow Goose Hunt.

Thursday evening we returned to the same field, something that works quite successfully in spring hunting. We left the decoys in the field and simply returned in mid afternoon to hunt the evening feeding. We returned, the birds did not. Most likely, with a day of rest, the flock feeding in the field had decided to push further north that day and new birds did not find the field. We had clear skies with hardly a bird to be found except for the 3 of 4 we killed that did come in range. But the evening was not without adventure. The already soft ground had softened even more as the frost was coming out of the ground. If you were to dig down about 1 foot deep through the wet soil and mud, you would find solid frozen ground. With the ground softening through the day, sections of the field we were able to plow over with the quad earlier became deeper and soon we were faced with a stuck quad. Not a gently stuck quad, but one that had dug it's wheels into the muck and pulled the chassis into the mud as well. There was no way two of us could lift it out, although we certainly tried. We trudged across the field and took the truck to a buddies house a few miles over and with another quad began the task of pulling out the stuck quad. When that didn't work, we got another quad, two quads pulling, no movement. On to Plan C, which included a number of wooden planks, a jack-all, two quads pulling, and finally after 4 hours the quad was unstuck. Covered in mud, tired, and hungry, we got back to the house at midnight, enough time for a couple shots of rum and leftover supper, then 2 hours of sleep before the next day of hunting was set to begin.

Friday morning came early. Way too early, but early is part of waterfowl hunting. We had a new field lined up from our spotting the day before and the set up was on. There was a large water body a mile away that the birds were roosting in the night before and we set up a typical large decoy spread, 700 to 800 decoys, including our rotator decoys, and positioned ourselves in the blinds, ready for a promising day. The birds worked as anticipated, coming off the water, attracted by our decoys and calls, swinging around to land into the wind, and paying close attention to the rotators, less attention to us. In roughly an hour and a half of shooting we had 60 birds. We had another group, led Jim Jones of Prairie Wind Decoys was a couple of miles to our west and the three of them dropped another 43 snows.

This set of spring snow goose hunts proved what we already new about spring hunting, the birds are very transient, moving through the area much quicker than in fall when a flock may stick oround for several weeks. It also proves the value of good spotting and the need to be willing to pack up and move to other fields if the birds change quickly. After being shot at for the majority of their spring migration north, the wary snow geese were still willing to have a close look at our decoys. We attribute that to a copule of important factors, one being a large number of decoys and the second, adding movement to the spread with motorized decoys.

In the weeks to follow there were several more successful snow goose shoots including several in the 60 bird range and the best spring snow goose hunt to date, a 140 bird kill! Another membership in the Prairie Rose Outfitters 100 Bird Club.

How to Look Professional in 5 Minutes

2011-06-20T06:05:00.000-07:00

How do you look professional, personalize your message to your customer, and keep track of your customer proposals, in 5 minutes or less? The simple answer is by using computer technology to your advantage. Technology should be a tool to make you more efficient and to make you more professional. If you can develop a systematic way to format a proposal to your customers, you can ensure that you always project a high quality, professional image, while keeping your message to your customers consistent.

Stand Out

When your potential customers are considering who to choose for their next hunting trip, you should want to stand out from the rest by having a better image, by showing a more professional presentation. When you are out hunting, often your objective is to blend in through the use of camouflage and blinds. In Outfitter Marketing, your objective is the opposite, you want to stand out. You want to be the guy in the orange pullovers highly visible in the field. Consider the following situation, your potential customer is deciding between your proposal and one from a competing outfitter. The potential customer has a brochure from both of you and has visited both websites. Your prices are similar. How do you sway the opinion in your favor? Make your proposal more professional, create the belief with the customer that you are the right outfitter to work with by reinforcing their desire to be treated well and to have a strong trust in your abilities. The best way to do this is to ensure every interaction you have with the customer is consistent and of the highest caliber. Make sure all your communication tools reflect your image and leave a positive impression.

Proposal Template

No one has the time to put together a multi page proposal, with pictures, and your logo, and make it customized to each customer, unless you use the power of technology to short-cut the work and lock in the quality. To see an example of how this can work, click to view the file (size = 2 MB).
Or click on the image below:

Instructions for use: Click on the link or image to view the file and click the Save option to save it to your computer. Save it to your file folder or to your desktop for easy reference. Once you have saved the file to your computer, open the file, you will likely be presented a security warning and be asked to enable macros. Say yes or accept this option so that the interactive form can run. Once you have replaced the default values in the form, click Okay and the values from the form will be automatically filled in throughout your presentation template. Scroll through the document and put yourself in the place of you customer, receiving a customized hunting proposal. Page 3 of the hunting proposal is where you can add the dates and details of your offer to the customer simply by typing directly into the document. You can use the Save As feature to save all the changes to the file in another file name, such as your customer's name.

Custom Templates

The file you have just viewed above can be custom built just for your outfitting business. including your contact information, your logo, your customer trophy pictures. For a fee of $50, one time, S3 Outdoors will build a file for you and provide it for your unlimited use. Just email us and provide us with a description of your offering, a variety of high quality pictures, your business name, phone, website, address, and email and we will draft a file for your approval. Upon your approval, we will invoice you for the fee and provide the final completed file.

For more Outfitter Marketing Advice see www.s3outdoors.com

Ash Skinner Hunting Group - November 2010

2011-06-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

The Location was a field about 5 miles East of Saskatoon down the Yellowhead highway.

The tally was 32 Canada's, 28 Mallards. We let the ducks fly through early in the shoot so that the Canada's behind them would work into the decoys. Best shooting was when a flock of 50 or 60 Canada's came into the decoys, 20 yards high, 20 yards out, feet down, then we shot. One of the 4 shooters had time to load a fourth shell and dropped the 10th bird with a 70 yard shot, angling away to the right.

We had a pretty extensive spread set out for 4 guys. Around 350 snow goose silo socks, 75 Canada silo socks, 50 mallard silo socks, 100 full head snow goose silo socks, 2 dozen full body Canada's, 6 snow goose flyers on 20 foot poles, 2 dozen full body mallards, and the robo mojo duck. We put the full bodies out front with a mix of about 25% of the socks and the rest of the socks behind us. We set the lay down blinds in a line of 4 with the wind at our back. The flyers on the poles were set about 25 yards behind the decoys. The Canada socks and duck socks were set in family groups spread amongst spaces left in the snow goose dekes. We left a landing area in the middle of the spread about 25 yards behind us.

The wind was mostly West when the morning started while we set out the decoys. Shortly after we finished the set up the wind shifted more to the South. This brought the Canada geese straight into the two guys set up to the left of our shooting line but left the other two of us with long shots after the birds flared from the other two shooters. The ducks, however, took the mojo duck as a beacon and came in to land in the duck decoys which were in the right hand side of the spread. Had we not shot them out of the sky, they would have landed in the spread. We actually had some live ducks walking in the decoys for a while. A flock of 10 to 12 mallards were leading a couple of 25 to 30 bird flocks of Canada geese into the decoys. We decided to let the ducks go to take the geese. About half of the ducks landed in the decoys while we watched the geese cup their wings and glide their way into our sights. As we blasted the geese, the ducks took off, with dead geese falling around them.

We realigned the blinds so all 4 shooters were with the wind (that had shifted) at our backs. It was a good move as this put us all in perfect positions for both the ducks and the geese.

We ended up 4 ducks short of our limit. Had we choosen to knock down a few more ducks earlier, we could have had our limit of both. We were at 31 Canada's on the ground when a flock of 100 geese lined up and made their commitment. We quickly made a decision to take the right most bird of the lead group. With 4 of us opening up, it didn't have a chance. Had we all chosen different birds, and if we had more room in our limit, we might have had another opportunity to drop 10 birds in one volley, like we did earlier.

Dave Anderson Hunting Group - Sept 2006

2011-06-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

When the conditions are all wrong bird hunting can be a frustrating day sitting in the field or standing in water. Take Sept. 6th, 2006, we were setting up for a snow goose shoot west of the Quill Lakes with the Dave Anderson group. It was mid-afternoon, bright blue sky, nearly t-shirt weather, and hardly a breeze. Not ideal conditions for the hard-to-fool snow geese. We knew we had a challenge ahead of us.

We had to use the resources available. Our extensive spotting told us there were upwards of 100,000 snow geese roosting on Big Quill Lake, many of them feeding in a stubble field a few miles away. We had watched them work this field the last two nights. There was also a smaller body of water that another 10,000 to 15,000 snows were using further away, and coming to this field as well. What else did we have to work with? Well, 1,000 snow goose decoys was a good start to attracting their attention. We set the decoys in a back-to-back U pattern (think of the Under Armour logo), one with a large landing zone to the largest group of birds and the other facing the direction of the other flight path we were expecting. With very little wind, and plenty of decoys, we wanted to be ready for birds from any direction. We deployed the swivel chairs as well. If you watch some videos from the hunt, raining geese, and hunt in comfort you will get an idea of how the swivel chairs work. The chairs give us the ability to safely shoot in any direction, depending on where the birds are coming from.

In bright blue sky conditions, snow geese can often approach your decoy spread and flare off early if they don't like the looks of your decoys. With very low wind, there was almost no movement of the decoys to keep them interested. Our hunters were covered up in white ground camo suits and seated in the low profile chairs.

As the birds started flying for the afternoon feeding, our spotting paid off. We definitely had the right field. With mild weather conditions, and long days in the early season, the birds came in small groups. When snows come in a flock of several hundred at a time, they are hard to hunt. It only takes one goose to sound the alarm and they all flare well outside of shotgun range. Today they came in singles, pairs, fives, tens, twenties, but rarely in the hundreds. With plenty of separation, the small groups wanted to join the larger group (of decoys) on the ground and they came willingly to our calls.

Depending on the direction, our shooters swiveled their chairs, looking for the snow geese to drop their feet and commit to the decoys. The side slipping action was incredible to watch . Birds started falling from the sky with our calls of "take 'em, take 'em, take 'em". By the end of the hunt, the 8 hunters had dropped 106 snow geese, reserving their spot in the Prairie Rose Outfitters 100 Bird Club. Throughout the day, we never saw another species of waterfowl, no Canada geese, no specks, not even a single duck, but the snow geese sure came in numbers.

Drip Marketing for Outfitters

2011-06-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

Have you ever heard the expression “out of sight, out of mind”? If your prospects can't find you, they will book with someone else. Drip marketing is a strategy that will help you to stay top of mind by sending multiple promotional messages to your customers and prospects over an extended period of time. The objective of drip marketing is to create a steady growth in your revenue. A good way to approach drip marketing is to do something each month to put your name on their desk or computer screens.

Customer videos on CD are a great way to market to potential clients. Hand out at trade shows, include in your next direct mail campaign or use as phone call follow up.

Keep in touch with your customers by sending a simple newsletter. Add all of your customers past and present to the list and encourage them to pass it on to others.

Once you have a plan for a Drip Marketing program, in just 15 minutes to an hour a month you can implement an effective marketing. Spend 15 minutes per month and watch your sales grow!

In order to use drip marketing effectively, you must create a plan! By creating an action plan and following it through you’ll ensure that your message will eventually get through. While you’re developing your plan, don’t be afraid to use three or four different media types to reach your customer. It will help you cut through the clutter and will improve readership as well.

What methods can you use in your drip marketing campaign? Here are a few ideas:

Personal letters
Email
Post cards
Newsletters
Email newsletters
Promotional or sales brochures
Customer testimonials

Things to Remember:
1. Be patient! Drip marketing is a long-term strategy and it may take time for your campaign to generate results. If your first activity does not generate a flood of leads, do not panic. Just stick with your plan and be patient – it will pay off.
2. Keep it interesting! Look for ways to make your message fun, informative or useful. Add helpful hints, industry information, or other non-sales oriented material. It is easier to communicate the strengths of your business if people enjoy the material while they are reading it.
3. Keep it going! Do not let long periods of time pass between your messages. Part of developing a strong brand and a strong image is using repetition. No matter how strong your message, most people need to see your brand five to seven times before recall occurs.
4. Help your customers learn to want your service. Show your customers how they can benefit from your service in a variety of ways. Educate your customers; don’t just tell them to buy! Use testimonials to prove the value. Testimonials are much more truthful than advertising.

Sample Drip Marketing Campaign

We will now go through a sample drip marketing campaign for a hunting outfitter.
Step 1: Develop your plan – put it on paper so that you know exactly what you are doing each month. Not only does this keep you on schedule but it helps to plan your preparation time each month as well. If you include execution dates it is really easy to stay on task and to complete each activity in a timely fashion. Remember to plan something every month! Most activities will require little more than an hour or two each month. Consider using some of the following examples of materials for your drip campaign.

Personal Letter to Introduce Yourself	Determine list of recipients (source local hunting clubs, your customer list, national associations, trade publication mailing lists, etc.). Draft letter – who you are, what you offer. Prepare envelopes and labels.
Email	Send a “Did You Know” email to all contacts in your database – come up with an interesting fact and write a couple of short paragraphs, include a couple of supporting pictures.
Email	Customer testimonials. Include a couple of quotes and a few pictures.
Direct mail - Season's Greetings	Prepare a card or letter. Use a great outdoor shot of your hunting area, your lodge, trees with snow, or some other scenery that reminds your customers of the Christmas season, and make them think, "there a big buck in the woods". Prepare envelopes and labels & mail.
Email	Search for and find an interesting story on your state DNR website, a new regulation, or a forecast of animal populations. Include a short summary and link to the actual article.
Direct Mail	Send your company brochure. If you plan to attend any tradeshows shows in the coming months, tell your customers where to find you.
Email	Travel directions - show your customers how to find you, with directions from the nearest airport, or driving instructions from the main highways. It's a subtle hint that your accepting new customers without any pressure sales tactics.
Direct Mail	Activity guide of other local events. Give your customers, especially those traveling a long distance, more reasons to come visit you by educating them of other local attractions.
Email	If your website includes a photo gallery, send them a few customer trophy pictures a link to the gallery on your site. Simple suggestions such as "We have room for more trophies", or an invite to join your customer "Hall of Fame" can often help customers visualize themselves on the page.
Direct Mail or Email	Send an overview of local hunting seasons.

I recommend using a plan where the activity occurs on the second Tuesday of every month. Mondays and Fridays are not necessarily the best day to try and reach people. On Monday they are all trying to get organized for the week and people may not take the time to read an informational email. On Fridays people are usually trying to wrap things up before the weekend and again may not take that time. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays tend to have the best response rates for promotional emails.

Proposed Drip Campaign

Month	Drip Activity	Preparation
January	Introduction letter	Take a great winter picture for use in December. Pick a topic for next month's Did You Know.
February	Did You Know email	Choose a customer to profile next month.
March	Customer testimonial email	Pick a topic for next month's Did You Know.
April	Did You Know email	Order/print brochures for next month's mailing.
May	Mail your company brochure	Find a copy of local hunting seasons and print copies.
June	Send an overview of local hunting seasons	Choose a customer to profile next month.
July	Customer testimonial email	Prepare travel directions.
August	Email travel directions	Choose 2 great images from your photo gallery.
September	Send photo gallery link	Pick a topic for next month's Did You Know.
October	Did You Know email	Find an interesting story on your state DNR website..
November	Email the story from DNR	Add a holiday greeting to your winter picture.
December	Direct mail - Season's Greetings	Prepare the plan for next year's Drip Campaign.

Make Use of Email

Email is a great medium to use to reach customers because it is free and it takes very little time to prepare. However, take caution so that your messages don’t become seen as “spam”. Be sure to include an opt-out option for customers so that they can be removed from your email list and be sure to honor each request. If you keep your content fresh and interesting you should have a fairly good response to your email campaigns.

By using the “Did You Know” emails, you can save yourself a lot of time by writing about local facts and trivia. These emails are educational and highlight different customer experiences based on unique facts (what makes you different) about your company.

It is important to supplement your email campaigns with other materials as well. Incorporate a different type of message approximately every second month. This will help to manage the preparation time and cost for each campaign. You will notice that there is a different media type used for each of these campaigns. This is where it becomes important to have a common element throughout so that people will recognize that the information is from your company.

Step 2: Decide who you want to target. Do you have a list of potential leads and past customers? You will definitely want to include these people in your plan. Even though they know about your product you want to keep them thinking about it so that they remember you when they are ready to book a trip.

Step 3: Be sure that there are consistent elements in each of the pieces so that they are easily recognized by your audience. Always include your contact information with each message, phone number, email, web site address.

Remember, this is not a hard sell, take action, impulse buy type of campaign. Resist the urge to push your customers into making a booking right now. Over time, a successful Drip Marketing Campaign builds credibility and interest. They will approach you when the time is right.

For more Outfitter Marketing Advice, see www.s3outdoors.com.

Camera Plus Customers - Powerful Marketing Tools

2011-06-13T09:29:00.001-07:00

Camera Plus Customers - Powerful Marketing Tools

Make use of your two most important marketing tools, your camera and your customers. In the business of hunting outfitters and fishing lodges, pictures of your customers, and their trophies, are like gold, highly valuable. Pictures help tell a story about what your future customers can expect when they book their fishing or hunting trip with you, and they remind your past customers of their great times they have had. When considering pictures, make sure to take pictures of yourself, to establish you as an expert in your field. Pictures of you with that big Walleye that we want on our wall or with that trophy whitetail buck that creates hunter envy in all of us will help with establishing your credibility.

Learn to Use Your Camera

To take great pictures, learn how to operate your camera. Digital cameras have different setting for action shots and still shots, for bright light conditions and low light. Take lot's of digital pictures, they're free and we all love to look at pictures as reminders of the great times we spent with our fishing and hunting buddies. Your future customers will want to see pictures of what a hunting trip or a fishing trip with you will be like. Make sure you capture pictures of yourself, with a walleye we would all be proud to have on our wall, or with a buck that will cause envy among all the hunters among us.

Learn to Use Your Pictures

As your outdoors business continues to grow the number of happy customers and great pictures should grow building more opportunities to share pictures with other future customers. Pictures can used in advertising, in marketing campaigns, on your website, and in your brochures. Pictures quickly show the great attributes your location. More images give you a greater opportunity to show a specific potential customer that you have what they are looking for, through examples from the past.

Gathering Pictures from Customers

Sometimes the hardest part is getting the pictures from your customers once they have left your property. They have the pictures of their hunting adventure or fishing on the memory card of their digital camera. Here are 3 easy strategies to gather some great photos.
1. Set up your own computer in an easy to access place so that before your customers leave, you can take 5 minutes to copy their photos. Make sure you have all the accessories to handle the majority of camera types, that means memory card readers and adapters as well as a variety of USB cables. Check at your local camera store or computer store for the most popular and you will be able to cover off 90% of the devices for under $100.
2. Give your customers your business card before they leave and write a short note asking them to email you their favorite pictures from the trip. Follow up with a phone after a week (good customer service as well) to remind them to send you the pictures.
3. Start an online photo contest with your customers. Your web designer should be able to set up a simple image submission form and photo contest on your website (if not, you have the wrong web designer). Having a contest is fun and gives your customers another way to brag about their trip and show off their trophy's. Give the winner a discount on their next trip to you, or offer them a premium service for a standard price.

Other Uses of Your Images

Once you have an archive of pictures, you have a number of ways to make use of them. Add them to your brag book, a binder of your brochures and pictures of your customers. Take the book everywhere you go, keep it in your truck, bring it to tradeshows. Send a few pictures to your past customers on a frequent basis as part of your drip marketing campaign (see the article on Drip Marketing). Use the pictures to create an outfitter calendar that you can send to your customers as a Christmas gift (and a reminder to return).

Read more Outfitter Marketing Advice Articles on www.s3outdoors.com

Online Marketing For Outfitters

2011-06-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

Online Marketing For Outfitters

Should I advertise online? Yes, in more ways than one. Having a professional quality web site is only the first step. You need your website to get found. Make sure you include your website address on everything you can, your pens, hats, trucks, letterhead, everything. There are thousands of outfitter sites on the internet, you need to be seen to be considered. Help your future customers put you in their sites. Here are some other ways to attract more customers online.

Get Listed

1. Get listed on outdoors directory sites such as S3Outdoors.com, PrairieOutdoors.com, HuntsForSale.com. Make use of any enhanced listings that will put you at the top of a long list. Outdoor directory sites have a broad appeal and because of this they tend to attract a high volume of visitor traffic. By having a listing on these types of sites, you can expect the amount of traffic on your site to increase as visitors click through to your site. Outdoor directory sites also tend to have a higher Page Rank (a ranking by Google) that stresses the popularity of the site. When these sites link to yours, Google interprets this as a "vote" for your site, and increases your Page Rank.

Banner Ads

2. Place banner ads on local club web pages. Seek out the websites of local hunting and fishing clubs. The members of these clubs are either directly in your target market or they are in a position to recommend you for those looking for an outdoor adventure. Consider this, if were a hunter looking to go on a hunting trip in Iowa, you might search for "Iowa Hunting" on the internet. Likely you will pull up listings for hunting clubs, gun clubs, etc. based in Iowa. These people have contacts in the hunting industry. You should try to be one of these contacts. Get yourself listed with local clubs and get found by more customers.

Link Up

3. Link up with local hunting gear suppliers and tackle shops. Most online retailers now have a listing of "preferred outfitters or guides" and you will want to be included on these lists. Local suppliers are known as the experts in "what works here" and "where to go around here". Don't you want them to refer customers to you?

Pay Per Click

4. Consider Google AdWords. Google AdWords is a very powerful, and popular, place to advertise for new customers. With it's tremendous power and flexibility, it can also be overwhelming.

Consider having a Google AdWords campaign professionally managed, on a pay for services basis. If you are determined to manage your own Google AdWords campaign, consider the following, set aside several hours every week to review and adjust, get specific, get local, get active, get negative, and put your ad $'s behind what produces results.

Get Specific - unless you have a huge marketing budget, with more than 4 zeros, don't bid on generic keywords like "hunting" or "fishing". These will break your ad budget, or if you bid too low, get you absolutely no exposure. Think about what you offer, exactly what you offer, and craft your keywords and a combination to match them, exactly. For example, if you offer back pack elk hunting adventures in the Rockies, then make sure you focus on that. You don't want to pay for someone who clicks on your ad who is not willing and able to take a rugged adventure. As well, if you operate a fly-in fishing camp in a remote location, you likely aren't seeking the budget conscious worm and bobber family.

Get Local - Google AdWords has the ability for you to limit your ad display by geographic locations. Do you expect the majority of your customers from a specific country or even more specific, a province or state? You use Google geographic choices top make sure your ad does not get clicked and cost you money where your non-customers live.

Get Negative - When crafting your Google AdWords keywords, think about why someone would not be a good customer for you, and make sure you include relevant negative keywords in your campaign to avoid cost associated with low probability click-through rates. For example if you run a budget-friendly fishing camp, you may want to use negative keywords such as "-luxury", "-exclusive", "-pampered", and "-remote".

Get Active - Advertising works when it causes the target to take an intentional action based on what you show them. Make sure when you write your Google AdWords ads that you fill them with action words that bring up the ideas of being in the outdoors and in search of their quarry. You will have very limited amounts of text to work with so stick the point, quickly, and get their attention. If you do, you will get traffic that matters.

Get Results - Use Google AdWords as a means to attract more of the right types of traffic to your site. If you review your campaigns on a regular basis, you will quickly learn what works. Get rid of anything that is costing you money without any results and put those same $'s behind the ads and keywords that are working.

Online marketing works, if you show up in the right place, with a short and very powerful message. Get online and get more customers.

See more Outfitter Marketing articles at www.s3outdoors.com.

- Galen Sonntag

The Birds Are Coming Back, Please Bring Spring With You

2011-06-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

Note: originally posted March 26th, 2011

The calendar says it is Spring but the 2 feet of snow and -20 windchill seems to disagree! With the very wet summer and fall last year, we were all hoping for a light snow fall winter, an early spring, and a gradual melt. Looks like none of that is going to happen. I'm writing this post sitting in a coffee shop in Moose Jaw and the local talk is the notion that spring is not going to come at all this year!

This week the Canada geese started to come back, in small numbers. We won't likely see the northern migration kick into high gear until some snow melts away and it becomes easier for the birds to forage for food. That should keep the spring snow goose hunters in the northern states happy as their season will be prolonged as the snow geese, who hate snow, will hold back for a while longer.

But the good news is the weather forecast looking ahead looks to be moving towards a spring-like thermometer. Even saw some overnight lows above freezing in the long range forecast. All this means spring snow goose season in Saskatchewan will likely have the peak season pushed to late April. So, may as well leave the Province for a while and go fishing in early April.

With a huge hatch last year, enormous numbers of juvenile waterfowl made the migration to the south in the fall which should carry over to big numbers again this fall. Should be great opportunities for some more groups to join the Prairie Rose Outfitters 100 Bird Club.

So fill the coffee, enjoy a few pics and think about warmer weather.

Customer Referral Program

2011-06-02T09:24:00.000-07:00

In the Outfitting business, your reputation is one of your most valuable assets. Building your reputation happens over time, with each satisfied customer. As you build up your clientele, you are also building up your sales force. Many marketing and advertising experts state that word of mouth is the most trusted form or advertising because it is human to human, often coming from a person you already know and trust. Relying on your customers to tell others will naturally happen. It will happen faster if you help it along with a formal referral program.

Ongoing communication with current customers is critical to sustaining future business. Purchasing a hunting trip is a significant expense for most people, and if you can keep your customer informed about future opportunities they will be more likely to spend with you again than with another outfitter.

What Makes a Good Referral Program

The best referral programs are simply good because they are easy to understand and easy to use, for your customers. They are also best when they are not used as a hard sell tactics. As a reward to your customers, it does not have to be a lavish expense, and is best if you tie it into to the services you offer. If you have received a good referral from a customer, offer them an upgrade on their next visit with you, or some form of premium service at regular price. Reward a customer after a booking has been made from the referral, this provides an immediate reward, and creates a willingness by the customer to refer others for an additional reward. You should also give your customers an element of choice in the selection of the rewards. A rewards program that let's the customer choose between a service or good, or a $ amount of lesser value, gives the feeling of making a good decision to the customer. The key decisions you will need to make in putting together a referral program are what value of a reward will you offer for a referral, will you only reward referrals that result in customers, who will I invite to join the program? As a good guideline for what you would pay for a reward, think about how much you would pay a booking agent for a new customer.

Sample Referral Program for a Hunting Outfitter

The best booking for any outfitter is a group booking. Less paperwork, less hassle. Fewer arrangements to make and less coordination. A simple form of a referral program is to offer a bonus to any past customer who brings along a new customer on their next hunting trip. This is a great piece of business for the outfitter because not only do you get the revenue from the new customer, you fill the seats with past customers as well. The past customers can train the new customers and you have less to worry about. Another great way to reward customers for bringing you new business is to simply upgrade every aspect of the service they get from you. Give the referring customer the best spot in the decoy spread, or the best tree stand. Upgrade their meal plan. Make sure they have their favorite beverage waiting for them back at camp or the lodge in their return. If you have accommodations you normally sell at a premium, give them the upgraded room for no extra $'s.

Sample Referral Program for a Fishing Guide

In the day of angler, how many more times can make the experience better? If a customer does you a favor and bring you more customers, give them the best boat you have. Provide them with a free tank of gas for a day. Cook a complimentary shore lunch or offer to guide them personally. Nothing talks of customer service quite as mush as the owner of the company providing the service. If your customers are coming from out of state or province, pick up the cost of their licence for them. If the bring in a large group, give the most loyal customer of the group free accommodations.

Cash for Referrals

One popular way to reward your customers in a way that is simple to understand, is to simply give them cash for their referrals. This is a popular practice in the real estate business, but I caution you using in your business. Cash for Referrals will certainly get more of your customers encouraging people they know to hunt or fish with you, but the integrity of the message tends to get a bit watered down. Now, with cash on the table, your customers may be less genuine as they are more interested in the revenue stream. As well, some customers may be insulted in being "bribed" to refer your business to their acquaintances. Cash for Referrals is certainly easy to understand and very straight forward. Be careful how you use it.

Rolling Out Your Referral Program

Once you have decided on who is eligible and the rewards you will offer, you need to tell your customers about the program. If you push the program too hard, you turn your customers off with a hard sell. Keep the program a little bit more low key by incorporating the referral program into a quarterly mailing. See the article on Drip Marketing on this site. If you are following the Drip Marketing campaign, you can add the referral program as a mailing or an email to the schedule. Don’t make the rollout of the program just about the referral program. Add some news about what is happening at your location, a weather report, some game sightings, something newsworthy to your customers that reminds them of the last trip they may have spent with you. Introduce the program within the reports and position it as an offer to help them bring along a few friends on their next trip. Include with your communication to the customer a few extra copies of your brochure that they can pass along. If you position the program introduction as an invitation, it is likely to be received with very positive acceptance. Push it too hard and you risk losing not only the referral but the original customer as well.

Customers Breed Customers

Wow, that heading sounds suggestive! What I mean is that you may not have to go outside your current customer base to grow your future customer base. A good referral from a past customer is a better sales tool than any website or brochure because it comes from the most trusted source, a friend. If you have high repeat business you should applaud yourself for a job well done. That is a success story for building customer satisfaction and brand awareness. Now the next step is to keep it growing by getting your referral program out to all your current and past customers and turn them into your sales force! As your referral program takes effect, and if you take good care of your customers, you will find that you likely can reduce your investment on other marketing activities. If you have strong return customer business and they act as a good referral network, you may be able to self-sustain your booking schedule.

For more Hunting Outfitter Marketing Advice see www.s3outdoors.com

Go Outdoors Idaho - Just Launched!!

2011-05-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

Just Launched, GoOutdoorsIdaho.com, is now live for hunting, fishing, and camping enthusiasts. We have put together a site for those who live and/or like to play in the outdoors of Idaho. The site will grow with a number of planned feature and content areas in the coming months. right now we are focusing on adding content of hunting pictures and videos and fishing pictures and videos.

One of the great features of the site is the campground ratings pages where site visitors can offer their opinions and ratings of the Idaho State Parks. This has been reported as a very useful feature on other sites such as PrairieOutdoors.com where users can get the goods straight from other visitors to the campgrounds. If you are looking for a family friendly park, look or search through the comments. If you are looking for the parks with the best boating, look through the comments. Want to find the group friendly park? The comments should help you.

GoOutdoorsIdaho.com has also started adding hunting outfitter and fishing guides to it's online directory. The site offers basic and premium listings. The basic listing will be a one time fee and will display basic information. The real value is in the Premium Listing which includes the outfitter/guide contact information such as phone numbers and website links.

So go check out GoOutdoorsIdaho.com. Add your own hunting and fishing pictures from Idaho to the site and become part of the fastest growing Idaho outdoors site.

Our Newest Site Design

2011-05-30T06:16:00.000-07:00

Carrizo Creek Lodge

We have just completed our latest website design project for Carrizo Creek Lodge. The website is www.texasdovehunt.net. Go ahead and have a look at the site and tell us what you think of the design. And, if you are a dove hunter, now is the time to make a booking and get in on the action.

As a new site launches, owners are often impatiently awaiting the site to begin filling up their bank account with new customers. The reality of the situation is that new website start a few paces behind the competition who have had the advantage of time to get indexed by the search engines and begin to appear in search results. Sometimes people refer to the waiting period as the Google Sandbox Effect. This is a mythical force that seems to bog down the performance of newly launched websites, despite good design with careful Search Engine Optimization and planning in mind. I, for one, believe there is a delay in new sites establishing a ranking they deserve so I actually put some faith into the myth.

Getting Good Rankings Fast

While I believe the myth exists, I also believe there are several SEO tactics that can help move your new site forward more quickly and overcome the Sandbox Effect. Obviously the first has to do with proper planning and research before the site is built to choose the best possible keywords for the site, and then carefully building them into the site a search engine friendly manner. Let's assume that this has been done and the site is now live for the world to see. Your next top priority is to tell the search engines your site is ready for them. This is usually done by finding the Add URL function on the search engine page and entering your website address. The major engine links are:

Google Add URL: http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
Bing Add URL: http://www.bing.com/webmaster/submitsitepage.aspx
Yahoo Add URL: http://search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

Feeding the Search Engines

Search Engines are like a young puppy, hungry for attention and willing to eat anything tasty. One of their favorite foods is sitemaps. A site map is simply a listing of links on your site easily organized to make it easier, faster, and more reliable for search engines to find your pages and add them to your index. If you haven't done so already, build an XML site map and submit it to Google, Bing and Yahoo. They will wag their tail for you!

XML site map instructions: Here's a great tool to use: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

Get Others to Get You Listed With Links

What's the best marketing? Referral Marketing. The same is true on the web. When a website refers to your website, by linking to your site, it is considered by the search engines to be a vote for your site. There are automated tools that can help you find and contact related sites, but don't rely on them for the launch of your site. If you know your industry, you know the influential sites with related content in your industry. Make a list of them, go through each site, get their contact information and ask them to link to your site. The more links, with the greater relevance, the more search engines like you. Just like in high school, the most popular have the most friends because they are the most popular. If you want to become popular, you have to make friends with them.

Blogs and Social Media

If you are like most people these days, you know a little bit about blogging and maybe something about social networking as well. If you have a blog, use it to tell others about your new site. If you use social media such as facebook, twitter, youtube, linked in, and others, tell everyone to go look at your new site and when you add content to your site, post an update on your blog and social media sites, like this:

Go check out www.texasdovehunt.net, the newest hunting outfitter website designed by www.s3outdoors.com.

Pay Per Click Advertising

2011-05-29T09:17:00.000-07:00

Pay Per Click Overview

Several of the leading search engines offer a pay per click advertising program, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (Bing). It works just as it sounds, when a user clicks on an ad of yours (taking them to your website), you end up paying the search engine for the traffic. Cost per click can range anywhere from 10 cents to 10 dollars (rare). The ads are typically short text ads that are displayed next to search engine results. Try searching on Google for any term and look at the ads placed down the right hand margin. These same ads also appear on some content sites, sites which are not owned by the search engines and who get paid for displaying the ads (when they get clicked on). The biggest advantage to Pay Per Click advertising is that they display content related ads. On fishing pages, or on fishing related searches, you will get fishing related ads. The more specific the search or content, the more specific the ads.

Compliment Your Website

Your website may be a great website, but it can't be the top ranked site for every search term that you want. Think of how Pay Per Click campaigns can get you the traffic you want. Think of Pay Per Click as the magic bait that can guarantee you traffic to your site. magic takes money. If your website is not bringing you all the traffic you want, use a Pay Per Click campaign to compliment the traffic it brings by targeting your pay per click where you want to grow.

Convert Paid to Free

Guess What? The stats in your Pay Per Click campaigns are a lot like the stats on your website's free traffic. Learn to use the stats, especially the keyword performance stats. By monitoring your campaign stats, you can quickly see what ads and what keywords are being displayed the most and which are being clicked on the most. This should lead you into developing and optimizing content pages on your site for these keywords and key phrases.

Beware the Bounce Rate

You will see in your campaign stats, something called a bounce rate. This is a very important as it will tell you if you are wasting money. The bounce rate is a measurement of visitors entering your site and leaving after only viewing the 1st page. You paid for these visitors. You need to determine what an acceptable rate is. If 90% of your paid visitors bounce, you need to multiply the average cost per click by 10 to give you a true measure of what it costs to get someone to your site who will at least look at one more page.

How to Get Started

There is a 3 step process to get going with Pay Per Click campaigns, whether it is Google, Yahoo, Bing, or other. Step One is to create an account, including providing billing information, and setting a campaign budget. Step 2 is to create some text ads and tell them where to go when the ad is clicked on (which page of your site). Step 3 is to select the keywords for which to display your ads. This is obviously a simplification of the process, but it is literally possible to have a campaign up and running, start to finish, with ads driving clicks through to your site, in less than one hour. I would urge you to spend the proper time planning. Setting up a campaign can be quick. Setting up right takes more effort. S3 Outdoors has the experience to set up a Pay Per Click campaign for you.

Looking for More Outfitter Marketing Advice? See www.s3outdoors.com.

Outfitter Marketing Basics

2011-05-28T06:11:00.000-07:00

Some of the terminology used in the field of marketing can seem like just a bunch of jargon to confuse non-marketing professionals and make us sound smarter than we are. In the interest of breaking down the marketing-speak into something more useful, I have put together a list of comparisons between the marketing terminology and some common hunting/fishing terminology. Hope you enjoy the comparisons and find them useful. Future articles posted here will go into more depth (farther a field) to explain how these can be applied to your marketing efforts.

Target Marketing = Field Selection.
Target Marketing is all about increasing your chances of being successful by marketing to a more defined set of potential customers. Like selecting the right location for your tree stand or field blind, being present where your target is give a better chance of taking a trophy, or a customer.
Online Marketing = Long Distance Casting.
The further and more diverse your customer base, the further you have to cast to reach them. There is no more efficient of a marketing tool than the web. Once you have an email address, email marketing becomes the way of frequently passing a lure near them and eventually enticing a bite. Online isn’t easy, and all your competitors are likely out there already, so it becomes an essential part of your marketing mix.
Marketing Mix = Tackle Box.
There are many lures, weights, baits, and hooks in your tackle box, and none of them work all the time. Some are specialty items, some are general use items. The right lure at the right time has a greater chance of landing a fish. Knowing which to use and when is a skill usually learned through experience, understanding the behaviors of your quarry, and knowing the situation, plus some luck and chance meetings.

Direct Marketing = Fly Fishing.
Direct Marketing is simply a ratio of results. The more often you put a fly in front of a fish, the more chances you have of getting a bite. The more appealing the offering is the more likely the customer will take you up on your offer. The wrong offer presented in the wrong way will have little chance of success. If it looks fake, it will be ignored in favor of something else that floats by on the current.
Print Advertising = Scouting.
Print advertising puts you out there, searching farther and wider than other methods. You will come across more terrain and more species, hoping to find the location of the right game. Scouting set you up for success at a later time, when you are ready to pull the trigger and knock down the trophy.

Customer Surveys = Fishing Log.
Track your fishing success, noting the weather, location, lures, techniques, water temperature, etc. and you will find patterns and situations that lead to greater success. Looking these common patterns can generate future success. Asking your customers what they liked and disliked gives you tremendous insight into what to repeat and what to change to increase the success rate and customer retention.
Referral / Loyalty Programs = Catch n Release.
Each satisfied customer goes away with a tale of a great adventure, and takes your name with them. With each successful send off, you increase the brood stock for greater returns in the future. Hunting groups will often grow in size over time, from the two guys who booked their first excursion with you this year to the return trip with their buddies and brother in law next year. Treat them well and give them a reason to come back with more on the line next time.

Brochures = Fishing Lures.
A realistic looking lure, with a natural action attracts the most fish. A high quality brochure with a believable proposition to the customer gets the best response. Don’t use your home PC to design a brochure for your business, with WordArt as your substitute for graphic design. A cheap imitation will be ignored while a realistic professional piece will bring in the big fish from out of the weeds.
Tradeshows = Flocks of Customers.
Someone one described a tradeshow to me as a room full of customers. Customers come in waves, or flocks, passing by your blind (booth) and your decoys (booth signage) are what bring them in for a closer look. Not every customer at a show will be a customer, but the more time you spend, and more shooters you have, the sooner you will reach your limit.

Interested in more? See our Outfitter Marketing Advice on http://www.s3outdoors.com.

Target Marketing

2011-05-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

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.

scout the area for the best position
know the habits and patterns of your target
prepare in advance
set up early
take careful aim
be patient

Improve Your Chances

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

See more Outfitter Marketing Advice articles on www.s3outdoors.com

New Sites: PrairieRoseOutfitters.com and NorthernReflectionLodge.com

2011-05-25T12:13:00.000-07:00

We have given PrairieRoseOutfitters.com a face lift. The new site design can be seen at PrairieRoseOutfitters.com. Included in the site, besides a modern and updated look and layout, are new image gallery displays, including a more dramatic larger image display technique. PrairieRoseOutfitters.com has some great new photography from their week spent with the Ducks Unlimited TV crew and these are displayed prominently on their site. The site was well positioned in the search engines for key search terms so the content strategy was mostly maintained, just rearranged.

The second site we would like to announce is NorthernReflectionLodge.com, a fly-in fishing lodge in Northern Saskatchewan catering to the angler looking for basic lodging and great fishing for northern pike, lake trout and walleye. The lodge owner recently purchased the business from the retired owner. As such, the site needed to be built in anticipation of new content to be added as the fishing season gets underway in Saskatchewan. Northern Reflection Lodge also offers Spring Black Bear hunting and Fall Moose Hunting.

Pay Per Click Advertising

2011-05-21T15:28:00.000-07:00

Pay Per Click Overview

Several of the leading search engines offer a pay per click advertising program, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (Bing). It works just as it sounds, when a user clicks on an ad of yours (taking them to your website), you end up paying the search engine for the traffic. Cost per click can range anywhere from 10 cents to 10 dollars (rare). The ads are typically short text ads that are displayed next to search engine results. Try searching on Google for any term and look at the ads placed down the right hand margin. These same ads also appear on some content sites, sites which are not owned by the serach engines and who get paid for displaing the ads (when they get clicked on). The biggest advantage to Pay Per Clcik advertising is that they display content related ads. On fishing pages, or on fishing related searches, you will get fishing related ads. The more specific the search or content, the more specific the ads.

Compliment Your Website

Your website may be a great website, but it can't be the top ranked site for every search term that you want. Think of how Pay Per Click campaigns can get you the traffic you want. Think of Pay Per Click as the magic bait that can guarentee you traffic to your site. magic takes money. If your website is not bringing you all the traffic you want, use a Pay Per Click campaign to compliment the traffic it brings by targeting your pay per click where you want to grow.

Convert Paid to Free

Guess What? The stats in your Pay Per Click campaigns are a lot like the stats on your website's free traffic. Learn to use the stats, especially the keyword performance stats. By monitoring your campaign stats, you can quickly see what ads and what keywords are being diplayed the most and which are being clicked on the most. This should lead you into developing and optimizing content pages on your site for these keywords and key phrases.

Beware the Bounce Rate

You will see in your campaign stats, something called a bounce rate. This is a very important as it will tell you if you are wasting money. The bounce rate is a measurement of visitors entering your site and leaving afer only viewing the 1st page. You paid for these visitors. You need to determine what an acceptable rate is. If 90% of your paid visitors bounce, you need to multiply the average cost per click by 10 to give you a true measure of what it costs to get someone to your site who will at least look at one more page.

How to Get Started

Looking for More Outfitter Marketing Advice? See www.s3outdoors.com.

Partnering - Grow Your Sales

2011-05-20T04:43:00.000-07:00

Partner With Other Outfitters to Grow Your Sales. If you think about your business for a while, you will discover that you can not possibly be all things to all customers. You may be the best whitetail deer outfitter in your area, or the best fishing guide in your area, but the wants, dreams and desires for outdoor adventure of your customers are too varied for you to supply them with every experience they could possibly want. But don't let this be a negative, instead develop partnerships to turn this to your advantage. if you become the source of information, the leader in recommending how they can further their outdoor adventures, then you increase your value to your clients.

If you can't offer it all, then find a way to partner with others who can. This partnering can come in many forms, the first thing you need to know is what other outdoor activities (or other activities in general) interest your customers, and then find a source of supply for those, find a willing partner. Think of the top 25% of your customers, especially your loyal return customers, and talk with them, perhaps you already have, about what else they do outdoors. What other species do they hunt? what do they fish for? What is on their outdoors wish list, their outdoors bucket list?

You may find that the activity they are looking for is not in competition with you for their time or money but rather complimentary to what you offer. Perhaps they enjoy waterfowl hunting and fly fishing for trout. You may offer one of these but the other is not in your geographic area. So find a leading outfitter that offers the complimentary service and begin a referral relationship. Outdoors men and women are more likely to be interested in other hunting and fishing activities than the rest of the population so an outfitter from another area, offering another type of activity, has a high likelihood of customers in their database who would be interested in what you offer.

Some customers would be interested in a package that offered spouse activities. Perhaps in your area there are hiking trails or sigh seeing activities that would be valued by some of your customers. As an example, some west cost salmon fishing charters could team up with a whale watching expedition tour company. Remote hunting camps may consider a partnership arrangement with the sightseeing and tour companies or hotel/spas in the nearby city used by your customers for their airline travel. A relaxing trip in a new location for the spouse and a rough and rugged hunting adventure for the outdoorsman may be a combination that is an easy sell.

There are other ways to partner beyond complimenting each other's offerings to provide a broader range. Think about sharing resources with your partner such as co-marketing arrangements. While most privacy concerns would suggest that you should not share your customer lists, especially anything gathered online presumably for your use only, you can still trade marketing messages, sent on behalf of the partner. That is, you send out a message to your customer list specifically from your partner, and your partner sends out our message to their customer list. If you are using email, this is an easy process and costs little, other than time to organize the list and send the message. If you are using direct mail, then obviously there are printing and mailing expenses that need to be covered, as well as the time component. If you use other forms of traditional advertising media, consider co-marketing yourself in the same print ad space. Rather than purchasing two 1/4 page ads in a magazine, purchase on 1/2 page and share the space. Your cost per ad space will be lower but your exposure will be the same.

Partnering with others to grow your revenue is just another smart way to make the most of the resources around you. The benefits are similar for you and your partners and you will find the more partners you acquire, the easier it becomes.

Social Media Marketing Secret

2011-05-13T21:01:00.000-07:00

Social Media means interaction.

Social Media Marketing means posting content that is interesting and engaging to your audience. Should you as an outfitter get involved in Social Media Marketing? How much time do you have? By the very nature of Social Media, you must be willing to commit time to it for it to be successful. There is no magic Facebook bullet or Super Secret Twitter post that will grow your business without effort. The secret to Social Media Marketing for Outfitters is the same formula that makes you a successful outfitter, hard work, attention to details, telling good stories, excellent customer service. Social Media takes your mass marketing efforts and gives the people who are interested in what you do a place to communicate directly with you, and it gives you a place to communicate back, at the same time putting the same message on their network as well.

What Social Media Works?

There is a huge variety of social media sites. To many to list, most of which don't count anyways. The right Social Media for any of my clients depends on the line of business they are in. For your Outfitter Marketing Mix you will want to focus in on what I regard as the big 4 which includes Facebook (fan page, group, profile), Twitter, YouTube, and Linked In. If I had to recommend only one, I would go with Facebook simply because it is the most robust and enables you to provide useful, interesting, and engaging content in a number of ways.

Facebook

is intriguing because it has found a way to stretch itself beyond it's original plan of connecting friends to friends. It has demonstrated true platform growth by creating a powerful marketing/branding machine which has become the focal point of many contest and highly successful viral marketing campaigns. If you have only have time for one Social Media platform, or don't know where to start, choose Facebook. It will help you grow a network of interest, if you put in the time and attention.

Twitter

is the hottest Social Media platform around. It’s known as a micro blogging site because you are limited to posting 140 characters at a time. You can link to richer content forms, such as images and video, but it does not give you a place to store this content. Personally, I hate Twitter. Professionally, Twitter amazes me with how popular it has become and how much time people are willing to spend telling the world they have brushed their teeth. All that aside, Twitter has become successful because of simplicity. Actual practical use for your Outfitter Marketing Plan will be limited. (Look for future articles on this site where I refer back to this because I am proven wrong). Love it or hate it, Twitter has proven to be addictive in it's following. If you have time to post and reply to messages, sometimes hourly, then Twitter might be your kind of bait.

YouTube

is a goldmine of possibility for Outfitters looking to attract a growing client base. Imagine the regular audience of any hunting or fishing show deciding to go online and search for more. Hunters are very visual, give them everything you've got to see and post it on YouTube. Every hunting or fishing video you have is a chance to make an impression. Make sure you make a good impression. Don't have any good videos? Make a slideshow with your best pictures. More about this idea in future articles.

can be thought of as Facebook but a lighter version, for use by Hunting Outfitters and Fishing Lodges. LinkedIn gives you the ability to establish a network or likeminded people, allows you to profile yourself, and post images. What is different about LinkedIn is the interactivity. It is no where near as engaging as Facebook. It was designed essentially as a professional version of Facebook, a business referral network of suppliers, partners, and job seekers.

Social Media Cost

The true cost of Social Media is your time, your valuable time. All the sites listed above are free to use, free to post content, free to market your business. How much free time do you have will help you decide how deep to dive into Social Media. Future articles here will go into more depth about how to maximize your use of these four Social Media platforms. Check back or sign up for our newsletter to be notified on new articles.

Need to know more about Marketing for Outfitters? See www.s3outdoors.com.

Expert in Your Field

2011-05-13T20:55:00.000-07:00

Advantages of Experts

Being an expert in your field brings many advantages. You don’t have to work as hard to find new business. You can charge more for the work you do. You are given the benefit of the doubt in certain circumstances, and you open up new avenues of success. There are several ways to demonstrate your expertise. The first is just to flat out get it done out in the field. That is, prove your worth to your customers by giving them a great experience, putting on a great pool of fish, putting them in the right field for the bird shoot, picking the right tree stand for the way the bucks are moving, or helping pick the right lure are all ways to demonstrate your value as an outfitter or guide, and it's what your customers pay you money for.

Tell Them You Are an Expert

Another way to establish your expertise is to tell everyone about it by putting together an article, a how to instructional piece, or share a story about your adventures. Think of the hosts on your favorite outdoors shows. They gain credibility by sharing with us their experiences, and putting the proof right in front of us on our screens. We believe what they say because they have the reputation and the proof. You too can gain this credibility by putting your expertise on display. Consider submitting your story to hunting a fishing sites like the S3Outdoors Outdoors Journal.

Write an Article

Writing articles about hunting and fishing is not something that everyone is cut out to do. Some of us are better at the doing that we are at the writing. If you have the ability to put your thoughts and experiences into words, then you can turn your valuable insights into big credibility points for yourself. Get started with your article by simply sketching out the bullet points, key topics, that make for the article. For each key point, choose an example, or a piece of detailed instruction, that supports the point and add it to the main point. Once you have made your points, and supported your thoughts with examples, read it over and add any additional explanation needed. Then, put it away for a day and come back to it for a proof read. Does it make sense 24 hours later? Have someone else read the article and ask if the message is clear. Once you are finished with the main part of the article, go back and write an introduction, one or two sentences, and conclusion that sums up the main points, again in one or two sentences.

Telling stories. Put yourself mentally around the campfire, with your buddies, all relaxing after a day of hunting or fishing, a cool one in your hand, and let your mind run through how you would tell of that day. Who were you fishing or hunting with? Use their names, first names or nicknames make it more personal. How long have you been coming to this same spot together, is this an annual event or the start of a new tradition? What were your expectations when the day started? How was the weather? How did you prepare and plan for the day/trip or did you grab your rod or gun and get right at it? Be sure to talk about the gear you used, tackle, technique, tips, tactics, and how they related to the success you had (or sometimes, didn't have). Imagine one of your buddies passing on the story to a friend back home, what parts would they be sure to explain in detail and what part of the story would make you want to return. Answer these questions and you are sure to have a story of interest. Keep in mind when people read a story, they can usually sort out the B.S. pretty quick so don't stretch a 12" trout in to a land locked salmon or bambi into the king of the forest.

Outfitter Marketing Videos

In today's media age, with great social tools like Facebook and YouTube, get your video up on the web. If you have editing software, add some transition effects and make sure to reference yourself and your business. Use some cutaway footage to show off the scenery and any other points of interest. Add some "in-studio" head shot narration if you can to add some explanation to the "action" footage. Don't use too many fancy effects or overdo the sound effects and sound track. The online culture right now is to keep things very realistic and not "Hollywood" production style so resist urge to add your favorite "Monty Python" style graphic text. Post yourself on the web, on your own website if you can, or other media sharing sites such as YouTube and watch for the comments others make. Don't be afraid to a bit of self promotion to the beginning and end of the video by including your name and website address.

Display Your Outfitter Expertise

As an outfitter or guide, your experience vastly exceeds that of even most seasoned anglers and hunters. For the one or two deer some of us hunt in a season, your help dozens more get their shot at a trophy. For each day we spend on the lake or stream, you spend a week helping customers hook a memory of a great trip. Take your knowledge and your expertise and put them out on display. It will improve your standing with your customers and a stronger reputation helps you build your business.

For more Outfitter Marketing ideas see www.s3outdoors.com

Overview of Advertising Media

2011-05-13T20:44:00.000-07:00

If you are involved in hunting, fishing, or any other type of outdoors business, your success is based on attracting new customers, as well as repeat business from past customers. Today's competitive businesses environment makes it essential to use some form of advertising to grow your business. Everyone competes for the business of your customers. We have prepared this overview to help you learn to determine what type of advertising media is best for you, and learn to identify guidelines you can use to obtain the advertising exposure you need. It will help you identify ways to make your advertising more effective. Think of choosing the right advertising medium in the same way you choose a weapon and ammunition, use the right combination for your target. Read to the end of this article for our recommendations based on whether you are a retail store, campground, fishing lodge, hunting outfitter. for each type of media, we include our lists of pros and cons as well as the On Target Tips to help you choose the right type of advertising for your outdoors business.

YELLOW PAGES

Pros:

Year long coverage.
Gives your customer a method of easily locating and contacting your business, even if they didn't initially know your name.
You pay by the month instead of one large payment.

Cons:

There are no short term advertising options.
You are immediately placed with a group of your competitors, making it easy for customers to comparison shop.
Sometime your ad is buried and ineffective.
Your customer must know what classification to look for.
It is only useful in a specific geographic area.

On Target Tips:

The customers who have looked up your classification in the yellow pages are active buyers, so this means much of the ‘sell’ copy does not have to be included.
The thing to be aware of when you write the ad is the other firms' ads within your classification.
Your ad should be large enough to incorporate the vital information the customer needs to make a contact decision.
Keep your ad clean, creative and eye-appealing.
Include your website address and email.
Do something unique or different. If no one else is using color, use color.
Yellow Pages advertising is an important medium if your customers are concentrated in a specific geography.

RADIO ADVERTISING

Pros:

The ability to easily change and update scripts.
Station personalities have a good rapport with their listeners and can be influential in advertising.
You can easily integrate radio and other media by saying in your commercial, "See our ad in the Outdoor Herald," which makes your message twice as effective.
Radio is a relatively inexpensive way of reaching large numbers of people.

Cons:

If the customer didn't catch all the message, they can't go back and hear it again.
Since there are a lot of radio stations, the total listening audience for any one station is just a piece of a much larger whole. That's why it's important to know what stations your customers and prospects probably listen to.
People don't listen to the radio all the time...only during certain times of day. So, it's important to know when your customers are listening.
Radio can only advertise or one or two ideas at the most and is a poor place for prices and telephone numbers.

On Target Tips:

If you're including your address in the commercial, simplify it. Instead of "1345 Oak Drive," say "at the corner of First & Oak, East of the river." It's easier to remember.
Radio works better when you combine it with other advertising media.
Be creative with your radio advertising, too. If it sounds like all the rest of the commercials, it won't stand out.
Without getting complicated, here are two cardinal rules for radio advertising: 1. It's better to advertise when people are listening than when they are not. It's better to bunch your commercials together than to spread them apart. 2. Since you can't automatically recall the radio commercial and hear it again, may have to hear the same commercial two, four, or maybe six times before the message sinks in.
Most of the time, radio advertising should be bought in chunks. High frequency over a short period of time is much more effective than low frequency over a longer period of time.
If you decide to write your own radio scripts, remember these basic copy writing rules: 1. Get your listener's attention immediately. 2. Write in conversational style. 3. Avoid using buzz words or jargon. 4. Repeat your important points. 5. Make your ending strong and positive with call-to-action for response.

TELEVISION ADVERTISING

Pros:

Television reaches very large audiences.
Advertising on television can give a product or service instant credibility.
Television is very segmented, with 100 of channels, so you can easily reach the audiences you have targeted. i.e. farmers during the morning agricultural reports
TV offers the greatest possibility for creative advertising

Cons:

TV can be expensive, stations can charge more for commercials because of the large number of viewers reached.
A poorly produced commercial could create a bad image in your customer's mind.
The cost of a well-produced commercial can be very expensive.
Even if your commercial is being aired, viewers may never see it unless it is creative enough to capture their attention.
Television delivers the highest impact of any media, but unpredictable viewer habits make it difficult to reach the same viewer with enough repetition.

On Target Tips:

Remember, more than anything else, when it comes to making a TV commercial, you get what you pay for. And also, like radio, the message comes and goes...and that's it. The viewer doesn't see your commercial again unless you buy more placements.
To obtain positive results from TV advertising you must have enough money in your budget to pay for the cost of producing a good TV commercial and pay for effective commercial time that will reach your viewer at least 5-7 times.

NEWSPAPER ADVERTISING

Pros:

Almost every home receives a newspaper.
You can reach certain types of people by placing your ad in different sections of the paper.
People expect advertising in the newspaper. In fact, many people buy the paper just to read the ads.
Unlike advertising on TV and radio, advertising in the newspaper can be examined at your leisure. A newspaper ad can contain details, such as prices and telephone numbers or promotional offers.
You can often insert a new advertisement on short notice.
There is a large variety of ad sizes newspaper advertising offers that can fit most budgets.

Cons:

Newspapers only cover a specific geography.
Newspapers usually are read once and stay in the house for just a day.
The print quality of newspapers is the lowest of all print media.
The page size of a newspaper is fairly large and small ads can get lost.
There are typically over a hundred ads in a single newspaper.
Not every person who gets the newspaper will read your ad if they don't read the section you advertised in.

On Target Tips:

Newspaper circulation drops on Saturdays and increases on Sundays.
Choose carefully what section you want your ad to appear, the newspaper sales agents should help you decide.
Create short, descriptive copy for your ad. · Neat, uncluttered and orderly ads encourage readership. Don't try to crowd everything you can in the layout space.

MAGAZINE ADVERTISING

Pros:

The print quality is very high so your graphic image can appear very crisp and strong.
Magazines are usually weekly or monthly publications instead of daily and have a longer shelf life.
Advertising messages are more image-oriented and less price-oriented.
Advertisements involve color more often.

Cons:

A half page ad in a national magazine can cost up to $5000
Advance planning is required and once you submit your artwork, it's difficult to change.
Magazine advertising does not create an immediate response.

On Target Tips:

Repeat the same ad 3-5 times within a campaign period to create brand awareness and recall.
It makes sense to spend extra time and money to prepare a worthwhile ad that can be successfully repeated.
Check the magazine demographics in the media kit which is usually available online to make sure you are targeting the right audience.
The lead time for placing a magazine ad is usually at least a month in advance of their mailing date.
Check if the magazine has regional advertising sections that allow your business to look like it purchased a national ad when it only went to a certain geographical area. This can be especially useful if you want to target only that region.
Absolutely include your website in the ad. Most magazine readers will go from the ad to your website before they call you, or they may email you.

OUTDOOR ADVERTISING

Pros:

Since it is in the public domain, people are exposed to it whether they like it or not.
Since most messages stay in the same place for a period of a month or more, people who drive by or walk past see the same message a number of times.
Particular locations can be acquired for certain purposes. i.e. A billboard located a block in front of your business can direct people to your showroom.
Outdoor advertising is an excellent adjunct to other types of advertising you are doing. In fact, it is most effective when coupled with other media.
Expensive signage (i.e. benches, posters, buses, etc.) at an intrusively visible business location is often the cheapest advertising your money can buy. Intrusive visibility is the quality that separates landmarks from scenery. You’re intrusively visible when the public sees you without looking for you.
Billboards reach more people for a dollar than any other media and they’re geographically target able.

Cons:

Outdoor advertising is a glance medium. At best, it only draws 2-3 seconds of a reader's time. Messages must be brief to fit in that 2-3 second time frame.
It becomes invisible after just a few sightings in the same location, so be sure to move your boards every 30 days. Additionally, the average driver is unwilling to look away from the road for longer than eight words.
The nature of the way you have to buy outdoor advertising (usually a three month commitment) is not conducive to short campaigns.

On Target Tips:

Included in the "outdoor" classification are benches, posters, signs and transit advertising (the advertising on buses, subways, taxicabs and trains), and billboards.
When you buy outdoor advertising, remember that location is everything. High traffic areas are ideal. A billboard in an undesirable area will do you little good.
Keep your message concise (use only five to seven words) and make it creatively appealing to attract readership.
Few words, large illustrations (or photos), bold colors and simple backgrounds will create the most effective outdoor advertising messages.

DIRECT MAIL

Pros:

It can be relatively easy to coordinate a mailing with other advertising media if you are also using them in the same campaign. It can significantly increase the potential return.
With a good list, you can send a very targeted message to a specific group.

Cons:

Direct mail is often considered "junk" mail.
Response rates are often below 2% so you need volume to generate business.
Acquiring a good list can be difficult, you get what you pay for.

On Target Tips:

Define your audience. Choose images and words that appeal directly to them.
Don't try to design a direct mail piece that appeals to everyone.
Locate the right mailing list. Do the research yourself and compile the information on a computer or purchase an "outside list" from a list house or magazine or tradeshow.
For addressing and mailing your piece you can do it yourself or use a printing company with a mailing service to do it for you.
Consider using a self-addressed reply card or envelope to increase the return rate.
Attract the reader's attention with color and creativity. Use clear, comfortable writing and make your appeal easy to respond.

INTERNET

Pros:

Reach the whole world.
It is the fastest growing advertising media, it might be the only media that is growing.
Chances are, 95% of your customers use the internet.
The internet can be a way to extend all the rest of your advertising, "See us online at..", or "Read more online at…".

Cons:

The disadvantage of the internet is that you’re competing with the whole world.
Managing a website can be extremely complex and time consuming.

On Target Tips:

If we recommend only one advertising media to use, it is the internet. Several of our clients have already made this decision and now have all the business they need.
If your outfitter business regularly advertises in other forms of media, make sure you include your website on everything, your prospective customer need to get to know you online.
If you do not have experience in web design, don't try to do it yourself. A low quality site that will turn more customers away. Seek out a professional web design company such as S3 Outdoors

Who Should Use What media:

Retail Stores such as Tackle Shops and Sporting Goods Stores - Yellow Pages, newspapers, radio, outdoor, internet.

Campgrounds - outdoor, internet.

Fishing Lodges - magazines, direct mail (including email), internet.

Hunting Outfitters - magazines, direct mail (including email), internet.

CONCLUSION

It is important to explore the various advertising media and select those which will most effectively convey your message to your customers in an effective manner. Always remember, advertising is an investment in the future of your outdoors business.