Marketing to Recruit, Retain, and Reactivate Participants

What Is It?

For the purposes of R3, marketing includes any communication effort designed to encourage people to consider participating in hunting or shooting sports or to continue to do so if they already are.

Marketing strategy is a combination of selecting and combining the right:

• Target Audience
• Message
• Media
• Evaluation

We will explore each of those in detail for moving participants along their journey as hunters and shooting sports participants. This chapter is not designed to educate you in the art and science of marketing but rather to steer your R3 marketing in the right direction with the latest research and case studies. The resources in the table below will teach you more about general marketing strategy if that interests you.

This chapter will not address the use of marketing to influence public perception of hunting and shooting sports participation. That is addressed in the section Marketing for Public Support.

Why Is It Important?

Many R3 efforts are designed to get more people to participate in hunting and shooting sports and/or to get current participants to do it more frequently. The R3 community recognizes that participation in hunting and shooting sports has many benefits—both for the participants and for conservation of natural resources and society. Marketing is one strategy used to make people aware of hunting and shooting sports activities and to encourage them to try the activities and continue participating.

How can your organization help your practitioners?

When we spoke to R3 practitioners and asked them how their organizations could best support them in their efforts to market hunting and shooting sports, these were the answers we repeatedly heard:

• Provide funding for media, production, and PR expenses.
• Provide additional funding for extra media and production expenses associated with producing more diverse messaging (media, translation, models, ad versions, etc.).
• Make sure your R3 team has access to marketing staff and/or can hire a marketing firm.
• If your team and/or organization does not have diverse marketing expertise, allow your team to go outside and hire communication professionals with experience reaching broader audiences.
• Make sure internal support staff (marketing, etc.) understands R3 and the activities being promoted.
• Make sure your communications team understands social media, marketing, media buying, and public relations (or has the authority and budget to hire an ad agency that does).
• Fund an online licensing and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Such technologies make available a myriad of marketing strategies and tactics that are proven to sell licenses/permits.
• Allow your R3 team easy access to license holder lists and other lists like camping reservations, boat permits, etc., that they can use to develop email lists for R3 efforts.
• If you want your R3 team to be able to evaluate the success of marketing efforts to demographically diverse audiences, ensure that you collect gender, race, and ethnicity information on license/permit buyers and other event participants and sync it with your CRM system.

Recruitment – Marketing to attract participants

The Outdoor Recreation Adoption Model (ORAM) divides recruitment into three key steps:

• Awareness – Becoming aware that the activity exists
• Interest – Thinking the activity might be for you
• Trial – Participating in the activity for the first few times

Your marketing effort should be designed to move the prospective participant through one of these steps.

Target Audience for Recruiting – It is crucial that any marketing effort first determine its target audience. The target audience is used to determine messaging and media selection. The more precisely you can define the audience, the more efficient and effective the marketing effort can be.

Recruitment is the most difficult audience to define in R3 because your organization most likely does not have a relationship with or contact information for individuals who are just considering taking up hunting or shooting sports. Luckily for the R3 community, recent audience segmentation research has developed target audiences for new adult hunters, firearm owners, and archery participants. These research results are briefly described in the target audiences’ section, and the full studies are available in the table of resources.

Messages for Recruiting – The best messages for recruiting are based on the motivations of the audience you are targeting.

Here’s a quick list of the top motivations for hunting, shooting sports, and archery. A quick review of any of the segmentation reports will provide support and additional details.

Top motivations for participating in hunting:¹

• Enjoy the activity and the outdoors
• To spend time with family members
• To be more self-sufficient regarding food
• To protect the environment

Top motivations for participating in shooting sports²

• Protect themselves and their family
• To learn new skills
• To learn to shoot for hunting
• For the sense of security

Top motivations for participating in archery³

• Enjoy the activity and the outdoors
• Enjoy the challenge
• Enjoy hunting and the tradition
• To spend time with family and friends
• Enjoy the competition
• Want to live a sustainable life

If you are building a campaign to attract new participants to one of the activities, we recommend a series of messages, each featuring a separate motivation. If possible, look for proven/tested message templates that already exist. Don’t assume that you must create your messages from scratch to reflect your particular situation.

If you need images or video to create your messages check out the R3 Clearinghouse on CAHSS.org.

Media for Recruiting

Regardless of your target audiences, you will need to use media to deliver your marketing messages to them. Since your organization may not have a relationship with individuals who have not yet decided to become hunters or recreational shooters, recruiting is the most difficult/expensive of the three Rs from a media standpoint.

Paid Advertising – Whether it’s print media, paid search, online display, or paid social media ads, paid advertising is the broadest reaching way to get your initial awareness messages in front of prospective participants.

Public Relations – The other way to use paid media outlets is through public relations. This can be as simple as sending all your events to published event calendars or as elaborate as inviting a TV station to cover a beginner archery event. The secret to public relations efforts is turning your event into an interesting story and offering that story to a media outlet or reporter to share with their audience. PR should be a win/win proposition. The media outlet gets interesting content with very little effort. You get media coverage without paying for advertising.

Website Content/Banners – Your organization probably already has a website. Use it! Be sure all your events and online training content are included in any section where they are applicable. Use banners or any other available mechanism on the site to feature interesting upcoming events. It’s free and it is where your public expects your events, programs, and content to be available. Don’t disappoint them.

Social Media Posts – Social media is another low-cost way to get your message out. However, social media will only reach your organization’s followers unless you employ strategies to extend your reach.

• Engagement – A social media post is only visible to your organization’s most active followers until those followers comment, like, repost, or otherwise interact with your post. This interaction is called engagement. When one of your followers engages with your content then it is more likely to be seen by their social media contacts. If one of your range users comments on a Facebook post made by your shooting range, their neighbor (who may not shoot at all) is much more likely to see that post. By posting messages that are more likely to cause your connections to engage, your visibility increases.
• Boosted Posts – Some social networks will allow you to pay to extend the visibility of one of your posts to include individuals who would not normally see it. This gives you the advantage of an organic post but extended reach of paid advertising.
• Social Ads – Some social platforms also let you run paid ads. While they are usually not as credible to viewers as posts, they can be delivered to your target audience with the added accuracy that social media allows.

Targeted Social Media – Having an individual’s email and cell phone number opens up a potent tool in social media. First, you can purchase social media ads that WON’T BE SHOWN to a particular list of people. This allows you to target people who do not already have a hunting license or range permit with social media ads, thus lowering your media costs and improving campaign results. Second, you can provide your social media outlet with a list of your license/permit holders, and they can build a list of lookalikes (people who are like your license holders but aren’t license holders themselves) based on demographics and online behaviors. This allows you to find people like your customers but not customers themselves.

Other-in-house lists – Another inexpensive way to reach potential hunters and shooting sports participants is by using other lists you may already have inside your organization. For an organization that isn’t a federal, state, or tribal agency, these are likely to be membership lists. For a state or tribal agency, they could be hunting or fishing license lists, range permit lists, boat registrations, camping registrations, ORV permits, or anything else. People on these lists are not guaranteed to be prospective hunters or shooting sports participants, but they are an inexpensive place to start. Be sure to use lists that are logical for the offer you are presenting, and do not email the same individual too often or too close together.

Captured Leads – To help potential participants along the steps in their journey, you need to communicate with them. The most effective way is to collect their contact information (name, email, phone, date of birth) during every engagement with your organization. This could be done via:

• Event registration
• Sign-up sheets
• Newsletter sign-ups
• License and permit purchases
• Etc.

The contact information could be saved in spreadsheets, but the most effective strategy is to import the contact information and the interactions that collected it into a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System. A CRM will allow you to track all your customers’ contacts with your organization so you will know more about them and be able to offer them the opportunities, support, and events most likely to appeal to them and their particular situation. This allows you to do things like invite people who attended a wild game tasting event to a small game hunting class since you captured their email when they registered for the game tasting.

Retention – Marketing To Keep Participants

This section applies the principles of marketing to retaining participants. Customer retention is critical to R3 success. If you can’t keep your customer (license buyer or shooting sports participant), your business model is unsustainable. Retention efforts boil down to helping participants improve on what they are already doing (how to field dress a deer, how to shoot more accurately) or offering the participant a new, additional experience in that same activity (bowhunting for gun hunters, five-stand for trap shooters, etc.). Below are some strategies to retain your shooting sports participants and hunters year after year, thus reducing churn.

Target Audience for Retention – By definition, the target audience for retention is current participants in an activity. For hunting, this audience is easily defined by simply pulling license records. Participation trend data typically shows that new participants, especially women, are likelier than the average participant to lapse the following year, so consider new participants as target audiences for retention efforts. If you have range permits this is very similar for shooting sports participants. If not, you will need other methods to determine who your current participants are that you are working to retain.

Message for Retention – While you could target all hunters or all shooting sports participants for your retention efforts, most of the time, your efforts will be more effective if you select a subset based on their motivations, barriers, location, or other information. This can be done in a variety of ways based on the marketing methods you are using.

The best way for you to develop an understanding of the exact audience you are serving is to review whatever records you have available and/or to survey your constituents. If you are creating a survey strictly to learn about your audience, we recommend questions covering areas like:

• Demographics
• Motivations
• Barriers
• Outdoor experience

We also recommend you tie survey responses to individual records in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This will make it much easier to select an audience, send them an email, and track their response.

Media for Retention – Because you already have lists of your existing customers in your License Management System or Customer Management System, you should be able to work with more direct media channels that take advantage of the fact that you have the individual’s email, mailing address, and cell phone number. If you don’t have a list of the individuals you are trying to retain, you could buy media like that described in the recruiting section of this chapter or use location-based media like hanging a poster at the shooting range, buying a billboard near the shooting range, or buying geo-targeted online media that are triggered by a viewer’s phone being at the shooting range or gun shop.

Email – Email is inexpensive and generates a rapid response. Use concise and honest subject lines and keep your emails brief. Short-text emails get through more spam filters. Attractively designed HTML emails can nearly deliver the power of a website visit into someone’s inbox. Customize your emails based on what you know about your customers. Use images that match the gender, hunting style, and age of the recipient. A 50-year-old female trap shooter will be more interested in an article with an image of an individual like herself.

Email is a powerful tool in your retention arsenal. And because it is essentially free, there can be a tendency to overuse it. Don’t create email fatigue by emailing the same individual too often. (This is not the case for people who have signed up for a regular email announcement or newsletter.) Make a rule never to email the same person more than once a month. This count should include both promotional and research emails. A frequency rule like this can be built into your CRM or add a “last emailed” date field to any database or spreadsheet.

Direct Mail – The low cost of email marketing has dramatically reduced the use of direct mail. This reduced mail volume means that people pay more attention to each piece of mail in their mailbox than they did a few years ago. However, direct mail is expensive (postage and printing costs), so it is probably not your first choice in media. But it does offer a high-impact media of last resort for people who did not respond to email or whose email bounced.

Texts – Text messages should be used sparingly for anyone who has not signed up for a text program. Reserve texts for situations where you can be seen as being helpful to the recipient, like a reminder for an event they have registered to attend the next day or a new range opening in their area. Again, be careful not to text the same individual too often.

Website Content/Banners – It is reasonable to assume many of your license and range permit holders visit your website. Be sure all your events and online training content are included in any section where they are applicable. Use banners or any other available mechanism on the site to feature interesting upcoming events.

Social Media Posts – Social media is another low-cost way to get your message out, and many of your license/permit holders will follow you on social media. Be sure to promote your events and online training content on social media. But don’t rely on social media to host your content. Post your content on your website so your organization can keep it updated and available. Use social media to promote content and events but drive visitors to your website for the actual content or registration.

Targeted Social Media – Having an individual’s email and cell phone number opens up a potent tool in social media. First, you can purchase social media ads that WILL ONLY BE SHOWN to a particular list of people. This allows you to target your current license/range permit holder with social media ads with the surgical accuracy of emails or texts but with much less obtrusive social media advertising.

Reactivation – Marketing To Reactivate Lapsed Participants.

The key to reactivating lapsed hunters and recreational shooters is offering the lapsed participant the thing that is most likely to lure them back. This is best done using a Contact Management System (CRM) to develop a profile of a participant’s motivations and barriers and send emails addressing those issues. Or it could be as simple as pulling up a list of lapsed turkey hunters and telling them about a turkey calling class or video.

Target Audience for Reactivation – The target audience for lapsed hunters and target shooters are the people in your License Management Software or Customer Management System who have not renewed their license or participated in the activity for whatever number of years you feel is appropriate.

Message for Reactivation – Messages are more likely to spur a lapsed participant’s reactivation when they are targeted at a specific individual’s unique needs. Reactivation is about understanding why somebody lapsed and addressing their situation to bring them back to hunting and target shooting. This can be done by directly interpreting their CRM record by examining events and classes they have attended, survey answers they have submitted, or it could be implied by demographic information like age and gender.

Be sure to consider factors like:

• Demographics
• Motivations
• Barriers
• Outdoor experience

Media for Reactivation – Because you already have lists of your lapsed customers in your License Management System or Customer Relationship Management System, you should be able to work with direct media channels using their contact information. Reactivation of individuals you don’t have a list of will be difficult unless you can logically assume you are losing them to something like a private range up the road that can be targeted with location-based media like billboards or geo-targeted online ads.

Email – Email is inexpensive and generates a rapid response. Use concise and honest subject lines and keep your emails brief. Short text-only emails get through more spam filters. Attractively designed HTML emails can nearly deliver the power of a website visit into someone’s inbox. Customize your emails based on what you know about your customers. Do your best to address their motivations and barriers based on the available information in your license/permit and event attendance records.

Email is a powerful tool, but don’t overuse it. A lapsed individual no longer has a relationship with your organization. Set a limit, like six emails over the course of a year, and if your attempts to reactivate fail, don’t email that individual anymore. This count should include both promotional and research emails. A frequency rule like this can be built into your CRM or by adding a “last emailed” date field to any database or spreadsheet.

Direct Mail – Direct mail is expensive, as you need to pay for postage and printing costs, but it does offer a high-impact media of last resort for people who did not respond to email or whose email bounced. Consider a final physical mailer to individuals you can’t reactivate via email or don’t have an email address for.

Texts – Text messages are somewhat intrusive for lapsed hunters/shooting sports participants. You might consider a well-timed text right before a season or event they regularly participated in or as a last-ditch text right before giving up on them but regular texting of an individual your organization has not current relationship with is not advised.

Targeted Social Media – Having an individual’s email and cell phone number opens up a potent tool reactivation tool in social media. You can purchase social media ads that WILL ONLY BE SHOWN to your list of lapsed license/permit holders. This allows you to target your past license/range permit holder with social media ads with the surgical accuracy of emails or texts but with much less obtrusive social media advertising.

General Guidance for Creating Campaigns

Below is a brief list of steps to consider as part of your framework when creating and implementing a marketing campaign.

The Process of Building a Campaign:

1. Identify your objectives and evaluation metrics:
   1. What do you want to accomplish?
   2. How are you going to evaluate whether you were successful?
2. Determine your budget/timeline for this effort:
   1. How much money do you have to spend?
   2. When will the campaign run, and for how long?
3. Identify who your target audience is:
   1. Who do you want to reach? (Age? Gender? Ethnicity? Values? Behaviors? Experiences?)
   2. What are their unique needs, barriers, opportunities, and preferences?
4. Match your target audience to a media type and appropriate messaging:
   1. What kind of media do they typically consume?
   2. What kinds of messages tend to resonate with this audience?
5. Determine whether partners will be involved in the campaign implementation and what their roles will be:
   1. Is a partner providing funding, sharing the campaign on their platforms, developing the campaign, etc. For specific information on developing partnerships, see the Partner Engagement Chapter
6. Develop the marketing campaign:
   1. Make sure all metrics are placed so that you can measure success afterward
      1. Ex. Tags on social media posts/pages, pixels, Urchin Tracking Modules (UTMs), etc.
7. Implement the marketing campaign:
   1. Evaluate your efforts during implementation to adjust efforts towards the most effective strategies. Invest your budget to do more of what works.
8. Evaluate your efforts once they are done and use these results to guide future campaigns and R3 efforts:
   1. What worked? What didn’t? What did you learn?
   2. Did the campaign accomplish your objective?
   3. What are your next steps?

Creating Marketing Materials

In 2020, WMI, DJ Case, and Southwick Associates worked together on a multistate grant to develop a toolkit for marketing hunting and shooting mentorship programs. While this was developed specifically for mentorship programs, many of the best practices for developing marketing resources are relevant to general hunting and fishing marketing. ⁴

• Know your Audience: 
  • Identify who your target audience is and do your research ahead of time on what messages, images, and media types resonate with your target audience.
• Branding:
  • Have branding guidelines for your organization and keep logos simple.
    • Every R3 effort does not need a separate logo from the organization, as this creates confusion of the brand identity among customers and the public.
  • Make sure all communications to customers, including email signatures, social media posts, websites, printed materials, signage, and mass communication efforts, are branded appropriately for your organization.
• Text:
  • For ads with a URL included, the URL should be easy to see/read at a glance.
  • Headline should be straightforward, e.g., “Learn to Shoot.”
  • Any text used should be simple, short, and straightforward.
• Images: 
  • Safety precautions and gear should be depicted clearly.
  • Images should be technically correct for the type of hunting or target shooting represented.
  • Consider appropriate representation of your target audience’s gender, age, and ethnicity when selecting images for the campaign.
  • Use imagery that resonates with potential target audiences
    • While you are targeting potential hunters or shooting sports participants, many non-hunters will be seeing the images you portray, so it’s essential to make sure selected images are appropriate for general audiences (limit depictions of blood, lolling tongue, etc.) For more information, check out Marketing for Public Support (LINK)
  • Environment (in images) should reflect local geography and the type of hunting or target shooting being promoted.
  • Include a prominent “sponsoring” organizational logo to add credibility.
  • Mentoring Specific Images Recommendations:
    • Should include two people.
    • One mentoring the other (ideally, the mentor has no gun but is teaching).
    • Diversity in race and/or gender.
    • Everyone should appear to be having fun.
    • The mentee should be a neat, pleasant person.
    • The scene should look fun.
    • Firearms should not be “intimidating.”
      • Pistol, rifle, or shotgun (not AR or AK).
      • Not pointed toward the camera.
  • If you need a firearm-free image for social media outlets with strict guidelines surrounding the depiction of firearms, there are several topics you could choose for a photo that would allow you to portray some facet of hunting or target shooting without a gun. Here’s a short list of ideas:
    • Setting up or checking your target
    • Sitting at the range with eye and ear protection on
    • Clays breaking
    • Reading the range safety rules
    • Using binoculars
    • Bow hunting
    • Archery practice
    • Butchering/processing
    • Cooking
    • Scouting
    • Cup of coffee at the truck/car
    • Turkey, duck, or squirrel calling
    • Looking at a map
    • Setting up a tree stand or blind
    • Working with a dog

You can find open-source images for use in R3 efforts in the National R3 Clearinghouse.

Potential Target Audiences

Differences between motivations, concerns, values, abilities, and language can be found in various subsets of the outdoor community. These characteristics make tailoring communication and marketing strategies to the specific needs of unique audiences an essential consideration for R3 efforts. As the population of the country shifts and social norms change, one significant way to consider replenishing and increasing the ranks of hunters and shooting sports participants is by recruiting and retaining a more diverse and representative group of participants. Communication and marketing strategies are also a powerful tool to represent the diversity already present in the hunting and shooting sports communities.

The following sections specifically address how to market to various audiences. This is not a complete list of marketing audiences, but as new R3-related studies emerge, this section will grow to reflect that knowledge. This section will not address the public perception of hunting and target shooting. That is addressed in the section Marketing for Public Support.