Digital Marketing Strategies for outdoor footwear brands

The current marketing campaigns for the outdoor footwear brands are not what they used to be a decade ago. More than pretty scenery or the beautiful legs of the models, the marketing for outdoor footwear brands has evolved and came a long way in turning conventional calls-to-action on their heads and prompting us to check out the products.    

Lately, the shift in consumer buyer trend is drastic. When it comes to outdoor equipment or gear, the days of physically visiting a store are long gone. Customers are more and more craving for online convenience. The ability to shop from anywhere whether it is a third-party platform like Amazon or the companies’ websites, offers reviews from other customers along with free door delivery.

Millennials with a passion for outdoor brands are one of the primary reasons for the consistent rise in market growth. As an outdoor premium brand, you have to be selective in your marketing approach as your audience is selective in nature. 

Here are the digital marketing strategies for outdoor footwear brands. 

• Authenticity and Inclusivity

Every customer wants to connect with brands that understand his or her needs, wants, interests, and experiences. And when it comes to marketing your outdoor footwear, inclusivity is the key. If every ad or photo shows a model who just wears the footwear and stands in the middle of nowhere, then you are missing out on a big portion of your audience. 

More than selling, you need to focus on telling stories. Highlighting the purpose of your footwear, narrating the story of how they came to be, and a nice explanation as to why they deserve to be worn by every outdoor enthusiast. Keep telling your customers how your brand embodies inclusivity, quality, performance, and more.

• Make Ample Use of Influencers and Brand Ambassadors

Let’s connect with your customers a step further and closer. No matter what product or service you sell, customers enjoy seeing genuine, honest reviews, and feedback from everyday people like themselves and the famous people they follow on social media platforms. Now, a good way to include this in your marketing strategy is by reaching out to people who can connect or relate to your brand and your products on a personal level. 

For instance, compared to celebrities who usually have millions of followers, influencers with less than 100,000 followers have better engagement on their pages with whom you could easily partner for your next social media campaign. For an effective campaign, set clear expectations and share them with the influencers along with the audience personas and branding strategy initiatives. 

• Create brand-owned Content

Yes, influencer relationships can indeed assist companies with brand awareness and pushing sales of their products but it is also important for outdoor brands to invest in their own content creation and publication. In order to maintain a genuine and authentic tone, your brand’s content should add value to the customer’s research or purchasing process while building a reliable relationship. Whatever content you create should match the quality of your outdoor product by creating an impact and consistent. 

Now, the main topic of the discussion, what kind of content you should create for your marketing campaign? When it comes to outdoor footwear brands, you should focus on creating that’s honest, helpful, and one that adds value. For example, first-person stories and insights on the latest cutting-edge technologies assist in building trust with your target audiences. 

• Know What Search Marketing Tactics Are

Once you are done creating content that is both authentic and inclusive from social media influencers and ambassadors, you should make sure that the videos, blog posts, newsletters, or any kind of content on your brand can be easily found online by your customers. Why? Cause your audiences use a variety of tools and a variety of content when it comes to browsing.

The most successful outdoor brands depend on entirely integrated search tactics more than search engine optimization (SEO) or even search engine marketing (SEM) to stand apart from their competitors.

While SEO is useful to get your website, social media pages, or any other content to rank at the top of search engine results pages, on the other hand, SEM is effective to enhance your brand’s content’s visibility in search engine rankings via various ways such as contextual advertising and paid search. 

• Let Your Influencers Talk

In the 2021 digital marketing world, influencers’ word is everything for customers. They hold the power and get the undivided attention of a huge number of followers so that they can see their influencer’s unbiased and honest opinions and reviews of various brands. They are typically seen as fashion gods. So don’t control your influencers’ script. Let them talk and give their honest opinions.  

Summing it up

While the outdoor footwear industry continues to grow, learn more about their audiences’ preferences, adapt to new changes, and become more creative and innovative in their advertising and messaging, brands that overlook such basic yet robust marketing strategies will not be able to win their customers’ hearts or trust.