CEO Blog: Consumer Campaign

Why pack more potential customers into a store’s busiest season? Simple. The vast majority of revenue in the archery/bowhunting industry gets generated by that second word: bowhunting. Our target market, mostly millennial males, is also more motivated by instant gratification than older generations like mine and many of yours. If we drive potential bowhunters into pro shops in spring, but they can’t go afield for six months, the industry would probably lose that customer. Although new customers could add pressure to a shop’s already-hectic selling season, the timing is right for folks who want to pick up a bow for the first time.

Either way, here’s the obvious question: Is the campaign working? Are we driving new customers into our members’ pro shops?

The simple answer is yes. In the campaign’s first two months, our commercials were viewed nearly 24 million times. If the campaign is working as designed, those in the industry, along with veteran archers and bowhunters, haven’t seen it. The campaign’s focus is new participants, not those already here. Our intent in playing the commercial on streaming video services is to create an emotional reaction to picking up a bow. It’s a thrill each of us feels when nocking an arrow.

When a viewer reacts, their next step is to visit the campaign’s website. We’ve seen over 26,000people do just that. From there, they can find their local pro shop, and see if the sport fits them. For those of you with marketing experience, and even those without, we know each step in this process generates increasingly fewer actions. During the campaign’s first 60 days, it drove 3,931 potential customers to our member pro shops.

This is the first time your ATA has tried a campaign like this. We had no benchmarks for measuring success. We’re building and redesigning it as we go to ensure the best possible results. During the campaign’s first month, for example, we aired 15- and 30-second spots. If you’ve spent any time watching streaming videos, you know 30 seconds can feel like an eternity. That proved to be the case for this campaign. Our target audience didn’t stick around long, so we stopped airing that 30-second commercial. Streaming media made that adjustment easy. The second month saw improvement, with nearly a 50% increase in viewers who completed the ad then visited the website. Bottom line? Nearly 4,000 new customers visited pro shops.