Creating and Holding Customer Interest

The best way to create and hold your customers’ interest is by being accessible, relevant and receptive to the community’s needs. You can generate excitement by hosting events and tournaments and spreading the word about those events on social media. Once customers are in the door, you’ll hold their interest by hosting reoccurring events, like leagues or date nights, and keeping an active inventory with products that cover all budget levels. If you need some guidance to get started, our ATA member benefits have you covered.

A Dynamic Website

A well-crafted website can greatly enhance your marketing efforts and has become essential in today’s age to reach both local and non-local customers. Connect your shop to a Google Business account, and tag it as an archery shop. This should populate your shop’s address and phone number on the front page of the search engine results when customers search for archery shops in your city. Give potential customers a sense of what they’ll find at your shop by keeping your site updated with new events, gear and shop announcements. When people are searching for a business in a niche market and they find one that offers the services they’re looking for with great reviews to back it up, they’ll be more likely to put in the miles to give that business patronage.

The ATA offers a course on this very topic through the Learning Center. “Build Your Own Low-Cost Website” teaches users how to secure a domain, find a web host, build a site and manage the Google Business listing. You’ll also get a bonus lesson on how to add video content to your site and increase your customer reviews.

This course is free for ATA members. Click here to purchase the course.

Enticing Events

People love experiences! Make sure your shop offers fun and exciting events, like themed archery shoots, wild game dinners or charity tournaments. If you can get a new customer in the shop with a curated event, you’re opening the door for them to come back for more lessons, league nights, new equipment and other events. That one night could create a lifelong customer.

The ATA offers multiple resources for creating and crafting events at your range, such as:

Archery and Bowhunting Event Ideas

- A 12-month calendar with different event ideas for each month
- Free for members
- Click here to download

Archery Event Planning Workbook

- A workbook with detailed, well-organized plans for hosting an archery event from the planning stages to conducting the event
- Free for members
- Click here to download

Archery Range Guide: Retail Edition

- Assists retailers with establishing their own archery range. Operating a range is a profitable and effective tool to build archery participation. If you’ve been thinking about adding a range to your shop, this is the perfect place to start.
- Free for members
- $30 for nonmembers
- Click here to download

The range guides are being updated over the summer by our Outreach team to ensure that our members are receiving the most up-to-date, helpful and relevant information to guide them in creating their archery ranges.

Old and New Inventory

Once you’ve created interest in your shop through exciting events, you can hold the customers’ interest by making sure your shelves are always stocked with an assortment of products. Keep older bow models on hand for budget-conscious archers, but also make sure you have some new bows to display for those that want to upgrade. Striking the right balance in your inventory will keep current customers coming back and entice new archers to get into the game.

Social Media

Use social media to post about your events and showcase your gear. Livestream tournaments or post product reviews to keep your customers engaged. If they’re intrigued by what they’re seeing, they won’t want to miss out on the next event or the new product you just got in. Remaining active in customers’ feeds will keep your store top-of-mind. You can put these same videos on your website with the knowledge you acquired in the “Build Your Own Low-Cost Website” course.

Become an ATA Member

Joining the ATA will grant you free access to all of these helpful documents which will teach you ways to create and hold customer interest. Check out our membership types on the member dashboard at membership.archerytrade.org/member-types to review the one that’s right for you. Once you’ve chosen a membership type, submit your application and the required documents, and an ATA staff member will review your membership. Membership options for retailers start at $75. The 2025-2026 membership year began on April 1, so joining now will give you almost an entire year of benefits plus access to the ATA Trade Show portion of our ATA Show Week!

2026 ATA Show

The expanded ATA Show is now a nearly week-long event and will be held at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis Jan. 7-11, 2026, bringing together the archery and bowhunting community for the archery event of the year. ATA members have access to the ATA Trade Show Jan. 7-8, 2026, both ATA members and the public have access to the Archery & Bowhunting Supershow Jan. 9-10, 2026, and everyone has access to the Rushmore Rumble, Jan. 9-11, 2026.

Questions about membership? Contact Kim Watson at (507) 233-8133 or kimwatson@archerytrade.org.