How outdoor and wellbeing brands win customers and keep them

How outdoor and wellbeing brands win customers and keep them
This article is second in a series on branding for the outdoors, wellbeing and adventure tourism sector.

Fact: To turn the right customers on to your brand you need to send the right signals at the right time. This works for winning new prospects, and nurturing your existing customers.

So what do we need to do in the outdoors and wellbeing space? The answer is in what makes these brands different to other industries, and why people seek nature-based activities, adventure, personal development and how they find peace in the process.

What are their expectations? What do they care about? What are we actually selling?

Sell the sizzle

In business, it is too easy to get focussed on practical descriptions of products and services and lose sight of what is truly motivating people.

The sausage sizzle is iconic in Australia, why is it so attractive? There is suddenly hunger where there wasn't before, which has less to do with the sausage itself and everything to do with the smells, the sounds, the fond memories of summer barbeques past... this is the sizzle.  

The experiences and products on offer from the outdoor and wellbeing industries target a broad market with different demographics, but they promise the same basic things: enjoyment, adventure, personal fulfilment, health and wellbeing. Even outdoor products are about selling an experience, because they play a vital role in whatever the customer is planning.

So if we're all selling experiences, what are they exactly? Hike to this lookout... Back bending class... These are the sausages.

If that's all you're selling then you're missing the heart of the story. The sizzle is the way the sausage captures your senses, how it makes you feel, creates anticipation and makes you salivate.

Being pushed to your limits, spending time in nature and seeking personal growth are deeply personal experiences. It's hard to put your finger on these things, let alone articulate it to a customer and make a promise about it. And as every outdoor guide will tell you, every client has a unique experience.

So how do we find the sizzle and sell it? We need to talk about brand values, emotions, setting expectations and building trust.

Emotional rewards

"When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion."‌‌– Dale Carnegie

The opportunities for achievement and personal growth in the outdoors and wellbeing experiences puts the spotlight on a important feature of brand theory: emotional rewards.

In very simple terms, these are the positive feelings someone gets from a product, experience or place.

You don't buy a hiking boot just for ankle support. The right boot will improve confidence in safety and performance - an insurance policy.

Seven days splitboarding in NSW backcountry? Some of it is going to hurt, but still you return to tell the story over and over and come back for more.

The promise of an outdoor experience is all the excitement, fear and expectations prior to the trip, the thrill of the trip itself, and how life improves afterwards. It's one long fun emotional rollercoaster.

“Jobs fill your pockets. Adventures fill your soul.” ‌‌– Jaime Lyn Beatty

The importance of emotional rewards

Many industries define emotional rewards in their brand strategy, but for outdoor and wellbeing brands it is central to our promise and offering.

Emotions are important to branding because of the role they play in the formation of memories. The human mind isn't great at remembering what someone said, but it will remember how a person made you feel. If you want your brand to be memorable you need to be pushing the right emotional buttons.

Successful brands define the emotional rewards that they want their customers to feel in a very specific way and use that to inform all design, copywriting and anything else that they are using to communicate to customers. This requires an intimate understanding of your prospective customers and what makes them tick.

Emotional rewards are the result of the customers' effort and your promise.

Top 5 values for outdoor and wellbeing brands

Your brand and your customers have shared values. So this should be easy!

Shared values are fundamental to how people relate to each other, so not suprisingly it's the same for how people and brands relate to each other. Lets list them and break it down.

Every brand is unique, so take this as a set of fundamentals for your brand:

  • Safety (goes without saying)
  • Thrills not spills
  • Achieve my personal best
  • Find peace, feel new
  • Healthy me, healthy planet

Safety has been drummed into us so it has become a way of life and rightly so. Safety is important to outdoor branding because it addresses the basic premise to this whole adventure which is that the customer is putting their lives in your hands. Whatever product or service you provide, a safe experience is paramount. So why should customers trust you with their safety?

Thrills not spills. Well everyone likes a thrill, and no one wants a spill. This is about integrity in your planning and engineering. Whatever you're offering must deliver what it promises and the stakes are high. This is true for clothing and equipment as much as an experience or destination brand.

Help me achieve my personal best. Not everyone is a Reinhold Messner or Lynn Hill. But it doesn't matter. PBs are the number one personal goal for most sportspeople, and although in the outdoors we don't usually have a way to measure it, nor is everyone setting out to break some record. Some kind of challenge is central to the experience. I've seen adults take their first tentative steps on a dirt track. The feelings they get are near-on identical to anyone else trying something new or beyond the limit of what they know, which is what it's all about. PB!

Find peace, feel new. Feel something new, feel renewed... This is where we get deep down to the heart of why we're really seeking these experiences, and what the outdoors and wellbeing businesses offer is unique from any other industry. This is the most rewarding part for the customer, life changing sometimes.

We as an industry compete with many lesser experiences for people's time. None can promise life affirming and life changing experiences the way we can.

Healthy me, healthy planet. In the outdoors and wellbeing we're working with some hot topics: Physical and mental health, the health of our environment, and valuing indigenous culture. These are things that people really care about and have deep concerns about. Our industry is in a position to educate, heal and make a difference, and your customers will thank you. Yes they may be looking for adrenaline or some other self-motivation, but we can also make the experience more rich and unexpected.

Do you have something to add to this list? Let me know.

By understanding how to communicate these values you can find common ground with customers and build trust. Once we have trust, people are more likely to believe your promises, but what are they looking for exactly? It's the sizzle.

Setting expectations

Did someone say promise? The old adage under promise and over deliver is true for the outdoors. It creates delight and builds trust.

You manage customer expectations every day, in a tentative balance between what you can provide vs what the customer is hoping for. Setting expectations is a core function of your brand, and when done well can make your day to day efforts in managing expectations easier.

In the outdoors and wellbeing, expectations naturally run high for a number of reasons:

  • Money invested: Usually customers are putting in effort to budget and save for the outdoors.
  • Time invested: Maybe it's a weekend away from the family, or significant fitness preparation. Like money, time is a precious commodity.
  • Achievement: Not everyone gets a sense of personal achievement in their daily life. People head to the outdoors seeking that kind of fulfilment.
  • Personal growth: Less tangible, but powerful and unique to the outdoors and wellness industries, people who experience life changing personal growth will come seeking it again. The services and products associated with those experiences will find a place in peoples hearts, but equally will generate high expectations.
“Because in the end, you won’t remember the times you spent in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” ‌‌– Jack Kerouac

Building trust

Building and maintaining trust with customers is probably the most basic and fundamental activity of any business. They won't pull out their wallets or commit their precious time otherwise.

My favourite analogy for building trust with a customer is it's like taking care of a houseplant—just the right amount of care, don't overwater, and it will blossom.

Some houseplants are super easy to take care of, others are expert-level.

It's just the nature of the outdoors and wellbeing industries that we fall into the expert-level category when it comes to the need and difficulty in building trust with customers, for obvious reasons: we're talking about are matters close to the heart, are usually spending big or commiting a lot of time, and sometimes putting their safety, or life, in your hands.

This industry helps people step into the unknown, outside the bounds of what they might normally consider safe. That takes guts on both sides. This is true whether your brand is a wellbeing or outdoor product, experience or destination. Can you deliver the thrill? Can you help me achieve a PB? Will I find peace and inspriation?

Outdoor products, experiences and services need to have high integrity, and the prospective customer needs to form a high level of trust before they will be willing to take the leap with you.

Win new customers and keep them

So if you put in the extra effort to build trust with your customers, make clear your shared values, set realistic expectations and appeal to the emotional rewards that they are seeking, you'll get loyal customers. Easy said!

At Studio Outside we will help you build memorable, trusting relationships and set the right expectations. See some of our work »

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