How Emerging Technologies Are Affecting Marketing in the Outdoor Industry

The future of emerging technologies in marketing is an exciting one. Within the space of three years, the number of marketing professionals using Martech (marketing technology) grew by 186% and the Martech industry is expected to grow by 18% from 2020 to 2027.

Where does the outdoor industry stand in all this?

The outdoor industry is not only about exploring woods and mountains. It is also about brands that deal with outdoor accessories, footwear, and equipment for outdoor activities. It is about outdoor enthusiasts that engage in mountain climbing, kayaking, whitewater rafting, and other outdoor activities.

According to the Outdoor Industry Association, the outdoor industry generated about $887 billion in consumer spending alone. Much of this spending is a result of effective marketing tactics. Marketing in the outdoor industry is highly competitive and smart brands who embrace innovation are staying ahead of their competitors and increasing their consumer spending power.

How are they doing so today?

How Emerging Technologies are Affecting Marketing in the Outdoor Industry

There is an ever-changing marketing world in the outdoor industry. Not only is the competition getting stiffer, but there is also a whole new evolution going on in the outdoor marketing landscape. As an outdoor brand, you have to educate your prospects on why your product or service is a preferable choice and then take steps to convert them into sales. Whether you decide to choose an outdoor marketing agency or not, here are a few emerging technology trends that are affecting the outdoor industry in 2023:

1. Augmented and Virtual Reality

Augmented and virtual reality provide immersive experiences that improve outdoor industry marketing campaigns. How?

Video Marketing

This type of marketing has become popular in this digitalized world. New emerging technologies like Augmented/Virtual reality and live video are great avenues for a successful outdoor industry campaign. Outdoor brands are creating 360-degree ad videos, using drones to create light shows and holographic projections for their marketing campaigns. Fancy right? How about you try this out in your next outdoor campaign?

Digital Out-of-Home Ads (DOOH)

Outdoor brands are also using AR/VR to improve immersive customer experience and increase customer engagement. AR/VR is helping outdoor marketers with several measurable strategies like location-specific targeting, interactive billboards, drones, and other marketing activities that improve customer experience.

Inbound Marketing

You may have carried out traditional outbound strategies in reaching customers. While these tactics are still relevant, you are likely to get better success with inbound marketing tactics.

Inbound marketing in the outdoor industry is when an outdoor brand focuses on building the interests of prospects, providing value for them, and converting them into customers. An inbound marketing tactic aims to show customers what you have, turn them into enthusiasts, and slowly into customers.

Adding AR/VR to your inbound marketing campaign will hasten this process for you. It helps your prospects to be quickly immersed in your product and know how you are creating a difference with your campaigns.

2. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

AI is changing the outdoor industry marketing one step at a time. There are several ways AI is doing this today. Here are are a few key areas:

Paid Ads

Running paid ads is a common marketing practice in the outdoor industry. With AI and machine learning tools, you can create more personalized ads and segment your target audience with more information. How?

AI helps businesses to detect their target audience's emotions and determine whether people are happy or angry.
Then the AI algorithms can set up personalized ads based on the data from people.

This interactive and personalization feature is becoming very important in today’s fast-paced commercial world as it helps outdoor businesses improve their marketing efforts to keep up with the demands of their prospective customers.

In-depth Monitoring and Analysis

AI and machine learning tools have made it possible for outdoor brands to monitor and analyze important data. These tools help businesses to optimize customer data and provide marketing and ROI evaluation by using key performance indicators (KPIs). Also, as these AI tools improve analytics, brands can better improve their content creation and customer retention efforts.

Content Marketing

A good story can turn your prospects into loyal customers. Smart outdoor brands know how important storytelling is to customer retention. AI is helping outdoor brands create stories that reach their target audience. With AI algorithms, outdoor marketers can understand their customer's preferences and create content that improves customer engagement.

3. Web3

Web3 might be a new innovation, but it has great potential that outdoor brands shouldn’t miss out on. Web3 is a new generation of the Internet that focuses on interacting with users and devices directly and providing an open Internet for all. Web3 promotes personalized user experience and it has great potential in the digital marketing space. Smart outdoor brands that recognize the importance of Web3 and take advantage of it in their marketing strategies are benefiting. How are they doing so?

Brand Awareness

Outdoor marketers are using blockchain tools to create awareness by issuing tokens, NFT collectibles, and digital asset ownership to customers and prospects. People who spend their time creating content for the outdoor industry or outdoor enthusiasts are benefiting from Web3. These enthusiasts can earn rewards in the form of tokens and NFTs and this can be converted into real cash.

Customer Experience

Web3 helps outdoor brands put their customer first in their marketing efforts. It helps to improve targeted marketing efforts, ad fraud prevention, and other customer interactions. Web3 equips outdoor marketers with tools that improve the virtual relationship of customers. Also, this technology promotes customer data privacy through its private infrastructure.

Outdoor Brands that are Using Emerging Technologies in Their Marketing Campaigns Today

Adidas

Adidas, an outdoor brand launched an AR/VR campaign in 2017 that allowed people to follow two mountaineers in real time. Through virtual reality, people were able to virtually experience climbing the Delicatessen peak from two mountain climbers' POVs. This campaign helped users to understand how rock climbing works and enjoy the real outdoor experience.

Bass Outdoor

Bass Outdoor adopted an interactive ad campaign to establish its POV on the outdoors. Origin Outside assisted in bringing this campaign into reality by creating a 60-second interactive video that introduces the brand as a perfect outdoor companion to its target audience.

TOMS

The shoe brand TOMS provided an immersive experience to customers as part of their humanitarian campaign to donate shoes to people. With VR, customers got a virtual experience of what it is like to give shoes to children with the staff. The reactions to this were positive and emotional.

HUCK Token

This is an ERC-20 token that is built on ETH blockchain for community members who engage in outdoor activities. The main use of this token is to reward anyone engaging in an outdoor activity or creating content for the outdoor industry. Even outdoor enthusiasts who do not understand how cryptocurrency or Web3 works can benefit from this token.

In Summary

Outdoor businesses, whether big or small, need to embrace the innovation that emerging technologies are bringing to improve their marketing campaigns. Technology is there to make things interesting, and it’s up to you to improve your outdoor industry marketing strategy with technology.