How To Get More Trips Through Email - The Perfect Marketing Strategy For Fishing Guides
Last year my wife and I took our dream vacation to the Dominican Republic, and while there we wanted to get out and explore the countryside. The locals have learned that tourism is a huge boost for their economy, and they offer excursions doing everything you could possibly think of on the beach and in the jungle.
Most of the trips tried to up-sell pictures they took of you during the excursion. One of these for us was while riding dune buggies, and we took them up on the offer. The pictures were from an angle we weren’t able to get during the action, and those photos are now memories that we never would have gotten otherwise.
As a fishing guide you have the best vantage point to capture those moments for your clients. The photos you take of them fighting fish, or the whole family holding the monster they just caught, are memories that a selfie wouldn’t properly capture.
There’s no need to up-sell your clients on the pictures like they did in the Dominican, however you can easily use them to increase your business. Those pictures not only help make sure your clients want to come back with you, but they can also grow your social proof and persuade more potential clients to book with you.
How To turn your pictures into more trips
The basic strategy is to grow your business with the pictures you take through email marketing.
This starts by taking plenty of high quality pictures of your clients throughout their fishing trip. The better quality pictures you take, the more special it will feel to them. Today’s smartphones have great cameras, but you can also take some amazing shots with a DSLR camera like the Nikon D3500 for around $400, or even cheaper if you buy used.
At the end of the fishing trip be sure to let your clients know that you would like to email them all of the high quality pictures you took during their trip. If you don’t already have their email be sure to get it from them.
Take all of those photos and edit them as much as you feel confident in. Simply removing any blurry photos, cropping the rest so everything is centered, and using auto-enhance is generally enough. With a little practice, and some YouTube guidance, you can really make your pictures pop, and set yourself apart from everyone else.
Pro Tip: These photos make great content for your social media as well. Since the editing is already done, all you need to do is post them on your Facebook and Instagram pages.
Now that you’ve edited all of the pictures it’s time to send the email. It can be as simple or lengthy as you like. The key is to push them to leave a positive review on either Google or TripAdvisor. To get the positive reviews ask them if they had a positive experience on their trip. If they click yes it takes them to a page to leave a review. If they click no it takes them to a feedback form on your website so you can know what went wrong and improve on it without the negative review being public.
Here is an example of what this would look like:
To get a link that takes them straight to your Google reviews search for your business >> click “Write a Review” on your business listing >> then copy the link from the browser.
Why Reviews Will Help Grow Your Business
Social proof is huge when it comes to the visibility of your business, and getting more people to select your guide service over the competition.
When doing the research for what excursions to take during our vacation to the Dominican Republic reviews played a huge part on deciding what to do, and what companies to use. The more reviews a company had the more likely they were to appear at the top of the searches. Also a company that had 100’s of reviews came across as more reliable and popular than one that only had a few even if they were all 5 stars.
For most fishing guides building up your number of Google reviews should be your first priority. The majority of people looking for information on fishing will be doing it through Google. Once you have more reviews than your competition it’s time to focus on TripAdvisor. You can easily change the link in your emails depending on where you want to focus the reviews.
Get Out There And Practice
Now that you know how to grow your business by taking more pictures get out there and practice. Take pictures during every trip, and always be sure to send the email afterwards. The more you do it the better you’ll get, and the more trips you’ll book.