Customer Experience: The Heartbeat of Go Outdoors 🌳

I didn't realise it at the time, but I was part of their ecosystem, a loyal customer, making repeat purchases.

Think about it:

• More sales were going online

• They were getting amazing Life-Time Value (LTV) from me

• They weren't the cheapest - if price was the only factor, I would have ordered from Decathlon

All signs of a successful long term business, growing and adding value to their community.

"Covid killed off in person retail, the high street is dead."

No…

The high street's purpose is changing.

Their CEO, Lee Bagnall, clearly understands this, or at least he should do if he reads my Gymshark newsletter. His team are approximately a third of the way through their "nationwide refurbishment program". With an exciting new flagship store opening in York in September. Arguably with good timing from Covid, as it got more people going outside and thinking about their mental health.

My story of going back to the store to test for size, ask questions, and buy right must be a common occurrence. Their new stores are not there for audience discoveryability; they have a different purpose: customer experience.

The store will offer products for nearly everything you want to do outdoors (trust me, I've lost hours in the tent section). And a range of brands, such as Rab, to more affordable ones like Blacks (which is part of their JD Sports and Leisure Group).

But more impressive is what they will offer the customers:

• Boot and Rucksack fitting

• Parcel drop off stations

• Collection points

• Alpine Café

I sincerely hope they plan on finding ways to have more conversations with their customers. Sephora uses IRL experiences to disrupt the beauty industry. Having face-to-face conversations to build trust, educating them, and getting their immediate opinion on products. Which enables them to change and adapt their offerings fast - and be the industry disruptor.

Which is why Lee is planning on using IRL experience to drive URL sales.

You could imagine my excitement when I saw they are using a brand ambassador (Helen Skelton) to promote the launch event.

But, out of their 24 meta ads, 1 of them was promoting their launch event. Without UGC, with no clear CTA and describing what they offer - not the outcome people get.

With 41% of their social media traffic coming from Facebook, and low engagement on there. I suspect there is a reasonable amount of ad spend. Which I suspect could easily see 2x, 3x or more results if they had complete strategy applied across their whole ecosystem.

Especially if they're brand ambassador was a creator - not an influencer.

Work with influencers or creators?

Of course, the answer to this question depends - on the company's goals, targets, vision, etc.

But some things that you need to remember during the planning phase:

Followers ≠ Views

Views ≠ Conversions

Conversions ≠ Profitable LTV

Helen is a TV presenter and has 511K Instagram followers She and her family are passionate about the outdoors, and she seems to also be presenting a new series with a TV channel out of a mountain range in Wales.

Across her last 32 pieces of content, she averages 182K views. With one of them a collaboration post with Go Outdoors, it reached 146K views (19.8% below the average). I think the purpose of it was to promote the back to school range. But I am not entirely sure.

Whether this is an effective partnership for Go Outdoors depends on what they are trying to achieve, and their wider strategy with her. But if they are trying to get attention through content, this isn't working, and if they want to see conversions, I am not confident in that either. Especially with no content on TikTok either.

Soon, every company will be a media company.

Making a YouTube series that their community would enjoy watching and engaging with could be very effective, especially with a TV presenter. But their social media shows no signs of this so far, or with it being within their existing teams abilities.

So, if you want content that gets views, educates your audience, and seamlessly integrates products - partner with creators.

And if you want a face for the brand - you want someone who is authentic, shares your values, and is relatable to your community.

Bonus tip:

I spent 5 minutes coming up with some potential ambassadors for them.

Check it out in the actionable steps section.

Creating content with no plan and putting it up will get me results

Social media dominates our time and choices.

The amount of content online has increased exponentially, but our attention spans have remained the same.

It’s obvious you need to be using it - but the competition is getting more fierce, there is constant innovation, and the top few percentiles

get most of the results.

You must have a robust social media plan that delivers to your wider brand strategy.

Their best content typically has a good hook and storytelling, which is not a well-kept industry secret. But there is so little content; achieving discoverability through content is pure luck for them at this point.

“Volume negates luck.” - Alex Hormozi

This lack of volume is responsible for 4.7% of traffic being from social media sources. And when you break that down, Instagram doesn’t show up on the list of the top social media traffic - even though it is the highest-ranking platform for Gen Z to make a direct purchase.

What’s more worrying is that Reddit is responsible for 12% of their traffic, but most of the conversations on there are negative. So the good news is that their “team of expert advisors” in their flagship store can also go into these subreddit groups to take immediate feedback on their service and offer advice/experience there.

In-person advice = Selling 1:1

Online advice = Selling 1: Many

Actionable Steps

Go Outdoors mission is to "Inspire and Equip everyone for Life Outdoors”.

Regardless of whether your band goal is this ambitious or not, here’s how I would be tackling this if I were them.

1) Get the right eyeballs on you.

Who is your customer? Where are they spending their time? What are they talking about?

They have a wide audience, because they offer products for everything outdoors.

The top topics their customers are talking about is hiking, camping and tents. I could drill this down further for you to tell you the exact questions they have, about almost everything. But for the sake of a quick example, with tents - staying organised in tents, identifying stains, camping hacks, dogs in tents, group size, dealing with the rain and gifts.

Content is the new SEO.

So they need to make content answering these questions. Which their customers will always come back to (Evergreen content).

To tap into what people are currently searching (trends), they need to make this content:

They need to make content around: Lake District camping, seven sisters hiking, hiking belts, woodland grove camping, Bristol balloon fiesta 2024 camping.

Knowing what to talk about is the easy part. Doing it in the right way is tricky. So get the correct people doing it for you.

My quick 5 minute ambassador shortlist for them. They have a range of follower size, and post frequency. 

• https://www.youtube.com/@WildBeare/videos

• https://www.youtube.com/@PaulMessner/videos

• https://www.youtube.com/@GirlOutdoors/videos

• https://www.youtube.com/@thetrailhunter4469/videos

• https://www.youtube.com/@ScotlandsMountains/videos

• https://www.youtube.com/@AbbieBarnesWILD/videos

• https://www.youtube.com/@simonablokeinthewoods/videos

• https://www.youtube.com/@GoodBlokeOutdoors/videos

• https://www.youtube.com/@DaleyOutdoors/videos

But they capture their audience's attention well, and Go Outdoors can help them to monetise from that with revenue shares, sponsorships, and a social media support team.

2) Nurture that audience.

You have the attention; now you need to do something with it.

You want to do at least one of these four things:

1. Inspire 

2. Educate 

3. Entertain 

4. Persuade

And we can do this in different locations within their ecosystem.

• Messaging groups (WhatsApp, Telegram)

• Social media (YouTube, Instagram)

• Messaging forums (Reddit)

• In-person (Stores, Events)

• Newsletters

You need to think about the flow of people and attention throughout these locations (ecosystem). There’s no right answer, every brand will be different and largely dependent on their audience.

One example:

Partner with brand ambassadors that authentically use and promote their products. They educate their audience on their pain points and entertain them with their content.

They persuade people to join a newsletter where they offer more information or exclusive offers. 

This centralised location would have updates on the Go Outdoors community as a whole. Updating on events, prize giveaways, new products, and other ambassadors for people to spend their time watching - cutting through the online noise and communicating directly with their community.

3) Convert. 

Their audience knows who they are, they trust them, and now they want to buy. 

But we don’t want them to just make one purchase - LTV:CAC ratio will be essential for their long-term success.

The 3 things I’d be telling them to think about:

1. Generating other revenue streams

2. Loyalty schemes

3. Advocacy

How can they offer extra value to their community that they’d be willing to pay for? Could they make a hiking event similar to “The Wolf Run”.

How do they get them to continue making purchases without focusing on price wars? Loyalty schemes, prize draw competitions

Can they get their community to promote itself? Referral schemes, relatable and shareable content online and in person experiences that people want to share.

My Special Birthday Gift 🎁

I’m writing this newsletter on my birthday.

I’ve been used to having my Birthday in the summer all my life, but now I’m south of the equator. It's during the winter.

You’re probably wondering why I’m enjoying spending 5 hours of my ‘big day’ writing my analysis down on a Google doc…

I’m not.

But I caught a viral infection since moving to Brazil and I haven’t been able to leave the house. 

So celebrations next week and the only gifts are the ones I am giving to my readers below!

Check out the whole case study below: