What are the most important considerations for hunters and shooters when buying a product? Price? Performance? Service? For most outdoor lovers worth their salt, all of these things are important when weighing up how to spend hard-earned cash. However, in the modern world, there are other, more subtle influences when it comes to purchasing decisions. For instance, how does a product make the buyer feel? Does it give them confidence? Does it make them feel more prepared or resilient? Does it enhance part of their personality or make them feel a trait more strongly than they normally feel? These kinds of soft power influences over buying decisions might seem a little leftfield, but they are a great way to help brands and retailers grow sales if carried out correctly.
Mindset training goes mainstream
Most people have gone through some kind of hardship in their lives, whether that be something as small as not getting the promotion you were aiming for, or something more consuming like grief. Overcoming challenges in life increases our preparedness and our resilience. During the dark days of 2020 and the pandemic, many people were forced to reassess their preparedness and had to face up to the psychology of survival in a very direct way. This event, combined with global conflicts, climate change, and other potentially existential threats, has meant that the psychology of survival has become much more mainstream.
Whether people acknowledge it consciously or experience it unconsciously, traits such as resilience, hope, purpose, and adaptability are important attributes that people are seeking out in their daily lives – and that extends to when they buy products. And for hunters and shooters, who normally spend a large part of their time doing their hobby in situations where survival of some kind is more keenly felt, this mindset change is potentially more prominent and something the industry could and should be taking advantage of.
What does it mean for retailers?
It’s all well and good saying that brands and retailers should emphasise that the gear they sell will help increase the buyer’s confidence, resilience, and mental preparedness, but how do you actually do that? Of course, there’s no simple answer, but there are some ideas. One of those ideas is an age-old marketing term that in English goes: “Sell the sizzle, not the sausage.” In basic terms, this means that you should be promoting how a product makes someone feel or what it will enable them to do, rather than just the features. For example, focusing the marketing of a shooting tripod around how it can help shooters shoot with confidence on rugged, remote, and beautiful terrain, rather than listing off the materials it’s made of or even how much it weighs.
