Marketing your fishing charter business requires much thought. Even the most organized captain may struggle to get fishing charter leads, keep track of their tasks, and offer excellent service when their phone keeps ringing.
In addition, these are challenging times for starting business owners. Forbes reported that only 70% of new businesses could survive the first two years.
However, the difference between sinking and swimming isn’t in the product’s quality, the service, or the value for most businesses. It is the passion and dedication they put into it every day.
A small business’s success is mainly dependent on its ability to market its service and generate leads effectively. Clever marketing is the only way to keep a steady stream of customers. This is also true for fishing charters.
How do you do this? How can you make places and engines like Google rank you third on the search results page for fishing charters or even higher?
How can you ensure your satisfied customers return to you again and again?
You will need to know the secrets to make it to small business owners’ top. We can help you by going over the current strategies that work for your business today.
Make a Beautiful Website
A recent survey found that more than half of small businesses don’t have a website to promote their services.
Do yourself a favor, and get a domain name as soon as possible if you are one of these small businesses. It will cost you approximately ten dollars, and you will have this lead place where most of your leads will land.
Websites are the core of any company’s lead generation strategy. It’s the first thing most anglers see to find out about your company and decide whether they want to book a trip.
The first impression is made in a split second, so make sure it looks good.
According to research, most people give websites four seconds to load before moving to the following website.
Avoid putting too many widgets on your websites, such as singing fish or other distractions that could slow down page loading. It would help create a user-friendly interface with all your contact information visible.
It would help if you addressed the customer’s needs and even some questions on your home page. These are the questions that need answers most of the time:
- What fish can I catch?
- Is the boat safe and comfortable?
- What level of experience do the captain and crew have?
- What types of trips are you offering, and what is the cost? Are there additional charges?
- How do I contact you?
It shouldn’t be a surprise that galleries and fishing reports pages are the ones that receive the most attention as they show what people can do visually and also answer a couple of questions.
Thus, consider adding media as well. People love to see what your most excellent catch was and what they are catching when they plan to go sealing with you. A high-quality camera is a must, and you should regularly update your reports page to include new angling stories.
Potential customers will be able to see that you are always putting your clients on the fish. You’re also letting people know that you are still in business and will continue to maintain a solid online presence.
SEO and PPC: Spend Money to Make Money
SEO (also known as “natural” and “organic”) is one of the most challenging endeavors but one that will definitely return your investment in time and money when done right.
It requires persistence and time to get to the top search results for your keywords and all SEO parameters that matter. However, it is not rocket science.
As you may know, PPC ads and local search engine images appear right under organic search results. To optimize your fishing charter website for organic search placement, you will need to focus on key areas. These are:
- Titles.
- Meta Descriptions.
- Alt tags.
- Content is critical (the more you create content, the more keywords you can target).
- Internal linking (linking between pages within your site).
- Inbound linking (getting links from sites that link back).
- Site Speed/Page Speed is critical, especially for mobile SEO.
- Headers.
- Footers.
- H1’s/H2’s.
- Canonicals.
- URL Naming.
- Custom 404 pages.
- Redirects (301’s, 302’s, etc.).
- Robots.txt.
- Navigation/Layout.
- Calls-to-Action Placement.
- Social Signals (linking back from social profiles to site pages).
We understand that the above list may seem overwhelming. However, effective organic SEO requires covering every possible angle to address search engine algorithms like Google’s.
Apart from covering all bases with periodic updates to your coding (titles/meta, H1s, etc.), you should regularly focus on two areas.
These are building new pages in blog posts/articles or new landing pages and continuing link development activities to increase your ranking potential for the most critical phrases.
We recommend that you have a content calendar created and put into practice to ensure that you are formulating valuable content for your target audience.
Local SEO is a critical digital marketing channel that local boat rental and fishing charter operators use to offer their services.
Google My Business requires several areas to optimize your charter’s visibility in the “three-pack” highlighted below.
Here are some areas that fishing charters should focus on for local SEO.
- The Business Name (it should match the legal name on the listing).
- A precise address.
- Unique to your location is a local phone number.
- A valid email address, which is verified regularly and official.
- The main website is linked.
- An SEO-optimized description.
- A primary category describes the business, with at least one class being Google sanctioned.
- Hours of operation at the office.
- Accepted Payments.
- Photos.
- Videos.
- Additional details (fully customizable).
- Contributing regularly to the profile with content such as blog posts, special offers, and limited-time offers.
- Continued citation building (listings in other directory style sites like Yelp, Merchant Circle and Superpages, Citysearch, etc.
If no one can locate your website online, your website is useless, and your online marketing will fail. Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and PPC (Pay-per-Click), are two paths that will lead you to the top page of Google.
PPC advertising, such as Google Ads, is an excellent way for your brand to be seen by people actively searching for fishing charters within the region you offer.
As the name suggests, Pay-Per-Click marketing is based on a per-click/per site visitor basis. Several factors determine this. Keywords and phrases that you are targeting, and the price your competition will pay per click
Matching Options: Broad match, modified broad match, and exact phrase match.
Geo-targeting options are available if you want to target a specific area and your ads only appear in that area.
Google Ads gives fishing charters the option to limit how much they spend each day, week, or monthly. If you have only three hundred dollars per month to spend on PPC, you can specify that amount to three hundred dollars and spread it out over the month. This can help you budget for PPC. You pay when a client clicks on the ad you have placed and is sent to your website.
PPC is a must-have for your charter company looking to bring in qualified leads. This is especially true if charters have older websites or a minimal presence online.
Research shows that people click less on links that are advertisements. SEO is therefore crucial. However, achieving natural search engine rankings can be a tedious and long-term goal. You have to work hard even if you are at the top.
PPC allows you to get on the first page of Google immediately, and you can see the results in just hours when done right, but this means that more than SEO, you need a combination of both.
Tip: We are heavily invested in PPC, so listing your boat will give you access to the same traffic that you would otherwise have to pay. It would help if you had a marketing team to optimize your listing for search engines to rank for specific keywords.
Promoting Yourself through Various Media
You can use social media for more than just sharing photos with friends and family. Social media allows businesses to showcase their unique experiences. This is an integral part of a charter fishing company’s offering.
Charter fishing captains who can demonstrate that their experience is superior to others can win more business. It is difficult to show that you provide a better experience than the competition without high-quality content, so this will come with a lot of work.
Social media lead generation tools offer many benefits, including a large user base and the possibility of targeted advertising.
You can target customers you believe to be the majority of your customer base with Facebook or Instagram’s advertising platforms. These are either newlyweds on a fishing trip or casual fishers looking for some fun, and social media makes it easy to reach them.
You can also use social media to create fan pages and groups on Facebook for your business. This will allow you to increase existing customers’ engagement and provide updates about deals and other happenings in your charter fishing business.
Instagram and Facebook are incredible social media platforms. These sites boast over two billion users.
People can also use them to find additional information about fishing charters, such as reviews and images. This information will help them choose which charter they want to book.
We recommend that charter businesses use images extensively in their social media marketing. Images like customers holding up a prized catch, YouTube videos like someone pulling in an Atlantic Goliath grouper, and other pertinent photos should all be used frequently.
Regular updates beyond images and videos, such as memes, funny GIFs, or events your charter might be great to spice things up.
Social media is a solid tool that you can use to your advantage. Although Instagram and Facebook offer great PPC opportunities, it is free to create a profile and connect with customers. It is vital to make the most of this opportunity!
Create a business page that people like and follow. Keep in mind what your clients want to see and build profiles around it.
YouTube is essential, but other video-based social media apps like Tik-Tok or Snapchat are exploding. Keeping up with all the latest social media trends online can seem overwhelming. But guess what? This is precisely what seventy percent of failed companies thought.
On the other hand, you might consider holding a contest via social media where one can win a free or discounted trip. You can announce the competition to everyone you can.
Call your clients and inform them about the prizes. This will drive traffic to your profile, and once they start to flock in, it’s time for you to shine.
For content inspiration, visit fishing charters’ Instagram and Facebook pages.
Fishing charters advertise catches, locations, charters, and even special charters to improve lead quality and provide high-quality leads. This helps generate traffic to our website, but it also offers you extra exposure!
Keep Customers Coming Back
You’re losing an opportunity to build a relationship with your customer if you cut off contact when they leave your vessel or when your business is over.
While providing a memorable fishing experience for your customer is a great way to build repeat business, you can use them to give yourself new sales-qualified leads.
After the trip, your primary goal should be to ensure that the customer has a good impression of you. It is possible to do this in just a few steps.
Keep in touch. Newsletters and regular emails to customers can be a great reminder of how memorable the experience was. With email marketing, you will let them know what you think will make their next fishing trip even more enjoyable.
Your newsletter should be personal for generating leads. Did you find anything memorable or fun during the trip they will remember over anything else? There were a few jokes that you couldn’t stop telling? You can incorporate these moments throughout the day to create a warm, nostalgic atmosphere that will make potential customers want to return again and again.
Loyal customers can get discounts and gifts with a personal signature.
Are you selling merchandise? Have you ever seen a customer get excited about something and manage to capture it? Your imagination and budget are the only limitations.
You’re sure to receive positive reviews through planned lead generation campaigns. This builds trust and encourages potential customers to book with you.
Customers look at previous buyers’ comments and star ratings when looking to purchase or book any product or hire a service. You have endless opportunities to engage in marketing campaigns for your fishing charter! Keep up the great work!
Do not be afraid to ask your customers for recommendations in your lead generation process. Your customer would be happy to refer their friends if they had a good experience.
Word of mouth is one of the most effective lead generation strategies. This makes your clients your brand ambassadors!
Tip: Offer discounts and the ability to customize trips. Your newsletters for captains, customers, and crews will keep you informed about all fishing news and any changes.
Selling Like Your Life Depends On It
You, the captain, are the heart and soul of your business. It would help if you could sell, as your livelihood depends on this whole charter thing.
You will need to step outside of your comfort zone. This doesn’t mean you have to become a salesman, but you should use every opportunity you can to help promote your business.
You know what you are selling, so it’s okay to promote it. It’s a win for both you and your customer if your sale succeeds.
You might consider speaking at a seminar. Find out where local fishing clubs or sports groups have events where you could give talks. You can create your event if there aren’t any to carry out lead scoring from your potential customers.
If you know everything about the business, why not make it your own? If your local expertise is more well-known, you will likely be able to attract more business.
To promote your company, find out more about your competitors, and form mutually beneficial partnerships, you should attend events in your industry as well.
Trade shows are a great place to book charter fishing trips. It will help you fill your schedule with marketing campaigns by consistently being present.
Mingling is a solid way to meet people, even if you aren’t leading the discussion. Hand out unique business cards to all those you meet. Here creativity is at its best. Your business card should stand out so potential customers notice it.
Pro tip: Find a similar business venture to partner with. A service that complements your own is a good idea. You could partner with a local fish shop so that your clients can enjoy the catch. This will increase your customer experience and presence.
Additionally, list your boat online to promote your services. Your sales teams should have experts that will cover most of these points and market you to thousands every day.
A Huge Collection of Great Reviews
A TripAdvisor page is a great way to promote your fishing charter business as a budding provider while also getting reviews outside of your Google profile or website.
You will attract new customers and ensure your customers continue to choose you for their fishing trips if you are present in places where most of them are looking for the service.
You will be able to get great Google reviews if you direct every customer who comes to you for services after each fishing trip as well, so you don’t necessarily need to use the page as an additional review option but rather connect it to the main one.
Your chances of getting repeat business and new customers will increase if you have positive reviews.
Bad reviews can ruin your charter’s reputation. Keep an eye on your 5-star rating on Google My Business, Facebook, and other sites that offer review options, but if you get bad ones, just focus on offering solutions since how you reply will speak louder than the review itself.
Offering Customers Branded Freebies or Special Discounts.
You should turn your customers who are happy to be your brand ambassadors and give them freebies. You could provide them with bottle openers, pens, t-shirts, or stickers. This will increase your fishing trips’ value and give your brand exposure.
It will also help drive your business up.
Your website can offer great discounts for the group, advance, or repeat bookings from time to time, so people also know they need to check the page, and thus, they will visit often.
You will be able to entice past and current customers to return and book advanced bookings for the season. Your website will be the talk of the town, and it will attract more fishermen tour enthusiasts. You will also gain new customers.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Fishing Charter Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Fishing Charter Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Fishing Charter Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.