Unruled & Unfiltered

For brands in the digital age, social media has become a nearly ubiquitous tool for communicating with consumers, achieving added brand exposure and engaging with followers. In fact, more than three in four small businesses harness social media to strengthen consumer connections, and nearly 92% of U.S. businesses with 100-plus employees include social media in their marketing mix.

Brands and marketers tend to put an outsized amount of focus on acquiring new customers — and understandably so, as that’s how businesses grow. But often, the focus on attracting new audiences can overshadow another important key to long-term business success: keeping the customers you already have coming back.

For brands doing business in the outdoor space, the opportunities to excel in today’s market abound. In fact, according to the 2023 Outdoor Participation Trends Report from the Outdoor Industry Association:

For any business, the holiday season is a critical time for realizing big annual revenues. After all, the end of each calendar year, when holiday shopping is in full swing, is typically when annual profit projections are made or missed. And according to expert forecasts, the 2023 holiday season will present opportunities for growth, with holiday retail sales expected to grow by 3.5% to 4.6% over 2022’s numbers.

It’s a mantra heard far and wide (and over and over again) in professional marketing circles: Know your customer. And when you think about it, it’s a hard principle to dispute.

Cyber Monday 2022 brought a fitting end to what was a record-breaking holiday weekend, according to the Washington Post. Consumers spent $35.4 billion online over that period. As for Cyber Monday, it presents a huge opportunity for online retailers to boost fourth-quarter (and annual) revenues. In fact, since the introduction of Cyber Monday in 2005 as the online answer to the brick-and-mortar-heavy Black Friday, U.S. sales for the added “shopping holiday” have grown from roughly $484 million in its debut to a single-day online record of $11.4 billion (with a B!) in 2022.