It is time for Guides, Outfitters and Lodges to get out of the dark ages and get tech savvy.

These six ideas and technologies will help you drive sales and increase customer loyalty. The good news? Most of them are free or cheap – so there are no excuses!

1. Evaluate your Website
Many Guides, Outfitters and Lodges have websites that are a few years old and are out of date. As more people are looking to the web to find information it is important that your site is attractive and includes the right information – services, location, rates, staff information etc. Make sure that your customers can find all the right information on your site. Websites used to be a big investment, but today you can get basic changes and upgrades for a few thousand dollars (or less). Make your site a priority.

2. Get Found with Search
Once you’ve fixed your site, spend some time looking at your search engine rankings. Potential customers are increasingly searching online for hunting and fishing guides, outfitters and Lodges. Make sure that your site is optimized for search.  Contact Outdoor Adventure Marketing for a free Search Engine Marketing Snapshot, you need to know where you stand.

3. Tweet
Twitter is growing quickly and offers many interesting marketing opportunities. You can post about new offerings, or other specials or deals. This can be a great way to connect with your audience. Setting up an account is free, but spend some time learning about twitter to get the most out of it. Check out Twitter for Adventure Lodges for twitter tips and tricks. Keep an eye on who is tweeting your links and more. Use backtweets.com and twazzup.com search engines for Twitter.

4. Facebook Fan Page
Facebook can be a great way to keep your fans up to date on events and specials you offer. To be effective at Facebook you have to do more than just create a fan page. Connect with your fans (these people already like you and are interested). Give them something to talk about. Share pictures, funny stories and insider information. Facebook can be very time consuming and addictive, enter cautiously into this media.

5. Monitor Your Online Reputation
These “online reputation management” tools will help you to define keywords or phrases you wish to track and then watch for any mention of your company name, products, or services. It’s important to defend and monitor your online reputation. Protecting your image online is the name of the game, and just as in real life, everybody has one to maintain.

 addictomatic.com : A little different than the others, you type in a keyword, topic or phrase and out it goes searching the top blogs, news sites, Google, Technorati, Ask, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Topix and more. You’ll be given a personalized results page to bookmark with everything it finds related to your topic.

google.com/alerts : I’ve been using this “secret weapon” for years. Simply type in your name or company name and receive daily emails of results found. They do the work, you receive the links. Free and nice.

sitemention.com : Type in your url and find out what’s being said about you. The results returned are gathered from Google Blog Search, Twitter, FriendFeed, YouTube, MySpace, Digg, Delicious and many more.

6. Email Campaigns
Start with the gold mine you already own, the relationship and contact information you already have with existing customers. An email campaign allows you to build customer loyalty, start new conversations with old inquiries and guests. By building these customer relationships, you keep your lodge in the forefront when they decide the location of their next adventure. Contact us today for information on how to profit from the gold mine you already own.