Businesses in the Gun Industry – gun shops, aftermarket parts distributors, FFLs, or firearms manufacturers – are beset by a unique issue when it comes to digital Marketing. 

Paid advertisements, both on Google and Social Media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, are forbidden. 

This eliminates a whole series of digital marketing channels for businesses in this industry. 

Does this mean these companies are out of luck with respect to digital marketing? 

Far from it. Here’s how to advertise in the gun industry – albeit in some less-than-traditional ways.

SEO and Content Marketing 

Given the fact that SEO is considered by most digital marketers to offer the best ROI of all marketing channels and that organic search still drives more than 10 times more traffic than social media, this hardly seems like a concession.

For our purposes of exploring how to advertise in the gun industry, I’m including content marketing and SEO under the same umbrella, since the lines have blurred and there’s hardly a difference between the two nowadays. 

But, to break it down somewhat, SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing a website to make it favorable to search engines so it ranks better in the results pages. Content marketing is the process of creating content (written blogs, videos, podcasts, etc.) for the purposes of building awareness, credibility, brand loyalty, and of course driving sales. 

It can take a long time with both SEO and content marketing to generate increases, but the gains a business makes are long-lasting and hard to unseat. The results also tend to compound on themselves. 

Building an SEO-Friendly Website 

There are four main pillars of SEO, being off-page, on-page, technical SEO, and content (which is why there is so much common ground between SEO and content marketing). 

There are also over 200 ranking factors that Google uses to assign authority to a website, but with that said, here are some top tips for building an SEO-friendly website. 

• Make sure you have an SSL certificate
• Compress all images before uploading. Uses Google’s Page Speed Insights to determine areas where your page speeds can be improved and take those suggestions. 
• Add alt text to all of your images.
• Allow browser caching and remove outdated/unused/unessential plugins that will slow your website down.
• Replace stock/manufacturer images with images you take yourself. These are better for SEO and credibility.
• Write meta descriptions and product/category descriptions for all product and category pages. Do not copy manufacturer descriptions.
• For any keywords for which you want to rank, include those keywords in your product descriptions, in URL slugs, and in page titles, headers, and subheaders.
• Answer commonly asked questions in product/category page copy. 
• Where you can, include internal links on product pages to relevant categories, or to products that are often bought in tandem. This improves technical SEO, enhances user experience, and creates cross-selling opportunities.
• Ensure all pages can be indexed in Google Search Console. Submit your sitemap regularly. 
• Regularly check for toxic backlinks and disavow them; remove 404 errors or add redirects. 

You’re also going to need to invest in content marketing, which is a huge component of SEO, so I’m going to dedicate the entirety of the next section to content marketing/content in SEO.

Content Marketing Tips 

One whole pillar of SEO, and the entire one that matters in terms of developing credibility and authority among your potential customers, is content. 

To draft any sort of quality content for SEO, you’re going to need to develop a keyword strategy. Identify keywords in your target market using a keyword research tool like SEMRush to find keywords that have decent volume, attainable competition/difficulty scores, and relevant search intent.

Then you’re going to need to start creating CMS pages and drafting blogs and articles that are useful to your readers. These will benefit you both for content marketing purposes and for SEO. 

Good strategies include: 

• Creating evergreen CMS pages dedicated to frequently asked questions. 
• Creating dedicated pages for gun maintenance, shooting techniques, reloading, and relevant topics.
• Writing releases/introductions when you bring new items into your online store or when a manufacturer releases a new firearm line.
• Creating blogs and other articles about relevant or trending topics in your niche. Popular topics include ballistic comparisons, cartridge/platform histories, shooting tips and techniques, firearm laws, and other relevant topics. 

Optimize content both for SEO keywords as well as for readership, and you will be able to use it both for SEO and content marketing purposes. 

For the purposes of advertising in the gun industry, content is your most important asset for several reasons. 

For one, it is the central pillar of SEO, and an asset you will own for many years, that will build your credibility and authority long after other trends come and go. 

Another important reason is that content is one of the main ways to reach your target audience, especially in the gun industry where paid techniques are not permitted. 

Your content is also your voice for creating authority in your niche. This is something that bears a lot of weight in this industry. 

Most shooters and hunters can tell low-quality content a sentence or two into reading it and are unforgiving of factual inaccuracies or content that betrays a writer that is not familiar with the shooting sports. 

Whatever you do, do not populate your website with fluffy content that is basically valueless for readers. Elementary information is acceptable, but don’t be afraid to write about niche topics that may be unfamiliar to beginning shooters. They’ll get there. The more you can cultivate an air of expertise, the more you will develop domain authority that will help buoy up your rankings in the long run.

This makes content one of the best ways to differentiate your business from competitors. The best content wins. 

Organic Social Media Marketing (Including Influencer Marketing)

One other huge prong of organic marketing is organic social media marketing. 

While paid advertising in the gun industry is mostly forbidden, for now, organic avenues remain excellent channels for reaching your target audience. 

Also, social media platforms – such as Instagram and Facebook (especially Instagram) – offer firearm companies a highly effective channel for reaching new users and engaging with existing customers. 

While SEO is a great way to reach a target audience passively by capturing them when they search, social media algorithms will actively pitch accounts and posts to users based on their past interests and history. 

So the more active you are on your social platforms, and the more followers you gain, the more likely you will be to capture new leads. These platforms will actually help you find them. 

One of the keys is to remain active. Post regularly about new products, specials, and articles your website publishes. Instagram is also a great platform, as you can use images to promote products and reels to demonstrate techniques, tricks, and skills. 

It’s equally important to engage with your customers on your social media accounts. Scan the comments and respond where appropriate. It will improve your organic presence and will help humanize your brand. 

Another great way to capitalize on organic social media marketing is with the help of brand partners, or through influencer marketing. 

Influencers, who in this space are typically dedicated competitive shooters and hunters, amass followers through credibility and demonstrable expertise, rather than through image alone (although that doesn’t hurt). 

Influencers in the outdoor market typically have extensive firsthand experience with firearm maintenance, handloading, competitive disciplines like clay shooting and 3-gun, and even hunting and trapping. 

Partnering with these influencers can help you generate additional exposure and will show your users that you are committed to furnishing them with valuable content. 

Take MidwayUSA.com as an example. They’ve relatively recently launched a partner program by teaming up with accounts they call “Brand Ambassadors.” 

By working with industry experts like Scott Linden, Brandon Lester, and the Lever Action Kid, they’ve substantially increased their brand reach and improved their credibility in one fell swoop.

If your business follows a similar model and can find influencers willing to promote your product, you can improve your reach and credibility, too. 

Email Marketing 

Email marketing, though still a viable channel for players in the firearm industry, is more of a marketing strategy than traditional advertising. 

Be that as it may, since it can be used to improve recency and stay visible in front of your target audience, it can still be considered advertising for our purposes. 

There are no secrets here, though. The advantages of email marketing for companies that sell firearms and parts are the same as those for other industries. 

Namely, email marketing enables the business to send personalized messages to warm leads, improves customer interaction, can produce opportunities for upselling and cross-selling, and can extract a greater overall customer lifetime value (CLV).

There are two main types of email marketing formats for companies in the firearms industry: transaction-based emails and offer-based emails. Both are direct-marketing strategies and both can capture new revenue. 

In both cases, in order to be effective, email marketing messaging should be personalized based on customer interest or past purchase behavior. It’s also critical to segment your audience according to interest, for instance, hunters vs. competitive shooters vs. casual shooters and plinksters.

Another great thing about email marketing, and not just in this industry, is that you’re already marketing to customers that know your business and its model, so when run properly, and when your messaging is personalized and well-targeted according to interest, email marketing can be much more profitable than the other strategies mentioned here – even though it doesn’t technically capture new business most of the time. 

Not Sure How to Advertise in the Gun Industry? Contact Our Digital Marketing Experts

Not sure how to advertise in the gun industry, but want to start attracting new leads to your business? 

We’ve developed a wide range of marketing strategies for businesses in this industry. If you’re interested in how you can improve your marketing efforts through our advertising and marketing services, feel free to get in touch with us and we’d be glad to help.

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