The nautical industry is an exclusive sector and in order to succeed in it, you have to stand out from the rest. Differentiation is key and achievable with a good marketing strategy. The best way to reach your target market is to communicate on the channels they use, sending out the right type of message to your buyer personas.
Developing a marketing strategy for your marine company
The nautical industry has a vast range of different companies, products, clientele and trends. From yacht charter to refit and repair, boat services, marinas, shipping, watersports, leisure and more. Chartering especially, has boomed in the last few years with more and more people heading out into the water in their space time.
Every marketing action you carry out as a marine company, will require a different strategy, with one thing in common: the demand for exclusivity.
To start your marketing strategy, the first thing to do is create your buyer persona; the ideal customer who you want to attract. You need to define everything about this person; their personal life, job title, interests, and most importantly, their needs. With this information, you can start to define the right channels and content needed to attract these kinds of profiles to your company.
Inbound Marketing Plan
Inbound Marketing in the nautical industry is about creating relevant, useful content such as webinars, newsletters, blogs or specialised podcasts that interest your potential customers. This allows you to reach them by defining the objectives and strategies specifically for them, based on their interests, preferences or tastes.
Content Marketing for marine companies
Once we have defined our Inbound Marketing Strategy and the channels we wish to use, we should start creating content. You need to decide whether that should be in the form of an article, social media post, webinar, or other. When creating that content, think about who it should be targeted to, do you need to create content in multiple languages with multiple cultures in mind? For example, if your potential customer loves cruising in the south of Spain but haven’t got a clue where to find the best anchor spots, they would value an article from your company about the best beaches to anchor on, how to get there and what the conditions are like. By creating the kind of content your buyer personas are already looking for, they will come across your company in an organic way which is key to converting them into buying customers.
Community Management for marine companies
Talking to your community via your company’s social media pages is essential and interaction is key. Two-way communication will allow you to create trust with your community and, above all, increase the personalisation of your product or service. By starting conversations, interacting with buyer personas on social media or resolving doubts through messages on, you can reach potential customers and increase the satisfaction of current ones.
Email Marketing in the nautical industry
Email marketing in the nautical sector is another very useful tool for generating trustworthy content for yachting enthusiasts. Creating valuable information, personalised promotions or exclusive packages will help generate more interactions from your customers. First of all, you should start collecting data through sign up forms on your website and downloadable material, then segment your audience to send the right messages to certain behavioural groups. Finally, create your email content and of course, analyse the data. What worked well and what could be improved.
Inbound Marketing will help your marine company to learn about and provide your customers with what they need and want. And luckily, we can track all our actions and their success rates with everyday marketing tools and apps. Analysing the results and improving whenever we can, to create the best inbound marketing strategy for your marine company. Do you have any Inbound Marketing advice you want to share with us today?
