Top Marketing Examples of Outdoor Brands on Social Media
Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms have become powerful digital marketing tools with an enormous outreach over the years. Thus, it is no surprise that the presence of brands on social media is expected by clients and is nearly compulsory for effective growth. This applies to a variety of industries, including the Outdoor and Sports markets.
Read ahead to learn how outdoor brands use their social media channels to keep their audiences engaged, raise company awareness, and promote sales.
With approximately 1 billion monthly active users, Instagram is among the largest and most popular social media platforms in the world nowadays. The channel’s potential advertising reach equals 1.478 billion users, with nearly 90 million people tapping on the product tags monthly.
Below, you can see some of the best examples of outdoor brands on Instagram that managed to achieve a large following and fairly high engagement rates.
Patagonia
Followers: 4.7 million
Engagement rate: 0.11%
Patagonia has done an outstanding job at producing content across various channels, always tying it back to the brand’s core focus areas - sustainability, outdoor activities, and the exploration of nature.
Patagonia’s Instagram profile meets adventurous clients with beautiful photos and inspirational stories instead of straightforward product shots.
The brand posts regularly, with publications at times appearing every day, and is very generous on video content. This is a smart approach considering Instagram’s recent algorithm updates and the audience’s rising interest in the video format.
Another fact worth mentioning is that Patagonia has created many location-specific pages, such as @patagoniachile and @patagonia.arg, alongside a separate account dedicated to climbing, @patagonia_climb, with unique content posted on each of them. This approach enables the company to better segment its audience and appeal to it more effectively.
Quiksilver
Followers: 2.3 million
Engagement rate: 0.17%
Quiksilver posts a lot of interesting content, mainly dedicated to surfing and snowboarding. The account features plenty of video publications and maintains a youthful, indie aesthetic that speaks to a variety of age groups.
The brand has a separate account targeting the female audience, @quiksilver.womens, that has a notable focus on fashion outfits created with the brand’s apparel.
REI
Followers: 2.3 million
Engagement rate: 0.22%
REI’s brand purpose is to get people outside and supply them with the gear they need to do it. The company’s Instagram profile is full of excellent content featuring photos and videos about the outdoors, motivation, and even nutrition.
The brand actively collaborates with other companies, including @subaru_usa and @hipcamp, and influencers like @callmeflowerchild and @elenashapeshifts. The brand creates original adventure stories featuring various products and services.
Under Armour
Followers: 8.4 million
Engagement rate: 0.05%
Under Armour is a reputable brand producing outdoor and sports gear and clearly killing it on Instagram. Nearly every post released under the brand’s handle features an @ mention of a celebrity like @therock and @gymhooky or a well-known organization, such as @NBAallstar.
The company promotes athleticism, outdoor activities, and personal growth. Besides, it often uses Call-to-Actions in its posts to drive desired actions from its audience.
Santa Cruz Bicycles
Followers: 1.4 million
Engagement rate: 0.66%
Santa Cruz Bicycles blends the thrill of mountain biking with stunning visuals, effective use of hashtags, and niche influencers collaboration into a powerful Instagram marketing strategy.
With the highest engagement rate on this list, the brand is known for occasional giveaways, cycling news overviews, and pro biking tips. The company also actively reposts the users’ stories featuring its products.
As of January 2022, Facebook had nearly 3 billion users, placing it in the first place among social media platforms in terms of active accounts. The platform’s size of global advertising audience reaches 2.109 billion people, comprising 72.4% of its user base. Needless to say that Facebook is an excellent channel to promote goods and services for a variety of brands, including those operating in the Outdoors industry.
Below are some companies that have established great Facebook presence and are effectively using it to achieve business goals:
Jones Snowboards
Followers: over 74,500 people
Engagement rate: 0.24%
Jones Snowboards is very active on Facebook, publishing posts nearly every day. The brand uses hashtags a lot and tags photographers and influential people regularly.
The company is also fairly consistent with the visuals it chooses to publish, keeping them limited to shades of white, blue, and black, with few exceptions. Users can often see product promotions and can easily access the sales pages from the photos.
Marmot
Followers: over 400,000 people
Engagement rate: 0.02%
Marmot focuses on creating meaningful posts that promote not only its products but also the brand’s initiatives, the beauty of nature, an active lifestyle, and stunning photo materials.
With a minimalistic approach to the use of hashtags, the company manages to attract users and keep them engaged with the power of interesting content featuring text, images, and videos.
Nalgene
Followers: over 137,500 people
Engagement rate: 0.003%
Nalgene makes the most out of various social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook, with the latter being its highest-ranking channel.
The brand uses the Facebook feed to post promotions and sales fairly often. Besides, Nalgene’s signature touch is its original GIFs. The company uses a flashy and bright color scheme that immediately captures the users’ attention.
ATOMIC SKIING
Followers: over 230,400 people
Engagement rate: 0.03%
Atomic’s Facebook page features an aesthetically pleasing consistency in visuals and a minimalistic approach that focuses on the brand’s signature color - red.
Users encounter a variety of content formats, from images and videos to inspirational quotes and news updates.
Helly Hansen
Followers: over 730,000 people
Engagement rate: 0.005%
Helly Hansen is a globally recognized Norwegian brand of outdoor products with a prominent presence on social media. Its Facebook page revolves around winter activities and features a lot of visuals with snowboarding, skiing, and the Nordic lifestyle.
The company posts a lot of videos featuring extreme sports that keep the users engaged and support these publications with branded hashtags.
Burton Snowboards
Followers: 159K
Engagement rate: 0.06%
Burton Snowboards is a company that clearly managed to build a strong connection between its followers and founders. This was proven when they published a post in honor of Jake Burton Carpenter’s passing, and it achieved the highest annual engagement rates among outdoor brands on both Facebook and Twitter.
On regular days, the brand posts impressive visuals of snowboarding and actively uses emojis.
HOKA
Followers: 51.9K
Engagement rate: 0.05%
Hoka is a sports brand with a strong passion for all things outdoors. The company’s Twitter account shares this love with the world by making frequent posts featuring stunning sceneries and product images.
The company uses the branded hashtag #TimeToFly and often retweets its customers’ posts.
Patagonia
Followers: 558K
Engagement rate: 0.03%
Patagonia’s successful SMM strategy stretches far beyond Instagram. Its Twitter is also popular among outdoor enthusiasts as it features regular posts with an unusual approach.
In fact, the posts with the highest engagement rates on Patagonia’s Twitter to date only contain photos without any captions and let the beauty of the imagery speak for itself. Other top tweets published by the company include environmental initiatives and never picture straight-up shots of the products they sell.
Billabong
Followers: 224.5K
Engagement rate: 0.06%
Billabong’s content on Twitter mainly consists of beautiful short films about surfing shot in different parts of the world. Considering that the company tweets nearly every day, the amount of work put into the brand’s account on this social media channel is impressive.
The videos are often retweeted by surfing enthusiasts, thus effectively increasing brand recognition.
Salomon
Followers: 84.5K
Engagement rate: 0.05%
Salomon uses Twitter to post various types of content, including Salomon TV teasers, respots from followers, new product announcements, and even memes.
Thus, the brand’s Twitter feed has something for every fan of outdoor activities.
More Worthy Mentions
Apart from our top picks, there are plenty of other brands that show impressive results on social media channels. Here’s a brief overview of other worthy mentions:
Brands
Followers - 610K
Engagement Rate - 0.43%
Followers - over 254,000
Engagement Rate - 0.05%
Followers - 26.1K
Engagement Rate - 0.05%
Followers - 367K
Engagement Rate - 0.88%
Followers - over 120,000
Engagement Rate - 0.85%
Followers - 33.4K
Engagement Rate - 0.10%
Followers - 466K
Engagement Rate - 1.66%
Followers - over 269,000
Engagement Rate - 0.04%
Followers - 52.5K
Engagement Rate - 0.06%
Followers - 417K
Engagement Rate - 0.43%
Followers - over 1 Million
Engagement Rate - 0.07%
Followers - 64.2K
Engagement Rate - 0.02%
Followers - 510K
Engagement Rate - 0.55%
Followers - over 191,000
Engagement Rate - 0.02%
Followers - 26.6K
Engagement Rate - 0.05%
And there you have it - some great examples of how outdoor brands on social media can implement an effective SMM strategy. Which tips are you willing to try for your business?
Are you ready to grow?
At Algofy Outdoors, we partner with amazing outdoor brands to provide 360° digital marketing solutions.
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