How to evaluate your current marketing: a self-assessment scorecard

Most outdoor operators can tell you whether last season was good or bad. Fewer can tell you why. And almost none can point to the specific marketing gap that cost them the most bookings.

That gap between gut feeling and actual diagnosis is expensive. A rafting company in West Virginia might blame a slow July on weather when their real problem is a booking page that loads in nine seconds on mobile. A fishing guide in Montana might assume word of mouth is enough while a competitor with 80 Google reviews quietly takes every “fly fishing near me” search.

This scorecard gives you a structured way to grade your own marketing across seven areas that matter for outdoor recreation businesses. Score each one honestly, tally your results, and you’ll walk away knowing exactly where to spend your next dollar or hour.

How the scoring works

Each section below covers one area of your marketing. For each, give yourself a score from 0 to 2.

A 0 means you haven’t done this at all or it’s badly broken. A 1 means you’ve started but there’s clear room to improve. A 2 means this area is solid and performing.

Write your scores down. The total at the end tells you where you stand overall, but the individual scores are what matter most. A business scoring 11 out of 14 with a 0 in email has a very different fix list than one scoring 11 with a 0 in reviews.

Your website: does it actually work on a phone

Start here because everything else feeds into your website. If the site doesn’t convert visitors into bookings, better SEO and more ads just mean more people bouncing.

Pull up your site on your phone right now. Time how long it takes to load. If it’s over three seconds, that’s a problem. Google’s data shows 53% of mobile visitors leave a site that takes longer than three seconds to load, and over 60% of outdoor recreation website traffic comes from phones.

Check these specifics: Can someone book a trip within two taps from your homepage? Is your phone number clickable? Do your trip pages have real photos from your operation, not stock images? Does your booking widget actually work on mobile without horizontal scrolling?

The average website conversion rate across industries sits around 2-3%. Hotels and resorts average 3.9%. If you’re using FareHarbor or Peek Pro, you can check your own conversion rate in their dashboards. Below 1% means your site is actively losing you money on every visitor you attract.

Score yourself: 0 if your site is slow, hard to book on, or you don’t know your conversion rate. 1 if it loads fast and looks decent but you haven’t optimized the booking flow. 2 if you track conversions and your mobile booking experience is tight.

Search visibility: can people find you

Open an incognito browser window and search for your main activity plus your location. Something like “kayak tours Lake Tahoe” or “guided fishing trips Bozeman.” If you’re not on the first page, potential customers aren’t finding you through search.

Go deeper. Search for “things to do in [your area]” and see if your business or any of your content appears. Check whether your trip pages show up for specific queries like “half-day rafting trip [river name].” If your site audit turns up thin trip descriptions, missing meta titles, or pages Google hasn’t indexed, those are fixable problems with direct booking impact.

One thing most operators miss: search rankings aren’t just about your website. They include your Google Business Profile, your presence on platforms like TripAdvisor and Viator, and whether AI tools like ChatGPT mention your business when travelers ask for recommendations.

Score yourself: 0 if you don’t appear on page one for your core activity + location search. 1 if you rank for your business name and one or two activity terms. 2 if you rank for multiple relevant searches and you’re monitoring your positions.

Google business profile: your free storefront

Your Google Business Profile is often the first thing a potential customer sees. Pull yours up and evaluate it honestly.

According to Google’s own data, customers consider businesses with complete profiles 2.7 times more reputable. Those businesses are 70% more likely to get visits. Yet we’ve seen dozens of outfitter profiles with missing hours, no service descriptions, and photos from 2019.

Here’s what to check: Are your seasonal hours accurate right now? Do you have at least 10 photos uploaded in the last six months? Have you filled out every service and product listing for your trips? Are you posting updates at least twice a month?

Look at your profile metrics in the GBP dashboard. How many profile views did you get last month? How many website clicks? Direction requests? If you don’t know these numbers, you’re flying blind on your most visible free marketing asset.

Score yourself: 0 if your profile is incomplete, has wrong hours, or you’ve never checked the metrics. 1 if it’s filled out but you rarely update it. 2 if it’s complete, regularly updated, and you track its performance monthly.

Reviews: what customers are saying about you

This one stings for some operators, but the data is clear. BrightLocal’s 2026 consumer review survey found that 68% of consumers will only use a business with a 4-star rating or higher. Businesses with a 4.5-star average earn roughly 25% more clicks than those sitting at 3.5.

The volume matters too. The average consumer expects to see about 40 reviews before they trust a star rating. And review freshness counts. A business with 200 reviews but nothing new in six months looks stale compared to a competitor getting two or three reviews a week.

Check your review response rate. In 2026, 81% of consumers expect businesses to respond to reviews within a week, and 32% expect a response by the next day. If you have unanswered reviews from months ago, that’s visible damage.

Don’t just look at Google. Consumers now check an average of six review platforms. Your TripAdvisor, Yelp, and any activity-specific platforms all matter. A solid review strategy doesn’t just happen. You need a system for asking, responding, and monitoring.

Score yourself: 0 if you’re below 4 stars or have fewer than 20 reviews on Google. 1 if you’re above 4 stars with decent volume but don’t have a system for requesting or responding. 2 if you’re above 4.5 stars, actively growing review count, and responding within a few days.

Email marketing: are you staying in touch

Email is where most outdoor operators leave the most money on the table. You had hundreds or thousands of past guests and website visitors, and if you’re not emailing them, a competitor eventually will.

The travel industry average email open rate hovers around 30%, with click rates near 1.6%. Those numbers trail the cross-industry average of 43% open and 2% click. But here’s what’s interesting: businesses that send one email per week see open rates closer to 37% and click-through rates near 5.6%. Consistency matters more than perfection.

What to evaluate: Do you have an email list at all? How many subscribers? Are you sending at least one email per month? Do you have any automated sequences, like a post-trip follow-up or a pre-season announcement? Can you segment your list by trip type, location, or whether someone is a past guest versus a prospect?

If you’re using Mailchimp or ActiveCampaign, both platforms show you how your metrics compare to industry averages. Check those built-in benchmarks against your own numbers.

Score yourself: 0 if you don’t have an email list or haven’t sent anything in three months. 1 if you have a list and send occasionally but no automations. 2 if you send regularly, have at least one automated sequence, and track your open and click rates.

Content and social media: do you exist between seasons

Here’s a question that reveals a lot: when was the last time you published anything on your website or social media? If the answer is “during our busy season,” that’s a pattern that quietly erodes your search rankings and audience connection over the off-season.

Google rewards websites that publish consistently. An outfitter blog that goes silent from October to April is telling Google the site might be abandoned. Meanwhile, a competitor publishing two posts a month year-round builds authority that compounds.

For social media, look at your posting frequency and engagement. Are you posting at least weekly during season and biweekly in the off-season? Do your posts get any comments or shares, or are you talking into a void? Have you tried short-form video? Reels and TikToks from guided trips consistently outperform static photos for outdoor businesses.

The content question isn’t really about volume. It’s about whether you have anything working for you when you’re not actively posting. Evergreen content like gear guides, trip preparation articles, and “best time to visit” pages bring in search traffic year-round without any ongoing effort.

Score yourself: 0 if you haven’t published a blog post in six months or your social accounts are dormant. 1 if you post socially during season and have some website content. 2 if you publish consistently year-round across at least two channels.

Tracking and measurement: do you know what’s working

This last section is the one that separates operators who improve year over year from those who keep guessing. If you can’t measure something, you can’t fix it.

At minimum, you should have Google Analytics 4 installed and be checking it monthly. Do you know how many website visitors you got last month? Where they came from? Which pages they visited most? Which pages led to the most bookings?

Beyond basic analytics, check whether you’re tracking these: booking source attribution (do you know whether a booking came from Google search, a Facebook ad, or an email campaign?), cost per booking by channel, and your marketing ROI by activity.

If someone asks you “what’s your most effective marketing channel?” and you can’t answer with data, that’s a 0.

Score yourself: 0 if you don’t have analytics installed or never check them. 1 if you have GA4 and check traffic but don’t track booking sources. 2 if you track visitors, booking sources, and can calculate ROI by channel.

Tally your score and find your fix

Add up your seven scores. Here’s where you land:

12-14: Your marketing foundation is strong. Focus on optimizing what’s already working and testing new channels. You’re in a position to grow aggressively.

8-11: You have the basics but significant gaps. Identify your lowest-scoring areas and tackle them in order. One focused improvement per month will move the needle.

4-7: Several areas need attention. Start with your website and Google Business Profile since those two affect everything else. Don’t try to fix six things at once.

0-3: Your marketing is essentially starting from scratch. That’s not a judgment. Plenty of successful outfitters built their business on reputation and repeat customers. But the market has shifted, and operators without a digital presence are losing ground every season.

The most common pattern we see is a business that scores well on reviews (because they provide great experiences) but poorly on website, SEO, and tracking. If that’s you, the good news is you already have the hardest part figured out. Turning great service into visible marketing is a solvable problem.

Whatever your score, pick the single lowest area and give it focused attention for 30 days before moving to the next one. Trying to overhaul everything simultaneously is how marketing projects stall out and die. One section at a time, measured and adjusted, is how outdoor businesses build marketing that actually lasts.