Marketing RFP template for outdoor recreation businesses
A bad marketing agency can burn through $30,000 of your annual budget before you realize nothing is working. For a rafting outfitter or fishing charter pulling in $300K–$800K a year, that kind of waste stings. The difference between hiring an agency that gets results and one that doesn’t often comes down to what happens before you sign anything.
That’s where a marketing RFP comes in. A request for proposal forces you to get specific about what you need, what you’ll pay, and how you’ll measure success. It also forces agencies to compete on your terms, not theirs.
Most outdoor recreation businesses skip this step. They hire based on a referral, a good sales call, or whoever shows up first in a Google search. This template gives you a better process.
What a marketing RFP actually does for you
An RFP isn’t corporate busywork. For a 12-person kayak rental or a guide service running 200 trips a season, it’s a structured way to compare agencies without getting sold. You write down your goals, your budget, and your timeline. Agencies respond with how they’d approach the work and what it would cost.
The comparison is what matters. When three agencies answer the same questions, you can see who understands outdoor recreation and who’s copy-pasting from their last SaaS client.
Send your RFP to three to five agencies. More than that creates a mess of proposals you won’t have time to read. Fewer than three doesn’t give you enough to compare.
The sections your RFP needs
Here’s what to include, in order. You can copy this structure directly.
Section 1: About your business. Two to three paragraphs covering what you do, where you operate, your peak and off seasons, your approximate annual revenue range, and how many trips or bookings you handle per year. An agency that works with outdoor operators needs to know your seasonality right away. A jet ski rental in Gulf Shores has a completely different marketing calendar than a dog sledding operation in Minnesota.
Section 2: Current marketing situation. What are you doing now? List your website platform (Squarespace, WordPress, custom), your booking system (FareHarbor, Peek Pro, Xola), any OTA listings (Viator, GetYourGuide), your Google Business Profile status, whether you’re running paid ads, and your current monthly marketing spend. Be honest about what’s working and what isn’t.
Section 3: Goals and scope. State exactly what you want help with. Examples: increase organic search traffic by 40% in 12 months, reduce OTA commission dependency from 35% to 15%, build an email list of 5,000 subscribers, or launch Google Ads for shoulder season. Vague goals get vague proposals. The more specific you are here, the more useful the responses will be.
Section 4: Budget range. This is where most small business owners freeze up. But leaving budget out is a mistake. Agencies need a range to scope their work realistically. For context, small outdoor businesses typically spend $1,500 to $5,000 per month on marketing services. SEO-focused retainers run $3,500 to $8,000 monthly. If your total budget is $2,000 a month, say so. You’ll get proposals that match, rather than pitches built for $15,000 campaigns you can’t afford.
Section 5: Timeline. Include the RFP release date, a deadline for agency questions, the proposal submission deadline, when you’ll make a decision, and your desired start date. Give agencies at least two weeks to respond. Three is better if you’re sending this during peak season when everyone’s busy running trips.
Section 6: What you want in the proposal. Tell agencies exactly what to include in their response. We’d suggest: a brief company overview and relevant experience (bonus for outdoor recreation clients), the specific team members who’d work on your account, their proposed strategy for your stated goals, a detailed cost breakdown (monthly retainer vs. project-based), three references from businesses similar in size, and one or two examples of past results with actual numbers.
Section 7: Evaluation criteria. Be upfront about how you’ll decide. A simple weighted system works: relevant industry experience (30%), proposed strategy quality (25%), cost (20%), references and proven results (15%), communication and culture fit (10%). Adjust the weights to match what matters most to you.
Outdoor-specific details most RFP templates miss
Generic RFP templates don’t account for the realities of running an adventure business. Here are the sections that make yours useful.
Seasonality is the big one. Your RFP should ask agencies how they’d handle the off-season. Do they scale spend down in winter and ramp it up in March? Do they have a content strategy for the five months you’re not running trips? We’ve seen outfitters sign annual contracts with agencies that charge the same retainer in January as they do in July. That’s a red flag.
Ask about booking platform experience. If you run FareHarbor, you need an agency that knows how to build booking pages Google can actually crawl. Some booking widgets create JavaScript-heavy pages that search engines can’t index. An agency unfamiliar with these platforms will miss this entirely.
Photo and video production matters more in outdoor recreation than almost any other industry. Your RFP should ask whether the agency handles content creation or expects you to provide everything. A whitewater rafting company needs action shots and drone footage. A stock photo of someone smiling at a laptop won’t cut it.
Ask how they approach OTA relationships. A good agency won’t just ignore your Viator listing. They should have a perspective on balancing direct bookings against OTA commissions and a plan for shifting the ratio over time.
How to evaluate the responses
Once proposals come back, resist the urge to pick the cheapest one. The South Dakota Tourism board’s 2026 RFP allocated 76% of their budget to media, 11% to strategy, 10% to production, and 3% to ad tech. You don’t need those exact ratios, but notice that strategy and media execution eat most of the budget. An agency quoting $1,200 a month for “full-service marketing” is either cutting corners or losing money on your account.
Look at specificity. Did the agency mention your booking platform by name? Did they reference your actual competitors or your geographic market? A proposal that reads like it could have been written for any business in any industry tells you everything.
Check the team. Ask who specifically will manage your account. Agencies often pitch with senior partners and then hand execution to a junior coordinator. That’s fine as long as you know upfront.
Call the references. Ask one question: “Did they understand your seasonal business, or did you have to explain it every quarter?” That answer tells you more than any case study.
Pay attention to how quickly each agency responded, too. If it took them two weeks to send a proposal, imagine how long they’ll take to return your emails in August when your ad campaign needs adjusting mid-season.
What to do if you can’t afford an agency yet
Not every outdoor business is ready for a $3,000-per-month retainer. If you’re a two-person fly fishing guide service doing $150K a year, a full agency engagement might not make sense yet.
In that case, use this RFP process in reverse. Write out the same sections as if you were hiring someone, but use it as your own marketing plan. The exercise of defining your goals, budget, and timeline has value even if the only person reading it is you. When revenue grows enough to bring on outside help, you’ll have a document ready to send.
You could also use the RFP to scope a smaller engagement. Instead of full-service marketing, request proposals for a single project: a website audit, a three-month SEO sprint, or a Google Ads setup. Project-based work typically runs $2,000 to $7,500, and it gives you a way to test an agency before committing long-term.
Common mistakes that waste everyone’s time
Skipping the budget section is the most common one. Agencies hate it. You hate it when proposals come back three times over your range.
Writing a 20-page RFP when a 3-page one would do. You’re a small business, not the Department of Defense. Cover the seven sections above and you’re good.
Not including your website URL. Sounds basic, but it happens. Every agency will look at your site before responding. Make it easy.
Asking for a “full marketing strategy” in the proposal. That’s asking for free consulting. Request a high-level approach, not a full playbook. The detailed strategy comes after you hire someone.
Sending the RFP to 10+ agencies. You won’t read 10 proposals carefully. Three to five is the right number. Do your homework first by vetting agencies for red flags before you send anything.
Your next step
Copy the seven-section structure from this article. Fill in your business details, your real budget, and your actual goals. Set a deadline three weeks out. Send it to three agencies that have at least one outdoor recreation client in their portfolio. The whole document should take you an afternoon. What you’ll get back will be worth more than any sales call.
