The off-season playbook: 10 things to do when the snow melts (or falls)

Your season ended. The gear is stored. The guides are scattered. And your website is sitting there, unchanged, doing nothing for the next four months.

That’s the default for most outdoor businesses. But operators who treat the off-season as their marketing season come back stronger every year. They show up on page one while their competitors are still updating last year’s pricing in April.

Here’s an off-season marketing plan for your outdoor business. Ten specific things you can do when the river’s frozen, the snow’s melted, or the boats are on blocks. Not vague strategy. Actual tasks you can knock out over the slow months.

Fix what’s broken on your website

1. Run a full site audit. Check for broken links, slow-loading pages, missing images, and outdated information. Tools like Google Search Console will show you crawl errors and indexing problems you probably don’t know about. A rafting company we worked with had 30+ broken links from old trip pages that had been removed but never redirected. That’s 30 dead ends for both Google and potential customers.

2. Rewrite your trip pages with fresh details. Update dates, pricing, group sizes, and any new offerings for the upcoming season. If your “2025 Salmon River Trips” page still says 2025, Google notices, and so do the people reading it. While you’re in there, check that every trip has its own dedicated page. “Half-day float trip” and “full-day whitewater trip” shouldn’t share a page any more than they’d share a put-in.

3. Speed up your mobile experience. Over 60% of outdoor activity searches happen on phones. If your site takes more than three seconds to load on mobile, you’re losing people before they even see your trips. Compress images, ditch plugins you’re not using, and test the booking flow on your own phone. If it’s annoying, it’s costing you money.

Build the content that ranks by spring

4. Write the seasonal blog posts you’ll need in three months. This is the big one. Content published now has time to get indexed and start ranking before search volume spikes. A fishing guide publishing “Best fly fishing on the Madison River in June” right now, in the off-season, will be positioned to capture that traffic when people start searching in March and April. Wait until May and you’ve already lost. (We mapped out a full approach in our seasonal content calendar.)

5. Build out your “best time to visit” and local area pages. These are some of the highest-volume queries in outdoor recreation. “Best time to visit Glacier National Park” or “things to do in Bozeman besides skiing.” If you don’t have these pages, your competitors are getting that traffic. If you do have them, now’s the time to refresh and expand.

6. Create or update your FAQ content. Think about every question guests asked last season. “What should I wear?” “Is it safe for kids?” “What happens if it rains?” Each of those is a search query someone is typing into Google. Write clear, specific answers. A dedicated FAQ page (or better, individual blog posts for the meatier questions) pulls in long-tail traffic all year.

Strengthen your reputation and reach

7. Follow up on reviews. Email your best guests from last season and ask for a Google review. People are happy to leave one. They just forget. A simple email in November or December, while the trip is still a good memory, converts surprisingly well. The difference between 15 reviews and 50 reviews on your Google Business Profile changes how you show up in local results.

8. Pitch local media and tourism boards for backlinks. Off-season is when tourism bureaus, chambers of commerce, and outdoor publications plan their content. Reach out now with story ideas, updated business info, or offers to contribute a guest article. A single link from your state’s tourism website is worth more than a hundred social media posts. This kind of outreach is tedious during guide season. It’s perfect off-season work.

Plan and prepare for the surge

9. Map out your content calendar for the full year. Don’t just wing it when the season starts. Sit down for an afternoon and plan what you’ll publish each month, tied to when your customers actually search. A simple spreadsheet works. Two to four pieces a month, alternating between seasonal and evergreen topics. The planning takes a few hours. The payoff compounds all year.

10. Set up your email sequences. If you’re not collecting email addresses on your site, start. If you are, build a pre-season sequence: early-bird pricing announcement, new trip previews, a “what’s new this year” update. Past guests who had a good time are the easiest people to rebook. An email in January with “2027 dates are live, here’s what’s new” costs you nothing and fills trips before the season opens.

The off-season is the season

Every item on this list is something you can do without leaving your desk. No trips to run, no guests to manage, no shuttles to drive. Just focused marketing work that directly translates to bookings when things pick back up.

The operators who consistently outperform aren’t necessarily better at running trips. They’re better at being visible when the next customer starts searching. And that search starts months before anyone touches water, snow, or trail.

Pick three things from this list and get them done this month. Then pick three more. By the time your season opens, you’ll be ahead of every competitor who spent the off-season doing nothing.