Research was BRUTAL on this gig!
And now, number 600 in the copywriting master series, “Topics I Never Considered Until I was being Paid to.”
Do you know the difference between in-shore, near-shore and offshore fishing? A bay, cove or sound? A boat and a skiff? Yeah, me neither…until now. I was never much of a fisherman, I must admit. In fact, one of my earliest memories was at a fishing lake. I might have been three. I remember drawing the rod back and making a mighty cast. Instantly I felt a yank on the line and heard a scream. I had hooked my mother by the earlobe!
Anyway, the topic is fishing charters, and they are BIG business in Charleston SC. The tourism base here is strong already and, when you combine that with abundant fishing opportunities, you have a lot of competition in the angling trade.
The challenge, as usual, is differentiation. In my research I learned that absolutely every one of these fishing boat captains has:
- Spent his whole life on the water;
- Knows every secret fishing hole, channel and reef in the Charleston area; and is
- Fully licensed, bonded and insured.
Fortunately, I worked with a web design dude who had a little more on the ball in terms of the subject matter. He also had loads of ideas in terms of structure, with SEO in mind. This included a glossary of fishing terms, a detailed equipment list, exhaustive descriptions of the territory covered, and so on. Also, though our client runs a strictly in-shore charter, we included descriptions of all the other types of charters you might experience in Charleston, just to get those stray Google hits.
Anyway, take a look. Did I capture the fishing mojo? By Gar, I hooked it by its lip and hauled it up out of the vast sea of my own fishing ignorance. Then I gutted and filleted it right on the dock!
A Lively Exchange 