Imagine you own a business with a flat-to-diminishing customer base. Your operating costs go up every year while market conditions make it increasingly difficult to obtain product to sell. Your customers and critics have a history of reacting poorly to raising prices in an effort to increase your cash flow. This is the business model you are operating in if you work for a state wildlife agency. In a market place wrought with competitors fighting to be the public's passion, isn't it time agencies discussed ideas to increase their market share? The Business of Conservation: Converting Consumers to Customers, a special session at the 80th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference, will discuss how state fish and wildlife agencies can focus more on the challenges of maintaining our presence and relevance in the future. The session is one of four concurrent special sessions scheduled from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., Wednesday, March 11, 2015, at Hilton Omaha in Omaha, NE.

The hard reality is that, due to a user-pay, user-benefit funding model, an agency is vulnerable to negative market conditions that can have the same fatal effects as a failing small business. Savvy business operators develop sustainability models to understand who is not buying their product and why they are not buying it. Unfortunately, most of our recruitment efforts tend to focus on audiences already aware that they want to hunt or fish. Our establishment goes to great lengths to foster collaboration and maintain support from roughly 20 percent or less of the potential customer market. We focus a majority of our efforts on a minority population that our data indicates is declining. Some states have made significant efforts to reach the remaining 80 percent of the market, but these efforts have been costly, time consuming and slow to achieve united commitment from leadership. How do agencies work with partners to target and convert the 80 percent? What data is available to guide decisions? How do agencies translate their message and mission to a language that is digestible to vendors, consultants and ? most importantly ? these new customers?

The increasingly difficult market conditions that make the business of conservation challenging require aggressive and contemporary outreach. Special Session 2, co-chaired by Nick Wiley of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and Scott Lavin of the Arizona Game and Fish Department, will provide compelling data supporting the argument of new models for revenue generation. The presenters will identify opportunities to outsource expertise in the arenas of market analysis, branding, and advertising. They will discuss models to engage and maintain customer loyalty with new audiences, while achieving increased market share. Finally, they will identify some best practices of consumer product successes in a commercial digital setting.

Learn more about the 80th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference.