Digital Marketing for Sport – 3 Reasons Why Sports Marketers Need Social Media

Sponsoring an athlete, sports team or an event is not just about signing a cheque. It’s more than just getting your name on the side of a car or a sign in the stadium. For those of you that know me you know that Sport is my passion and I’m also involved in business consultancy and digital marketing so here is my take on Sports Marketing. 

Basically, if you want your sponsorship pounds to be an effective marketing tool, you need to double your total sponsorship just to promote the fact that you have a sponsorship deal. If you’re sponsoring a rugby team, you need to tell your customers about it, and get them to cheer for “your” team. If you’re sponsoring a football team, you need to get your best customers into the luxury suite to see and hear the game. Even if you’re sponsoring a small local village football team, you need to find a way to bring the parents into your store or restaurant after the game.

The Same Old Problem – You Can’t Effectively Measure Traditional Marketing

Sports marketing is no longer just about soliciting cheques from big companies – you have to be able to demonstrate the ROI of a sponsorship.  Measurement and analytics for  off-line marketing is nearly impossible.  It is almost impossible to know which TV commercials increased sales, and which ones lost money. You don’t know which billboards brought visitors to your website. And you certainly don’t know which logo placement or interview plug was responsible for the increase in sales.
But social media can do all of that, and more. Here are three things social media can do for sports marketers:

1. Social Media Can Prove ROI in Sports Marketing

The great thing about social media is that it’s easy to demonstrate the ROI. Thanks to simple tools like Google Analytics and bit.ly, it’s possible to come up with a basic system to see how many people found your website, requested additional information, or bought something.
You can measure a campaign’s success and figure out which variables, messages, and even time of day brought the best results. See if you get spikes in traffic before, during, or after an event. And whether the spikes are taking place in the city, or if they’re spread out. You can even set up different URLs and landing pages, and do A/B testing to see which variables brought the best results.
With social media, you can pay attention to who’s talking about your brand, and interact with the ones who are the most vocal, whether positive or negative. You just can’t do that with a billboard or a TV spot.

2. Social Media Can Grow a Sports Marketing Audience

There are more social media tools than you can shake a stick at. Suffice it to say, there are plenty of ways to connect with your customers online.  Use tools like Twitterment, NearbyTweets, and even Twitter’s own search function to find people who are interested in your team. Use Twitterfall or TweetDeck’s search feature to watch for discussions about your team or the event.
Connect with those people, and discuss the team, the players/drivers/crew, and the event itself. Don’t sell them anything or talk about your company. if you have to, hold a special contest or make a special offer. “If our team finishes in a certain place or higher, the first 500 people to tweet us gets a coupon for a free widget.” But other than that, talk about the thing that interests the fans (hint: it’s not you).

3. Social Media Can Deepen Relationships With Fans and Customers

Enhance your customers’ experience on race day by live blogging, tweeting, and video streaming from the stands, the sponsor’s tent, or even Victory Lane.

• Get some behind-the-scenes looks (assuming you get permission from the team) at what it looks like in a garage or locker room.
• Hold a special Twitter chat with a driver or crew member.
• Have a player give a special video greeting or tour for fans.
• Ask different team members to blog about their experiences over the season, complete with photos and videos.

Social media lets fans see the things they might be missing, but help them feel like they’re part of the experience. By doing this, you help them feel more like a part of the team. They’re insiders, with special knowledge about the team, the athletes, and the event. By feeling like they’re connected, they’ll become more of a fan, not only of the team, but of the organization or brand that helped them get there.

If you want any advice on digital marketing or social media plans the contact us on our business webpages

Significance of Sitemaps

Today there are many SEO techniques that help you to optimize your site, but one trick whose importance is undervalued at times is a Sitemap. A Sitemap is really a page on your site that indicates the complete structure of your site including various sections, links between them, and so on. In short it gives a detailed listing of your web site layout. Sitemaps have become helpful because they create site navigation easy for the visitors as well as help search engines index the site.

Sitemaps usually fall into two categories. The first is a HTML version which is for human site visitors so helping them navigate through the whole site and find the information they are looking for. The other Sitemap is an XML version that is meant for the search engine to know about all the pages on the site including all the URLs that may go unnoticed by the search engine spidering the website.

Sitemap benefits

There are many great things about using sitemaps that are detailed below:

Easy Navigation

A sitemap helps a visitor know where to locate particular information he is searching for on the site. It acts as a guide to enable easy navigation through the site without wasting time to find information.

Search Engine Indexing

Sitemaps help search engines learn about any updates which you make on your website. It is not guaranteed that the search engine bot will instantly index the updated webpages, however, the modifications will certainly be indexed considerably faster when compared with when there isn’t any sitemap.

New Site

For those who have a brand new internet site with very few links in it, sitemaps can be beneficial. The reason being the search engine spider crawls through documents by following links from one page to another and if your site does not contain proper links, it might be challenging for the bots to index them.

Broken Links

For those who have a web site which contains lots of content webpages that are improperly linked to one another or have broken links then using sitemaps will help search engine bots to index your pages better.

Dynamic Content on Site

Sitemaps are also very helpful if you have a site where your content is updated or changed frequently. The search engines can be immediately informed of this change through your sitemap. However, this will not assure you that your changed pages will be indexed right away.

Sitemap Process

To create a Sitemap for your website there are some simple steps you need to follow. First, a Sitemap needs to be generated and then it should be uploaded to the website and last but not least Google ought to be advised about it.

Sitemap Generation

A sitemap might be generated in two ways. The first is by making use of a web based tool that may help you generate the sitemap along with the other is by downloading it and setting up a sitemap generator. The first alternative is less of a challenge compared to the second one as there are numerous online sitemap generation methods available free of cost that make your work simpler. The other option of downloading and setting up a sitemap generator is a little difficult but lets you obtain a better control of the end result.

Uploading and Submitting Your Sitemap

As soon as your sitemap is created, it has to be uploaded to your website and Google should be advised about it. So that you can notify Google you should add your internet site to your Google Sitemap account. However, in case you do not have already a Google Sitemap account, this is the time that you should produce one. Furthermore, it is important to know that adding a sitemap to your account needs a confirmation indicating you are the lawful owner of the web site.

Additionally it is important to know that Google does not guarantee that all the URLs in your sitemap will be spidered and indexed. For instance, if there are any image URLs in your sitemap, these will not be crawled and indexed. However, your sitemap can help the search engine to know more about your site layout which will help it to crawl your site better and faster when compared to not having a sitemap. Webmasters usually benefit from submitting sitemaps and will not be penalized for it.

A Financial Management firm can create a strong web presence by designing and developing a business website on the internet.  However, this step alone is not a digital marketing plan. Just putting up a Financial Management firm website on the internet is similar to establishing a physical business like a shop or an office, and then just sitting back and waiting for the customers to flow in. More than likely, it will not happen and your website will resemble a billboard in the desert.

Financial Management firms must understand that they need to spread the word about their firm, talk to people, inform, engage with potential clients and communicate their services using the internet.

The focus of web searchers looking for accountants has changed, and instead of turning to the yellow pages, people prefer to search the net in order to find an Financial Management firm.  To search for a Financial Management firm in Tunbridge Wells

·         Visitor 1 may type “Tunbridge Wells Financial Managers”

·         Visitor 2 might search for “Financial Management firms Tunbridge Wells”.

·         Visitor 3 might search for “IFA Tunbridge Wells”

Different people search in different ways and it is important to make sure that your Financial Management firm website captures this valuable traffic.

What should Financial Management firms, large and small, do to be found on the web?

Financial Management firms need to invest in a digital marketing strategy that will specialise in Financial Management firm search engine optimisation, Financial Management firm marketing and website design. A professional digital media marketing consultant will have the relevant business expertise and will know how to handle this. Other important factors are:

·         Digital media marketing starts with your Financial Management firm website design. The website must be structured with elements of search engine optimisation, where the meta tags are properly written and executed. The website is designed with SEO in mind. The starting point is keyword research and when this is done properly the right keywords are embedded in the content.  Images and graphics are optimised to make the Financial Management firm’s website search engine friendly.

·         While the above will greatly help in organic search engine rankings, the digital marketing strategy may need some quick traffic through a Pay Per Click campaign. Organic search engine optimisation will take a few months to get going until the web site attains authority in the search engine rankings. During this time, the sponsored listing or paid advertisements will help to project the Financial Management firm and traffic will start to flow to the website.

·         In parallel, the digital marketing strategy will also lead you through other digital media marketing mediums such as announcing your Financial Management firm website presence through press releases and news. Syndication will help that news to reach as many readers as possible

·         While this will draw enough website traffic to start getting web visitors and leads, the digital media marketing strategy will also start building a social network campaign through Video, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. to draw the Financial Management firm close to social communities on the internet.

·         The strategy will deploy legal blogging, article writing and submissions.  Through blogs and articles, it is possible to create an air of trust by writing about the Financial Management firm, and educate readers about Financial Management. This will project the Financial Management firm as an authority on the subject and people will tend to trust the firm with their business.

·         We have heard the phrase “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” and this is still very applicable today and even more so in a period of recession.  In this context, the digital marketing plan will use web analytics to collect data from the website to determine which aspects of the site are working towards the defined business objectives for the website. 

Web analytics is a continuous improvement process and a key part of an effective digital marketing plan. It is not enough just to produce reports each month, you need to analyse these reports so you can ensure that the website is always responding to the needs of its visitors. Once you have gathered your data, analysed the results, proposed changes and implemented these changes you repeat the process all over again.

Financial Management firms and who think that digital marketing for their firm is a thing they can do without are severely cutting themselves short. Consider these facts from January 2010:

·         Over 60,500 searches being conducted in the UK for the term “Financial Advisor”

·         Over 33,100 searches for the term “Financial Advisors”

·         40,500 searches conducted for the words “Financial Advisers”

·         18, 500 searches for the term ”Independent Financial Advisors”

·         100s of thousands of more searches for related terms

The question is: Can Financial Management firms and keep themselves away from a focussed digital marketing strategy? 

Learn more about a specialised digital media marketing strategy for your Financial Management firm at http://www.wsionlinebiz.co.uk or give us a call at 01580 819529.

In the rapidly changing world of marketing, even if you don’t do anything else, you should have at least two key objectives to be successful with any size of business:

• Make sure that your message is reaching the right audience
• Ensure your marketing initiatives are meeting performance goals  

The key to achieving these two objectives is a well crafted Digital Internet Marketing System.  Today, it is a given that the internet must be at the centre of your marketing strategy.  The internet is the medium that lets you maximize the measurability, return on investment and relationship building efforts of your business. But in order to take advantage of the power of the internet, you need the right solutions and processes in place to unlock the information it holds in store for you.

Profitably Acquire New Customers

Paid search marketing, usually referred to as Pay Per Click (PPC) has emerged as one of the most effective channels for reaching potential customers and is a key element of an effective Digital Internet Marketing System. According to Forrester, paid search spend has grown from $7B in 2006 and will reach $11.5B in 2010.  Paid search marketing is complex because managing an increasing number of keywords across different networks means you need to profitably scale your paid search investment. It’s also important to determine the impact search has on your offline demand.

Measure and Optimize for Success

It is important to measure Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) consistently.  You need to have a common language to communicate across your organization which drives towards the same goals. As part of your Digital Internet Marketing plans, it is also vital to measure all of your campaigns together, whether you’re measuring a PPC keyword buy on a search engine, an email marketing campaign, a banner ad and so on. You must consolidate your multi channel performance data into a single consistent Digital Internet Marketing System framework of metrics that lets you make decisions with confidence.

Strengthen Customer Relationships

The internet enables you to target your customers more effectively. In the past, data has been largely aggregated and therefore impersonal.  With new technology and system that is all changing and digital marketers are making the most of better analysis to segment their customers and create customized email marketing campaigns that resonate with them. They are providing better customer service by understanding the visitor behind each visit, and developing targeted online and offline marketing programs based on the preferences of their customers.

Web Analytics

Google Analytics and other web analytics packages, when properly configured, implemented and managed help measure the above and go a long way to supporting your Digital Internet Marketing System and can help you answer the following key questions:

• Which marketing campaigns are generating the most leads and customers?
• Which keywords are driving most of the visitors?
• Which pages on the website do customers find the most engaging?

Today’s economic climate

Deep into the recession it is very easy to make cutbacks in marketing and advertising.  However, statistics from the last recession in the 1980s point to the fact that companies that continued to spend on advertising and marketing came out of the recession stronger and ahead of their competitors when the recovery came around.  Therefore, it is important to work smarter and decide where and how to spend your hard earned marketing budgets.

Ads are everywhere

From the moment we wake up we, the consumers, are bombarded with marketing messages all day long and marketing is everywhere.  There are ads for cars, ads for beer, ads for fashion items, ads for holidays and lots of ads for all those gadgets that promise to make our life easier.  For the most part this is brand marketing and it doesn’t really register as we are concentrating on our driving our making sure we get off the bus at the right stop.  However, building brand recognition is important and when it comes to decision time we are influenced by what we have seen and heard.  However, there lies the problem.  Radio, TV and print ads can all be targeted at specific audiences, e.g.,  a  print ad for a quality Mercedes will do better in the Sunday Times Style supplement than in the local parish magazine! However, whilst it may be a targeted ad, it loses effectiveness because they are not hitting the target audience at the time when they are making a buy decision.

This is where digital internet marketing enters the equation.

All the recent reports and statistics are pointing to the fact that traditional newspapers and print magazines are losing circulation numbers and consequently advertising revenue.  For the first time in the UK, during the 3rd quarter 2009 the online spend on internet advertising surpassed that of the TV.  Today, we all have DVD players, SKY+ and TV remotes that allow us to skip past the commercials.  The rise of the IPod, MP3 players and internet and satellite radio has decreased the popularity of local and national radio stations.  The one form of advertising that is seeing tremendous year on year growth is the internet.  Used in the right way, the internet is an amazing opportunity to, not only provide highly targeted advertising and brand recognition to your target audience, but you can engage with your audience at all those crucial times in the searching, selecting and buying decision process – including right at the buy phase.

All forms of digital internet marketing are rapidly growing in popularity

As the online population continues to grow worldwide, so does the popularity of using the internet. In addition, the current economic downturn is forcing all those across the generation divide to hunt around for the best deals on products and services they can find. The internet is where these best deals are being found. Digital internet marketing offers your company an exceptional opportunity to allocate your marketing spend towards a medium that allows you to increase exposure to consumers who are actively seeking your product or service.  This is making the internet much more effective than other forms of advertising because it is targeted, effective and relevant.  It has been said many times before but this is the equivalent of McDonald’s only showing you a Big Mac commercial when you are hungry.