Start thinking outside the box and begin 2018 strong with these innovative marketing tips geared towards sports brands. We'll also help you put your money where your mouth is with ideas on how much and where you should spend on your marketing budget this year.
Getting into the practice of using digital marketing to generate leads in your sports business takes work, but can pay dividends. There are ways that even the world's biggest brands can more effectively leverage their websites to gain more business.
As more and more people are using their phones to access the Internet, don't overlook your website as it can benefit greatly from optimizing your mobile responsiveness better. Make sure that your loading speed is up to snuff so that potential customers aren't left waiting for images and videos to load. You should also be separating your images properly for mobile. Your back-end system should also be organized with great titles and description meta tags.
You've probably seen the small text ads that appear at the top of Google search results, but what you may not realize is how valuable this territory can be. If you get your keywords right you can grab the attention of potential customers who may be searching for your products. In the market for new running shoes or soccer balls? Capture their attention here and it's more likely they'll click to your website.
To make this work to your advantage, be sure to have your keywords, ad, and website landing page all synced to each other and to your searchers intent. To maximize your results create separate ad groups for each product you want to advertise. The keywords that a prospective customer would use to find each product should be as unique as possible.
Remarketing your ads allows you to reach people after they've visited your website to remind them why they came there in the first place. You can segment these ads to reach specific audiences according to the criteria of your potential customers. This tactic can be especially useful when you want to promote a line of clothing as it can generate new traffic to your website and bring back returning visitors who may have looked at your product page recently.
You can also work on your Google ads with an online marketer or SEO specialist. To start cooperation, you need to grant them access to your Google Adwords account.
Investing your time, energy, and finances into a detailed content plan and utilizing fresh, engaging, customer-focused content on a regular basis can score you major points with Google and other organic search engines, which in turn go a long way in driving traffic to your website.
Your content plan should budget in at least one or two posts a month, if not more. According to the Content Marketing Institute's Report on Manufacturing Content Marketing for 2018, almost 70 percent of marketers say that their content marketing is successful. Posting case studies, e-books, videos, professionally shot and edited product images, and detailed product write-ups are all great methods to increase your content. Sharing the posts on social media also gives you an additional boost.
Email is still one of the most effective ways to reach your target market as well as to engage with current customers about new products and company news. Including short surveys or other calls to action in your emails also helps.
In terms of B2B marketing, if you've recently attended a trade show this can also be a good way to reach out to any contacts you made and follow-up with them.
While the above methods are effective for gaining and maintaining customers, you don't have to do them all at once. Start by layering your approach and incorporating one or two ideas as you gauge responses and results. It's better to do one or two things right and to a high standard than to do a lot of things wrong. Your digital tactics should be geared towards providing solutions to problems that your potential customers want to solve.
Exactly how big should your marketing budget be? Marketing professionals from different industries and types of companies suggest the following:
This simple marketing budget calculator shows an overall marketing budget as well as a digital marketing budget. The template then breaks the digital budget into itemized categories.
- easy to use Excel file
- marketing and digital marketing
- international, national and local
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These percentages represent total marketing costs including advertising costs, marketing staff, payments to third-party agencies, media spend, etc.
According to Forrester Research the average firm is expected to allocate 41% of their marketing budget to online (Digital Marketing) in 2018, and this rate is expected to grow to 45% by 2020.
Now that you are aware of some tactics, it's useful to think about how you want to allocate your marketing budget this year to incorporate new methods.
In a survey by Marketing Charts conducted last year, at least half of all respondents stated that they plan to increase spending in social media and content marketing, personalization, video advertising, and online lead generation for 2018.
In another recent survey of 2,500 digital marketers about what activities generate the best ROI, respondents consistently stated that organic search, email marketing, and social media and content marketing achieved the best returns.
A 2016 report from eMarketer projects social media penetration and growth through to 2020. Facebook is predicted to hold onto its share of 90 percent of social media users using the platform. While Instagram is projected to grow from 32 percent penetration to 47 percent by 2020. As both social media platforms have increasing opportunities for advertising and marketing, brands should consider an emphasis on these channels.
A Hanapin Marketing report from last year highlighted 75 percent of its respondents planned to increase their Google Adwords investments in 2018. While Facebook also factored in as a competitor to paid search engines. Though this means that digital is still going strong with marketing investment in search engines over social channels.
Overall when it comes to marketing spend digital is vastly winning out over more traditional forms such as print and radio. For the last five years, investments in traditional advertising have dropped while digital marketing spend has grown by double-digit increments each year. This means that many businesses that were once investing in television, radio, and magazines are now channeling that money into search, email, and social media campaigns.
The boom shows no signs of stopping anytime soon, so brands would benefit in harnessing more of their marketing spend to accommodate digital trends and tactics. Understanding these tips and knowing what way the market is leaning to can help you determine exactly how much and what you want to spend your marketing budget on this year
Categories included in the calculator:
