#20 The Ballketing Letter
A remarkable podcast episode, influencer marketing redefined, methods & tools for your email strategy, Clubhouse, sustainability in sport & examples to give you ideas for your sport / fitness business
Hey there, Ballketers.
We are back another week with awesome content to help you manage your sport or fitness business. Before going into the details, as usual, our top 3 pieces for this week would be:
Guy Kawasaki interviews Dr. Jonah Berger on the Remarkable People Podcast. This is, quite simply, a masterclass on tackling customer behavior, challenging the “status quo” bias, or how to effectively launch a new product or service. We actually listened to this episode twice, be sure not to miss it!
We also thought the Everybody Hates Marketers episode on “brand differentiation” and standing out was absolutely awesome. Louis Grenier takes a series of questions across several topics and gives back actionable advice with real examples. He even discusses some ideas for someone who runs a sports / fitness events related business so be sure to listen in.
“Sustainability” is a term that is finally becoming relevant in business so we are thrilled when we see it being applied to the sport industry as well. This week we share with you “The Halo Effect", an initiative developed by Southampton FC with the aim to drive a sustainable club and develop project in the community.
We have also published a new article on the blog, looking into the current situation, opportunities and challenges for the women´s sport industry. Feel free to check that out and let us know what you think!
Let´s get down to business.
Podcasts
It may be time to reconsider what you thought about influencer marketing
Many businesses believe that influencer marketing is more effective when partnering with someone that is capable to reach a huge audience. According to this episode from the Social Pros Podcast though, this is the wrong approach.
Influencer marketing should be about effectively influencing an audience and in many occasions, this is actually more feasible in more reduced groups and more importantly, when the partnership is based in authenticity (not when it is obvious that a person is promoting a brand because he is being paid to do so). In industries such as sports or fitness, where influencer marketing is prominently used as a marketing channel, it might pay off to think about new approaches to be develop more effective tactics.
Remarkable episode from the Remarkable People podcast
There are many podcast episodes that we feel compelled to listen to twice but this was certainly one of them. Guy Kawasaki interviews Dr. Jonah Berger on this fantastic episode of Remarkable People in which you can learn, among many other things:
What is being"status-quo" biased and why using free products /trial/freemiums/ etc. is a great way to fight it.
Understanding customer needs in order to innovate successfully and drive changes in behaviors. In this sense, it is not the same to ask customers what they need vs finding it out.
People do not like being told what to do, they like to have a choice when considering a change in behavior, which is why it makes sense to be really knowledgeable with regards to what they need to eliminate barriers to change.
The importance of "active listening" & body language when speaking with customers, prospects or...people in general!
When launching a new product, identify those customers that really need that product vs those who consider it "nice to have." Those early users that need to product will drive demand from other segments. Moreover, when shifting to those "nice to have" customers, it is best to chop a big decision (like choosing a new brand or service) into small decisions that, little by little, end up driving a major change in behavior.
We are sure it can be a great source of ideas for your sport or fitness business so try to make some time for it...it will be worth it!
Learn to differentiate your business with "Everybody hates marketers”
This was another awesome episode from the “Everybody Hates Marketers” Podcast. Louis takes questions from people in the audience and delivers great tactical answers with real examples and ideas for them. Although pretty much all the answers were fantastic, we thought the episode was particularly relevant since he helped a person who works in a sport / fitness events-based business tackle some doubts regarding how to target multiple segments within an existing customer base with relevant content. Does this sound familiar?
At the end of the day, personalization comes down to knowing the objectives of customers and the phase of the purchasing journey they are in. And the only way to do so is to actually get customer feedback from a relevant sample of clients (rather than assuming we know to perfection what their needs and concerns are). Then, you will be able to create different segments based (using your own analysis or even tools as basic as Facebook or Google ads) and the next step would be to test different types of content for each segment. Based on the results of those test, you will be able to define the most relevant pieces of content for each customer segment and hopefully, increase conversions.
Finally, the rant at the end of the episode on standing out and differentiating from the competition also makes the episode one that you simply cannot miss.
Articles
Build your email campaigns with this "No Code" tool
We probably all agree on the importance of creating impact through emails for you to catch your customer´s or potential customer´s eye. On the other, hand it sometimes take a long time to develop these type of emails. And since you probably prefer to dedicate the majority of your time to your core business rather than building email templates, we wanted to share this tool with you in case you are searching for easy options to develop your email strategy.
The cool thing is that the folks from "Really Good Emails" provide a fantastic detailed review of how it works with examples and videos you can follow along.
...And here are some examples of apology emails, in case you ever need them
If you´ve ever had to write an apology email, you must have realized it is a very difficult thing to do. Each word needs to be written with especial care to ensure the user feels that apology and accepts keeping business with you. Because of that, we wanted to share this article in which you can find tips and examples to develop apology emails. Keep it around although we hope you never need to reference it!
4 ideas to market your health & fitness business
Iterable publishes this insightful article with ideas and examples on how to market your health & fitness business. These include:
Analyze user engagement data to deliver revenue driven communications
Apply dynamic customer segmentation
Strengthen your onboarding program
Automate your personalization tactics
Check it out as it can give you some ideas on how to improve your current marketing strategy and in fact, Iterable also published a specific case study on Fiit TV, a subscription fitness app from the UK which you may also find valuable.
More on video lead generation strategies
On last week´s newsletter, we brought an article covering Vimeo´s new partnerships to help businesses with their lead generation strategy using video. This week, we go more "tactical" and we bring you a Hubspot article with actual ideas you can implement to improve you efforts to increase the amount of potential customers you generate through video. These include:
Personalized contact forms
Break long form content into segments within a video to guide the user through all the content
Device / platform optimization
Knowing where and when to place contact forms during the video
The article then provides more details which can probably give you a few ideas to test for yourself.
Use the C.U.R.V.E. method to drive conversion from your email campaigns
A powerful email subject line is, in many instance, the difference why some people decide to open emails or not from brands, and therefore, it can be considered among the first steps to ensuring a later sale. This is the reason why we believe this article, which describes the benefits and details of the C.U.R.V.E. method, can be of great help to improve your email marketing campaigns. The method includes:
Curiosity
Urgency
Relevance
Value
Emotion
The question is, are your email subject lines currently including two of those five elements?
Gary Vee gives his opinion on clubhouse and the future of voice technology
You probably have heard quite a bit about Clubhouse in the last month (or few months) and the craze it has suddenly been able to build up. And since you might have already "Googled it" to see what it was, we thought it might be more valuable if we brought this article instead.
Gary Vee brings an awesome review on why the app is enjoying huge success and how it ties into his vision on voice technology being dominant in the future. In particular, we will stay with two predominant ideas:
Voice technology can be consumed "passively." This, for example, means you can actually be doing something else while consuming voice related content.
In the end, users value time above many other things (except, perhaps, health & family) and again, voice technology is a huge enabler of "time savings." Think about it, have you increased the amount of audios you sent through Whatsapp? Would you prefer saying: "hey Google, find me this?" or writing it out?
Sustainability in Sport: Southampton FC launch The Halo Effect
English Premier League club, Southampton FC, has made official the launch of a sustainable initiative called "The Halo Effect," which is a commitment from the organization towards ensuring a sustainable future for the club, the fans and the community:
In addition, according to Sports Pro Media, the club is set to plant a minimum of 3,000 trees in the region over the next four years linking it to an objective of having three players from their youth teams making their first appearance with the first team each year. As a result, Southampton is looking to compensate 3,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Why is this important for your sport or fitness business? Well, according to Hubspot,"consumers are willing to open their wallets for products that are organic (41%), made with sustainable materials (38%), or deliver on socially responsible claims (30%)" so it may make sense for your business to start considering a sustainability strategy in the near future, as it will be a "key to play" feature across all industries.
7 ideas from D2C brands your sport or fitness business
In past editions of the newsletter we have shared other articles on D2C brands since we believe that they provide great examples on how to connect & engage with customers. Today, we share with you this article with 7 ideas and real examples of campaigns developed by D2C brands to do just that.
You will learn from the likes of Glossier, Warby Parkers, Bark Box or Ugly Drinks. Hopefully, your business, regardless of it being a brick & mortar sport business or a digital service can pick up a few ideas for your own strategy.
Define your market positioning correctly
In an environment where competition is as intense as it is today, establishing a unique marketing position within a market is critical. This article published on CXL bring tactics and examples to "nail it," when developing your marketing positioning strategy.
Keep in mind though, that in the end, market positioning is ultimately about customer or fan perceptions. All efforts will go to waste if your brand is not perceived as you want it to.
And that would be all for this week! We hope it was worth it and the content can help you manage your sport or fitness business more effectively. Please feel free to contact us if you have any suggestions, doubts or content you want to share. And most of all, thanks for reading until the end.
And, of course, if you know someone who would enjoy or benefiting from reading this newsletter please share it with them.
Keep safe.