#44 The Ballketing Letter
Unconscious branding, unlocking the "triggers" to purchase, masterclasses for fitness owners, when being "good" is not "good enough," positioning vs product marketing, new customer profiles & more!
Hey there, Ballketers.
Welcome to issue #44!
This week, the brief shares the main lessons we learned from Douglas Van Paert´s book “Unconscious Branding.” We actually divided it in two parts so make sure you check out next week´s issue if you enjoy what you read below.
We also could not miss an awesome selection of business content and we had time to publish a new blog post, covering how you can use NoCode tools to build your fitness app.
Finally, remember that we keep feeding our “Resource Center" in Notion, where you will find the content we find most valuable organized by format, topic, publisher and even a small summary of each element we add to it.
Let´s get down to business!
Great timing to share this quote from the player of the week on the team of the week. You might have already seen it, but this quote from Giannis is absolutely great to frame on approaching the past, the future, and the present.
(Anybody else think about Master Oogway from Kung Fu Panda??)
Unconscious branding & 7 steps to drive behavior change (I)
This week´s Ballketing Brief is inspired by Douglas Van Praet´s book, "Unsconcious Branding." Whether you are in sport, fashion, fitness, etc. the goal of your marketing strategy is to generate more revenue, either by:
Acquiring more customers
Getting your current customer to spend more, and / or
Extend the "relationship" between them and your brand
The chances of this happening increase significantly if we become the "top of mind" option for them; we become THE option for them. And, if this behavior becomes "embedded" in the customer´s mind, we pretty much hit a home run. There is an idea in the book that revolves around this concept:
To achieve branding on the deepest level, both conscious and unconscious dimensions must combine to produce a physiological transformation in people that can generate immediate results and endure over time.
In the book, Van Praet describes a 7 step process to influence behavior changes and today, we will share the first 3 of those steps as we do not want this edition to be too long:
Interrupt the patterns: Essentially, the best way to learn is through attention, and nothing focuses our mind better than surprise and novelty. So if you are running a marketing campaign of some sort, once you have defined a core "brand message," it might be a good idea to make small twitches, variations or even create additional version of the ads to drive that "surprise factor."
In general terms, we become more aware of our surroundings when something breaks the pattern or the norm. This is the classic example of having a shopping aisle with "milk, milk, milk, juice, milk, milk, milk.”
Which item do you believe will stand out more?
A good example of this in the sport industry is seen when clubs launch "radically different" designs of their official kits. These usually generate more "buzz" around fans than traditional versions. For example, the first time Real Madrid launched a black colored kit in the late 90s, there was a lot of backlash for being "contrary" to the traditional "white" first kit or purple / blue second kit.
Today? There have been numerous black kits designed for the club and launching new kits each season with different colors has become a "normal" situation.
This is also the reason why "surprising" or what they call "thumb stopper" content in digital platforms work better. It completely interrupts our scrolling pattern.
So, think about how your sport business can interrupt the pattern without being annoying and staying true to your brand.
Create comfort: The best way to build rapport is to share your fans´ beliefs and behaviors but being authentic about it. People don´t buy products, they buy into values, and when these beliefs and aspirations closely mirror their own, companies can create brand fans for life.
The fans of your team are loyal because they identify themselves with the values your organization transmits (effort, excellence, style of play and even, in some cases, political stance).
In this day & age, it is less about what your brand says about itself, it is more about what people say about it, especially if those people belong to "the tribe."
Jeff Bezos once said:
"Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service."
The long-term success of a brand depends on trust and recommendation (Van Paert argues that brands excelling on those two dimensions enjoy a 10x brand customer bond and 7x more likely to be purchased). In practical terms, it is the reason why microinfluencer marketing works better than macro-influencers; the closer the person giving a recommendation is to our inner circle, the more influence their words will have.
Finally, Van Paert shares a great definition of what the role of marketing should be:
The role of marketing is to sculpt and shape dynamic relationships by tapping into the inner desires and secret strengths of people´s optimal self. It is not about changing who they are but recognizing who they are.
Or, if you want a more "down to earth" definition: "Give a s** (about customers), don´t be full of it"*
Lead the imagination: The imagination is the driver behind our perceptions of reality. All great stories are built around human truths; all the best songs, movies, ads, let you see yourself in them somehow. Van Paert believes the goal of marketing communications should be to transport people to a destination of their own making, which in turn should lead them to the brand itself.
The reason is that most of us have two lives, the one we actually live and the one we wish for; the perception of the world is a fantasy that meets reality.
Nike understands this quite well and we recall two outstanding pieces of advertising that take this idea to a new level:
Nike: Take it to the next level
Nike: Find your greatness
What we desire in the physical world often starts out in our minds.
"Fitness influencer" marketing became so popular for the same reason. People saw in that content "what they wanted to become" and brands like Gymshark understood that insight, developed their strategy around it and have benefited greatly from it.
So, tying back to step 2, be as clear on your mission as you are on that of your customers´ mission. If both align, people will follow you and your brands. If your sport or fitness brand can promise a better life, not just a better product, the more chances that fans or users will be more loyal; people, deep down, are consistently yearning for someone to lead them to a better place in their life.
What are your thoughts so far? Let us know if this inspires some ideas or questions. Next week we will continue with the other 4 steps so hope to see you then.
We start this section with a moment to reflect on the importance of the “basics” in strategy.
“Back to basics” in marketing
Legendary athletes always talk about “mastering the fundamentals.” In marketing, it should be no different…
We could argue there are two "poles" to approach the role of marketing: the brand approach vs the data driven approach, which has emerged thanks to the development in new technologies. In this episode of Marketing Spark they cover how marketing is going back to the fundamentals and the review some of the most important concepts including positioning, messaging and focusing on "people" to develop a successful strategy.
From our point of view, as with sports, the key is to master the fundamentals (positioning, branding, etc.) and adapt the new developments to those fundamentals.
And the basics of marketing start by understanding your customer…
5 types of customers that have emerged from the pandemic
This episode from the eMarketer podcast discusses if the new type of personas that are emerging in a post pandemic world will remain true in a post-Covid world. The conversation is based on this Adweek article that identifies 5 specific personas:
Routine Ritualist
Prioritized Parent
New Nomad
Eco Evangelist
Emerging Entrepreneur
As your business strategies may need to start targeting them more often but keep in mind that the main objective is to truly understand your customers and create your own segments.
And once you do so, you are in a position to try and generate new business, for which you will need to understand how customers go from “intent” to “purchase.”
Unlocking “triggers:” The secret ingredient that drives purchases
Outstanding episode of "Everyone Hates Marketers" in which Louis Grenier explains why we need to find out the triggers behind a customer´s decision to buy and how we can do it.
A "desire" is not enough for a customer to take action; in fact, we need to understand the constraints and the triggers to complete the scope of the decision to buy.
Your marketing strategy will only succeed if you have a great team executing it…How can you build it?
Emotional skills to hire for and mistakes as "the greatest renewable resource."
Awesome episode of The Knowledge Project centered around Hospitality and Humanity with Danny Meyer (CEO at the Union Square Hospitality Group). We particularly found insightful the 6 emotional skills that he uses for hiring, which you can apply to your sport or fitness business:
Optimistic Kindness
Curiosity
Work ethic: Commitment to improve the situation and "go in the trenches"
Empathy: Do unto others what they would want to be done to them, not to you
Self Awareness
Integrity
They also cover the "5 As" of making mistakes, which they refer to as "the greatest renewable resource."
Be aware
Acknowledge it
Apologize for it
Act on it
Apply additional generosity
Moving to another topic, a few of the podcasts we follow must have agreed that this was "fitness business" week as they offered some excellent masterclasses for owners.
Masterclasses for fitness businesses
Dan Martell gives awesome advice on this episode of the Growth Stacking Show to a Crossfit gym owner on what he needs to focus on to grow his business. In essence, 3 questions to ask yourself:
What can you do to acquire more customers?
What can you do to keep them coming back?
What can you do to increase revenue per customer?
Every strategic decision you make from then on, should be based on those questions. If you are a fitness owner, this is an episode you cannot miss!
Then, Marc Randolph, in an insightful episode of That Will Never Work, helps a "brick & mortar" kickboxing brand owner determine if she should branch out into digital despite her amazing success in the traditional model. He provides three arguments
From a capacity point of view, there is no need as she still has room to grow in the "brick & mortar" space.
From an operations perspective, the grass is not always greener on the other side. Going digital implies a new set of skills, business model, challenges, which all go against her ability to focus on her core business.
From the customer´s angle though, it might make sense to test out if the user wants a "hybrid" experience and if they do, that might be enough to prove the opportunity. But he advises her to test the concept first rather than going all in investing in production capabilities, marketing campaigns, etc.
Eric Roza (CEO of Crossfit) visits the Fitt Insider podcast to review the state of the business and the opportunities for the future. Among many other things, he shared the 6 levers for growth in the future:
Crossfit gyms
Training
Coaching certification
D2C initiatives
eCommerce
Health
Finally, Vanessa Severiano interviews Liteboxer´s CMO in this episode of The Business Side of Fitness. We particularly liked the way she describes the challenges brands face in such a competitive industry:
Market differentiation
Media channel choices
Innovation & prioritization
And we end the podcast section with an interview to one of the players changing the sport landscape…
A conversation w/ Bo Han (CEO at Buzzer)
Great conversation on the state of sports broadcasting w/ Bo Han, who is looking to change the playing field with Buzzer. He identifies three main trends:
1. Fragmentation of the sports broadcasting industry
2. Generational gap in consumption of live sports
3. Unbundling of the media packages.
Positioning vs product marketing
They are definitely not the same but they do need each other. This great article on Casey Accidental will show the differences in detail but in essence, product positioning is a long term result of the perception that product creates in the market whereas product marketing is more related to the go-to market strategy.
The article also reminds us of the "Brand Pyramid" framework, which can be useful for you to understand, regardless of the type or size of business your sport or fitness brand is:
Peloton entering the virtual fitness space
A few weeks back we shared how Facebook sees virtual fitness as the future of the industry. It now seems that Peloton is also headed down that same road as it will apparently launch a virtual fitness experience. initially called "Lanebreak," by the end of the year.
The virtual fitness space is heating app…Facebook, Peloton, Zwift and the players that still may enter in the near future.
Learn the basics of MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads)
Given the amount of things we need to focus on, we need to aim to be as efficient as possible in all of our business operations. This includes in our sales & marketing processes. As such, we need to shift our mindset to generate "Marketing Qualified Leads" (MQLs) rather than "generic" leads. An MQL is basically a potential customer that enters our sales pipeline with higher chances of converting, based on the the fact that it has demonstrated some form of intent towards doing business with us.
Learn the basics in this article and look to take your marketing to a whole new level.
When being good is not good enough
Brandingmag publishes this insightful article that looks to identify how brands can embrace a world that goes beyond "buying, selling, profit & loss." Our main takeaways?
Define 3 values for your brand: One rational, one emotional, and one aspirational.
Always deliver on the brand promise from the inside
"A good business is about delivering consistently brilliant products or services, commercial success to sustain those working for it, and concerned to ensure positive social and environmental impact."
Messaging as a key element for brand differentiation
The folks at CXL share this detailed guide on "messaging" and how it can be a source for brand differentiation and generate demand. The cover the "why" and the "how" through 4 elements that include:
Your USP
Your target
Storytelling
The "messaging guidelines"
They finish it off with a description of how to take it to the market. It has it all!
And that does it for #44! We hope you found it useful and that you learned something new to apply in your sport or fitness business. If you have any feedback, let us know so we can keep making this newsletter better.
And, if you believe somebody else can enjoy The Ballketing Letter, don´t hesitate to share it with them so we can grow the community together.
We hope to “see” you again next week where we will try to deliver more content, updates and resources to help you take your sport or fitness business to the next level.
Until then, please keep safe.