All posts by Gerard McLean

If it works on paper, make sure it works on the field

Tournaments

I am at the 2009 NSCAA in St. Louis and the hotel bathroom is almost entirely unusable. To be sure, it is has nice shower head, the glass shelf and pedestal sink is really nice, but it all falls apart quickly with the lack of water pressure, only one plug outlet and little bottles of shampoo don’t fit on the shower shelves or the sink. In addition, there is no venting of the steam after you take a shower, a shower longer than usual because there is no water pressure.

Ironically enough, when I had a corporate job and a travel secretary, she used to book me on TWA through St. Louis. She did this because it was cheap to fly and the flight schedule showed you could get anywhere from St. Louis. Only you couldn’t. TWA was going through bankruptcy and they wanted to fill their planes as much as possible. What they never told anyone — including my secretary — was that they would get you to St. Louis and then you would sit. If the plane going from St. Louis to where you wanted to go was not full enough, they would delay it or cancel the flight. What worked on paper just did not work in real life.

She did not understand my frustration with her and it was hard to justify a flight 100% more expensive to MY boss. Then, she had an opportunity to travel to a training workshop a day ahead of me. She booked her own fight the same way she booked mine. We ended up seeing each other in St. Louis the next day as her flight was delayed. She then understood.

As with travel, hotel people should be forced to live in what they design for a week. They would design rooms a bit differently.

Our Advice: Sometimes, especially in the dormant season, a soccer tournament system works well on paper. In your mind, without benefit of frantic teams calling every hour, advertising, hotel booking systems, registration systems, etc work out well. On paper, there is always time to finish the task and move sequentially through the to do list. But when you have several hundred teams all wanting to do something at the same time, they can quickly overwhelm you, your staff and your systems.

Nothing is more especially true for a web site that has real-time scoring. If your tournament is in September, your traffic is almost non-existent in January. Some teams are checking you out, making plans, etc. but for the most part, your web site runs well. But, how will it hold up when you have parents, players and fans of 200 or more teams all wanting to know the scores during a two hour window on Saturday night?

When coming up with systems for your guest teams, make sure they are also ones that you can live with. Build your soccer tournament to expectations that you have of other people. And make sure things are usable when and where your guest teams need and want to use them.

Bowling for soccer teams

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What do bowling, soccer tournaments and the economy have in common? A lot, according to the Wall Street Journal. When the economy is down, people pick up a bowling ball and you have a lot of people coming into town for your soccer tournament.

This is a great opportunity for soccer tournaments to partner up with a local bowling center. You have kids and parents coming into town and looking for entertainment in the evenings and between games. Bowling centers are everywhere and a great way for the teams to keep “warmed up” between games.

When partnered with your TourneyCentral advertising DEALS, a listing of bowling centers in your local area as well as a deal to host a soccer team night or dedicated lanes is a win for the center, the community, your tournament and your guest teams. And, you may even be able to talk the bowling center manager into running our Real-Time Scores on one of their televisions to keep the teams in the loop.

Our advice: Call your local bowling centers and get some deals going. Fill their lanes, become a great community partner. Introduce a new sport to lots of kids and reintroduce it to their parents. Whether they bowl a perfect game or gutter balls, the social aspect of bowling makes it fun for just about everyone.

You can find bowling centers in your local area at the AMF Web site and at this great search engine Bowling2U.com.

Novi Jaquar Invitational on Back of the Net radio

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Allison Stier with the Jaguar Invitational is interviewed by Larry Miller with Back of the Net.

Click here to listen to the podcast or access through iTunes.
WHEN: May 8-10, 2009
WHERE: Novi, Michigan
FEES: 6v6 and 8v8 $550 11v11 $625
APPLICATION DEADLINE: Friday, Mar 13, 2009

Using postcards as effective soccer tournament marketing

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Click the postcard to view front and back in full size

Click the postcard to view front and back in full size

A postcard for the Hershey Tournament and the Penn State 8v8 arrived earlier this week. It got my attention, not only because the two events are TourneyCentral.com tournaments, but because it was well designed and executed. Here’s why.

I knew what it was about quickly
I didn’t have to open a letter or fight with that low-grade postage wafer that tears most of the information off the top of the flyer folded in thirds. “2 great tournaments.” The logos were right there on top, leading the description.

5Ws
Who, What, When, Where, Why and How were listed in bullets points and were easy to read. No disclaimers were mixed in to “CYA” the tournament. Just the facts and where to go to get more.

Contact information front and center
The web address was right there as was the email AND PHONE NUMBER. Chances are most folks will go to the web site first, but there are a few coaches left who still feel more comfortable picking up the phone and getting a feel for how real the event is.

It is print
I’m an advocate for the Internet, but nothing replaces 4-color print — even if only a postcard — to let your guest teams know that you believe in your event enough to design a postcard, print it out and pay for postage to mail it to them. Print says “I am real.”

Good use of white space
The designer did not stuff every square inch of postcard space with crap. Get the basics out, push your audience to the web site where they can read more if they need to. Just the facts and lots of breathing room.

What I would have liked to see
– A human face, a soccer player or coach. A family that has been helped by the charity.
– The web address bigger for each event
– Rule of thirds and some offset. The tournament panels being side-by-side instead of flanking the middle content.
– A little more contrast between the actual soccer tournament events and the Kicks4Kids organization.
– More WIIFM (What’s in it for me) to the coach and less about the hosting organization.
– A TourneyCentral logo, showing that they are hosted by the best (but that is really selfish on my part.)

Please feel free to leave a comment if you disagree with my list.

Print and direct mail is not dead. Neither is the US Postal Service. A great soccer tournament will use a mix of email marketing, print and word-of-mouth to get the message out about their tournament.

Almost ready for St. Louis and the NSCAA

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Just in case you were following along with us, checking off the dates until the big NSCAA soccer conference in St. Louis, here is our booth status. Almost ready!

Our TourneyCentral.com NSCAA booth. A little more nip and tuck, but we're almost there.

Our TourneyCentral.com NSCAA booth. A little more nip and tuck, but we're almost there.

Meet us in St. Louis for the NSCAA.
We’re in booth 1735 and we won’t even try to sell you anything, so you can stay and chat as long as you want. Really. And, if you want to make a podcast promoting your soccer tournament, Back of the Net will help you with that. You don’t even need to be a TourneyCentral tournament.