Are you using unemployment data to guide your soccer tournament marketing?

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The average soccer tournament pulls teams from 3-5 states, including adjoining states and the home state. For many, their home state is the largest draw, followed by a primary state. With the recession in full swing, it may be affecting your ability to draw teams from states that have traditionally sent lots of teams but now has a high unemployment rate.

For example, the average competitive tournament in Ohio typically pulls a large contingent of teams from Michigan. But if you take a quick look at some unemployment statistics, it should not come as a shock that convincing teams that normally came down without question is getting harder to do. In addition, you may have to resort to discounting for multiple teams, juggle the schedule to work around a hotel minimum stay; all effective short-term tactics, but long-term strangulation for your tournament brand.

A better approach may be a more well-rounded, distributed marketing plan where one state’s financial plight does not adversely affect your tournament planning. In short, spread your marketing dollars around to states one over; those that may be in a better financial position to attend. You’ll get some fresh blood in your tournament and you will be less dependent on the unemployment rate.

The time to start marketing to other states in before you need teams from financially healthy states. Hoping and praying the teams from distressed states will still come is not a marketing plan.

Parents will always spend money on their kids, but there are limits. Many are cutting the number of tournaments and only putting one or two travel events on the calendar. Make sure yours is in the mix by making sure they know you are there.

The economy will recover eventually and when it does, your marketing efforts will continue to pay back as newer teams who could not afford it during the recession try your soccer tournament out. And, as sure as the recovery is coming, so too is another recession. Be ready by always marketing smart.

Watch the trends. Sometimes being a great soccer program is just not enough.

How is your soccer tournament like Apple?

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This week, the Washington Post published an article on Apple, it’s new product line and how it is kicking butt all over the computer world despite being in a recession. In the article, it concedes that Apple’s success are not merely driven by Apple fanatics who will buy anything Apple makes, but by a sound, well-thought out value strategy.

Quite simply, Apple produces a quality product and makes no compromises on design and user interface. They set the price high enough to generate a profit to ensure research and development dollars for future products and don’t apologize for it nor do they adjust it based on whether or not we are in a recession. Their products don’t appeal to everyone, but the audience to which they appeal are loyal and expect quality; first time, every time.

And they are onto something. As the average PC maker continues to be squeezed by their customers who shop on price, they have fewer and fewer dollars left to innovate and improve. When a recession happens, many low-cost producers simply go out of business because they can’t afford to weather the storm. They did not prepare.

Is your soccer tournament an Apple or a PC? Is your fee/vendor/sponsorship agreements set high enough to claim value and ensure enough profitability to assure your guest teams that you will be around next year? Or in some cases, even this year? Do you take care of your guest teams enough to justify your fees?

Our advice: Set your team fees high enough to make sure there is enough profit to operate at a high-quality level. Don’t cave to arguments of teams not being able to afford your tournament. You are providing quality soccer competition and entertainment at a fair price that reflects your value. If some teams have problems affording you but have pegged your tournament as a “must attend” event, then perhaps they need to make cost-cuts elsewhere.

And don’t compromise your vendor relationships — including hotels and concessions — to make your tournament more affordable to guest teams. Don’t undervalue your volunteers and staff by cutting perks. Don’t buy cheaper awards. Don’t compromise your marketing.

And don’t cave to scheduling demands that compromises revenue. If that means shrinking the number of teams you accept in order to maintain your quality and profitability goals, then do it. If you are profitable, you can always grow in stronger economic years.

Your ultimate goal is to build a soccer tournament event that is sustainable and will benefit your soccer organization and your local community over a long period of time. Making price deals just to satisfy short-term team counts does not contribute to that goal.

Is price the only issue here?

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I was going to write a long, complicated blog post about price and value. But, then I ran across this video and it said it better than I ever could.

I especially like the comment the woman in the beauty shop says. “I can cover your hard costs…” Sounds suspiciously like, “I can cover the referee costs, but I can’t pay the entire entry fee.”

But I’m just a volunteer with a day job

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Sometimes coaches and team pound on tournament directors to do this, do that, tell me this, tell me that, etc, etc. It kinda comes with the territory running a soccer tournament. And every so often, especially when you come home from your day job after a particularly long day, and you are reading these emails, you are tempted to quip back something like:

“I’m just a volunteer with a day job and I can’t be expected to answer all your emails and phone calls 24/7 at your beck and call.”

And that’s when you should step back, NOT send the email and take a deep breath. It is not a good idea and will backfire because the coach or team rep who is asking you questions is probably also a volunteer and they are spending their lunch hours, evening, weekends and holidays to manage their team as well.

The only difference between your volunteer efforts and theirs is they are PAYING your organization to play in a tournament. They are the customer, regardless of whether you are volunteering your time or not. In this relationship, you don’t have the luxury of ignoring their needs simply because you are volunteering your time, energy and expertise organizing a tournament.

There are limits, like not being expected to take a phone call at 3:00am, but mostly managing a soccer organization is a night, weekend and holiday job. Plan for it.

Our Advice: Set support hours and communication channels and publish them clearly. If you can only be available by phone between 6:00pm-10pm M-F and 9:00am-11:am S/S, say so! Publish the hours on your home page, in your about section and in your FAQs. Make the hours part of your email footer. If you prefer email and can respond faster that way, say so!

Most communication issues can be solved by setting clear expectation from the start and following through with them. There will always be emergencies and these should be responded to appropriately, but make sure they are real emergencies. If they turn out to be routine issues that could have been handled through your published channels, don’t be afraid to remind the coach/team rep about this. Some coaches will always see their issues as emergencies. Be sure to not enable that by being firm.

But never fall back on the “I’m just a volunteer” excuse. It never works.

Compliments

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I love compliments. I can be having the crappiest day, have three dozen people all ticked off at me for something I probably didn’t do and then I get something like this and it all doesn’t matter.

Just wanted to tell you that your tournament website is great – one of the best I’ve seen. Everything I need as a parent of a player. Thanks.

The person who sent this (about 2 minutes ago) didn’t need to. We all know it is easier (and more fun?) to complain than to take a few minutes and drop someone a quick email letting them know they are doing something well. But, it makes such a huge difference! (Thank you parent of a Mead Cup player. If you are reading this, you already know who you are.)

Our Advice: Don’t let the people with bad attitude, axes to grind or complaints get you down. Most likely, they are in the minority and they are just louder. If you are doing a good job, nobody will probably tell you. If you are doing an exceptional job, maybe one person will tell you. Maybe. It only takes one to lift up your day.

The audience you are not getting because you are focused on your own niche

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Here is the ugly truth about American soccer. It is something kids DO, not who they are. Yet many soccer clubs and tournaments focus their marketing and message around the assumption that soccer is central to the players lives and that everything else is ancillary or inconsequential.

The ASAE (American Society of Association Executives) produced the video below for their annual meeting just this past weekend. (It runs a little long, the movie beats you up a little with the message, but pay attention to the subtitles. They are really small, but perhaps the most important part of the whole piece.)

I get it; trade associations connect people together and that was the obvious point. But, the not so obvious point is that all these people who are working at trade associations during the day are spending their nights and weekends with their true passion; music.

We have seen this kind of thing before, but usually the talent is mediocre. But, these folks are darn good! The ASAE not only had the criterion of involving their members, but that the member had to have a high level of skill, proficiency and passion. Brilliant!

What does a harmonica have to do with biodiesel? Nothing except for Joe Jobe. Or a guitar with concrete or paint? For Joe Vickers and Phil Bour, the combination make perfect sense. Railroads and drum kits? Michael Fore makes it work. He probably taps out routines on his desk, driving his co-workers crazy. And there is no hiding the rapture Mike Skiados (ASAE) feels when he plays his guitar.

The Disney movie High School Musical (HSM) was a similar deafening intervention cry from kids, yet few adults paid attention to the underlying message, mostly dismissing it as bubble-gum entertainment. But the kids got it and that is what made the movie “stick.”

Social Media like Facebook gets this concept by allowing members to establish a core identity and then add interests and groups to them. More specialized sites like Meet the Boss, various Ning sites and sites like WePlay.com don’t. Neither do “gardens of brands” like Skittles or Ford. In their world, there is no room for “other interests” and no way to connect the person with them. (As an aside, the WSJ had an interesting article on fans. Worth a read… after you are done with this post and have commented/tweeted, of course.)

Anyone who doesn’t know me is surprised that among my passionate interests are newspapers, old typewriters, literature, photography, coffee, typography, dogs and harmonicas. Computers and soccer come in almost last on the list. Internet is the way I make a living and it is imperative I am knowledgeable and skilled in it, but it is not my passion. In their world, I develop Web-based properties therefore I must be a geek and only care about the latest technology. Sorry. Technology is a tool; no more, no less.

For sports organizations, the random connections that social media reveals is like gold. How many times have you approached a large brand for a sponsorship and gotten, “What does our brand/product have to do with soccer?” If you dig deeper into the social media networks like Facebook, you may well have a stronger answer. Your model is HSM and the ASAE video.

Our advice: Find the connections. The more random and strange, the better. Watch the touchlines and the space between games more intently than the games themselves at your next tournament. What are the kids doing? What are their parents doing? How many questions do your get about a particular topic? Why? Ask questions, observe behaviors. Your next sponsor may be in the non-soccer parts of the game that your sponsor’s target audience is most passionate about.

Note: This post was originally intended for just TourneyCentral, but because the medium here is also the message, we posted this on almost every brand we own. Dogs and soccer? Coffee and soccer? Marketing and soccer? Yeah, it all fits when you start looking hard enough. And, thank you Cindy Butts for the inspiration.

When anger turns into creativity

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Watch the video above. It was written and produced by Dave Carroll after an unpleasant experience with United Airlines. As of this writing, the video has been viewed 433,294 times on YouTube, had 3,274 comments and appeared in the Wall Street Journal web site, the Huffington Post, LA Times, the Consumerist and various other news sites.. We’ve also sent out the link to a lot of our clients and friends who are in the customer experience business every day. You can read the back story here.

Dave Carrroll may have just written the next United Airlines jingle that will be chasing through travelers’ heads when they see the United Airlines logo in any airport anywhere. Nothing worms into the brain more effectively than music or scent. And country music is really, really sticky. I know it is in my head right now!

Our Advice: Don’t design team satisfaction systems that require levels and level of approvals for the purpose of frustrating the team. Resolve issues quickly and don’t let them fester. Answer emails quickly. Recognize the difference between the coach’s need to blow off steam at a simple frustration and a legitimate concern for which your soccer tournament may be liable. And buy Dave Carroll’s album, Perfect Blue on iTunes. 🙂

Kids are clever and you don’t want a negative “playground chant” or derogatory description about your tournament to get viral. (Northworst, US Scare, etc… )

Soccer Photos from South Africa (2003)

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In 2003, the Warrior Soccer Club of Dayton, Ohio, donated uniforms, soccer boots and balls to Emthonjeni, a foundation that operates school and youth programs in Soweto and Sweetwaters, communities south of Johannesburg. More than 200 uniforms were donated.

In light of the renewed soccer focus on South Africa, I thought it would be a really cool idea to share these photos.

The story appeared originally in the Dayton Daily News

You Can Measure Return On Sponsorship

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by Larry Albus, 33 minutes ago

Originally posted at MediaPost.com

The sponsorship industry has advanced a great deal since the time the phrase “sponsorship can’t be measured” typically went unchallenged. As all aspects of the industry have grown more sophisticated, and as the dollar value and prominence of partnerships has grown substantially, the need for accountability has become vitally important.

We are hearing questions such as: Can I measure the impact of my sponsorship activation? What is the return on my venue naming rights deal? As a property, how can I demonstrate return to the sponsors of my event? And the list goes on.

Existing approaches to measurement — which merely transfer advertising surrogates such as media equivalencies and impressions to sponsorship, or use intermediate metrics such as awareness and attitude shifts to gauge performance – miss the mark. They don’t consider either the differences the sponsorship environment requires or the inherent flaws in the way advertising is measured.

Read the entire article at MediaPost.com

TourneyCentral sends scores and news to Twitter

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TourneyCentral, an online service available to Soccer Tournament Directors, announced that the users of its service now receive the added benefit of having their scores, schedules, announcements and information automatically “tweeted” out to followers on Twitter at @tourneycentral. Twitter is a micro-blogging application and is currently the hottest social media tool on the market. The development is an added feature because it centralizes soccer event updates for parents and fans, who can turn on the notification if they are at a TourneyCentral tournament and turn it off afterward.

“Many people are at soccer matches tweeting updates to their contacts using their iPhone, Blackberry and cell phones,” says TourneyCentral President Gerard McLean, “It just makes sense that we would automate the process from a single point of contact.” He adds, “This feature of our TourneyCentral product allows tournament directors to maximize the benefits of a very effective social networking medium by pushing out their message on Twitter.”

The tweet uses the #tag of the event (i.e. #WSC is Warrior Classic, #WLI is Westlake Invitational, etc.) and shows which divisions that were updated. In addition to scores and news, the spirit center for each event will be resurrected using Twitter. The calendar of soccer tournament events is available here.

ABOUT TOURNEYCENTRAL
TourneyCentral.com provides comprehensive, event-focused, web-based solutions for youth soccer tournaments and is wholly owned by Rivershark, Inc. an Ohio Corporation. Since 1999, TourneyCentral has been producing web sites that provide youth soccer tournaments with end-to-end integrated experience management for guest teams, from marketing through scoring. In addition, the advertising tools provide the tournaments with an increased opportunity for advertising and sponsorship revenue as a result of significantly increased traffic to the web site. For more information, visit www.tourneycentral.com.

Companion and marketing partner properties consist of: The Soccer Tournament Review, a blog and iTunes podcast for tournament directors, MyTournamentSpace, a photo-sharing site linked directly into the tournament game schedule and www.ticoscore.com, a single-source database and ranking system for soccer tournaments.

TourneyCentral will be attending the NSCAA Conference in Philadelphia in January 2010.

Contact for more information
Gerard McLean
gmclean [at] rivershark.com
937-836-6255

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Your game schedule is wrong

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Right after you release the game schedules, no matter how much work you have put into seeding the teams, researching, trying to minimize conflicts, etc. you will get a rash of emails from coaches acknowledging that scheduling is hard, but that you screwed it all up for them.

Among the more popular complaints are:
– You seeded my team wrong and my kids are going to get killed/not challenged
– You have my games too early/late/too much time/not enough time between
– I coach multiple teams and there are conflicts
– I don’t want to play this team/club

And on and on. The more you try to make someone happy, the less happy someone else is going to be because while coach A thought you did a thoroughly crappy job, coach B in the same division thinks you are a genius. When you mess with coach A’s schedule, you have to mess with coach B’s as well. Now, you have two coaches mad at you.

Our advice: Adjusting a schedule for all but the most egregious oversights is a zero-sum game and best to not do it. State early and often that coaching conflicts are the team’s responsibility to resolve, not the tournament. It was the club/team/coach who decided that multiple-team coaching was a good approach for whatever reason, not your tournament. The team needs to live with the impact of their decision.

There will always be some ranking system that one coach likes better than another. Take these with a grain of salt as teams change, even in mid-season. If you decide to use a ranking system, make sure that you publish this and that everyone is held to the same standard, even if they decide that the system is weighted incorrectly.

Above all, be courteous, but firm. Don’t expect that coaches will understand, but keep in mind they are looking to position their team best while you have the overall brand and reputation of the tournament to consider.

Don’t allow yourself to be bullied by one coach or club. Other coaches will notice and steer clear from you next year.

Soccer photos

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Sunrise over Ohio Soccer field

Sunrise over Ohio Soccer field

Margaret Workman went to a soccer tournament on Saturday, April 25 to watch a soccer game. But she saw so much more than the busy parking lots, the soccer uniforms, the hassle of getting her kids to the field on time, the misprints in the program, the unfair referee calls, the elbow shoves, the bad coffee, the horrible maps, the fact that her team had a 7:30am game, and ______________ (fill in the blank).

She saw a sunrise. She saw an opportunity to share nature’s beauty with those around her. She took a moment to enjoy something that none of us could ever make regardless of how much time, volunteers and other resources we were given.

Thank you, Margaret, for keeping us humble and reminding us all of what is truly important.

View the rest of the game photos here.

Why are your maps so bad?

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There are really only two things that send soccer parents into a rage at soccer tournaments: referees and really bad maps. The first we can’t do anything about and no matter how good the referee is, the other side will always think he/she made the wrong call. It is wasted energy to disagree. But parents do it anyway.

The other thing that send parents into a rage are the poor quality of the maps most tournaments give out or post on their Web site. My daughter had a soccer tournament in Ohio this past weekend and the map said to go south on I-270, when the fields really were north. Since I was in the middle of Kansas on my way to Colorado Springs for a conference, there was little I could do when she called in a panic, wondering where the heck she was. It was not a pretty conversation. Through the magic of Rand McNally and iPhone, we got her turned around and on the right road eventually.

But, it didn’t need to go this far.

You know where you are. Your local teams know where you are. The rest to the world does not care where you are until they need to play at your fields. And, if you maps are poorly drawn, poorly documented and you clearly had not done any quality checking, you will already be enraging most of your guests far in advance of the referee blowing the whistle on kick off. Why would you want most of your guest teams in that state of mind, especially in the morning?

Parents, coaches and team reps do not trust you when it comes to maps. They want to be able to map the fields themselves, see a soccer complex on Google Earth and plot the directions from their front door. Fromt he time the schedules are published to the day before the games, the number one question we see through the Web sites is: what is the EXACT address of the soccer field. I want to use Google Maps/Microsoft/MapQuest/etc to map the directions so I can give them out to my parents. They believe that no matter what you publish, it will be wrong.

Our Advice:
Spend time on your maps. Make sure you actually drive the route leading up to your fields from major highways. Read your own directions as you drive. Did you get lost following them? If statistics are right, you probably did. You forgot to mention that slight curve or that semi-fork in the road where you had to bear left, or that the street name changed for 100 yards through Shelbyville, etc.

Give specific GPS coordinates that are your park entrance, not “somewhere in the general area.” Use Google Earth or a variety of sites to find the coordinates. Take a look at your maps. Can you clearly see a soccer complex/fields? They are difficult to hide from a satellite view.

Include a “You know you have gone too far when…” statement if the directions could potentially lead to over-shooting a landmark and dump the driver into an unrecognizable landscape. Write the directions using BOTH “right turn” and “go east.” Don’t say things like “The southeast corner of the intersection…” For many people, SE/SW/NE/NW etc all look alike. That is over-geeking your directions. Keep it very simple and use plain language.

But, above all, make sure your right, left, north, south, east and west are accurate.

Top Drawer Soccer interviews TourneyCentral

News

Gerard McLean with TourneyCentral was interviewed by Top Drawer Soccer this week. The interview appears in their new technology section on their web site.

“We’re excited to be recognized as a leader in the soccer tournament industry,” McLean said. He added that TourneyCentral, while great software, is much more about helping soccer tournaments manage their operations and marketing than it is about web sites and email.

“Software is just one tool we use,” McLean says. “Other tools we rely on is our expert advise from our staff, who are all soccer veterans. It helps to listen to the soccer world around you and craft tools to deal with upcoming trends.”

ABOUT TOURNEYCENTRAL
TourneyCentral.com provides comprehensive, event-focused, web-based solutions for youth soccer tournaments and is wholly owned by Rivershark, Inc. an Ohio Corporation. Since 1999, TourneyCentral has been producing web sites that provide youth soccer tournaments with end-to-end integrated experience management for guest teams, from marketing through scoring. In addition, the advertising tools provide the tournaments with an increased opportunity for advertising and sponsorship revenue as a result of significantly increased traffic to the web site. For more information, visit www.tourneycentral.com.

Companion and marketing partner properties consist of: The Soccer Tournament Review, a blog and iTunes podcast for tournament directors, MyTournamentSpace, a photo-sharing site linked directly into the tournament game schedule and www.ticoscore.com, a single-source database and ranking system for soccer tournaments.

TourneyCentral will be attending the NSCAA Conference in Philadelphia in January 2010.

Contact for more information
Gerard McLean
gmclean [at] rivershark.com
937-836-6255

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Sending your teams to the web site

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This email came over to a tournament from a frazzled team rep.

I sent an email last week asking when the schedule would be posted and it was said that it would be no later than March 19.  I still can’t find the schedule — is it posted?  I need to get this information to my team by Wednesday as everyone is leaving for Spring Break and needs this information.  Could you please let me know when it will be posted?

I put the part in italics because that will be my point from here.

It is now 2009. Every kid under 20 alive today was born with the Internet fully functioning and Web sites available anytime, anywhere. Are team reps still printing out copies of the schedule and maps for every kid to see? Really?

I played the part of a coach/team rep for the last time in 2004 for a U19 boys team. My parting words before they went on their Spring Break was “Go to www….. and look up your schedule. Be on time for the games.”

And everyone was there, on time, in the right place, dressed to play. That was five years ago.

Our advice: Schedules are available in real time, via the Web site. That is just where things have evolved. Be sure to let the team rep know that the only and official schedule is on your Web site and that s/he should tell the parents what that Web address is.

Teams reps need to free up some of their time by NOT making copies of game schedules that cold change at the last minute. Players and their parents need to be encouraged to take responsibility for getting to the right game at the right time and place. Your Web site has all the information, in real time.