At Make Sport Fun we recommend using the following 6 stage approach to running your marketing campaigns. It’s proven itself time after time to be an effective way of increasing participation.
We started using this model after researching dozens and dozens of activity marketing campaigns, we found that one of the common themes amongst the successful campaigns was that they all had six stages:
1. Plan your campaign – who is your target audience, what activities appeal to them, how many people do you need to get more active? What marketing budget do you need?
2. Set up your campaign set up your website, build a database of where to get active, set up ways for people to register with you.
3. Recruit – Find people who want to get more active and encourage them to register their details. Think about using PR, advertising, Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click, Direct Mail. Social Media and referrals.
4. Intervene – call the people that have registered, support them in becoming more active and find them somewhere local to do an activity.
5. Active participation – People try the activity on their own, and hopefully have a good experience
6. Review – Phone people back at 1, 3, 6, and 12; months address any barriers and issues and offer further motivation and support.
It works because it covers everything you need to do as part of your campaign and it is such a straightforward model to follow. It takes everything back to basics and ensures that you don’t omit to include any important elements.
We’re currently running an activity marketing campaign in Greenwich – Greenwich Get Active – by following the 6 stage model.
Plan your campaign – We identified our target market which were living within the borough of Greenwich and worked with our partners at NHS Greenwich to understand how many people we were wanting get more active. We used the segmentation mapping tool (http://segments.sportengland.org/) to identify who to target. We used the communication plans from the promotingactivity site started to identify the messages and communication channels our audience would respond to. This enabled us to identify the marketing budget we would need to assign.
Set up your campaign – We created and set up a bespoke CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, an activity database and a website. This enabled us to help people to search for a local activity in the area to take part in. We made it as easy as possible for people to sign up by setting up a text number, email address, and phone number for registration.
Recruit– We worked with a local community trust, who ran a 9-week roadshow for the campaign, produced and displayed posters; placed adverts in newspapers, on the tube and at bus stops; ran Google Ads to target people searching for where to do activity. We researched the words people were searching for on the internet and optimised our website. Over 3,000 people registered and gave us their permission to communicate and market to them.
Intervene – We communicated to all the people that responded. Again – we worked with the local community trust who have called everyone and helped them find the ideal activity for them from our database.
Active Participation – People went off and tried the activity we’d help them find. This included over 1000 possible local activities from our database such as walking, cycling, gym, dance and sports clubs.
Review – We followed up with people by telephone to motivate them to continue their activities. We congratulated them on their successes and didn’t judge them if they were struggling. Instead we found ways to get them back on track; including other activities for them to try. This ensured that if anyone had dropped out they were more likely to start up again. We also used a newsletter, automated texts and emails to engage people and keep them interested in keeping active.
Results
Over 3,000 people have registered to say that they want to get more active. And according to our research from previous campaigns over 50% of them will become more active.
For further information about running campaigns download our FREE guide to marketing from http://www.formstack.com/forms/?1309487-UPrIByBlEG.