While researching various channels and verticals for our sandboxsports.com theme, we’ve come across a number of creative adverts that are…. well let’s just say puzzling. It’s not too difficult to discover ads where there is an obvious disconnect between the creative imagery, cheeky copy and what it is that most advertisers’ hope to achieve with their marketing budget.

This is fine for the ad agencies and creative professionals who get paid to “create” but not so good for the paying customer who receives a disappointing consumer response in exchange for their valuable - and limited - advertising dollars. It’s also fine for Coke, Nike, Budweiser and so on because the big dollar outlay on repetitive advertising is almost exclusively geared to brand promotion and almost never an immediate call to action.

For small business it’s a mistake to follow this type of strategy. Some marketing experts suggest that as consumers, we are presented with over three thousand advertising messages in a typical day. Billboards, T.V. commercials, radio commercials, email marketing, banner ads, pop-ups, pop-unders, direct response mail at home and at work (aka junk mail), telemarketing, fax broadcasts - you get the idea. To break through and capture the attention of your target audience, your advertising message needs to interrupt and then it must engage the attention of your qualified prospects so that they’ll continue to search for more information.

No doubt you’re probably familiar with the adage that sex sells - right? It’s not true. Sex interrupts. If a sexy image captures your attention in an advertisement, then it has interrupted you, but it has not necessarily engaged you - encouraging you to learn more - leading you to a purchasing decision or some other immediate action such as opting in to a promotion with their name and email address.

This print ad for a sporting event is a pretty good example of a misguided advert. The image of the sexy female squash player does a decent enough job of interrupting. But then it fails to push the hot buttons of almost any potential spectator with the exception of the demographic that is male, twenty something, hormonally motivated and probably indifferent to the game of squash.

Think about it, if you are a heterosexual female, a homosexual male, a family, a legitimate squash fan, an elderly person, just about anyone else - are you really interested in going to a sporting event that is going to be packed with obnoxious, Neanderthal, male patrons? This advert would work better if it were promoting a brand of beer.

If female squash players are really that hot, how about an action shot that captures the essence of the game and presents an image of athleticism, skill, competitiveness and drama. If the athlete happens to be a babe (think Anna Kournikova, Chris Evert) and if she were attired in revealing athletic sportswear (think Anna Kournikova, Chris Evert), then the ad would still work for the Neanderthal but it would also appeal to a much broader market demographic. A whole market segment that just might be engaged enough to want to learn more - maybe even buy a ticket.

WHEW – building an on online affiliate store is a lot of work – that is if you go about it the right way. The key is research followed by more research and so on but at some point, the rubber needs to hit the road - or in our case - the boots need to hit the trail.

In the building of Sandboxspots.com, we’ve been doing our due diligence on keyword research and studying the terms and phrases that people are actually
searching for concerning sporting goods and sports apparel.

We’ve been using some pretty sophisticated keyword research tools that are beyond the scope of this post to expound on. In future posts we’ll be discussing what some of these metrics are that are driving our strategy.

The important note here is that we’re going where the market is vs. creating a business model and then trying to bring the market to us. We don’t have that type of advertising budget! Once the site is set up, we’ll collect opt-in data that we’ll eventually use to further satiate the appetite of our hungry, athletic customers. This is where our real marketing muscle will come into play.

For now, we’ve established a few themes that will be set up as directories on the new site and then further subdivided into appropriate categories. For example, one of our themes will be related to the hiking niche.

According to the Keyword Selector Tool at Overture, “hiking” specifically, is a keyword term that was searched for 21715 times last month alone. The rule of thumb is to triple that number of queries to account for the exact same keyword searches conducted on other search engines including Google and MSN.

We’re actually using software that gives us far more accurate data than this simple rule of thumb approach but nonetheless, the Overture approach provides us with a quick snap shot of a given niche and whether the niche warrants further investigative research.

We’re continuing to build out the themes that we’ll be getting started with at sandboxsports.com but we’ve already started the creation of content for sports that will be featured for certain. These will include hiking, golf, scuba diving, skiing, fishing as well as certain fitness themes such as yoga and massage.

We are also setting up our affiliate/merchant agreements with world class distributors through Commission Junction (and direct) and we will of course match our content to products that include powerhouse brand names such as Adidas, Oakley and North Face to name a few.

So these are some of the broad strokes of what we’ve been up to and the marketing trail we’re following. There are lots and lots of details to sort through and the possibilities are amazing. Stick with us, and we’ll keep you posted on the evolution of our little affiliate store that could.

The affiliate store system that we’ve posted about before is making the execution of these logistics manageable and achievable. There may still be some systems available so it’s worth opting in and vetting their sales letter if you haven’t already.
Happy marketing!

Verizon Wireless has recently inked a multi-million dollar deal making it the ‘Official Provider of Wireless Phones’ to the National Hockey League (NHL) for the next several years. The agreement entitles Verizon advertising spots on the NHL website, during the Stanley Cup, and other prominate positions. Verizon customers will now be able to access exclusive NHL ringtones and background pictures. My only question is what sort of ringtones can you get that are ‘NHL-themed’?