Marketing Advice By Business Type
Marketing a Sporting Goods Rental Business
You're heavily invested in the success of your sporting goods rental business and failure isn't an option. That means you'll also need to invest yourself in the strategies and techniques it takes to effectively market your brand in the marketplace.
The struggle to find the right marketing mix is never-ending in a profit-oriented small business. However, great marketing strategies share a common characteristic.
Purpose in marketing is the key to success in this space. High-performing sporting goods rental businesses achieve market dominance through the careful execution of deliberate strategies. Although you'll need to consider your company's unique marketing objectives, there are several tips we advise our partners to integrate into their promotional plans and strategies.
Broadcast Advertising
Broadcast advertising has clearly taken some hits over the past couple of decades. The number of consumers who tune-in to local TV and radio has plummeted, and the industry has struggled to regain its footing. Broadcast advertising is down - but it's not out. Today's leading sporting goods rental businesses continue to find ways to attract audiences to their brand through broadcast media. Best practices for the use of broadcast advertising require businesses to evaluate their target audience's listening or viewing patterns and then tailor their media purchases to specific media outlets rather than blanketing the geography with brand messaging. When marketing sporting goods rental businesses, the target audience is almost always local or regional. For broader reach, you'll likely need to look beyond broadcast venues and explore other online and offline marketing vehicles.
Marketing Consultants
As a small business owner, it's tempting to think that you have what it takes to market your brand effectively. Maybe you do. But in our experience, there is no substitute for enlisting the services of a qualified marketing consultant. The best consultants possess a range of skills, including the ability to accurately communicate your sporting goods rental business' most important brand characteristics. More importantly, it will provide the expertise you need to identify the most productive marketing channels and raise your brand profile within the industry. As we continue to experience changes in the sporting goods rental business arena, exposing your strategy to the influence of capable marketing professional should be a top priority.
Media Monitoring
Some marketing initiatives lend themselves to simple measurement while others are more challenging. Direct mail can be evaluated by tallying the cost of inputs (e.g. a premium mailing list, printing, postage, etc.) and measuring the number of customer responses you receive from the campaign. The difficulty comes when you are tasked with quantifying market presence and brand influence. With the help of marketing professionals, media monitoring can provide up-to-date assessments of the amount of influence your sporting goods rental business has in the public sphere. Although media monitoring is not the only tool for measuring intangible brand qualities, it has the benefit of highlighting negative PR, giving your sporting goods rental business the ability to control bad buzz when it appears in the marketplace.
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