Wow, just got back from a huge UCA West Coast National Cheer and Dance Competition in Hollywood, California at the Kodak Theater. It was a tiring, terribly energy draining, and a great marketing time! I had the chance to interview Lauri “Looie” Harris, the Universal Cheerleaders Association West Coast Regional Manager. We’ve worked with her now for 4 years doing customized videography and action photography.
Since becoming the Marketing Director for Highlight Sports about 2 years ago, it’s been fun to see the progress we’ve made. My partner and friend, Brett Eden, has been great to work with, always keeping the clients best interest in mind.
My role has been to acquire sponsors who not only help carry the costs of DVD and photography production to dance and cheer participants, but also give themselves unbelieveable targeted traffic to their businesses. Below shows the traffic to our website, www.HighlightSports.com, in the last 7 days. The event started on Saturday, March 3 and went through Sunday, March 4th. We handed out over 2,500 flyers and business cards to remind clients to pick up their “Free DVD and Pictures, brought to you in part by Capezio Dancewear, NuSkin, and Catch the Spirit.” Capezio created a great flyer with a 10% off coupon. On the back was a Scene Interactive ad with a tracking code (I’ll be interested to see how that works!). Here’s our current traffic stats:
I’m learning so much about effective and creative advertising:
- There’s a huge difference between long term branding and short term ROI ad space.
- If you want to know if advertising is working, you have to create a way to track it’s progress (stat tracking, landing pages, 800 numbers, special email ads, etc.)
- The two marketing strategies are vitally important to the growth and prosperity of a business.
- What Highlight Sports does, not only for the cheer and dance participants, but also for advertisers, is really hard to put a price value on – it’s unbelieveable.
Anyway, there’s my two cents! If you’re interested in direct, targeted traffic to a marketing demographic of primarily 12-24 year old girls and their super involved mothers of 30-55, this type of ad space could be for you. Email me at nate@highlightsports.com.