Last week I completed a 2-month project by running a marketing workshop at the Us Girls conference.

Us Girls is a Sport England funded initiative that aims to get 30,000 young women living in disadvantaged areas more active, by providing them with opportunities to play sport within their local communities.

The project will run from 2011 – 2014 and 64 organisations will focus on over 50 specific areas of high disadvantage spread throughout England. The work is focusing on the market segment, defined by Sport England as ‘Leanne’, aged 18-25 and emerging Leannes who are aged 16-18yrs.

Paul Jarvis from StreetGames put Karen Keohane and myself in touch to help with the marketing of Us Girls. We met up and discussed what was needed to help the Us Girls coordinators to market their schemes more effectively.

I put forward a few options for different budgets, and Karen decided to go with a bespoke marketing book, showing exactly how to run your marketing, and a workshop at the Us Girls conference.

The book was 170 pages of clear, step-by-step instructions on exactly how to run the marketing to attract Leannes to your project. It also included 11 case studies of projects that had been successful in marketing to Leannes around the country.

The workshop went well, with lots of discussion and ideas from around the room. It got an average feedback score of 8.2 from everyone who attended. Hopefully the book will be useful to everyone involved in the Us Girls project over the next three years.

“It was great working with Make Sport Fun as I had every confidence that they would deliver what they said they would and they did – with a bit more!”

Karen Keohane, National Manager Active Women, StreetGames

I knew Chris Gregory at Bucks Sport from his days at Leisure Connection, so he got in touch with me to run this marketing workshop. Chris asked me to cover a few topics in the workshop as a taster for the group:

• Top 10 ways to increase participation
• 4 stages of an effective activity marketing campaign
• How I’d run the marketing for Reactivate Bucks
• What journalists learn about writing introductory sentences

I pulled those different elements together from our existing workshops and edited them down to the most important elements from each to fit them into a 1-hour workshop.

The workshop went well, with huge amounts of discussion on some of the points. I got some great ideas back from people in the workshop as well as hopefully them getting some good ones from me. Our average feedback rating from everyone who attended was 9.1 out of 10.

“Make Sport Fun worked with us to strengthen and support the marketing strategy we have developed for the Reactivate Bucks programme. By making our partners aware of the Make Sport Fun tools and how they aligned with the Reactivate campaign we have been able to demonstrate its value to our partners. The practice examples they have collated from projects across the country bring the ideas to life and will enable our partners to better market Sport and Physical Activity programmes to the residents of Buckinghamshire.”

 Chris Gregory, Physical Activity Manager, Bucks Sport

“Thank you for a great day, i found it very useful and took away with me lots of inspiration”
Loren, Bedfordshire.

“One of the best conferences i have ever been to (including USA conferences)”
- Deborah, Norfolk.

Nick Clarke from Active Norfolk was organising the conference, and he got in touch to ask if I’d deliver the Top 10 ways to increase participation workshop twice – once in the morning and once in the afternoon. I was obviously delighted to be involved with such a great conference.

This workshop is based on dozens of research reports, dozens of case studies of effective activity marketing campaigns and millions of pounds of research data. In it I covered:

• What millions of pounds of research have found to be the top 10 ways to increase participation
• The 4 stages of an effective activity marketing campaign
• How www.promotingactivity.com can help you plan and run your activity marketing

It was a shorter version of the full workshop, as we only had an hour instead of the normal 2 hours.

Feedback was positive, with 80% of people gave it a satisfied or very satisfied rating.

“The workshop delivered offered a selection of ideas and projects that work in those hard to reach areas, feedback from the workshop has been great.”

Nick Clarke, Physical Activity and Health Improvement Coordinator, Active Norfolk

If you’re interested in setting up this workshop for a conference or any other marketing training then please visit the training page on our website, call me on 020 3239 8824 or email me at john@makesportfun.com.

I explained that we’ve developed our email marketing tool to be much simpler to use than others so that there’s no learning curve for it. She decided to go ahead with making the switch. We then worked together to agree a brief on what she wanted her email marketing template to look like, what parts should be editable and what parts should be fixed.

Once that was agreed we created a first draft design. This was based on the existing design on their new website and on their branding guidelines. We didn’t manage to hit the nail on the head with the first draft of the design, so we discussed what the problems were, made some changes, and kept doing that until Lexi was happy with the design. We then built the design, uploaded it to our email marketing tool and tested it in all major email systems (e.g. Outlook, Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) to make sure it looked the same in all those systems. I then helped Lexi to link the correct email marketing lists in the email marketing tool with the sign up form on their website.

“Make Sport Fun listened to our needs and worked with us until we got it right!”

Alexia Fergus, NHS Greenwich

If you send an email newsletter or are thinking about it then get in touch to find out how our email marketing tool can make your life easier and your email newsletters more beautiful.

I’ve just run a marketing workshop for BADMINTON England‘s London and South East regions. I’m a huge fan of BADMINTON England and the great work they’re doing with Back to Badminton and No Strings Badminton. So when Paul Bickerton (London regional manager) got in touch with me I was delighted to be involved. Paul decided to get in touch following a marketing workshop I ran for Jenny Phipps in BADMINTON England’s South West region. Together we planned out what would be most useful to cover in the workshop.

The topics we decided on were:

• Brief explanation of the Sport England segmentation
• The 4 stages of an effective activity marketing campaign
• How I would market the Badders in the City programme
• More detail for how I would use each suggested tactic, and how they could do that themselves
• Know stage
• Facebook and 4 ways to use it to promote your courses
• Twitter and a way to use that to promote your courses
• Google Ads
• How to get more referrals from your existing participants and from partners
• Leaflets and how to make them more effective
• Partners
• Email shot
• Why Groupon might not be worth bothering with
• Link stage
• How to improve the conversion rate of the landing page
• How to best follow up with interested people
• Improve registration system
• SMS reminders
• How to track all your contacts

I planned out the workshop over the next couple of weeks. I used parts of previous workshops that I’ve run for other workshops round the country, and then I tweaked it all to match exactly with their needs.

The workshop was a success and we had tons of input and ideas from everyone in the group. There were 11 people from BADMINTON England at the session which is a great size for a workshop.Today’s workshop is obviously just the beginning and the hard work to improve their marketing starts now. I’m hoping to work with the London region some more and help them implement some of the ideas from today’s session.

“John delivered exactly the session that we were hoping for, and pitched it at just the right level.
The most useful part of the training was that John had related it directly to our work by analysing
and integrating one of our key projects into the session, using it as a case study and making
suggestions for improvement. It’s also important to ask plenty of questions in the workshop, as that really helps draw on John’s experience and knowledge.”

 Paul Bickerton, Regional Manager – London, BADMINTON England

The SPAH (the Sport, Physical Activity and Health group – their local CSPAN) had analysed the Sport England segmentation and had identified their priority over-50 segments as being Brenda, Terry and Elsie & Arnold.

They decided to run an activity marketing campaign for people aged 50+ in Greenwich – with a focus on Brenda, Terry and Elsie & Arnold. They had the following objectives:

• Build database of people who want to get active
• Deliver behaviour change materials to people who want to get active
• Connect people with local activity providers
• Build a database of at least 10 taster sessions/ month that people could access for free
• Give information about these taster sessions to the database of people who wanted to get active

They hired us to run this campaign. We ran it using the 4 stages of an effective activity marketing campaign – Know, Like, Try and Repeat.

We recently held a conference call for Make Sport Fun clients and contacts in which we explained how we ran this campaign, why it was so successful and what we learnt from it. You can now access the recording of that call for free at www.makesportfun.com/resources/go-london-greenwich/.

For more information about how to set up a website yourself using WordPress look at our sports marketing book.

His goal was to increase participation through social media, and to do this by spreading the sport’s centres profile and building a one-to-one relation with users.

They have 3 people in their team of 9 with roles in social media. Their work involves recording videos showing people how to use the equipment, deleting spam from the comments and replying to genuine comments really quickly. Marc says it is ‘vital that your facebook page is checked and updated on a regular basis.’

To check the impact of Facebook on participation he has tested putting some application forms only on Facebook page.

He uses the Facebook Insights tool  to monitor the number of page views, comments and more. So far their Facebook pages has now got 450 likes, but many more visitors from interested people.

Lisa teamed with HUGGIES® Little Swimmers® to support National Baby Swim Week, 20 – 27 June, and launch Swim Buddy, www.swimbuddy.co.uk a website created to encourage more mums to take the plunge with their babies.

The announcement follows research(1) which revealed that one in three mums avoid swimming because they dislike the way they look and a further one in five mistakenly believe that their baby is too young to go swimming.

Mum of two, Lisa, says: ‘I put on over two stone when I had Jaden then another two and a half stone when I had Star-Lilly and it really hit my self-confidence. I didn’t have the time or energy to hit the gym and swimming just seemed the best option. I could take Star-Lilly with me and I honestly found it such a wonderful, calming experience.’

Charlene Hutsebaut, HUGGIES® Little Swimmers® fitness expert, says: ‘Swimming is a great low impact exercise. One of the most important reasons for exercising after having a baby is that it can help your pelvis to heal back to its pre-birth position and is a great way to tone up key muscle groups. The beauty of a mother exercising in the water with her baby is that it helps to form a close bond, and over time their baby will naturally gain weight, increasing their strength as they will be lifting a heavier, beautiful baby each week.’

Lisa continues: ‘You tend to spend all your time focussing on your baby, lifting them in and out of the water and I know it sounds funny but you really do bond. There’s no escaping that having a baby can be stressful and babies will pick up on this, but in the water it’s different.’

According to the research, almost two thirds of mums still feel they don’t know enough about swimming with their baby to participate in organised classes at their local pool. Lisa is therefore fronting the HUGGIES® Swim Buddy campaign to dispel the myths and promote the benefits of taking the plunge. These include improved sleeping and eating patterns for your baby as the warm water of the swimming pool is relaxing and stimulates their appetite. Swimming also teaches your baby social interaction skills and aids the development of their physical fitness.

The campaign website, www.swimbuddy.co.uk includes information on more than 680 certified baby-friendly pools in the UK which meet the UK’s minimum safety criteria for pool temperature, hygiene, safety and facilities. Parents can simply enter their postcode to find their nearest baby friendly approved pool.

The website also features advice from TV stylist John Scott on how mums can boost their confidence at the pool through choosing the right swimsuit for their body shape. Fitness expert, Charlene Hutsebaut, is also on hand with tips and exercises on how to tone up in the water.

(1) A survey of 915 mums carried out by Engage Research on 27th July 2010.

Pro-Active Central London needed people from councils to learn about how to market their projects more effectively and in particular about how to use the resources developed on www.promotingactivity.com.

The brief

Deliver 7 workshops – one for each council in central London.

Our response to the brief

We delivered our promotingactivity.com workshop, in which we covered:

• The 6 stages of a marketing communications plan
• How to use the planning tool to identify who your target audience is
• How to use the communication plans to understand what messages will appeal to your audience
• What marketing tools to use to reach your audience

We then worked through a sample marketing plan, and then people tried out writing a marketing plan for one of their own projects.

Finally I showed people what free or cheap resources are available on promotingactivity.com for implementing their marketing, including:

• over 3000 free photos
• Change4Life poster design tool
• email marketing tool
• calendar of campaigns

At the end of this workshop I sent a summary of all this information as handouts.

Results

We delivered the training to nearly 100 people in under a month, and the training got good or excellent feedback from all who came. People are now using the communication plans and planning tool to plan out their projects and win more funding for delivering projects. They’re also using the free photos and other resources to deliver their marketing in less time and with more results.

Testimonial

“The training from Make Sport Fun was educational, fun and interactive. The attendees clearly enjoyed it and left the room with a good all round understanding of the ‘Promoting Activity Toolkit’ and how to use it.”

To find out how our services can help you to increase participation through marketing, simply call 020 3239 8824 or fill out this short form.