Marketing ideas required for a chicken and egg situation! No money for marketing

[sarahr]

We have little money left to spend on the marketing of ballz.com a new sports social networking site. We need to find ways to tell the world without spending very much money! …. before we can PR it to the likes of tech crunch and mashable etc ..

We’ve done most of the onsite SEO work we can and we are looking for some killer ideas to attract users to the site on a shoe string budget.

Can anyone help?

It’s a fantastically capable website to connect people of all sporting ability or disability. Users can personalise their own selection of sports (over 200 popular and niche sports available), meet friends, manage teams and leagz, listen to news and read about their favourite sports, blog and comment on sports they’re interested in, get mobile alerts and updates, find local sports facilities and services and shop for products for over 200 sports.

Thank you!

[fisicx]

I can see the potential for the site but I suspect it will be along road to success.

When I was a teacher we had all sorts of websites promoted to us by various agencies. We would dutifully inform the pupils and there would be a flurry of interest then nothing. The site seems to be aimed at younger players (the spelling was a give away) but it's missing the whole social networking thing.

I signed up and was presented with a most confusing page. I was asked to 'talk', read the latest news and add modules to my sports tabs. And you were trying to see me stuff as well (I also noted an AirCanada advert in the header, what's that got to do with sport?).

So far there has not been any 'what's in it for me'. I were a young footballer, what incentive is there for me to use the site? If I were a swimmer, what can the site do to help me? What do you do that's better than the sites I already use?

You also mention I can find local sports facilities and services and shop for products for over 200 sports. I tried to find my local tennis club but couldn't. I want the timings of the local swimming pool. I need to buy a saddle for my horse. In the shop you only have a very limited range of products and only a few suplliers for the product I wanted. You don't tell me if they have an outlet nearby or offer an alternative if there isn't.

You say you have carried out most of the onsite SEO - but why are many page titles identical, there are no descriptions, non relevant headers and almost no indexable text. And if you want an accessible site you are going to have to do a lot of redesign work.

Sorry if this seems very negative, but I've seen an awful lot of similar enterprises fall by the wayside over the years. Not because the intention was poor but simply because the site didn't meet the needs of its users.

The first indication that something is going wrong are your help pages. Usdability goes hand in hand with accessibility, if you need a help page to tell people how to use the site then it's going to fail.

It's a great idea but is going to suffer unless to think again about the aim of the site and your target audiences needs.

[BossBozz]

Try to get sponsorship by pitching your idea to sporting bodies. In the UK we have the Sports Council who award money to help promote sports, perhaps you could look into something similar? Otherwise start small by contacting local schools, colleges and clubs then grow from there. Emails are free, try emailing a press release to whatever publications, channels or websites that may be interested in running it. If you're handy with script you could make a Facebook plugin that directs traffic to a page that promotes ballz.com as well as offering something useful for the user (like a sports blog).

I'd seriously consider how much revenue can be generated from kids and look into the effectiveness of social networking advertising, I have seen a lot of bad press about the effectiveness of Facebook ads and have read recently that they had a click through rate as low as 0.04%. The plus side of that is PPC campaigns won't cost much in relation to impressions gained!

[barney1]

In a word...Facebook.

[fisicx]

Originally Posted by barney1

In a word...Facebook.

Really? What's the targat age of facebook compared to the target age of ballz members?

Not saying you are wrong it's just that I always thought facebook was aimed at adults wheras ballz is more for teenagers.