NFL Facing A Tremendous Marketing Dilemma

With the situation involving players kneeling during the national anthem, NFL owners were faced with the choice of siding with their employees or their customers. They chose their employees. This could be a huge risk for the future of the league.

You have to wonder if this decision is based on research on NFL ticket holders. If this market is basically a conservative, middle class group, it could be a problem. If the market breaks down like the political landscape of the country, southern and middle America teams (including the Jacksonville Jaguars) may experience a loss of support while those teams in metropolitan areas such as Los Angeles, New York and New England may not feel any affects. And considering that support and ratings have already declined, can the NFL afford to mishandle this issue? Time will tell.

The point is if your business has to make a decision to side with your employees over your customers, you better know how it will affect your customers and be prepared for the consequences. Now this doesn’t include issues such as employee abuse by a customer. That will never get traction. But unpopular customer policies will.

I have a client that advertises his business from time to time. When he promotes his business, sales pick up considerably. But it also puts additional pressure on his staff to keep up with sales and service. So they complain, and as a result, he backs off on advertising. This is an incredible case where he loses income by siding with his employees.

Every type of business needs to understand what their customers want and they need to ensure that their employees are on board to deliver on the business promise. Otherwise, they may just need to punt!

What Northeast Florida Businesses Can Do With Their Marketing To Help Survive Hurricane Irma

As is witnessed by the tragedy of hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana, no one wants to endure a horrible disaster as a hurricane. And while people in Northeast Florida are preparing for the safety of their families and homes, it is important to also prepare to protect your business.

Even with such a critical event as a hurricane, there are distinct marketing advantages for businesses. First, it is a very focused event, one that affects everyone. Second, people want updated information about the storm. So they are watching, listening and searching in large numbers.

To begin with, in Northeast Florida, it never hurts to start promoting your business services and products before a major storm hits. Hurricane preparation marketing should begin in June and continue through October. For retailers, this is an opportunity to conduct “hurricane sales events” to boost summer sales.

But what should you do now that you know hurricane Irma could be bearing down on us by next week?

The following is a brief, general marketing outline to help you take advantage of capturing a large audience focused on a specific event and through specific advertising channels:

TV Advertising - Contact your TV and Comcast rep immediately to place your TV commercials in weather-related programming. For cable, you should buy the Weather channel and news networks. For broadcast stations, buy around the weather reports in the news and buy rotations into the on-going local news/weather coverage.

Radio Advertising - WOKV news station is where you want to be with your radio spots. But also include news and traffic updates on iHEART and Cox stations.

ON-LINE Advertising Strategy - Start by putting your message on your website’s home page. Then consider Google ads utilizing keywords such as “hurricane,”  “storm,” or “Irma.”  Use messages on online weather sources. These can range from weather.com to weather notices on any of the local news media sites such as Jacksonville.com. In using these sources, you can utilize geographic and behavioral targeting to reach the Northeast Florida audience. You can use a similar strategy with Facebook ads.

Social Media - Keep your customers updated through a current Facebook page and blog, plus posting messages on LinkedIn. And reach your existing customers through email blasts.

Public Relations - Particularly if you have a unique product or service relating to storms, write up a news release about what you do, how you can help customers and how customers can find you. In addition to posting this on your social sites, send it to the local media. Be sure to include your name, title and after hours contact information to let the media know you are available for interviews.