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Profitable Target Marketing: 6 Lessons from Major League Baseball
By Bobette Kyle

Does your business struggle with profitable online
marketing? If so, you are not alone. Attracting the right
customers to a site and keeping them coming back - while
also turning a profit - can be a challenge. Consequently,
I'm always on the lookout for ways to demonstrate profitable
online strategies.

Last night, as I watched the Baseball All Star Home Run
Derby and visited Major League Baseball's Web site, it
struck me. The league is doing many things to effectively
find and attract targeted Web customers, while
simultaneously generating revenue.

In fact, I noticed numerous lessons from Major League
Baseball you can consider to profitably target your own
customers. Here are six of them:

Think Through Your Business Models

Free information and activities are present, but well
thought out, revenue generating business models are also
evident.

Lesson 1: Make your profit generators stand out.

MLB.com has a separate, prominent navigation menu for profit
producing activities - MLB Shop, Tickets, Auctions,
Subscriptions - which appears in the upper right on all
pages, where potential paying customers cannot miss it.

Importantly, each corresponding area of the site is narrowly
focused on the visitors' interests. For example, the shop
sells baseball - and only baseball - items. This is readily
apparent from the slogan "For all things baseball".

Lesson 2: Sell subscriptions.

The league generates revenue from a variety of event
subscriptions - live video broadcasts, live audio
broadcasts, archived clips, and fantasy games. This also
help open the door for repeat purchases and add-ons.

Lesson 3: Include advertisements.

Pop-ups and other online advertising are a fact of life on
free-to-user sites. Major League Baseball demonstrates taste
and intelligent implementation with their pop-under,
limiting each visitor to a single impression. Banner
advertisements and sponsorships are also apparent.

Develop Profit Pulling Marketing Techniques

Lesson 4: Segment your visitors.

The league uses a "hub and spoke" system, which allows
visitors to choose their own interests. There is one general
site (MLB.com), with links to several specialty sites
(stlouis.cardinals.mlb.com, etc.).

This portal approach helps segment visitors into specific
interest groups. It is a win-win strategy. Visitors find
what they are looking for and the league can more easily
target its marketing activities.

Lesson 5: Target locally.

Each "spoke" off the MLB hub contains local content, which
segments visitors regionally. The league targets products
and services accordingly.

For example, the Cardinals team site includes detailed
information for Cardinals baseball events, ticket purchasing
for Busch stadium games, and auctions for St. Louis related
baseball memorabilia.

Lesson 6: Offer tiered products.

MLB offers subscription services at many levels. By
packaging fantasy games into progressively larger bundles,
they encourage trial as well as repeat visits. The offering
also target customers according to interest level and
budget.

There you have it - five lessons in profitable target
marketing from Major League Baseball.

Copyright 2003 Bobette Kyle. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Bobette Kyle draws upon 10+ years of Marketing/Executive
experience, MBA, and online marketing research in her
writing.

Her book shows how to better find, target, and attract Web
customers. Read about it here:
http://WebSiteMarketingPlan.com/bookinfo.htm

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