The purpose of the following report is to discuss about the marketing strategy of the football club in United Kingdom. The chosen football club for this paper is the Nottingham Forest that plays in the second division or popularly known as the Championship. The club is currently at the seventh position and it is being managed by Aitor Karanka. In this report, the external environment of the club will be discussed and the best points will be found out as to how they can improve the number of their followers.
The customer segments of the club will be highlighted because the supporters are the most important assets of the club (Ferrell and Hartline 2012). The improvement strategies for the brand will have be an important reflection on the discussion as well. The core marketing concepts will have to be applied on the chosen football club Nottingham Forest FC. The club will like to attract more supporters to increase their supporter base. This will give them a better position in the football marketing as well. Some important marketing tools and theories will have to be applied in this section because this will make it clear how the club can be able to earn more profits and be successful in the commercial side as well.
The chosen organization for this assignment is the Nottingham Forest FC. The club is in the second division of the professional football league in Europe. The club was set up in the year 1865 (Nottinghamforest.co.uk 2018). The home stadium of the club is the City Ground. The capacity of the stadium is approximately 30,445. The owners of the club are Evangelos Marinakis and Sokratis and Kominakis. The club has a fair amount of supporters and they have been performing well in the recent times. However, the shares are divided between the two owners as 80% and 20% respectively (Nottinghamforest.co.uk 2018). Their purpose is to increase the number of supporters and fetch a good amount of money from the sponsors and increase their market share in the sports industry (Ferrell and Hartline 2012). The club is based in the Nottinghamshire. The effective team management will be very important for them (Nottinghamforest.co.uk 2018).
PESTLE analysis
The PESTLE analysis will be very useful tool to assess the external environment of the organization. As the chosen organization is a football club, the parameters will be different from the other organizations in the profit oriented background. The different factors of this tool will have to be assessed in the light of Nottingham Forest FC.
Political
The political condition of England is quite stable. The Government has planned several things for the development of sports. Especially England has performed well in the 2018 Russia World Cup so the Government will try to implement their plans effectively for the improvement of the football from the grass root level. Hopefully these plans and policies will yield good results for the overall good results of football in the country. The Government will approve a good amount of budget for the development of the youth team of Nottingham Forest FC. The youth team is considered as the supply line for the senior team of the club. Thus these plans will really be helpful for the club indeed.
Economic
The recent global inflation has been an integral issue in the current United Kingdom. However, the management team of Nottingham Forest FC will look to recruit the new and skillful players in the team so they can perform very well (Jurevicius 2013). The allotment of the recruitment fees will have to be implemented properly so the club can form their team with the purpose to win the second division championship tournament and FA Cup as well to come to the limelight. They will have to abide by the several economic policies employed by the Football Association (FA) and implement them in an ethical manner (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 2012).
Social
The supporters are the main customer base of the Nottingham Forest FC. They will have to convince the supporters to come to the field via the social media platforms. The attention of the people should be gained in order to be a popular club in the United Kingdom. Other than the men’s football team they should shift their focus on improving the women’s football team as well (Jurevicius 2013).
Technological
The use of the technology should be used properly for the best returns to the club. In this era of the technological advancement, the football clubs will also apply the technology for their advantage (Jurevicius 2013). The club should make use of the newest technology regarding the video analysis of their opponent clubs in the Championship matches.
Legal
The legal guidelines will have to be followed by Nottingham Forest FC. The gender equality should be maintained among their employees. This is very much important in the signing and recruitment of the players by considering the laws of the FA (Jurevicius 2013). They take several players from the big clubs from the Barclays Premier League teams on loan for the season. These signings should be done properly so the reputation of the club can be maintained.
Environmental
As a community football club and a source for entertainment of the people they should also focus on the environmental issues (Kolb 2013). They should not chop down the trees to build their new stadium or something like that. They can choose to build up several campaigns for creating awareness among their customer base to safeguard the environment for their benefits only.
Strengths
Weaknesses
Opportunities
Threats
Product
The main product for the Nottingham Forest FC is their team itself. The football players captained by the English born Ben Watson are the ones who perform in an excellent manner to market their team in the international arena (Fifield 2012). The sporting merchandise are quite related with the product marketing of the Nottingham Forest FC. The club should proposer some ways to make their revise their strategies by which they could gain the attention of their supporters so the attendance rates could be changed.
Price
The price of the tickets will be an important factor for the price of the products of the team (Roberts and Zahay 2012). The club can also raise the money from selling their jerseys in both the offline and online medium. This will be useful for them in many ways indeed. They can use the premium pricing method for the higher generation of their profits (Armstrong et al. 2015). They can come up to be the pioneers by the up market presentation of their products. The season tickets should be priced within the affordable range since the supporters won’t be agreed to buy the second division match tickets at a high cost. If the team can perform well in the Championship, Carabao Cup and FA Cup it will result in the higher television revenues as well (Hawkins, Mothersbaugh and Best 2013).
Place
The home stadium of the club City Ground is the place for their marketing mix. They also play the away matches at different grounds all over the country as well. In United Kingdom, most of the clubs have their own fan base. This is why they will be able to collect the revenues in a higher manner through the selling of their tickets at different venues. The club should arrange for a share of the tickets for their away fans as well (Hawkins, Mothersbaugh and Best 2013).
Promotion
The promotion of the club can be done through the offline and online media. The sports betting company BetRight will be their official shirt sponsors and they will have sponsorships from Adidas as well. The money from the sponsorship will be useful for them to sign the best players within the country (Martin and Schouten 2012).
The customers are the most important stakeholders for any organization and it is no different for the football clubs as well. However, the customers for a second division football club like Nottingham Forest FC would be their supporters. The supporters are all the football lovers who generally hail from the city of Nottinghamshire. Mostly the native people are the supporters of the club.
However, some people are the fans of the players who play for the club. They support the club for those players only. However, it is very important to make the demographic segmentation for the better understanding of the situation (Baker 2014). The fan base of the football clubs range from the little kids to the old age people. The demographic segmentation of the Nottingham Forest FC consists of several facts like age, gender, and ethnicity, location of the fns, the income levels and many things.
Objectives
The business objectives of the football clubs is mainly the proper commercialization of the club so the club can gather a good amount of revenues and this will help them to increase their market shares indeed (Baker 2014). The main purpose of the club from the technical aspects of the game is entertaining people with their majestic style of play but the commercial purposes are something more than that. Nottingham Forest FC is no exception to that. There are some proper business objectives for the club Nottingham Forest FC to develop. These are:-
Focused Club strategy
The club Nottingham Forest FC will be able to increase their brand revenue by selling their sports merchandise in different countries.
As they play in the second division, they will not be able to fetch the top grade sponsors for their team.
One thing the club can do is to reduce the ticket pricing and ensure the people of different economic classes could attend the club matches.
They must overcome the challenges they have faced in this context like the detailed market analysis on which target market they should tap in and how they could approach the target audience as well.
They should target to leverage their club brand. This will be very important for the organization to know their weak points and improve those points.
The proper commercial partnerships should be developed between the club and the different companies. This should indeed be a very important factor for the overall success of the club.
The club must plan their social media strategy in a manner that proper communication between the club officials and the supporters. They can use Facebook as an open forum to interchange their opinions on how to beautify their stadium, install new seating facilities, create a fan park for the supporters outside the stadium where they can gather if the stadium capacity is full.
The improvement of the brand equity should be based on the customers. Otherwise the rates of turning up in the stadium would surely decrease.
Leading club brands
If Nottingham Forest FC determines to make the strategies for the improvement of the club brand it will surely be helpful for the club.
The club should also put the proper focus on their product portfolio. The club should like to get to know the desires of their supporters in which they want the club to make the changes. Then they should align their products with the expectations of the customers. This will surely develop the brand value of the organization in several ways.
They will have to stress on strengthening their supply chain as well. The process of the product development process should concern around providing the best quality jerseys and football museums for the fans.
It is very important to define the potential target markets for the football clubs. As the chosen club Nottingham Forest FC is a second division football club, their target audience will be smaller in size than the big clubs like Manchester United, Chelsea, Manchester City and Liverpool. They will have to act according to that only. However, the club has a good amount of fan base indeed (Solomon et al. 2014). The club must sell the different merchandise for managing the benefits in the best ways. These different kinds of merchandise are the scarves, caps, jerseys, gloves, shoes and many other things that are related to the game. The overall financial conditions of the region of Nottinghamshire are quite well organized. This is why the club management can decide to sell the tickets of the home matches at an affordable rate (Gordon 2012).
There is a area in the home stadium of the club that is dedicated only to the families. The ticket price of that region is a little bit higher. However the standard ticket prices are maintained in all the stands. The price of the tickets is considered for three groups of people. They are the_
The Peter Taylor Stand i.e. dedicated to the families is a bit costly but it is quite a safe place to sit in for the people. The families can enjoy the matches from there as well. The security of the audience should be tightened more as well. The kids are given special discounts through the events like the ‘Kids for a Quid’. The target market segmentation strategy will have to be based on the buying behavior of the customers (Huang and Sarigöllü 2014). The emotion for the club and the game is a very important aspect for the overall marketing strategy of the club. The club will look to build up a ‘smoke free zone’ and address their target audience to keep away from smoking. However, there are a lot of women fans as well. This is why the organization will have to give their women fans the proper security so they can enjoy the matches in a safe way indeed. The tickets should be provided to the fans before a week of the fixture.
The marketing aspects are very much interconnected with the improvement of the brand value aspects of the organizations. Likewise a football club like Nottingham Forest FC will come under these obligations indeed (Huang and Sarigöllü 2014). In this context, it must be said that the individual fame of the players of the club will be much useful for the clubs to gain the best brand values indeed. Football is considered as the most followed sports in all over the world and billions of people watch this game with their utmost passion (Singh 2012).
The clubs are also their favorites as the club competitions entertain the football lovers all through the year. The use of the social media strategy will surely increase the brand value of the football clubs. The club must adopt the strategy of ‘going global’ to get famous in the international sphere indeed (Singh 2012). The commercial benefits can be increased by Nottingham Forest FC if they focus on increasing their revenues in the higher manner.
The best way to do this is to recruit some players from these continents. This will be beneficial for both the parties. It is simply because both these continents have been getting stronger in terms of their talents for bringing up good and skillful footballers. However, the infrastructure of Asian and African football is nowhere close to that of Europe. They can opt to build up football academies in the poor African countries and train them to play in Europe. Their sponsors will provide the money for these academies indeed (Khan 2014). This fact can really be helpful for them in improving their brand value by focusing on their corporate social responsibilities. However, they should give much importance to their best players as they are the best brand assets for their club.
The ways the chosen organization Nottingham Forest FC could develop their brand identity by implementing the best marketing strategies should be measured properly. To do this, the annual audit will have to be done to fix how the organization has been able to generate the profits by implementing their plans (Theaker 2017). Nottingham Forest FC must work as a non-profit organization as a commercial body. While measuring the improvement of the performance, the business managers and the owners of the club have found that the facilities of the club have been increased.
The establishment of the football academies will also be very much helpful for the overall success of the organization in the best ways. The organization has been very much effective in generating the revenues by selling the complementary accessories to the fans. The sale of the jerseys and scarves has helped them to gain good profits than the other clubs of the championship (Jurevicius 2013). The performance of the football team can also contribute in this matter. If the football team can play well and qualify for other tournaments and play till the final there will be more number of matches. As they play more matches, more tickets will be sold. Thus the income of the club will increase as well.
They have honored their former veteran players in several occasions and this has also pleased the senior fans as well. Thus the loyalty towards the club has been growing altogether. These measures can really be called as commendable, praiseworthy and effective for building up a proper brand identity for the club. Once they tap into the Asian and African markets through setting up the football academies their revenues will be increased automatically as well.
Conclusion
As the topic has been discussed in the above segments, it can be concluded that the football club Nottingham Forest FC will have to put in a lot of strong efforts to succeed in the sports industry. The way to success for the sports organizations is something different from that of the other organizations. Thus a football organization will have to keep several important issues to succeed in the competitive business environment. Another important fact in this issue is the main stakeholders of the sports organizations are simply their fans.
As football is considered to be the most followed and most popular sports all over the world, Nottingham Forest FC will have to make the plans very cautiously on how they could improve their performance. They should always focus on the desire of the fans to be the champions in the second division and qualify for the Barclays Premier League. In order to do that the organization will have to use the social media platforms as the most formidable channel to implement their marketing strategy. They can raise funds from selling their tickets for the home and away matches. The money from the ticket sales should be utilized properly as well to gain the organizational success.
References and Bibliography
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