Digital marketing strategy for the pittsburgh riverhounds
The Riverhounds logo will soon hold its own amongst the great franchises around it in Pittsburgh!
Who are the Riverhounds?
The Pittsburgh Riverhounds are a professional soccer club located in the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They play in the USL Championship league and were founded in 1998. They have a beautiful stadium right on the water with a backdrop of downtown Pittsburgh's skyline and also run a very successful youth academy. If they are able to sustain stable ownership, this club is more than ready to flourish within the city of champions!
Why should you pay attention to the Riverhounds?
I think the better question is why the team is being overlooked?! The Riverhounds have arguably one of the best stadiums in the country with a city around them that lives and dies by their sports teams. The beautiful facilities combined with the rich sports tradition in town makes for an opportunity of a lifetime to bring some life to soccer fans within the city. Not only do they need to engage soccer fans, but also the youth that isn’t as familiar with the game. Being in a city with serious weather, soccer isn’t the most popular sport in town, but there are definitely ways to work around this and here is how:
The beautiful Highmark Stadium that the Riverhounds call home
Set Goals
When creating a brand, it’s always important to first start with mapping out goals and ideas. Goals such as how to get more fans in the stadium and what they want their fanbase to be like/their reputation. Each team and brand has a unique identity which allows fans to latch on and rep their teams with pride. If you want more ticket sales and success, it’s important to engage with your community and make them feel wanted and special.
Know Your Audience
With a sport like soccer, it’s recognized around the world, yet very niche to a city like Pittsburgh. You have to know who you’re selling to. In recent studies, it is shown that individuals within the age 18-29 are more likely to be into soccer than those that are a little bit older. Luckily, the city of Pittsburgh is evolving as well and has waves of younger people moving in which is propelling the city into places we’ve never seen before. There couldn’t be a better time to rebrand and make a name for yourself in this city as a sports organization.
Take Notes
While setting goals, it is also equally important to take notes. Taking notes of what other successful teams in the city have done and are doing will be crucial. For example, study why and how teams like the Steelers and Penguins have such rich tradition and a loyal fan base. It starts with the people in your building such as your players and staff. Winning is the cure, if you’re able to win consistently everybody is happy. Another rapidly growing way to attract fans is social media and in specific, TikTok. Teams across all professional leagues have taken notice of the trend and have created a heavy presence on the platform. This content is then spread to a plethora of younger kids and even if they aren’t soccer fans, they might find your content interesting or funny and start to follow along with your content which ultimately leads to a fandom of your organization. Social media is a great free tool that all teams and especially the Riverhounds should take note of. Here are some photo examples of other professional teams using TikTok to their advantage to get tons of views.
This is a great example of a formal post that gives viewers an inside perspective of the team.
Here is an example of a video that has nothing to do with the Steelers but it allows for a ton of engagement as they are following popular trends on the app.
Create Unique Experiences
Being a student at Duquesne, I think it’s a no brainer to sell to college kids. One of the easiest ways to do this is by having a larger presence on social media. Teams like the Pirates for example have college nights which gives an opportunity for the students to feel wanted and welcomed at the game. College kids would also bring arguably the most energy to the stadium which is exactly what the Riverhounds should be looking for, some juice!
Team Up With Other Teams
One strategy that would help with building more exposure is partnering with other teams that are already well known in the city like the Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates. These teams host events outside of their games so being at those could help, advertising at their games, and building a strong relationship so they can help even with financial expenses if need be.
How to Grow Website Traffic using SEO
The use of internal and external links can help with search engine optimization. By linking relevant pages on your site, it allows for more traffic across your platforms which then gets shared. Therefore, use links that relate to your organization such as:
It is important to make sure that these external links you use open in a new window. This helps greatly with being able to keep people on your site longer, which is good for your search engine optimization. By using relevant keywords in headers and captions it improves visibility which is what Search Engine Land recommends. Another useful tool that the Riverhounds can use is Google’s free Keyword Planner. This allows the team to be able to find the most popular search terms that people on the internet use when they search for soccer games or events that are in the city of Pittsburgh.
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