Digital Marketing Strategy for the Pittsburgh Riverhounds

Written By Pursue Persuade

By: Alex Cindrich

This is the location where the Pittsburgh Riverhounds play their home games.

About the Pittsburgh Riverhounds

The Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC was founded on March 11, 1998, by Belle Vernon, Pennsylvania native Paul Heasley. The team’s emergence ended the sport’s 12-year hiatus in the city at the professional level after the Pittsburgh Spirit of the Major Indoor Soccer League folded in 1986.(Riverhounds) This vision was realized during the 1999 USL draft when Peters Township native Justin Evans was selected as the Riverhounds’ first player. The team compiled a 16-12 record in its inaugural regular season, playing its home matches at Bethel Park High School. In 2004, Heasley sold the Riverhounds. The team subsequently underwent a number of venue and ownership changes before landing at Highmark Stadium for the 2013 season. Current owner Tuffy Shallenberger took control of the Riverhounds and Highmark Stadium in 2013. To learn more about the Riverhounds, buy gear and tickets CLICK HERE

These are the jerseys they would where at home games and still fitting in with the Black and Yellow theme

What is the goal for The Pittsburgh Riverhounds?

The goal for the Riverhounds is to gain popularity is not going to be easy at all. Despite them having a stadium in a really nice area by the river, loyal fans, a good mascot, but with all of that, it’s not enough to bring high amounts of attendance to every home game for the Riverhounds to the point where it can be sold out. The reason its hard for 2 reasons being the Riverhounds aren’t really a popular/known team and its hard to watch it on tv because its hard to find. So, the main goal for the Riverhounds is to increase ticket sales, but it has to people within 50 miles of Pittsburgh because any further than that and it will be a waste of time and other teams exist outside the city. There are ways to bring in more people this is how. They want to keep fans happy and here is how the do it with the link here

Market strategey on social media

What lots of sports fans have is social media and looking from TikTok they don’t have really any social media followers because they aren’t known enough. What the Riverhounds social media team is doing is doing their best to post plays and interact with players, fans rarely and their mascot. What the team needs to do is to switch it up a bit and follow what the other big teams are doing and get on the trends where the team should do trends in today’s social media world and try to seek younger fans so they can enjoy the games further down and they should interact with fans more often to show that the organization cares about the fans. Also, with social media they can announce special nights to where people want to come about, and it can be anything. It’s nice to also see the media team repost fans post at the game as well.

Influencer Market

Famous Pittsburgh TikToker would the perfect person for being a Pittsburgh GUY

A social media strategy that could help the Riverhounds with their issue is implementing influencer marketing. Today, influencer marketing is taking over social media, and it is one of the most popular, if not the most popular, social media strategies brands are taking advantage of. According to an article by Goat Agencey, “Influencers and content creators are the bridge between athletes, teams, and fans. They offer a more personalized and relatable perspective on sports than those involved in them. When web influencers go to games other people would want to go. The kind of web influencers the Riverhounds should be going for content creators that live in the Pittsburgh area for 2 reasons. First the goal is we want to target sports lovers that are 50 miles of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh natives would love to hear creators that are from the same area as them and would go to the games that a favorite Pittsburgh creator has experienced. Second big youtubers like Ishowspeed that has almost 40 million subs would be too popular to start off and you want to start off small in followers and work their way up to people like bigger in followers like Peterspasta sits right now with 5.1 million followers on TikTok According to a survey by Mediakix , 80% of consumers trust recommendations from influencers as much as they do from friends and family. This level of authenticity makes influencer marketing a powerful tool for building brand credibility. (Mediaix) All these Web influencers would be forced on a influencers tier area, to see the full list you can find it here.

Special Events

There are times where the organization would do something fun to get more people to come at that time of the event like for example would maybe a bobble head night where anyone who comes get a free bobble head of a random player and watch the game while you are there. They can also do a crazy event like universities vs Black and yellow where everyone would either and show up in black in yellow more college cloths more to gain people’s attention and thinking which is better and be a better experience for fans would want them to come back for a see a normal night AHT with friends. There should also be at every home game thing where if you pay a little extra you can be on the field with the players before the game starts which should be limited

Get TV time and Partnerships

Since people 50 miles of Pittsburgh love watch Pittsburgh sports in general, we need to find a way for the Riverhounds to get on the Pittsburgh sports channel. The first thing is for the organization to tell the station team to feature their game on the Pittsburgh sports channel and people will see them preform on TV and would want to know what that would experience in person would be like for themselves. Then people who run or in charge of ads can play and show who the Riverhounds partner with and on social they can tell who they are sponsoring. If a fan sees the brand partner with this team they would want to see the team in support of the brand. If the Riverhounds get on Tv, it will be reviewed and seen by the Neilson ratings which is a big thing for TV. The best part of Neilson’s ratings Is they considered a 3rd party, meaning they respect all sides equally.

If you want to know more about Neilson’s ratings click here and find some surprising facts or if you want to know more on ads click the button below and it will take you to my previous blog

My Final Thoughts

Overall, despite the Riverhounds not having to many things around them they are making it work nicely. Would I change The Riverhounds right now and the answer is no. I think they are in the spot right now that terms of attendance look good, and the organization is good, good stadium, and mascot. What my ideas are claiming is to have more people close to the city want to attend the games and show the support of the Riverhounds. The reason I thought the change might need to become soon is based off the number of followers the team has which is not a lot and hoping with better content more followers will appear and the team being good. Basically, when you have to market a team, your job is to turn a great organization greater, not turn mediocre organizations less mediocre. But, with all that said I think the Riverhounds are going well, but I see the problem is their social media being boring and should be more creative.

Pursue Persuade
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