Scout Central
- 1. |Jeff Brown | Gina Heiderman | Shenin Hooda | |Kyle Wood | Weiting Yue | Mingye Zhu | MKT 595 Autumn 2013 SCOUT CENTRAL | Discovering and Connecting Athletes|
- 2. Business Model Scout Central 2 Core Capabilities: Infrastructure – Internet platform supporting a vast network for efficient recruiting of athletes Value Proposition: Online based environment that allows for high school athletes to advertise and build connections with coaches and recruiters who are looking to recruit the best talent Customers: Student Athletes, their parents, and coaches Scouts & Coaches Student Athletes + Coaches Scout Central Understandable Profitable
- 3. Market Opportunity “Participation in high school sports increased for the 24th consecutive year in 2012-13 and passed the 7.7 million mark for the first time” (NFHS Survey). Increased market of talented student athletes seeking opportunities to further their sports careers Difficult for coaches and recruiters to fit and match the right athletes with the appropriate Scout Central 3
- 4. Mission Statement “Our mission is to aid in the advancement of furthering high school athletic careers and education by connecting students with the right collegiate programs.” Scout Central 4 BEST SPORTS RECRUITING BEGINS HERE! Scout Central
- 5. Solution Website Mobile App Scout Central 5 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Paid Search Social Media
- 6. Search Engine Optimization Goals 1. Boost search engine result rankings 2. Ensure site can be easily navigated Scout Central 6 Carefully execute areas specific to mobile!
- 7. Website Design User-friendly Conveniently serve both coaches and high school athletes *Ensure that customers can immediately figure out the value proposition of our website and be able to easily navigate to and from other pages logo, tagline, search bar, footer Scout Central 7
- 8. Website Design Responsive Web Design (RWD) technical crawl efficiency and indexing benefits easier for Google to crawl and index 8 Scout Central
- 9. SEO and Mobile 4 mobile issues interstitials to drive traffic to apps broken videos that don’t play on mobile poor load time improper redirects Scout Central 9
- 10. Paid Search Goal: Improve our Ranking in Organic Search – Create Brand awareness – Take advantage of keyword traffic – Connect with consumer base Benefits to end users: Help users find the right information the right contacts the right sports program at the right time Scout Central 10
- 11. Social Media Cost and Benefit Leverage Social Media Platform: Facebook Google+&Blogs YouTube Mobile Platform Twitter Open Directory Project Scout Central 11
- 12. Free technology that allows us to understand how recruiters, athletes and other searchers interact with our site With Google Analytics, we can generate insights and know what adjustments we need to make to keep visitors on our site longer, and get them to register Google Mobile App Analytics can measure what matters most from first discovery and Allows us to create reports and KPIs that pull live data from Google Analytics account Report automatically update Ideal tool to share the KPI and insights with our colleagues and clients Enables us to connect to virtually any data source, from Facebook, and Twitter to SQL databases and Google Analytics, to get a complete view of our business. Google Analytics Klipfolio Web Analytics Scout Central 12
- 13. Web Analytics Costs Scout Central 13 Can be used for free 14 day free trial, $20/month
- 14. Email Costs and Benefits Email Provider A Provider B Total Total Send Quantity (Impression) 3,441,252 2,135,039 5,576,291 Total Cost $30,000 $21,350 $51,350 CPM (Average cost per 1000 sent) $8.7 $10 Clicks 516,187.80 256,204.68 CTR 15% 12% CPC (Cost per click) $0.058 $0.083 Conversion Rate 0.7% 0.9% Action 3,613.31 2,305.84 5919 CPA (Cost per acquisition) $8.30 $9.26 Total Revenue $65,040 $41,505 $106,545 Total Profit $35,040 $20,155 $55,195 Following calculation is based on Conversion Action: sign up for the premium plan ($18/month or above) We will hire third party email campaign providers to help us run the campaign with a cost of $51,350 per month. They will provide the list of email accounts of people who might be our target consumers, and sent 5,576,291 emails /month in total, which can cause a large amount of impression for our website. Estimated conversion rates are 0.7% and 0.9%, which will generate 5919 people who might sign up for our premium plan ($18/ month or above) and generate a profit of $55,195 or above per month. Scout Central 14
- 15. Paid Search Banner Costs & Benefits Banner Provider A Provider B Total Impression 1,800,000 2,000,000 3,800,000 Total Cost $36,000 $80,000 $116,000 CPM 20 40 Clicks 126000 200000 CTR 7.0% 10% CPC 0.29 0.40 Convertion Rate 2.0% 2.7% Action 2520 5400 7920 CPA $14.29 $14.81 Total Revenue $45,360 $97,200 $142,560 Total Profit $9,360 $17,200 $26,560 Paid banner ads will help the users find the right information, the right contacts, and the right sports program at the right time. We will cooperate with two different levels of banner ads providers. For the lower level provider, we will spend $36,000/ month and $80,000/ month for the higher level provider. Paid search ads may have higher costs and lower click through rates compare to email campaign, but it did a good job in generating brand awareness, which is very important for a new company like us. Scout Central 15
- 16. Membership & Potential Advertising costs and benefit Membership Free Inside r ($15) Professi onal ($35) Visibility Who's Viewed Your Profile limited √ √ Full Profiles limited √ √ Full Name Visibility √ Reach In-Mail Messages no 10 25 Introductions 5 25 35 Open-Link √ √ Search Premium Search no 4 8 Profiles Per Search 100 300 500 Saved Search Alerts (Save searches and get notified when new profiles fit your criteria.) 3 weekly 7 weekly 10 daily Scout Central 16
- 17. Action Items- Advertising Creating brand awareness Web Presence: Most of our services are internet based Paid Search and Banner ads are the best way to get our ads in front of the right audience Scout Central 17
- 18. Banner Ads Banner ads are an effective way to bring customers to our site via banner click through or a QR code Create multiple ads to target our different audiences Place different ads on specific websites Scout Central 18
- 19. Challenging question at the top of the ad Call to action- assertive text that would “call our customers to action” in order to influence them to click on the ad or use the QR code embedded in it “Build Your Future” @ Scout Central- We liked this slogan because it is audience neutral Banner Ads Scout Central 19
- 20. Banner Ads Scout Central Ad for Coaches Ad for Athletes Possible websites to advertise on: http://www.usatodayhss.com http://www.maxpreps.com http://www.takkle.com http://www.ncaa.com http://www.ncaa.org http://www.aauathletics.org
- 21. Thank you! The Digital Dream Team: Jeff Brown Gina Heiderman Shenin Hooda Kyle Wood Weiting Yue Mingye Zhu BEST SPORTS RECRUITING BEGINS HERE! Scout Central
Editor's Notes
- #3: Business model consists of Infrastructure, Value Proposition, and Customers A sustainable business model must be understandable and profitable Scout Central’s Core Capabilities consist of an Internet platform supporting a vast network for efficient recruiting of athletes Value Proposition - Scout Central is an online based environment that allows for high school athletes to advertise and build connections with coaches and recruiters who are looking to recruit the best talent. Customers - Student Athletes, their parents, and coaches Scouts & Coaches
- #6: We will create a website and a mobile app to deliver this service to our user base. Since we are a new athletic recruiting service entering the market, search engine optimization (SEO) will be vital in our success. We’ll use paid search to create brand awareness and improve our ranking on organic search. We’ll promote our business via social media.
- #7: We have two main goals for SEO: boost our search engine result rankings so users can find our site, and, once users land on our site, ensure they can easily navigate it and find what they are looking for Because our recruiting service will primarily be delivered on mobile devices, we must carefully execute areas more specific to mobile.
- #8: Our goal is to create a user-friendly website that can conveniently serve both coaches and high school athletes (including their parents and coaches) Since we cannot predict which pages will appear in search results, we will ensure that customer can immediately figure out the value proposition of our website and be able to easily navigate to and from other pages. Our logo, tagline, and a search bar will be present in the same location on every page along with breadcrumbs and a footer.
- #9: We will use responsive web design (RWD), as opposed to mDOT. A site designed with RWD adapts the layout to the viewing environment, whether it be mobile or desktop. The reason we have chosen this web design is because, according to Google, there are technical crawl efficiency and indexing benefits for RWD that are superior to other mobile development methodologies. RWD sites are easier for Google to crawl and index than mDOT sites. Since Google is currently the leading search engine, it makes sense for us to design our site to perform well with Google.
- #10: In addition to these basics for improving SEO, there are a few other key areas for us to focus on, specific to mobile. Google has described four mobile site issues which could cause a decrease in mobile rankings. These issues include the use of interstitials to drive traffic to apps, broken videos that don’t play on mobile, poor load time, and improper redirects we will need to test our page load times, fix any bounce rate issues that may arise, reduce redirects, and ensure our videos play on mobile devices Taking these into consideration will make a difference in the mobile SEO value and performance of our website overall, and will make our users happy. SEO is a never-ending process, so we will need to continuously revisit and update every aspect of our site which had been discussed to keep up with the changing algorithms.
- #11: Our goal is to improve our listing on organic search and create brand awareness. We will initially invest in paid search in order to improve our ranking with organic search. Paid search advertisements will give us an opportunity to directly and immediately affect where our site appears and take advantage of the keyword traffic. It will help users discover our website when they are searching with keywords like recruiting, college sports recruiting app, athletic recruiting, college recruiting, NCAA Recruiting, or while visiting specific sporting websites for scores or sports statistics. Using search engine reports will be very important for us to measure, analyze, and improve our paid search performance. We will focus our paid search ads via Yahoo Search Marketing, Google AdWords, Ask.com Sponsored Listings, and MSN adCenter. Paid banner ads will help the users find the right information, the right contacts, and the right sports program at the right time.
- #12: By including these social media tools, we can develop our business and let more people know the brand with no cost. If we are plan expanding the brand in the future, advertise in these social media would be necessary.
- #17: Membership will benefit us by membership fees which divided by three levels: free, insider and professional. Insider cost $15 per month and professional cost $35 per month. Register as member will not only benefit us as revenue, but also can provide us customers’ insights and data. Providing spots of potential advertising for people or organization who want to advertise on our website or application will also benefit us financially.