Arizona - Littlest Big Regional

[Rick TYler]

Originally Posted by Jessica Boucher

To shed a little light on it, after some calculations it could be that the 2005 Arizona Regional has teams traveling an average of 419 miles, or 7 hours, to visit the regional.

After a bit of further research, if you look at it from a Porter's Five Forces perspective (a tool used to define competition within an industry so that it can be tackled easier), you're running into the huge issues of "Power of the Buyer" and "Threat of Substitutes".

I enjoyed Jessica's marketing analysis quite a bit. Nice work.

Let me throw in a few more suggestions if you are looking at increasing the attendance at your regional. Let's use Marketing 101 and the four Ps: The ancient standards of marketing say that your strategy needs to include four items: price, distribution/place, product and promotion.

Price: The tournament entry fee is fixed, so what can you do with other costs? Is there a way you could package great accomodations at a reasonable cost? Would America West offer a special FIRST discount? Let's face it -- once you make the decision to get on an airplane, there isn't much real difference where you go within the contiguous US. I can fly from Seattle to Miami for around $225 round trip. Flying round trip to Salt Lake City is only $60 cheaper. Interestingly, flying round trip from Seattle to Portland, OR is around $185, while I can fly to Portland, Maine, for $365. You should be able to effectively market to any team that has to fly to get to their regional. You will have a hard time competing on travel cost with teams that have a short drive to a regional. We can drive from here to Portland in less than 3 hours.

Place: This normally covers product or service distribution, but in this case it is more about location. Why would someone prefer to visit Arizona in early spring (or late winter) instead of some cold, damp place? If you can't figure this one out, you should just move to Minnesota. Could you package some outdoor activities or benefits? Golf? Hotels with big pool complexes? Horseback riding? Sell sunshine -- it's worked for Florida, Southern California, and Arizona for decades. (On second thought, do any of us really want to see folks from New Hampshire, Illinois, or Washington in bathing suits with their winter "tans?" It's pretty scary to contemplate.)

Product: What does your tournament offer that others cannot? You mention that it is a smaller event. Does this increase the chance for rookie or poorly-financed teams to compete in the absence of teams with $50,000 budgets? Maybe you can sell it as, "Arizona Regionals -- The Best Start Here!" or something similar. Could you even structure it as "FIRST Choice for Rookie Teams!"? Since you have disadvantages in natural (driving distance) market size, you need some competitive advantage. Think of what yours is, or could be.

Promotions: PROMOTE, PROMOTE, PROMOTE! Send (e)mailings to teams worldwide inviting them to Arizona. Subtly promote it on these boards. Does your .sig on this bbs promote your event? Have a drawing for a door prize for everyone on this board who promotes your regional in their .sig. Hire blimps, have dancing geckos, put your tournament on coffee cups, whatever. If teams haven't heard of the amazing benefits of your event, they sure aren't going to attend. Remember -- six features, three benefits, two reasons to buy today.

This was kind of a supersonic 10,000-foot view. Hope it helps.

- Rick Tyler
Mentor, Team 1294
MBA '83, Professional Marketing Guy