How To Learn Marketing from Major League Baseball

In honor of Major League Baseball's Opening Day in 2014, we realized that there are things that we can appreciate about the MLB that go beyond just an entertaining game of baseball and hotdogs; we can actually learn some real marketing lessons from them as well.

1. Have your profit generators stand out from the crowd. When you have several offerings to your customers, let them know which parts of your business are the real moneymakers, of course, you will have to find a way to do so other than, "Hey! Check out these cash cows! Give us your money!" Point them out by placing the links to those pages in prime spots like the top corners of your site. Mention them in your social media when doing your internet marketing. Make sure the pages for those sites are in spots they cannot miss. 
2. Sell subscriptions to services. Be able to give subscriptions to services that people will want to utilize and experience on a regular basis. For example, if you want to have live baseball streams on your phone, tablet, or computer, you will likely have to subscribe to some service. This concept can help people develop a taste for being a repeat customer to your business. 
3. Utilize segmentation of consumers. The league uses a concept that is dubbed "hub and spoke", which means that they have one central spot that leads to several smaller ones; they have the mass MLB.com which then has links to the different team sites. This concept enables consumers to go to the sites they have interest in, they do not have to waddle through the muck of other information they couldn't care less about. 
4. Target market, go local. Each market of the MLB (cities that have teams) receive different marketing content from the League so it is tailored to their team(s). All the products and services from the League is tailored to those cities, it would not make sense to constantly market Yankees things to the St.Louis region, get it? The Cubs site has info and products that talk about the Cubs and events that Cubs fans would like. 
5. Have tiers for products and services. We can look at this one way in that they have tiers in the stadiums; if you want the best seats (level of your services or products), you have to pay more but it is well worth the money (never offer tiers if you make them all the same, make it worth their time and money, don't be a jerk). Another way to look at it is how the MLB offers different levels for their services like subscriptions for online streaming. The different levels appeal to different levels of interest, budgets, and gives those who splurge for the top tiers a sense of pride. 

If you have any questions, feel free to contact Integraphix.