This week’s title is not related to the Premiere League soccer club, as that is a sport where I am far from expert. While I do know the futbol club Arsenal is quite good, talk to Kevin on our team for all things soccer. This week’s Huddle Up is about the word itself rather than the soccer team.
One of the definitions of the word arsenal is, “an array of resources available for a certain purpose.” Which begs the question. As a leader in your industry, do you have the right resources to deliver on your stated purpose?
Since we work exclusively in the sports tourism and events industry, we will walk through a few thoughts on how the arsenal concept applies to our team at HUG and many of you that read this weekly publication.
We can think of an arsenal as the things you have to deploy to execute on your origination’s mission. Similarly, an arsenal can be thought of as the arrows you have in your proverbial quiver that you can shoot at the winning target (for the Hunger Games fans out there). For sports tourism organizations, here are a few things that every arsenal should be stocked with…..
Information – Do you have the right data to use in evaluating where the opportunities may be, what best-in-class organizations are doing, and most importantly, to define what success looks like? We find that last one is often overlooked. If you achieve X, is that a home run or just a single? Identifying the final destination makes it easier to arrive there.
Technology – There are more tech “widgets” in the tourism industry today than ever before. There are data trackers, match making tools, participation indexing services, and geofencing technologies (this is by no means an all-inclusive list). Any or all of these can help you and your team make more informed decisions that will support your journey to victory.
Marketing – Are you leveraging the right tools to promote your organization? We didn’t say are you using ALL the tools out there to get the job done, we asked if you are deploying the RIGHT ones. Most of the sports organizations we consult use the “spray and pray” model. They try to be everywhere and use every tool they can find in hopes something good happens. What marketing efforts are delivering trackable results for you? Whatever those are, double down there and get rid of the things that aren’t working. (Side note: After several years of investment, we just cut our membership with the largest tourism association in the country for lack of results. Nothing should be left off the table).
Relationships – Human capital is the most important resource in our industry. Quite frankly, that goes for nearly every industry. If you have the right people on the team and can lean into others with expertise outside of your organization, that is the best of both worlds. However, building meaningful relationships needs to be an intentional process. You have to dedicate time and energy to the process, every day, all the time. If you build great relationship foundations, when you need to ask for support from those individuals or companies, they will usually jump right in.
Of course, these are only a few of the important assets you need in your arsenal. You could probably add a dozen more. Our intent was to get you thinking about what you need (and what you don’t need) to get the job done.
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