Building in the football space means you're starting from a place of passion. It's fun. As it picks up, you’re able to build reputation, credibility and trust with a growing audience.
You start to wonder… “Can this be something bigger?”
The easy answer: “Definitely!”
The long answer: “Let’s look at a few things before going full in.”
There are 4 pillars that you can focus on as you start building the runway for your football idea.1. The market
You can look at the market from two perspectives:
1- Is this an opportunity?
2- Is this a threat?
Look online and see if you can identify trending topics or explore potential gaps in the market.
Using online tools such as Google Trends or the Keywords Search Tool can help you get started. You can get a clear picture of what people are looking for and how popular certain topics are.
On Google Trends, you’re going to want to explore breakout topics to identify new opportunities. Breakout topics are search terms that have grown by more than 5000% (vs the previous period), meaning that a lot more people have just started looking for it.
The players
Have a look around and see what the competition looks like. Of course, you can get inspired by what they’re doing right, but I would also recommend looking at what they’re not doing, or what they could improve on.
You can then decide whether you want to fill a gap in the space, or disrupt the existing space with a new and unique perspective.
The audience
We underestimate how much feedback we can get from our existing audience, especially when you’re just getting started.
Reach out and invite them to a video call. Listen to them, their take on things, and ask them their pain points, and challenges in the space.
If you haven’t started building yet, reach out to people in the space that you would consider as your future target audience.
As a token of appreciation for their time and input, you can give rewards, gift cards, discounts, freebies or exclusive access.
The platforms
While social media is a great option to start building, you’ll also need to own platforms as well.
Captain obvious here, but a website is a simple way to own a bit of your brand online.
Add an opt-in form and gather email addresses so you can start emailing your audience.
Add an eCommerce platform to start selling online.
Not good at coding? No problem.
There are plenty of website builders that don’t require any coding skills and come with easy-to-use templates for you to get started.
Once you’ve done your homework and looked at these 4 pillars, you’ll be in a much better position to prepare the next chapter of your journey in the football space.
Starting with passion is great, but you can and should always do a bit of research to validate your next steps.
