Photo by Esther Lin/STRIKEFORCE
The guys here at Insight Forge are all pretty big fans of mixed martial arts (UFC, Strikeforce, Pride, Dream etc.) and in particular of heavyweight champ Fedor Emelianenko. I’m not sure who caught the recent Strikeforce broadcast on CBS, but it was pretty great to see “the Last Emperor” prove himself yet again with a 2nd round knockout of Brett Rogers.
Which brings me to the subject of MMA Marketing. Because mixed martial arts is still a burgeoning sport many of the larger advertising agencies and web marketing firms haven’t yet caught onto how big MMA is going to be. The sport has international appeal, is immensely popular on all ends of the globe and has the potential to dominate the 18-35 age bracket (mostly male). This same age bracket spends a huge amount of time online and can be targeted accurately through online marketing mediums. I’d like to go over a few of these specific mediums:
Web Design & SEO: There are still quite a few high profile fighters out there whose websites look like they are from 1993. Fedor’s current official homepage is fairly outdated, is a hybrid between English and Russian and was last updated in 2007.
Mind you, when someone Googles ‘Fedor’, this official homepage pops on the 1st page of results. The keyword ‘Fedor’ gets nearly 2 million Google searches per month. Given Fedor’s popularity within the targeted MMA Marketing age bracket, you’d think that someone would have fixed his site up. Fedor, if you’re reading this, we’d be glad to help out.
Twitter: Twitter is fast becoming a great way for fighters to keep their fans updated with daily training regimens, upcoming fights, appearances, sponsors etc. Although there are already quite a few MMA fighters that are taking advantage of Twitter, there are many that haven’t yet picked up this good marketing habit.
One notably absent fighter, again, is Fedor. Someone recently created a fake Fedor Twitter account and tweeted before his Nov. 7th fight that he may have the flu (which must have caused quite a few gamblers to freak out). Which goes to show: a fighter with Fedor’s clout should be in control of his own marketing destiny with an official twitter account. As far as translating his tweets between Russian to English and keeping them up to date – Fedor, once again we’d be glad to be of service.
Forums: MMA forums on sites like Sherdog.com are amazingly active with fans and fighters alike. Forum users will post anything from their opinions on the latest MMA events to their opinions on health care reform. This is a great place for MMA marketers to reach out to potential customers, whether they are promoting a fighter’s newly designed homepage, an upcoming local MMA event, a fight gear site, or anything else related.
Promoters must beware that simply blasting out spammy posts about your site will certainly cause you to be banned from these forums. Your posts need to fit in with the topic of conversation and do so in a subtle way.
Insight Forge has an MMA and Celebrity Personality marketing and SEO skill set. If any fighters, celebrities, athletes, brands or event promoters are in need of SEO or social media services, feel free to contact us for a free site review and campaign estimate.