How to Grow Your Cricketing Business Beyond Word of Mouth

Despite the social, economic, and technological changes brought by the online and digital revolution, most smaller cricketing businesses still rely on word of mouth as their primary marketing strategy.

This isn’t a problem if the business is doing well and has no ambitions to grow.

However, it can be frustrating if you want to build your brand, attract more customers, and increase revenue.

Additionally, word-of-mouth marketing can be unpredictable; sometimes, there’s more business than you can handle, while other times, there’s little to none.

If you’re facing this challenge, join us in exploring a counterintuitive but effective solution.

But before we embark on our journey, let’s begin with the end in mind.

There are three things that we all desire in our businesses:

1. Less Risk

Business is inherently risky.

We therefore need strategies that reduce this risk.

2. More Control

We will sleep better at night if we are in the driving seat and knowing where our business is going, with the belief that a brighter future lies ahead.

3. Fast Results

As we all desire fast results, the promise of instant results is always alluring.

While there is no magic method, secret hack, or instant solution, there are ways to get fast results with less risk and more control.

You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” – James Clear

With the online and digital revolution, we have power in our hands that was previously only available to big businesses and the super rich.

We can now affordably set up a modern online marketing system that consists of three components that every business needs:

A Traffic Engine for Awareness
An Engagement Engine for Brand Building
A Conversion Engine to Make Sales

When these engines work together, they generate long-term, loyal customers – the foundation of any sustainable business.

But before we get into the system, It’s important to be aware of a few traps that can waste money, time, and effort if you are not aware of them.

What follows is based on our combined experience from publishing Cricket Fanatics Magazine since 2019, a decade of digital publishing, and three decades of designing, building and managing business systems.

While these insights can benefit many businesses, this guide specifically targets South African cricket businesses that are ready to grow beyond word of mouth.

This isn’t for you if you’re unwilling to invest in your business growth or learn new strategies.

It’s also not for you if you don’t want to invest in growing your business or learning how to do things better.

Some of what we share might defy conventional wisdom, but it’s been proven effective for smaller businesses worldwide – including our own journey with Cricket Fanatics Magazine.

Mindset Matters

All success starts with the right mindset—whether you want to be a star athlete, a great cricketer, or run a successful business.

A strong mindset will carry you through tough times and amplify your success in good times.

Conversely, the wrong mindset leads to wasted money, time and effort, and poor results.

In the past decade and a half, we’ve consistently seen smaller businesses struggle due to the wrong mindset.

This mindset has led to more business failures than most people realize, or dare to admit.

Yet, this mindset is still common practice, as it has shaped the way we think for more than a century.

But instead of telling you what it is, let’s explore how it works through the story of Alex, a fictitious character wanting to promote their cricketing business.

Alex’s Story: A Familiar Tale

Meet Alex, a fictitious cricket business owner whose primary marketing channel is word of mouth. While they occasionally have more business than they can handle, at other times, it’s slow.

Alex has absorbed the belief that success means “getting their name out there” to as many people as possible, a notion popularized by major brands.

Mass media advertising has worked for big brands selling widely used products, but Alex’s business offers niche services and doesn’t have the budget to justify mass media campaigns with traditional media like television, radio and print.

So, Alex turns to online channels but still carries the same mass media mindset.

They find that the big online media houses are also too expensive to justify their use.

So they decide to go it alone.

They create a website, blog, and social media accounts, publishing as much content as possible.

Spurred on by influencers who post everything from breakfast to bedtime, they work on getting their name out there by publishing lots of content.

But, as they are not a publishing company, and with limited resources, the quality of content suffers, and Alex’s business gains little traction.

Frustrated, Alex concludes that online marketing doesn’t work, returning to word of mouth with no control over their results.

Now let’s look at approaching this with a different mindset—one that has emerged online over the past couple of decades and works well for “real” businesses.

A real business is defined as having products or services to sell—not just relying on advertising revenue from views.

This alternative mindset dictates that you go in the opposite direction.

Instead of trying to reach as many people as possible, rather focus on the smallest number of people you need to sustain your business.

Marketing expert Seth Godin, an inductee into the AMA Hall of Fame, and author of the book This is Marketing, calls this the smallest viable audience.

Think of audiences that share common interests. He calls this psychographics, instead of the traditional demographics used by mass media marketplaces.

By focusing on delighting and helping the audience you serve, you’ll find that two things happen, according to Godin:

You discover the audience is bigger than you first thought.

They tell others, creating organic growth

This is a model that smaller businesses can use to build a brand and increase revenue.

When we started Cricket Fanatics Magazine in 2019, we were fortunate. We had discovered the value of focusing on a small audience with common interests.

We used this strategy to build Cricket Fanatics Magazine.

We selected South African cricket fans as our smallest viable audience.

We then set about publishing great content for a South African cricket audience.

We resisted the temptations of the mass media mindset.

This enabled us to become a well-known brand in South African cricket circles, despite having a limited budget and few resources.

We could easily have expanded into India, for example, where there are hundreds of millions of fans.

But that would have done you a disservice, as that’s not the right audience for you.

As publishers, our business model was to build a viable audience for cricketing businesses or anyone looking to reach a cricket audience in South Africa.

This may sound good, but you might wonder how to maximize your income using this model.

Kevin Kelly wrote a seminal essay in 2008 called 1,000 True Fans.

He provided a formula for calculating the viability of smaller audiences.

Since then, thousands of businesses have used his philosophy successfully.

His discussion with Tim Ferriss, more than a decade later, provides a great account of the impact 1,000 True Fans has had on thousands of businesses.

1,000 is not absolute; it’s a placeholder.

You can substitute it with the number that’s right for your business.

Based on your financial projections, how many do you need?

You should now see that the mass media mindset is not the right solution for you.

But even if you’re not fully convinced, there could still be some appeal for what’s next.

If not, that’s okay.

Most people won’t be convinced, and we’re at peace with that.

But if you’re keen to explore further, we’d like to introduce you to a modern online marketing strategy for cricketing businesses based on the principles discussed above.