Marketing Strategy for Nottingham Forest FC

The report discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the club, conducts a PESTLE and SWOT analysis, and suggests a marketing mix for the club. The potential customer segments are analyzed, and the business objectives of the club are outlined.

Running head: MARKETING STRATEGY
Marketing Strategy
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1MARKETING STRATEGY
Abstract
The purpose of the following report is to discuss and develop the proper marketing strategy that
will be useful for the football clubs in the United Kingdom. The chosen club for the report is the
Nottingham Forest FC based in Nottinghamshire. It is the duty of the club management to
develop some marketing strategies that will cater to the goal of the organization. The external
environment has been analyzed for the proper understanding the issues the club has been facing.
The strengths and weaknesses for the club will be discussed as well. Another issue that will be
taken under consideration to run the club properly is to develop a proper brand identity for the
club. The brand identity will surely help the organization to famous in the country. They can also
improve their game performance once they good sponsors and the sponsors help them to buy the
best players indeed.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Assessment of the organization.......................................................................................................3
Assessment of the external environment.........................................................................................4
PESTLE analysis.........................................................................................................................4
SWOT analysis............................................................................................................................6
Marketing Mix for Nottingham Forest........................................................................................8
Analysis of the potential customer segments...................................................................................9
Objectives......................................................................................................................................10
Target markets...............................................................................................................................11
Brand or marketing initiatives.......................................................................................................12
Measurement and control mechanisms..........................................................................................13
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................14
References and Bibliography.........................................................................................................16
Appendices....................................................................................................................................19

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Introduction
The purpose of the following report is to discuss about the marketing strategy of the
football club in United Kingdom. The chosen football club for this paper is the Nottingham
Forest that plays in the second division or popularly known as the Championship. The club is
currently at the seventh position and it is being managed by Aitor Karanka. In this report, the
external environment of the club will be discussed and the best points will be found out as to
how they can improve the number of their followers.
The customer segments of the club will be highlighted because the supporters are the
most important assets of the club (Ferrell and Hartline 2012). The improvement strategies for the
brand will have be an important reflection on the discussion as well. The core marketing
concepts will have to be applied on the chosen football club Nottingham Forest FC. The club
will like to attract more supporters to increase their supporter base. This will give them a better
position in the football marketing as well. Some important marketing tools and theories will have
to be applied in this section because this will make it clear how the club can be able to earn more
profits and be successful in the commercial side as well.
Assessment of the organization
The chosen organization for this assignment is the Nottingham Forest FC. The club is in
the second division of the professional football league in Europe. The club was set up in the year
1865 (Nottinghamforest.co.uk 2018). The home stadium of the club is the City Ground. The
capacity of the stadium is approximately 30,445. The owners of the club are Evangelos
Marinakis and Sokratis and Kominakis. The club has a fair amount of supporters and they have
been performing well in the recent times. However, the shares are divided between the two

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owners as 80% and 20% respectively (Nottinghamforest.co.uk 2018). Their purpose is to
increase the number of supporters and fetch a good amount of money from the sponsors and
increase their market share in the sports industry (Ferrell and Hartline 2012). The club is based in
the Nottinghamshire. The effective team management will be very important for them
(Nottinghamforest.co.uk 2018).
Assessment of the external environment
PESTLE analysis
The PESTLE analysis will be very useful tool to assess the external environment of the
organization. As the chosen organization is a football club, the parameters will be different from
the other organizations in the profit oriented background. The different factors of this tool will
have to be assessed in the light of Nottingham Forest FC.
Political
The political condition of England is quite stable. The Government has planned several
things for the development of sports. Especially England has performed well in the 2018 Russia
World Cup so the Government will try to implement their plans effectively for the improvement
of the football from the grass root level. Hopefully these plans and policies will yield good
results for the overall good results of football in the country. The Government will approve a
good amount of budget for the development of the youth team of Nottingham Forest FC. The
youth team is considered as the supply line for the senior team of the club. Thus these plans will
really be helpful for the club indeed.
Economic

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The recent global inflation has been an integral issue in the current United Kingdom.
However, the management team of Nottingham Forest FC will look to recruit the new and
skillful players in the team so they can perform very well (Jurevicius 2013). The allotment of the
recruitment fees will have to be implemented properly so the club can form their team with the
purpose to win the second division championship tournament and FA Cup as well to come to the
limelight. They will have to abide by the several economic policies employed by the Football
Association (FA) and implement them in an ethical manner (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 2012).
Social
The supporters are the main customer base of the Nottingham Forest FC. They will have
to convince the supporters to come to the field via the social media platforms. The attention of
the people should be gained in order to be a popular club in the United Kingdom. Other than the
men’s football team they should shift their focus on improving the women’s football team as
well (Jurevicius 2013).
Technological
The use of the technology should be used properly for the best returns to the club. In this
era of the technological advancement, the football clubs will also apply the technology for their
advantage (Jurevicius 2013). The club should make use of the newest technology regarding the
video analysis of their opponent clubs in the Championship matches.
Legal
The legal guidelines will have to be followed by Nottingham Forest FC. The gender
equality should be maintained among their employees. This is very much important in the

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signing and recruitment of the players by considering the laws of the FA (Jurevicius 2013). They
take several players from the big clubs from the Barclays Premier League teams on loan for the
season. These signings should be done properly so the reputation of the club can be maintained.
Environmental
As a community football club and a source for entertainment of the people they should
also focus on the environmental issues (Kolb 2013). They should not chop down the trees to
build their new stadium or something like that. They can choose to build up several campaigns
for creating awareness among their customer base to safeguard the environment for their benefits
only.
SWOT analysis
Strengths
 Nottingham Forest is an old football club and they have a well reputed history behind
their names (Desbordes 2012).
 They have good sponsors and good economic background to sign new players.
 The home stadium is well maintained and the security system is good.
 The brand value of the club is quite high enough in the second division of the
professional football club competition (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick 2012).
Weaknesses
 The presence in the social media is not so smart enough for the organization.
 Many times the club has faced several controversies in the matches that have brought a
negative value to their reputation of the club (Buhler and Nufer 2012).

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 The popularity of the club is not so high like the world famous premier division clubs like
Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool.
 They have not been able to qualify for the premier division for a number of years now.
Opportunities
 Nottingham Forest FC can look to tap the Asian markets for increasing their fan base in
the countries like India and China.
 They can also arrange for several exhibition matches in their off season. This will
increase the popularity of their players as well (Desbordes 2012)
 The club can eye for the development of their brand value in numerous ways. The
advertisements will have to be done properly so they can gain the notice of the football
lovers of the other continents other than Europe (Armstrong et al. 2015).
Threats
 The above mentioned big clubs do their advertising in such a strong way that the smaller
clubs like Nottingham Forest FC are unable to compete with them.
 The top clubs in the league will buy out the best players and they will be left with average
level players to play for them (Fifield 2012).
 There have been some internal problems between the players and the management team.
They have often faced problems with the coach as well.
 They have been incurred into debts many times that have restrained them from buying the
best players (Shank and Lyberger 2014).
Marketing Mix for Nottingham Forest
Product

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The main product for the Nottingham Forest FC is their team itself. The football players
captained by the English born Ben Watson are the ones who perform in an excellent manner to
market their team in the international arena (Fifield 2012). The sporting merchandise are quite
related with the product marketing of the Nottingham Forest FC. The club should proposer some
ways to make their revise their strategies by which they could gain the attention of their
supporters so the attendance rates could be changed.
Price
The price of the tickets will be an important factor for the price of the products of the
team (Roberts and Zahay 2012). The club can also raise the money from selling their jerseys in
both the offline and online medium. This will be useful for them in many ways indeed. They can
use the premium pricing method for the higher generation of their profits (Armstrong et al.
2015). They can come up to be the pioneers by the up market presentation of their products. The
season tickets should be priced within the affordable range since the supporters won’t be agreed
to buy the second division match tickets at a high cost. If the team can perform well in the
Championship, Carabao Cup and FA Cup it will result in the higher television revenues as well
(Hawkins, Mothersbaugh and Best 2013).
Place
The home stadium of the club City Ground is the place for their marketing mix. They
also play the away matches at different grounds all over the country as well. In United Kingdom,
most of the clubs have their own fan base. This is why they will be able to collect the revenues in
a higher manner through the selling of their tickets at different venues. The club should arrange
for a share of the tickets for their away fans as well (Hawkins, Mothersbaugh and Best 2013).

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Promotion
The promotion of the club can be done through the offline and online media. The sports
betting company BetRight will be their official shirt sponsors and they will have sponsorships
from Adidas as well. The money from the sponsorship will be useful for them to sign the best
players within the country (Martin and Schouten 2012).
Analysis of the potential customer segments
The customers are the most important stakeholders for any organization and it is no
different for the football clubs as well. However, the customers for a second division football
club like Nottingham Forest FC would be their supporters. The supporters are all the football
lovers who generally hail from the city of Nottinghamshire. Mostly the native people are the
supporters of the club.
However, some people are the fans of the players who play for the club. They support the
club for those players only. However, it is very important to make the demographic segmentation
for the better understanding of the situation (Baker 2014). The fan base of the football clubs
range from the little kids to the old age people. The demographic segmentation of the
Nottingham Forest FC consists of several facts like age, gender, and ethnicity, location of the
fns, the income levels and many things.
Objectives
The business objectives of the football clubs is mainly the proper commercialization of
the club so the club can gather a good amount of revenues and this will help them to increase
their market shares indeed (Baker 2014). The main purpose of the club from the technical aspects

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of the game is entertaining people with their majestic style of play but the commercial purposes
are something more than that. Nottingham Forest FC is no exception to that. There are some
proper business objectives for the club Nottingham Forest FC to develop. These are:-
 To assist and develop the budding football talents within the region of Nottinghamshire
in England
 To assist the players to develop the craft of sportsmanship within them so they can
become a future star and a role model for the entire nation
 The club also wants to promote and organize the mental, physical and social well-being
of the people of the local communities in the region (Best 2012).
 The club also wants to fund and promote the various social and athletic campaigns within
the region as a part of their corporate social responsibility.
 The club will look to provide the codes of conduct policies and business guidelines for
the corporate owners so no harm is done to the team and the players.
 The club would like to develop the attendance of the supporters in the club level to fill up
the gallery.
 They might like to launch a new product regarding the football accessories for the
customers.
 The club should give the responsibility of designing the jerseys by the supporters of the
club. This could improve the connection between the club and the supporters.
 These new jerseys could be the new sports product that could be developed by the
supporters and the online sales could be the process to increase the revenue of the club.

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 Apart from the general brand value of the club, Nottingham Forest can tie up with the
large retail and telecommunication brands of the country that would surely increase their
brand value as well.
 The objectives of the will be SMART. In other words, the specific (S) objective would be
to increase the attendance of the audience during the football matches of the club. This
goal is important because it is related with the development of the brand revenue of the
club. So this is measurable (M). This is achievable (A) as audience would come to the
stadium if they perform well. It is indeed very relevant (R) for the overall growth and
development of the club. Lastly it should be time bound since other clubs are in the race
of gaining the popularity as well.
Focused Club strategy
The club Nottingham Forest FC will be able to increase their brand revenue by selling their
sports merchandise in different countries.
As they play in the second division, they will not be able to fetch the top grade sponsors for their
team.
One thing the club can do is to reduce the ticket pricing and ensure the people of different
economic classes could attend the club matches.
They must overcome the challenges they have faced in this context like the detailed market
analysis on which target market they should tap in and how they could approach the target
audience as well.

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They should target to leverage their club brand. This will be very important for the organization
to know their weak points and improve those points.
The proper commercial partnerships should be developed between the club and the different
companies. This should indeed be a very important factor for the overall success of the club.
The club must plan their social media strategy in a manner that proper communication between
the club officials and the supporters. They can use Facebook as an open forum to interchange
their opinions on how to beautify their stadium, install new seating facilities, create a fan park for
the supporters outside the stadium where they can gather if the stadium capacity is full.
The improvement of the brand equity should be based on the customers. Otherwise the rates of
turning up in the stadium would surely decrease.
Leading club brands
If Nottingham Forest FC determines to make the strategies for the improvement of the club
brand it will surely be helpful for the club.
The club should also put the proper focus on their product portfolio. The club should like to get
to know the desires of their supporters in which they want the club to make the changes. Then
they should align their products with the expectations of the customers. This will surely develop
the brand value of the organization in several ways.
They will have to stress on strengthening their supply chain as well. The process of the product
development process should concern around providing the best quality jerseys and football
museums for the fans.

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Target markets
It is very important to define the potential target markets for the football clubs. As the
chosen club Nottingham Forest FC is a second division football club, their target audience will
be smaller in size than the big clubs like Manchester United, Chelsea, Manchester City and
Liverpool. They will have to act according to that only. However, the club has a good amount of
fan base indeed (Solomon et al. 2014). The club must sell the different merchandise for
managing the benefits in the best ways. These different kinds of merchandise are the scarves,
caps, jerseys, gloves, shoes and many other things that are related to the game. The overall
financial conditions of the region of Nottinghamshire are quite well organized. This is why the
club management can decide to sell the tickets of the home matches at an affordable rate
(Gordon 2012).
There is a area in the home stadium of the club that is dedicated only to the families. The
ticket price of that region is a little bit higher. However the standard ticket prices are maintained
in all the stands. The price of the tickets is considered for three groups of people. They are the_
 Juniors of the age between 4 and 11 years
 Juniors aged between the 12 and 17 years
 Seniors over the age of 65 years
The Peter Taylor Stand i.e. dedicated to the families is a bit costly but it is quite a safe place
to sit in for the people. The families can enjoy the matches from there as well. The security of the
audience should be tightened more as well. The kids are given special discounts through the
events like the ‘Kids for a Quid’. The target market segmentation strategy will have to be based
on the buying behavior of the customers (Huang and Sarigöllü 2014). The emotion for the club

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and the game is a very important aspect for the overall marketing strategy of the club. The club
will look to build up a ‘smoke free zone’ and address their target audience to keep away from
smoking. However, there are a lot of women fans as well. This is why the organization will have
to give their women fans the proper security so they can enjoy the matches in a safe way indeed.
The tickets should be provided to the fans before a week of the fixture.
Brand or marketing initiatives
The marketing aspects are very much interconnected with the improvement of the brand
value aspects of the organizations. Likewise a football club like Nottingham Forest FC will come
under these obligations indeed (Huang and Sarigöllü 2014). In this context, it must be said that
the individual fame of the players of the club will be much useful for the clubs to gain the best
brand values indeed. Football is considered as the most followed sports in all over the world and
billions of people watch this game with their utmost passion (Singh 2012).
The clubs are also their favorites as the club competitions entertain the football lovers all
through the year. The use of the social media strategy will surely increase the brand value of the
football clubs. The club must adopt the strategy of ‘going global’ to get famous in the
international sphere indeed (Singh 2012). The commercial benefits can be increased by
Nottingham Forest FC if they focus on increasing their revenues in the higher manner.
The best way to do this is to recruit some players from these continents. This will be
beneficial for both the parties. It is simply because both these continents have been getting
stronger in terms of their talents for bringing up good and skillful footballers. However, the
infrastructure of Asian and African football is nowhere close to that of Europe. They can opt to
build up football academies in the poor African countries and train them to play in Europe. Their

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sponsors will provide the money for these academies indeed (Khan 2014). This fact can really be
helpful for them in improving their brand value by focusing on their corporate social
responsibilities. However, they should give much importance to their best players as they are the
best brand assets for their club.
Measurement and control mechanisms
The ways the chosen organization Nottingham Forest FC could develop their brand
identity by implementing the best marketing strategies should be measured properly. To do this,
the annual audit will have to be done to fix how the organization has been able to generate the
profits by implementing their plans (Theaker 2017). Nottingham Forest FC must work as a non-
profit organization as a commercial body. While measuring the improvement of the performance,
the business managers and the owners of the club have found that the facilities of the club have
been increased.
The establishment of the football academies will also be very much helpful for the overall
success of the organization in the best ways. The organization has been very much effective in
generating the revenues by selling the complementary accessories to the fans. The sale of the
jerseys and scarves has helped them to gain good profits than the other clubs of the
championship (Jurevicius 2013). The performance of the football team can also contribute in this
matter. If the football team can play well and qualify for other tournaments and play till the final
there will be more number of matches. As they play more matches, more tickets will be sold.
Thus the income of the club will increase as well.
They have honored their former veteran players in several occasions and this has also
pleased the senior fans as well. Thus the loyalty towards the club has been growing altogether.

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These measures can really be called as commendable, praiseworthy and effective for building up
a proper brand identity for the club. Once they tap into the Asian and African markets through
setting up the football academies their revenues will be increased automatically as well.
Conclusion
As the topic has been discussed in the above segments, it can be concluded that the
football club Nottingham Forest FC will have to put in a lot of strong efforts to succeed in the
sports industry. The way to success for the sports organizations is something different from that
of the other organizations. Thus a football organization will have to keep several important
issues to succeed in the competitive business environment. Another important fact in this issue is
the main stakeholders of the sports organizations are simply their fans.
As football is considered to be the most followed and most popular sports all over the
world, Nottingham Forest FC will have to make the plans very cautiously on how they could
improve their performance. They should always focus on the desire of the fans to be the
champions in the second division and qualify for the Barclays Premier League. In order to do
that the organization will have to use the social media platforms as the most formidable channel
to implement their marketing strategy. They can raise funds from selling their tickets for the
home and away matches. The money from the ticket sales should be utilized properly as well to
gain the organizational success.

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Appendices

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