Up your digital marketing game with the Digital Marketing Hub

Many community sport organisations can struggle with digital marketing, but it can be a key tool for helping to reach new audiences and promote your offer. The Digital Marketing Hub has been developed to support people to improve their skills and knowledge through the provision of learning opportunities that work for them. Ollie Holt, Digital Marketing Hub Project Manager, and Reece Stafferton, CIMSPA Marketing and Communications Assistant, tell us more about how the new platform can help clubs and groups.

Clubs and groups across sport and physical activity have always faced challenges promoting themselves, reaching new audiences and finding ways to engage new people. The Covid-19 pandemic has made this even harder, making engagement more important than ever before.

As we move forward, and as online spaces become more important, it’s clear that we need new ways to reach people. Clubs and groups have so much to offer the people in their area, it’s important that they are visible and have a voice that gets through to the local community.

That’s where the Digital Marketing Hub comes into play.

The Digital Marketing Hub is a free resource for anyone in sport and physical activity across England – provided by CIMSPA and funded by a £450,000 National Lottery award from Sport England. It has been designed to help organisations, groups and clubs to develop their digital marketing skills for free.

To get involved all you have to do is register at https://digital.cimspa.co.uk

So, what can you access in the Digital Marketing Hub? First of all, we have a range of learning depending on your needs and how you like to learn:

• Certificated online learning programme – on-demand bite-size modules certified by the Digital Marketing Institute
• Live webinar series – featuring keynote speakers, Google trainers, digital marketing experts and community champions to demonstrate the power of digital marketing
• Peer networking – a supportive community where learners can post messages, ask questions, seek help, gain access to experts, and share their successes
• Resources and micro-learning – including blogs, pods, and guides

• Reaching new audiences – helping you to reach new and more diverse audiences and drive growth
• Insight application – supporting sport and physical activity professionals and volunteers to better understand and apply audience and sector insight to inform their digital marketing activities
• Measurement – helping you to set goals and KPIs and measure them effectively
• Channel skills – increase understanding of the key digital marketing channels, such as social, search, websites, email, and provide the practical skills to use them effectively

We know that clubs and organisations struggle to create plans for attracting new audiences, but believe it is important at the same time. We know that confidence to carry out digital marketing is low and that organisations often rate their capabilities poorly. And consistent with this, the appetite for support and training is high, especially in social media, content marketing, website management, and SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

Designed to meet these real-life needs, the Digital Marketing Hub has been live since September 2021 and also signposts to some of the marketing resources from around Club Matters. Social media and content marketing have been very popular topics. We’ve had keen interest in the Google Digital Garage webinars which provide tips and guidance for digital marketing beginners and anyone wanting to hone their techniques. Our modular course, the Digital Marketing Playbook, provides a strong grounding across all digital marketing topics allowing users to apply for certification and gain membership with the Digital Marketing Institute.

An important goal for the Digital Marketing Hub in its first year is to understand what works, what can be improved and make those changes. The more people that get involved, the better we can make the Hub and the more value it can offer everyone across sport and physical activity, especially anyone who is part of a club or group.

To register simply sign up at https://digital.cimspa.co.uk. It’s completely free and watch out for new developments coming in 2022!