Modern Snowboard Marketing in Three Easy Steps

Even after reading the simple list of ideas put forth in our “How To Get OUT of the Snowboard Industry” post, you may not have been able to pull the trigger, and find yourself in the position to be marketing for a medium-to-large snowboard brand this season. It’s hard, because you’re kind of lazy, you still don’t really get it, and the unnamed backer you’re working for pays you barely more than a living wage under the guise of the “bad economy” and that fact that you “love snowboarding.” On top of that, your budget got cut again, so after paying for all the necessary things such as a team, you’re left with about $150 to kick total new media ass with. Luckily for you, overworked snowboard marketer, your friends at YoBeat are here to help.

Step 1: Social Networking Campaign

First off, get excited! Social media is technically free, and this is your excuse to sit on Facebook all day and call it work. Your boss likely attended some social media conference this summer, so they are quite an expert, and know all that matters is that those fan numbers go up! Participation, engagement and quality of fans are far less important than having a higher number of fans than your brand’s biggest competitor. So what’s the best way to get fans? Give stuff away! The better the stuff, the more fans you’ll have. (Don’t bother giving away stickers – the only people who want that crap is kids that snowboard, so you’re really limiting your fan base.) Give away some apparel or equipment every week, preferably something that will fetch a decent price on eBay, and pretty soon you’ll have a loyal following of bored housewives coming back every week for their chance to win. Yeah, they’re never gonna BUY your products, but your boss will be stoked on the numbers. WIN!

Step 2: Blog

Blogging isn’t as hard as you think. Yes, you have to do it every day, and if you’re bad at grammar (which you probably are if you work in snowboarding) it can be a bit laborious to make your posts readable. So here’s the trick. There are tons of people posting stuff about snowboarding on the Internet EVERYDAY. Not just the major magazines, but blogs, and hell, even random kids on Youtube and Vimeo. If you want to run a kick ass brand blog, all you need is a Google alert for your brand name and all your riders. As stuff pops up, don’t bother reading it, just copy, paste and publish! Instant blog. And hey, if you’re a smaller brand, you can probably find an intern to do the embedding for you – you don’t have to pay them, they’re excited just to be involved! Trust me, you don’t have to stress too hard, no one is actually going to read it anyway.

Step 3: Team Video

You’re looking at your sad little budget, and you’re thinking, how the hell am I going to pay to make a proper team video? It’s expensive to employ a full-time filmer and pay for them to travel around the world with the team. Then if you want to set up a few shoots so your video actually stand outs, well… Good news! You can just get a bunch of GoPro’s (they’re cheap as it is, but GoPro might even sponsor your team video with some freebies) and then give them to all your team riders. At the end of the season, see what you got, pay the one am on your team with a film degree to edit it, and boom! Team video. Just be careful when your boss tells you to make it into DVDs and/or sell it in on iTunes. No one will actually want to pay for that crap.

Now good luck, snowboard marketer! Let’s get out there and sell some snowboard gear!