SwingAway Sports Products announced the Next Generation of Batting Stations by launching their most affordable machine simply named “The SwingAway”. $199.99.
August 18, 2009 by OA Group · Leave a Comment
The New SwingAway - The Ultimate Hitting Machine was announced today and will soon be available for the retail price of $199.99… This Patented Machine has all the credentials and the structural integrity that is associated with the SwingAway Brand and Reputation without the cost. This machine is intended for home training for all Baseball and Softball Players regardless of age and skill level.
Atlanta, GA, February 04, 2009 — (PR.com) — SwingAway Sports Products announced their newest Hitting Machine “The SwingAway”. The SwingAway is the newest and most affordable Batting Station to date from this new and exciting company.
The SwingAway Hitting Station was designed and engineered for home training for all Baseball and Softball players regardless of age or skill level. The New SwingAway is built to take the constant use and demands of the Professional Athlete and now it is available to ALL PLAYERS who possess the drive and determination to Get Real Good, Real Fast.
The New SwingAway will be available March 1, 2009, priced at $199.99. Don’t let the price of this machine fool you. This machine has all the benefits of the other models in the SwingAway Product Line and features a Bottom Boom and a new Revolutionary Hitting Mat. This Machine Rocks!
The bottom boom feature will perfectly align the Patented Pulley System to increase the life of the Bungee System. The SA Hitting Mat - replicates the inner portion of the Batter’s Box. The mat is marked for both Right and Left handed Hitters and numbered baseballs showing the “Proper Contact Points” plus Directional Arrows to show where to drive each Pitch Location.
“The New SwingAway acts as a Personal Hitting Instructor that will make any player a Better Hitter, Period, end of story, GUARANTEED”, states John J Flading, SwingAway’s President and CEO. “It is SwingAway Sports Products Goal to make the very best training aids plus offer all the tools to help our customers achieve their dreams and goals. The new SwingAway combined with the SA Hitting Mat, the SA University (SwingAway’s On-Line Hitting Academy), plus the privileged access to Baseball’s and Softball’s Greatest Hitting Coach’s, will make it possible and now affordable to make every SwingAway customer a better Hitter. The Price of this machine makes it a Great Entry Level Batting Station but it still will take the pounding of older and more experienced hitters”.
SwingAway Hitting Systems has always been the Batting Machine of Choice by Professional and Scholastic Programs, now it’s finally affordable for all Players who possess the drive and determination to be the Best.
We as a company are extremely proud to produce the only hitting machine that actually teaches and re-enforces the proper swing fundamentals and mechanics that makes our customers better baseball and softball players and we continue to be successful in doing something Real Good for the Game of Baseball and Softball.
You are Never to Young to develop Perfect Swing Mechanics
Contact Information
SwingAway Sports Products, Inc
John J Flading
800-999-1968, 404-825-7063
jflading@swingaway.com
www.swingaway.com
www.swingawayblog.com
CitySpur - The Premium Yellowpages
January 21, 2009 by OA Group · Leave a Comment
We are very excited about a new company that is turning the Yellowpages industry on its head. CitySpur.com is a premium Yellowpages online destination that reviews the best that a city has to offer. From restaurants, bars, hotels, family activities, they will give you the best options for that city. Below is a screenshot of one of their popular city sites, NewYork10.CitySpur.com:
And just in case you don’t feel like reading, they also produce a weekly online video show, have fun watching below:
60% Of Advertising Spending Was Wasted In 2008
January 21, 2009 by OA Group · Leave a Comment
The Fournaise Marketing Group, one of the global leaders in all-media marketing effectiveness tracking, released that 60% of all advertising spending it tracked around the world in 2008 failed to deliver the results expected by their marketers and can therefore be considered wasted.
Specialized in tracking, measuring and auditing the real-time performance of marketing and advertising campaigns deployed in both traditional and online media, Fournaise used its proprietary marketing effectiveness tracking solutions to measure the ability of the advertising campaigns to generate both direct and indirect engagement with their target audience, and therefore their ability to boost the advertisers’ Profit & Loss (“P&L”) through:
- Increase in retail traffic;
- Increase in sales;
- Increase in leads/prospects captured; and/or
- Increase in positive target audience conditioning.
Through the campaigns it tracked across offline and online media, Fournaise revealed that while the average Marketing Wastage Rate (”MWR”) in the business-to-consumer (B2C) industry is 65%, it falls to 47% in the business-to-business (B2B) industry.
“We noticed that the majority of B2B marketers are very focused on making their campaigns deliver hard, tangible results, i.e. leads or prospects that they can convert afterwards. On the other hand, the majority of B2C marketers tend to rely heavily on the old and traditional model of brand building: by mainly going after awareness and recall through expensive and impact-driven media buys, they hope to deliver more sales and/or in-store traffic down the line - a fundamental mistake nowadays given the high level of advertising clutter, which leads to high levels of wastage” says Jerome Fontaine, CEO & Chief Tracker of Fournaise.
To help their company successfully ride this recession storm, Fontaine believes marketers around the world must overcome 4 challenges:
1. They must first pull their head out of the sand, get out of their comfort zone and accept their reality once and for all: their job as a marketer is to grow their company’s P&L, nothing else;
2. They must change their approach by starting to be much more bottom-line-focused and embrace P&L-related key performance indicators: every single advertising spend must be tracked and must deliver tangible results;
3. They must be prepared to handle the truth, to take the necessary action to adjust their plans and to move their budgets to where the results are coming from in order to achieve the highest yields, real time – even if it means to cut or reduce the areas that they spend on out of tradition; and
4. They must start thinking like business owners and treat their budgets as if it was their own money. Would you agree to give away 60% of your own money every month without getting anything back in return?
Top 5 New Year’s Marketing Resolutions
January 1, 2009 by OA Group · Leave a Comment
With the beginning of a new year I thought it timely to suggest my top five marketing New Year resolutions for 2009:
- ROI, ROI, ROI! There may be some great sounding marketing tools coming out this year, just remember that the only thing that matters with a marketing campaign is that you make more money than you spend!
- Stay true to your brand’s mission. Do you remember the reason you launched your company? Return to your roots and your clients / customers will thank you for it.
- Create Raving Fans out of your customers. This can be accomplished by obsessively executing on what advertise.
- Work ON your business instead of IN your business. It’s easy to get caught up in the fast to day issues of your company. However to truly develop your business into a thriving organization you will have to develop looking term strategies that fuel innovation and growth.
- Always remember to not sweat the small stuff, and then remind yourself that it’s all small stuff.
Multi-Channel Marketing
December 22, 2008 by OA Group · Leave a Comment
Many organizations struggle to optimize online and offline marketing campaigns across an ever increasing number of new marketing channels. Silos of information reside in separate channel-centric technologies, and distributed marketing efforts, from both internal groups and external relationships, add organizational challenges to managing multichannel marketing efforts. Most of all, the proliferation of sales and marketing channels has made multichannel campaign performance difficult to track and monitor.
According to a new study published by Aberdeen, Best-in-Class companies are 1.5-times more likely to address these challenges by utilizing next-generation solutions that enable cross-channel optimization across an enterprise.
The report reveals how top performing companies currently execute multichannel campaigns to extract maximum value from their marketing investments. By combining organizational capabilities and marketing technologies, Best-in-Class companies are able to positively affect return on marketing investments and customer profitability.
“Traditional multichannel marketing is largely a function of delivering multiple separate campaigns across multiple channels,” explains Ian Michiels, Research Director at Aberdeen. “Best-in-Class companies are executing structured, collaborative cross-channel campaigns, and they are deriving extraordinary results from these tactics.” The top challenges organizations face when implementing a multichannel marketing campaign are data integration problems created by disparate systems, the lack of technology to centralize multichannel management, and the organizational challenges associated with department silos. “The challenge of executing, measuring, and optimizing multichannel marketing has far reaching implications that affect marketing performance, measurement, and customer retention and acquisition.”
Take Aim at Your Audience
December 18, 2008 by OA Group · Leave a Comment
A phrase I hear countless companies say in regard to advertising is, “I know I am wasting half of my marketing budget, the problem is that I don’t know which half!” This is a common dilemma that is directly related to where, when and how you are distributing your brand.
A research report was just released by Advertising Age that revealed that the automotive industry would be much better served by transitioning away from television towards radio. This case study is key in understanding domain expertise. If automakers migrate away from television to radio they could be able to dramatically cut their collective marketing budgets while still hitting their target audience; thus increasing their advertising ROI.
If you feel that your marketing dollars are being wasted on the wrong mediums, don’t get frustrated… GET FOCUSED!
Reputation Management
December 10, 2008 by OA Group · Leave a Comment
Let me introduce you to your best friend and sometimes worst enemy: social media marketing. You have heard the success stories of companies driving powerful consumer awareness via a viral video on Youtube or attaining expert credentials through relevant blog postings. However I want to talk about what happens when social media marketing gets ugly. If you purchase advertisements through an online ad network, there is a strong possibility that you do not know where your brand its being displayed. This has two negative components:
- Your business could be placed next to brand harming content
- Your banner ads could be simply filling in remnant inventory, which means you are practically guaranteed to lose your return on marketing investment
So what can you do to protect your brand’s reputation in the marketplace? Focus first and foremost on where your ads will be shown. This is where traditional advertising had it right. Companies paid based on placement, not solely on impressions. Secondly, experiment and choose innovative advertising mechanisms. If your marketing strategy has little to no risk, then you will produce little to no results. Good examples of fresh advertising placements are:
- Sponsored blog posts
- Video advertising
- Mobile marketing
Social media marketing can be your best friend, but only if you have a well thought out plan and clear objectives.
The Right Way to Make Your Brand Disruptive
December 8, 2008 by OA Group · Leave a Comment
The most common question I’m asked by clients is: where should I be marketing my business to drive results? The funny thing is that the answer is never the same for that particular question. Your tactical advertising plan needs to be in line with your product strong suits. A good rule of thumb is:
If your advertisements are annoying to their audience, they are being distributed on the wrong medium.
For example, if you are running social networking ads that constantly get complaints, you probably shouldn’t be placing your banner ads on sites like Facebook or Myspace. Every business has its sweet spot, the key is being able to recognize how to become ‘disruptive’ without becoming annoying.
Let’s compare two ‘disruptive’ advertising mechanisms: Product Samples vs. Internet Pop Ups. Both of these marketing tools ‘disrupt’ the user experience, the key difference is that giving away product samples help to establish brand loyalty while pop up ads simply annoy viewers and many times drive them to competing companies.
Every business sector has a specific medium in which their advertisements should be placed, below are some of the best pairings I’ve witnessed with clients:
- Car Dealerships – Newspaper and TV
- Legal Counsel – Yellowpages
- Consumer Electronics – Search Engine Marketing
- Movie Studios – Online Video Pre-Roll Commercials
- Business to Business Enterprises – Blogging
So remember to keep on disrupting your audience (it’s the only way to get their attention), however make sure that you are building strong and positive relationships with consumers as opposed to simply throwing an ad in front of their face.
SwingAway Launches Blog and Online Academy
December 4, 2008 by OA Group · 1 Comment
PRESS RELEASE
SwingAway Sports Products announces the launch of the Free SwingAway On-Line Hitting Academy and The new SwingAway Instructional Blog site.
The SwingAway Hitting System is the Premier Batting Station training aid in the baseball and softball hitting marketplace. This Patented product is used and supported by all 30 Major League Baseball Teams, the Olympic Softball Team plus 100’s of top tier college and high schools programs throughout the nation.
SwingAway® Sports Products has announced and launched two new Free web-based resources to help both baseball and softball players become better hitters and players.
- Free On-Line Hitting Academy for players of all ages and skill levels featuring Free video instruction and drills developed by the very best hitting coaches in the game of baseball and softball. The Hitting Academy can be found on SwingAway’s website, www.swingaway.com.
- SwingAway Instructional Blog, www.swingawayblog.com. This blog site features baseball and softball instructional articles that include all physical and mental aspects of the game. The blog is not limited to solely hitting instruction and written by the foremost authorities of the game.
“SwingAway is a different kind of Baseball and Softball Training Products Company,” says John J Flading- President and CEO, “We do not just sell world class Hitting Machines and Training Aids, and we deliver solutions to our customers. Our customers are serious Baseball and Softball Players that are determined to become better ball players, they do not just own our products; they invest in themselves though hard work and by getting the tools necessary to achieve their dreams! SwingAway as a company is also very serious about hitting. We feel strongly that it is our responsibility to offer our customers every resource to assist them to become better Hitters. If our customers are going to invest in a SwingAway then we are going to continue to invest in them until they reach their goals.”
The powerful combination of regularly Training on the SwingAway Hitting System with the wealth of resources found on these two new sites, the SwingAway Customer will quickly reach their Maximum Hitting Potential and Get Real Good, Real Fast.
How to Thrive During a Challenging Holiday Season
December 1, 2008 by OA Group · Leave a Comment
Ahhh, the holiday season is here. From the exuberant faces packed into the malls during ‘Black Friday’ to the hopefulness of New Years, this is traditionally the best time of year for brands and retailers. However the current market uncertainty has frightened the everyday consumer, and scared shoppers into frugal individuals. Essentially every major research agency is projecting the worst retail season in years, and these reports will most likely come to fruition. So am I saying to pack it in? Of course not.
Even though the season may offer several obstacles not seen in previous years, there is still plenty of opportunity for brands to emerge victorious over the next thirty days. Below are my three tips for having a successful holiday marketing campaign:
- Take a lesson in logic and live by Occam’s Razor, which states that the simplest answer to a problem is usually the best option. In other words, do not try to take drastic branding action over the Holidays in order to drive consumer awareness. When considering where and how your advertisements will be shown, live by the phrase: keep it simple stupid.
- If you have an established presence in the marketplace, continue to build deeper relationships with preexisting clients. Strong market research has shown that it is ten times as expensive to capture a new customer as to retain a previous client. So RIGHT NOW is the time to start hitting your email list, you very well may have a goldmine at your disposal of new sales from old clients.
- Cut all unnecessary spending and reevaluate all existing vendor relationships. You may be paying four services that have cheap of even free alternatives. A good example of this principle in action is CRM software. I have worked with organizations that pay thousands of dollars on services like Salesforce when web applications such as Zoho are completely free for small businesses and extremely cost effective for large enterprises.
It may not be easy, but if you stay smart this Holiday season your business can still flourish.
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