10 Tips On Drafting A Sales Strategy Using Probability As A Backbone

One mistake that most marketers make in creating their sales strategy is using weighted probability to compute how much revenue they will make. 

Say, for example, that you are selling a pair of athletic sneakers at $100 and you find the probability that your customer is going to buy is 80%. 

Using weighted probability, you will multiply the price of the sneakers by your probability to get $80 as your predicted revenue. But this is a wrong approach because if a customer does not buy the product, you will have zero revenue.

A better approach to forecast how much sales you will make is by first analyzing the risks your sales strategy will face and finding appropriate ways to mitigate them. 

This way, you can make informed decisions and have a better sales strategy using probability.

In this article, we look at practices that you can fuse to make better sales using probability as your point of information.

1. Increase population size

When you are advertising your sports equipment, ensure that it reaches a wide audience. This way, you are increasing the probability of a large number of people buying your products. 

Your marketing, therefore, should be broad but targeting a certain audience that is likely to buy your items. If, for example, you were marketing your athletic sneakers in Texas only, a good way is to broaden your scope so that you cover more states.

At the same time, you can increase the number of media channels you are using to meet your customers. If you were using print media as your only mode of advertising, it is time to diversify this. 

Try to capture a bigger audience by having a company website that talks about your product, use paid search and social media. 

This way, you will be reaching a wider audience, increasing the likelihood of converting some of them into potential buyers.

Case Study

Sports betting site Bookies gives you a wide range of NFL sports with their odds so that the probability of you winning your wager becomes larger.

2. Target seasons where people engage in a sport

If you are selling outdoor games equipment, you are better off targeting to sell them during summer seasons when people are outside and probably looking for such an outdoor sport.

During winter nobody is interested in such a game and so you would better be thinking of indoor sport for your target audience.

Case Study

Sports betting sites like sportsbettingdime will be marketing certain odds when the season is ripe for that sport. During the world cup, they will be marketing soccer while they will change tact to that during the NBA basketball season.

3. Target worldwide events

When the World cup is happening in a country, people in that area are highly likely to buy products related to the sport. 

Therefore, you will need to be armed with a wide stock of alluring products to trigger people to buy while relishing the sport.

Case study

While preparing for World Cup 2014, sports shoe brand Adidas was looking forward to getting $2.7 billion in revenue from selling their shoes. They had even gone ahead to make shoes branded as Lionel Messi, hoping he would be the center of attention during the soccer games.

4. Survey before going to a new field

Although most businesses fail to do it, surveys are critical before breaking into a new locality or selling a new product. 

The survey can give you information on what percentage of people are interested in a certain product. Therefore, you can market the product effectively based on the questionnaire data you received after conducting your survey.

Case Study

Before venturing into a new location, sports betting companies will first conduct a survey that informs the company on the demographics of those willing to bet. 

This informs the company on what sports to incorporate into the betting program as well as how much those betting are willing to spend.

5. Priors should inform your forecast

When coming up with a probability model of how your sales are going to behave in the future, you need to factor in the past and the new variables that might have come into play. 

With these past data, you can make informed decisions on what your target audience is likely to buy in the future and their buying patterns.

Case Study

When you are placing a bet, you should be informed by the past data about the sport and the players. With these statistics, you can make an informed decision based on priors and facts about the game.

6. Factor in the economy, inflation and natural disasters that might affect sales

When a pandemic hits or the global economy hits a depression, you will realize that certain products are not bought that much. 

Sports is then taken to be a luxury and as such, people will shy away from buying goods of ostentation but rather go ahead to buy more foods for their homes since they are not really sure of how things might eventually pan out.

Case Study

When the Covid 19 virus struck, countries came to a lockdown. Sports also suffered since most had to come to a halt. Some sports betting websites turned into casino sites that encouraged people to gamble their money. 

Since they knew that people were home, they looked for an activity that would attract bored people.

7. Go to a field that has fewer competitors

If many vendors sell the same product in a certain area, the probability that you will win all the customers dwindles. It is a divided game where you will share the customers. 

You will therefore want to venture into a sports product which is not very common in the market while at the same time having some considerable demand. 

If the area you are in gets too saturated with competitors, you could think of shifting to another area where you are highly likely to be the monopoly.

Case Study

Since football betting is so common and with big brands targeting customers in this niche, it would be unwise to chart this territory. You would rather go to a field such as swimming betting with a small audience but not too big of a competition.

8. Fuse psychology with probability in your CTAs

Anytime shoppers visit your site, there are some colors that they expect to be in your CTAs. You can do some research on the psychology of shoppers in your niche so that you fuse in these colors. 

Case Study

A visit to a popular sports betting site like BetNow shows you that the target audience expects to see a colorful site with conspicuous orange CTAs. Here they are highly likely to click and take the necessary action recommended.

9. Place your CTAs where people will probably click

When you use heatmaps, they show you where people are highly likely to click on your website. The spaces where they click might not necessarily have call-to-action buttons. 

They might actually be white empty spaces. But with data from a heatmap, you can identify these spaces so that you can put clickable elements.

Case Study

Oddschecker, a popular sports betting site has been using heatmaps to know where customers are highly likely to click on their site. With the data from heatmaps they are able to place their CTAs at positions where most clicks go to.

10. Check Availability of the sport

You need to be sure about the availability of a sport before you bring sports equipment targeting it. 

A city would need to have some swimming pools for example before you can think of selling swimming sportswear and glasses. If the sport is available, there is a probability that you will get clients demanding for your equipment.

Case Study

Fifa has banned Pakistan from the World Cup and unless things change, you are advised not to try to sell products targeting soccer in the country since not so many people are interested anyway.

11.  Work on trends

A look at the time-series of your sales data will inform you of the seasonality of products as well as periods when people are highly likely to be buying a certain product.

Case Study

If you are selling all sports equipment, you will find that during winter you are not likely to sell soccer balls or clothes since people are indoors. At that time, they are looking to play games such as table tennis. You would therefore sell more table tennis kits.

Sports Betting With A Touch Of AI

If you would like to do sports betting with high chances that you are going to win, try out score and stats, a website that gives you sharp picks powered by artificial intelligence. It also gives you information about the players in a sport, their history and statistics that guide you so that you can make an informed decision.