A retail store that sells all kinds of athletic equipment and apparel. They also run an online shop through their website and ship sporting goods across Canada.

The Al Anderson’s team initially came to us for website updates. Their previous website had become old and outdated. It needed both visual improvements and possible backend structural improvements. They were also interested in making changes and additions to their online store to increase its performance and effectiveness.

Additionally, they wanted to get more value out of social media. They had a Facebook page already, but they were not posting consistently and were not strategically trying to build followers and engagement. Ultimately, they were not reaching as many potential customers as they could.

Custom Website Design

We gave the entire website a major design overhaul to reflect a newly updated brand. We reorganized some of their content, added new content, updated calls to action, and created more engaging headers. We also restructured the navigation menu for a better user experience. The site looks better and more professional. But most importantly, it’s easy for customers to use and find whatever they’re looking to buy.

We rebuilt the online store with a new, more functionally robust Shopify theme. We added new collections and store sections and integrated the shop in logical places on the website. For example, Memorabilia items from the store now populate the Memorabilia page.
As with all website projects, we implemented analytics and data tracking on the website. We like to monitor the amount of traffic the site receives, where those visitors came from, what pages they like to spend time on, and more.

We built a user-friendly dashboard that can display all the important data in a way that’s easy to understand. Thanks to these dashboards, clients don’t need a Google analytics degree to understand how their website and marketing campaigns are performing!

Social Media

Plain and simple, Al Anderson’s wanted to get more attention online from their potential customers. We set them up on a variety of social platforms they were not yet utilizing, for a total of 7 – Facebook, Instagram, Google My Business, TikTok, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube. We create 25-30 unique, high-quality posts per month that are meant to be informative and entertaining at the same time. We try to make posts that have a high chance of being shared and interacted with.

A very successful and cost-effective genre of posts is giveaways and contests. “Like, follow, share, and comment, and you ‘ll be entered to win!” It’s not uncommon for a $100-200 investment to reach tens of thousands of real, local people that could be potential customers and give a major bump to their pages’ follower counts – which improves all future content performance.

We have a monthly ad budget that allows us to boost posts we feel could be winners. Social media platforms have excellent regional and demographic targeting capabilities, which means nearly every dollar spent is directed toward actual potential customers. (In contrast to television advertising, for example).

Every month, we provide Al Anderson’s with reports that show recent changes in followers, reach, and engagement levels. When we first started doing social media for Al’s, they were averaging around 5,000 impressions/views per month on their content. Mostly on Facebook. Now, we often get 50-100x those numbers across a variety of social channels.

Email Campaigns

In summer 2022, Al Anderson’s wanted to run a back-to-school promotion for teachers and athletic directors that need to order equipment for sports like basketball, football, volleyball, and soccer for the upcoming school year. Teachers appreciate a bonus for themselves, so a great promotion is a free gift for whoever makes an order of a certain size. Al’s decided on a custom sweatshirt or hoodie with orders of $750+.

Budgeting is a big issue for schools, so we wanted to convey the message that Al’s will work with them to find a solution. Order and pay now, or order and pay later – whatever works best with the yearly budget. The promotion would run starting in June, so they could make their orders well in advance of their busy August/September. We wrote email copy according to the plan and went back and forth with Al’s team until it was worded perfectly and approved.

We gave the email an attractive, professional design that reflected their brand identity. Emails get skimmed all the time, so important elements were emphasized with bolding, highlighting, and underlining. The message was sent to work email addresses of teachers and athletic directors in and around Saskatoon. We coordinated with the Saskatoon School Athletic Division for help in reaching as many contacts as possible. The promotion directly led to 18 large orders of sporting equipment.

Al Anderson’s Source for Sports has a slick, attractive website and online store that SELLS. Their email campaigns have been a success, and their social media is paying dividends beyond all wildest expectations – they are social media’s most popular Source for Sports outlet, period.

YXE Urban Games