User Features:

• Easy to use and accessible system for searching for local businesses
• Search for businesses alphabetically or by business type
• Download business contact details directly into Outlook, Thunderbird or other email programs in the form of a vCard

Business User Features:

• Dedicated and secure log-in system for controlling the business directory listing
• Listing includes links to website, company logo, contact information and company description
• Company description highly customisable with wide choice of HTML code elements, as allowed by the club in the Sport Buoy Business Directory admin panel.
• Companies can leap-frog their opposition in the business type rankings by paying more for their listing (optional)
• Keep track of the Cost-Per-Click (CPC) of their listing, to compare Return On Investment against other advertising options.
• Control over contact information means businesses can ensure that it is kept up to date and correct without relying on webmasters

Sports Club Features

• Simple installation into the existing sports club website – just a couple of lines of code!
• Easily customisable styles to fit with the rest of the club’s site
• New revenue stream for the sports club
• Great incentive to package with existing sponsorship options
• Keeps local business contact information up to date for use in sponsorship marketing campaigns
• Club controls what HTML businesses can use in their layouts – not just which tags but how many of them!
• Club can set number of links within the description on an individual level

1. Club website traffic
2. Club website Google Pagerank
3. Directory visibility on club website – how accessible/well-linked is the directory page?
4. Media profile of club

Clubs need to purchase Directory Credits from the Sport Buoy Credit Shop in order to attribute directory listings to business clients – one credit per client per year. Please allow 48 hours for purchased credits to be allocated to your account. Purchased credits will last indefinitely.

Due to UK money laundering regulations, Sport Buoy cannot accept payments on behalf of sports clubs from businesses: clubs must receive the money directly.

More and more businesses are turning to the Internet to advertise and market their products and services more widely and effectively, but most struggle for visibility in the search rankings or are unable to convert traffic into sales. What your club website can represent to them is a solid link to their website and a strong source of targeted local traffic. But is your site giving them what they need to succeed?

On the other hand, sports clubs sometimes struggle to formulate effective lists of potential sponsors, and once such lists are created the information is often left to go out of date, leaving clubs unable to reach their contacts, market new sponsorship opportunities or even incapable of collecting owed money!

The Sport Buoy Business Directory is the solution to both of these problems. A fully functional and user-friendly online business directory is inserted into your sports club website using only a couple of lines of code, enabling users to search the database alphabetically or by business type.

Businesses can be furnished with usernames and passwords in order to enter and update their own information. This enables them to upload their company logo and other images, write their own copy and maximise the benefit from the space for pre-selling their business. The listing can link to their website to give them more traffic, which will convert to sales more readily due to the local nature of the traffic. The company can also see the cost-per-click (CPC) for the advert in their user screen.

The club benefits from the Sport Buoy Business Directory by being able to sell it direct as a service to local businesses, or use it as an incentive in conjunction with existing sponsorship options. Rankings within the business directory can be determined by the amount paid by the business, with those higher up the pay scale appearing higher in the business type listing. This has the potential to spark bidding wars in verticals with a large number of local companies! Because the businesses obviously need to keep contact information contained in the directory up to date themselves, it creates a large database of valid contact information which clubs can leverage in sponsorship marketing campaigns.