Game Plan Marketing helps sports organisations get really good at branding and marketing themselves. We can teach you how to do this or do it for you. We also provide educational seminars, webinars and resources to help start your journey and guide you along the way, many of which are free. We work with teams, clubs, leagues, national sporting bodies, government organisations and businesses involved in sport.

We work best with small to medium sporting organisations, often known as ‘grassroots’ sports. They usually have between 3 to 20 office staff / volunteers but often have hundreds or thousands of participants and significant opportunities for improvement and growth. We find that people in these types of organisations really want to improve performance but do not have the resources or are not sure where to start.

The information on this website is free. In addition, we have a number of other free or minimally-priced resources, such as our videos, report downloads and our book (links). For those wanting to make significant improvements in a short period of time we offer the Game Plan Sports Accelerator Program (link) which we charge for. We find that those who apply the principles and tools in this program usually recoup their investment within a few months. We also provide marketing implementation services for organisations that want their marketing done for them.

We say that what we teach is “Simple, but not easy”. By this, we mean that the principles are very SIMPLE and in fact there are thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of people all over the world implementing similar systems and processes successfully. Many people working in sport do not have a business or marketing background, therefore it is not EASY for them. They may need to get approval or support from others in their organisation and sometimes they are unsure where to start. Despite this, our clients find that they can overcome these obstacles and have made significant improvements in a few weeks or months.

It is possible to do this and we encourage people to do as much as they can for themselves. In fact we offer free resources on this website and links to others to help them. What we find is that most people in sport are great at organising and running a sporting organisation but not at branding, marketing and promotion. Sometimes they don’t have the knowledge to do it by themselves and sometimes they don’t have the time, so when they find us its like a breath of fresh air. But if you want to do it all yourself, please use our resources and ask us along the way if you need advice!

Of course we want to make money and the generation of money and profits enables us to provide a better service. We are a ‘for profit’ business and just like our clients, we charge for many of the things we do. We have found that by giving away a lot of our knowledge and information, we’ve been able to help a lot of people and that is very satisfying – but its also good business! Often people who use our free information come back to us for help when they get stuck or need to take on a large project. Increasingly, we are also becoming known as experts in this area and that is good for business. Importantly, we have gained a lot from sport over the years and we get genuine satisfaction from being able to give something back. We believe that you have to give in order to get, and it’s a principle we teach in our courses and consulting.

We have worked with enough people to know that the system we have developed will significantly improve any sporting organisation if implemented correctly. If we ever had a situation where this was not the case, we would work with you until you got it right or give you back your money, or both.

What we cannot guarantee however, is people’s commitment to implementing and running the systems we teach! You have probably heard the saying “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink”. Well, it’s the same with Game Plan Marketing. What we do works, but only if you implement it in the proper way. To re-assure you, we approach this in such as way that any reasonably educated high school student could follow!

We like to think of ourselves as “the stern but loving parent”. We are friendly, helpful and enjoy having fun, BUT we also like to see results. We will tell you how it is and expect that you will be as direct and open with us too. So we think that we are very easy to work with and we get results! Our existing clients tell us they have seen great results from our work together.

Yes! Most of our programs can be delivered online and we provide workbooks and other tools for every stage you need to undertake. You will need to attend at least one face-to-face session with us, but this can be arranged to suit you.

Ned Coten founded Game Plan Marketing after more than 25 years working in sporting organisations of all sizes, in addition to owning several other businesses and working directly in branding and marketing with some of Australia’s (and the world’s) best known brands (like Heinz, Wrigley and Mars). He learned by trial and error but also had some very good mentors along the way. Ned is passionate about marketing and branding and wanted to provide a cost-effective way for any sports organisation to grow and prosper using simple but effective strategies. The result is Game Plan Marketing!