When you pay attention to the 'live balls' you can win the game

I was at my son’s baseball game yesterday watching them get bulldozed by another team in their Little League. My son is on the Boca Dodgers and up until yesterday they were ranked #1 in the league. So the Dodgers played the #2 team in the league (the Boca White Sox) and got crushed—final score, 15-3. It was as though our boys who had been leading the league suddenly fell asleep. They were making so many errors that the White Sox didn’t win the game, the Dodgers lost the game. 

A few times the White Sox scored on us were when our Dodgers didn’t pay attention to the live balls. The parents (myself included) were over in the stands waving our arms, jumping up and down yelling at the top of our lungs “live ball, live ball” and the boys were meandering about the baseball diamond letting the White Sox score on them.

To give you a simple example of a live ball, let’s say a pitcher walks off the mound for some reason, and then drops the baseball—that’s a live ball. The other team can steal a base or even try to run home. 

A ‘live ball’ is a ball that is still in play. The play isn’t over, and the ball is still live, meaning someone can score. The White Sox scored several runs on plays should have been over, but weren’t. They were smart and took advantage of the live balls. Our boys forgot that a play isn’t over until it’s all the way over. 

As I was walking away from the field with a dejected catcher by my side, I realized I spent the morning cheerleading for our team to attend to the “live balls”, and I do the same thing all week at work. Our landing page platform is called LiveBall for this very reason—a click is still in play until it’s converted. When someone clicks an ad, the play isn’t over, it’s just beginning.

Sometimes when people see LiveBall they think the platform is named after all of our cool bubble graphs that show real-time results of your online campaigns.

The bubbles are a phenomenally effective decision-support tool, but they aren’t the reason the platform is called LiveBall. It’s called LiveBall because smart marketers know that when you pay attention to the live balls you can win the game. 

I would be a bad mom if I didn’t mention that last year, our Dodgers didn’t let any live balls out of their site and they were the Boca Raton Little League champions. Go Dodgers!