Before we talk about how to get started, we need to address the main question: what is sports marketing? Sports marketing is the promotion and advertisement of sports teams, events, programs, organizations and related merchandise. If you want to be successful with your sports marketing efforts, you need a great strategy and a great marketing solution.
1. Do your research
What types of marketing do other teams and organizations do? Research effective sports marketing strategies that work for your particular sport. By learning what the successful sports marketers do, you can learn where to begin.
Who could forget the Red Sox use of social media in 2013? The players grew playoff beards, and the team created a huge buzz using hashtags such as #GetBeard and #FearTheBeard. Social media marketing is just aspect to include in your sports marketing strategy.
2. Create a sports marketing strategy and plan
Create a list of what you want to promote and how you want to go about it. Don't worry, you can always update your strategy as you receive feedback and data. The process of analyzing your marketing campaigns allows you to learn what techniques work, which messages gain the most responses, when the best time is to send your marketing messages and much more.
What do you want to accomplish? Gain more social media followers? Boost sales through email marketing? Spread awareness of your brand? Before you start, make sure that you have an idea of where you want to end up.
3. Choose a marketing solution that is right for your needs
Once you decide what and how you want to market, you need to find a marketing solution that has everything you need. Most marketing solutions have free trials. SimplyCast offers a 14 day free trial of our all-in-one marketing automation solution, SimplyCast 360. You can also sign up for a free demo, hosted by our experts by clicking the button below. The SimplyCast solution includes over 15 channels of communication in a single, powerful platform.
Take time to research the different solutions and test them out before you commit to anything.
4. Send out some marketing campaigns and test
By choosing a marketing solution with a simple drag and drop editor, you can create campaigns with ease. Whether you're doing email marketing, text message marketing, survey marketing, social media marketing or anything else, make sure it's brand consistent.
By maintaining a branded look and feel to your messages, you create a loyal connection with fans. No matter what medium you're using, ensure that you're keeping your brand first and foremost.
Also, try out different strategies. For example, A/B split test two different subject lines for the same email to find out what gets the most opens.
5. Review your data
How can you know what works if you don't analyze your data? After each campaign that you send out, your marketing solution will provide a detailed report. This will include how many people opened or viewed your messages, who responded or clicked through, how many shares or likes you got and much more.
By analyzing this data, you can learn how to improve. Continue to optimize your future campaigns based on your ongoing report data.
Request a SimplyCast 360 demo, and see how marketing automation can explode your sports marketing.
