Sports management and promoters, in order to increase your fan base and successfully grow your team's profitability, you need to present a unified brand while attacking on all fronts. In sports, if one of your players is injured or performing poorly, it can affect the outcome of the game and even sometimes the whole season. In marketing, if one of your marketing strategies is poorly thought out or not performing the way you had hoped, it can affect your revenue and your entire brand.
Multi-channel marketing blitz: Print ads and television ads used to be the top methods of sports marketing, but the landscape has changed. Online marketing and social media websites present huge opportunities if you use them wisely. Fans are interacting with teams in many new ways. Text marketing is a great, immediate way to connect with fans, and email marketing is perfect for confirming ticket dates and sending game schedules. A multi-channel marketing service that provides many forms of marketing in a single, integrated platform is the way to go: easy and affordable.
Go viral on social media: Sponsors and management are critical for a team's success, but the heart of any sports team is their fans. They pack the stadiums, they buy tickets, merchandise and concessions, they watch the games and follow the careers of their favorite players. Social media is an ideal way to connect directly with fans and create a meaningful engagement between the team and its supporters. Use Twitter and Facebook to run fun contests such as "Tweet your favorite moment from this month's games and be entered to win an autographed jersey!" or "Post a photo of you in a team hat/jersey and get a chance to meet your favorite player!"
Analyze your data: For every email, text and social media update you do, you should be analyzing the data that comes back. Are people opening the email? Responding to the text? Which tweet or post is the most popular? Digital marketing offers limitless possibilities for tracking and analyzing data from fans and supporters. This analysis allows you to target your marketing and rework your marketing strategy, based on your fans' response.
The New England Patriots, one of the most popular sports franchises on the East Coast, understand how important it is to collect and analyze data from their fans and supporters to create marketing strategies that appeal to their target audience. You can read about the Patriots' marketing experience.
By reaching out to fans through multiple channels, including email, text and the unstoppable force known as social media, you will expand your fan base. By analyzing the resulting data, you can improve your entire marketing strategy by seeing exactly what appeals to your fans. These are the elements of an explosive marketing strategy, and this season you can use them to get touchdown after touchdown.
