Businesses can greatly benefit from incorporating sports marketing into their mix, especially since events are back from the pandemic. Sports is a vast market with nearly 10 million people having watched the MLB World Series alone, and both minor and major league events attracting millions of viewers every year. Sports marketing can help boost your reputation as you tap into an incredibly lucrative opportunity to extend your brand's reach.
Getting Involved with Sports Marketing
Sports marketing involves pairing your company with specific sports and their teams to build brand awareness and recognition amongst their fans. Sports teams have a large, dedicated audience of loyal viewers. Sponsoring different events and teams introduces your brand to these loyalists, many of whom may not be easy to reach through other channels.
Aligning your brand with people's favorite teams and individual athletes gives your brand positive association that can attract interest from fans.
Incorporating Sports Marketing into Your Ad Strategy
Creating ads surrounding the game day experience lets you tap into sports’ excitement. Your digital and TV ads tap into the hype either before games or during them with day-of ads. Implementing timely ads brings as much attention to your brand as the games connected to it and allows you to reach a dedicated audience.
Sponsoring games also helps you integrate sports marketing into your strategy. Promoting branded gifts or promos in the event your team wins, either on TV or in the stadium, gives fans something to remember you. For instance, if your store offers a coupon to people who attended the game, they’re incentivized to visit your location and view your offerings. Getting fans into your store because of the game associates your brand with game-day excitement, differentiating your company from less involved competitors.
You're not limited to any single channel, either. Multi-channel ad campaigns that combine digital, TV, and over-the-top (OTT) streaming ads reach customers from multiple fronts, increasing touchpoints and awareness. Using these platforms before and during game-day ensures you stand out and attract attention. To illustrate, you could build hype around the game with digital and OTT ads advertising promotions and discounts ahead of game day. During game day, you can launch TV ads during commercial breaks to instill more top-of-mind awareness. Adding other marketing efforts, such as email and social media campaigns, reinforces sports fans' awareness and holds their attention better.
Creating a Lasting, Local Connection
Sports teams develop deep connections with local audiences. Tapping into these connections helps establish your brand as a more significant part of the community. People who see your brand’s support of their teams makes them more likely to view your brand favorably as part of their group. Over time, they'll associate you with local teams, leading them to become a fan of yours as you become another staple of the community.
If your business lacks the experience or resources to put together solid campaigns, a media partner can help you develop a highly effective sports marketing campaign. Experienced and well-equipped media partners know how to create strong campaigns that drive results and access digital platforms, local TV channels, and many other resources to help you get the most from sports marketing. Furthermore, a local partner knows the audience you want to reach and can ensure your ads get in front of the right audiences at the right time. Otherwise, embarking alone comes with many risks as you learn by trial and error and struggle to get your brand noticed before game day.
Maximize Your Brand's Exposure with Sports Marketing Strategies
With millions of dedicated fans worldwide, sports continue to present ample opportunities for businesses. Sports marketing helps you gain a competitive edge and appeal to mass audiences, and the key is knowing when to begin developing your strategies and which platforms to use. If you want to yield the best possible results with your campaigns, consider working with a media partner. A reliable partner will have all the tools, knowledge, and expertise required to help fuel successful campaigns, differentiating your brand from competitors and aligning your brand with popular local teams, ultimately bringing more traffic to your business.
