For Sports Marketers the 24/7 news cycle ranks supreme
Written By: Brad Shulkin & Dan Mihalik
KemperLesnik manages many high-profile sporting events, including the Maui Jim Maui Invitational, McDonald’s All American Games and CBS Sports Classic. In the age of social media, digital advertising and the 24-hour news cycle, major events like these require year-round promotion to garner the attention of fans.
With that, we have taken the liberty to outline three factors to consider when promoting a sporting event in the digital/social age:
- Digestible Content
Having a successful promotional campaign begins with understanding your desired audience and how to properly reach those within it. Knowing your audience likes, hobbies, interests, etc. will allow you to better react to key moments in time and provide your audience with desirable content.
In today’s day and age, fans want more content, much faster and in more digestible formats than ever before. Understanding different platforms, the key audiences for each and spending time learning about what types they will consume is crucial.
As PR and event professionals, we need to adjust the way information is disseminated and be more strategic with the types of content being distributed across certain platforms. Shortening messages, developing strategic headlines and utilizing visual elements to tell the story are all strategies that we use internally here at KemperLesnik to alter the way different messages are distributed across the variety of channels.
- Influencers
Now that we know the importance of understanding your audience, we look to influencers as a great way to access that desired audience. Utilizing visuals and original content in conjunction with influencers is a phenomenal way to not only reach a very specific, targeted audience, but also a great way for your key demographic to interact with your brand in an organic way.
During the 2018 Maui Jim Maui Invitational Bracket Announcement this past July, each of the above elements was in play. We created a 30 second video announcing the matchups and partnered with ESPN personalities to create unique content that provided an early preview of the Tournament. The announcement yielded some of the best overall media coverage, social media engagement, website traffic and general awareness results we’ve seen for that announcement.
- Big window of opportunity, smaller window to execute
When finding the ideal times to promote your event across the year, taking advantage of your industry’s key moments in time gives you only a few small windows to maximize exposure. Associating your event with key personalities, influencers, happenings and topics are invaluable to achieving your promotional goals.
Although the Maui Jim Maui Invitational takes place for three days during Thanksgiving Week, we take advantage of campus surfboard presentations, the NCAA Tournament and the NBA Draft, for example, to highlight the teams and the competition in the Tournament to not only position the Maui Jim Maui Invitational as the preeminent event in the college basketball scene, but also to encourage fans to join their favorite team in Maui.
As our society continues to evolve into the mobile-first, digital age, public relations and event professionals need to work around the year and around the clock to keep their event and/or client top of mind. Social media is an extension of your brand or event, treat it that way. Creating original content, videos, graphics and working with influencers are all part of giving your fans/followers/customers the best experience you can offer.