The NFL Season: 5 Ways to Coach Your Marketing Strategy to a Win

With the NFL pre-season in full-swing, brands should take advantage of the hype and use it to fuel their seasonal marketing strategies.

This doesn’t mean you have to set aside massive funds for a Super Bowl ad, either. Instead, you can generate organic interest through a variety of methods to capitalize on the fun and lead people to other campaigns throughout the Fall season.

To give you an idea of what game plans to deploy, here are 5 ways to coach your marketing strategy to a win:

1. Encourage Customers to Rep Their Favorite Teams

Repping your squad is what the NFL season is all about, so to make your retail location or pop-up event more fun, share a campaign on social media that encourages customers to rep their favorite team when they visit and offer them an incentive for doing so.

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Essentially, you want to make your customers do the work. By having patrons wear their favorite jerseys to your store, you’re developing user-generated content that breeds authenticity and creates a “shareable” experience that others can connect with.

For instance, once a customer shows up wearing their Cowboys jersey, instruct them to take a selfie and share it using a specific hashtag. After they’re done, give them 15% off a product or service. Or better yet, give them some free swag!

The most important thing is that you’ve hooked them in and they’ve broadcasted the same positive experience to their immediate network.

2. Run a Game day Giveaway on Instagram

Instagram boasts a billion active daily users, so it’s no surprise that many of them are pumped to score some touchdowns.

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With that in mind, you can run a special online giveaway for users to engage with, circulate your brand, and win some awesome prizes. To do execute this properly, here are a few points to tackle:

• Develop giveaway guidelines to users know the rules beforehand
• Leverage multiple social media platforms (along with liking the post, they also have to Re-Tweet the campaign or follow you on Facebook)
• Choose a unique hashtag to track your campaign and participants’ activity
• Make the prize something worthwhile (like two tickets to a season game, a free pizza party for up to 10 friends)
• Encourage users to subscribe to your website, fill out a form, anything to gain more data and use it for future campaigns

Don’t just think of a game day giveaway as a one-trick pony on one platform, but expand its reach to other areas so you can maximize referrals and go for the extra two points after the touchdown.

3. Follow-up with Email and SMS Marketing Funnels

Now that you have a playbook full of useful data, your final Hail Mary is to follow-up with your audience through email and SMS marketing funnels.

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Right away, you can state that a specific game is about to kick off, then below the airing date, hit them with an offer like, “Book a reservation now to enjoy the game with great food and drinks,” or “Click below to watch the game on a new 5k TV from Samsung.”

The idea is to integrate seasonal content into your strategies, and you can take the same approach with SMS marketing if you have a user’s phone number at your disposal. For instance, send them a quick text that says, “Do you love Monday Night Football? Press 1 for Yes, or 2 for No.” based on their response, you can reply with a coupon code, a free item, or a link to another giveaway for sweepstake.

As long as it provides value and is relatable to their interests, you can inch a customer to the end zone one yard at a time, and hopefully, with enough momentum, you’ll always get the first down!

Develop the Right Strategy with Hawke Media

With lots of seasonal marketing strategies to deploy throughout the year, fine-tuning a special focus can be tough.

No matter what industry you’re in, Hawke Media can help you develop the right strategy to connect with your target audience. With an outsourced CMO, you can rely on a diverse team of marketing professionals to capitalize on every opportunity, which brings you more leads and conversions throughout the year.

The NFL season is only part of the equation, so let Hawke Media be your playmaker and fill out the form below to get started!