Sports fans are one of the most rabid and passionate groups on the planet. For zero monetary gain, they’ll follow every move of their favourite sports team, know the details of every player, memorize the scores of every game and just generally put their heart and soul into the game.
Marketing to these fans involves understanding and using a different kind of psychology. Fans can be unforgiving of marketers who don’t speak their language. Speak to them in the right way however and you’ll have earned yourself the most loyal followers in the world.
Here are five tips for marketing to sports fans on Facebook.
1. Host a Discussion
Sports fans love to talk. They love sharing notes about their teams, reliving highlights from the last game, bashing on opponents and even just plain chatter. They love sports and they love talking about sports.
Not everyone can make it to an in person sports game. Sports lovers want to feel like they’re part of the game experience, even if they’re not there.Hosting live discussions allows them to talk about the action as its happening even if they couldn’t make it to the game itself.
2. Talk About it All Week
One big mistake marketers make is only marketing to sports fan when there’s a game on. However, sports fans are sports fans 24/7 – They want to talk about it all day, all night, whenever they can.
Before a game, there’s the leadup. They can talk about the players, the matchup, who they think will win, trash talk the opponent, get excited, etc.
After the game, they can discuss what happened and celebrate or commiserate the results.
Don’t just market to them during game time. Market to them all week. Every day.
3. Get Some Team Interaction
If you have a large enough audience, try reaching out to the team itself to see if you can get a team member to do something for your group.
Even if it’s just something as simple as a quick shoutout from their Facebook account, it can make a big difference.
Of course, if you can get them to do something more elaborate like a video or a Q&A session, that’s even better.
Fans love to get real interactions with their teammembers. If you can bring them that, they’ll follow you to the ends of the world.
4. Get Creative
Bring your fans content that they’ll love. Come up with creative contests, content giveaways, exclusive interviews, live videos and anything else you can think of for content that your fans will love.
In between games, come up with different things that you can entertain your fans with. For example, create trivia polls that test your fans’ knowledge of their team. Or show replays with your own analysis of the game.
Or you could host specific discussion panels. For example, talk about whether or not a specific strategy was a good idea from the last game.
If you can give special rewards, such as free tickets to winners, that can also go a long way towards getting your fans excited.
5. Ask Them What They Want
With most audiences, marketers tend to just send whatever they’ve got at their audience and hope it sticks. With sports fans however, you’re dealing with much more of a community.
Instead of just marketing to them in the way that you think they want to be marketed to, try asking them what they want. Sports fans will often be willing to share great ideas that you can easily implement.
These five tips will help you connect with and market to your sports fans. Marketing to sports fans isn’t easy, as they’re truly a fanatical and dedicated bunch. But if you can earn their trust, that rapid excitement can turn into devotion towards your brand.
0 comments:
Post a Comment