Best Practices in Sports Marketing & Promotions

Best Practices in Sports Marketing & Promotions
By: Anthony Mc Fadden

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Three of the best practices in sports marketing and promotions are having a plan, utilizing the 4 P’s of marketing and knowing whom your fans are. Knowing how to use and execute these three tools can result in very successful marketing and promotions. Whether it’s a sports event or just a regular event promoting and marketing are key elements in making your event heard by your target market / fans. There is no sense in having an event and no one knows or hears about it. Here I will provide some reasoning’s of why I believe that having a plan, knowing and utilizing the 4 P’s of marketing and knowing your fans are key to successful marketing and promotions.

Like anything we do, having a plan is key to any event we are preparing to pursue. This is no different when planning a sporting event. As an event coordinator it is their goal to find a place for the event, hire staff, food, entertainment, budgeting etc. A good solid plan can provide a very successful event that achieves whatever goals the event was for. If a solid good plan is not achieved it could very well cause the event to fail and be affective to the events goals. It is important to know what the purpose of the event and underline the goals you are trying to achieve with the event.

The 4 P’s of marking are product, price, place and promotion. The product can be the actual sporting event or a jersey. Price is the value of which the product is worth usually with a bit of a markup. Place is where the product will be distributed to the consumer. Finally, promotion is how you will excite the consumer about the product and convince them to try or purchase the product. The 4 P’s work together to successfully launch new product, revive an exist product or keep a product alive. Within sports, the product could be an event, for example Monday Night Football. In this situation the actual game is the product. (Stotlar, 2009)

Finally, as a marketer, we must know who are fans are. Not only is it important to know our fans, but also we must know as much as possible about what they like, want and need. Knowing that when you’re targeting basketball fans they can be separated by exclusives, connectors, collectors and participants become very important. This is important because you must realize that in an event you may have to send your message in various ways. Fan engagement is very important when marketing your sports brand and successfully reaching your fans.

Having a plan, utilizing the 4 P’s of marketing and knowing whom your fans are the three best practices in sports marketing and promotions. By implementing and executing these tools in your brand successfully you will be able to reach your fans. In return you will create effective and successful fan engagement as well as achieve your marketing goals. Sports is a business that wants to knot only provide an entertaining product, but also to be able to interact with its fans and allow the fans to interact with the sport. Successful marketing and promotions allows that interaction to exist.




Reference:

Stotlar, David. (2009). Developing successful sport marketing plans. 2009-04-01.