Over the last five years, advances in technology have changed the way that sports is consumed.
For sports teams, events and sporting retailers, being seen online and engaging with consumers is now vital for successful sports marketing.
Social Media
Image – Brisbane Bronco’s Instagram story builds hype in the lead up to Broncos vs Storm NRL season opener.
Live streaming is often used by sporting organisations to build interest in the leadup to events and engage their audience in a way that feels more personal. Our Marketing Manager for Basketball Queensland live-streamed the Under 16 BQ Champs through Youtube and Instagram stories. Using this medium, we are able to achieve maximum engagement and exposure for Basketball events and spread the word to a larger audience. Social media strategies that focus on driving engagement are a fantastic way to boost brand awareness. Running polls, contests and sharing exclusive articles will get people talking, liking and engaging with your content which is excellent for fostering a community around your sporting team.
Social media is also a place where sporting organisations can drive traffic to their website by sharing articles and other content with links back to the website.
PPC Search Engine Advertising
Pay per click advertising is a model of internet marketing where advertisers pay for each click on their add. Search engine advertising is one of the most popular forms of PPC where advertisers pay to have their listing appear first in the search ranks.
This form of advertising is not exclusive to the sports industry, but there are some trends emerging from the sports industry and the way that they are using this medium.
A trend developing over the last year has been working references to big sporting events into ad copy to take advantage of the spike in searches that surrounds events (e.g. the Olympics, Commonwealth Games). Sporting teams and bodies are learning to harness the buzz surrounding big sports events or accomplishments in their ad text, which drives conversions.
Using video on ad landing pages is another PPC advertising trend. Google loves great video content, and according to Forbes, embedding videos in landing pages can increase conversion rates by up to 80%. At Outsource to Us, our in-house Videography and Photography Manager develops video content that drives ad conversions for our clients.
SEO and Content
Search Engine Optimising (SEO) is all about optimising your website so that it ranks on search engines. Search engines use a complex algorithm to determine where websites will rank, and they change it regularly. There are a number of ways that those in the sports industry can optimise their website to drive organic traffic.
Image – Netball Queensland regularly updates their blog page with new articles.
In the competitive sporting industry, businesses need to ensure they are doing keyword research to see what their target markets are actually searching for. Once you know what terms you want to rank in, add them to your website! Work your keywords into your blog content, web pages and image alt texts to ensure your business ranks highly when these terms are searched.
