A Strong Brand Leads to New Revenue
Sports teams need to sell tickets and also engage fans. These are two huge goals for every sports business organization. The two are often attacked separately, with little communication between the marketing and ticket sales teams. However, teams should look at the two goals holistically and treat them as one. Welding the two together is an opportunity.
First, our marketing and ticket sales goal should be to engage fans, and then, once they are engaged, we sell them tickets. Engagement leads to increased demand for ticket sales. The days of going down two separate paths need to end. The Ticket Sales and Marketing teams need to get aligned and work together.
The Need for Leads
Let's look at how it typically works today. The sales team often wants more leads, and that makes sense. You can only close a season ticket sale with someone to talk to. Teams generate leads by offering a chance to win a signed jersey, a chance to meet your favorite player and other gimmicks. Enter your name, email address, and phone number to win something. One person wins, and everyone gets called about ticketing opportunities. This is a fairly standard practice that has been going on for years. And to a degree, it's worked.
But, this type of lead generation could be more efficient.
It wastes the marketing budget and salespeople's time. Gimmicks don't attract season ticket purchasers. They attract fans, but not necessarily fans who want to pay for a game. Sure, you get a lead that will close every so often, but the overall quality is very low. It takes a lot of phone calls and emails to complete one sale. But there's a better way.
Build A Sports Brand
You might say, "I have a brand! Don't I?" Well, we all have brands but not necessarily a strong brand that embodies the true nature of the organization, city, and fans.
Marketers are good at developing creative ideas, creating content, telling stories, and engaging with fans through social media and other digital channels. Highly engaged fans are "bought in" to the team and are more likely to purchase tickets. Engagement should be the initial focus.
The solution is to create a digital and social ecosystem that engages fans and compels them to follow our teams. Through tight storytelling, the development of emotional connections with solid content, and messaging that speaks to each fan segment, fans become closely and emotionally tied to the team. Fans desire to engage with us as much as we do with them.
After Fans engage with us, they seek us out. Ultimately, Fans will ask for our ticket information. They become a hot lead. After being engaged, fans want more. We must build up demand through a strong brand and then sell the fans tickets. But it's easier said than done. To reach this level, sports teams must become a lifestyle brand and be part of the fan's daily lives.
Create an Ecosystem to Create a Lifestyle Brand
A digital ecosystem consists of all of your digital assets and platforms. Social media is at the hub, and your app and website are essential components. The collection of assets must work together, and each "channel" serves a different purpose because each channel has a slightly different audience, strength, and weakness.
App and website visitors are typically your core fans, but the numbers are smaller than the various social media channels. Within social, each channel has its strengths and weaknesses, but all play a vital role.
While an app or website can be the hub for your content and house most of your long-form content, social media is the primary distribution channel. In social, our fans engage with our stories. It's vital to understand how each channel works and how to connect fans through these channels.
Connecting Fans
Teams develop messaging and content to tell our stories. These stories connect with fans and create a lasting bond. The content connects fans to the team and each other, a connection that builds community. It removes the element of wins and losses and brings people together as fans with common interests. Now, we have an emerging tribe.
It starts by finding common ground aligned with fans' passion for sports and their love for non-sports interests like music, art, and food. A community of passionate fans will stick together and bond with one another. Fans gather and start to align their passions and interests with your team. Then, they begin to market the team for you. Season ticket purchasers tell about the game, what they enjoyed, and their overall experience.
A few of their connections will become interested in purchasing season tickets, and they will reach out to us. We now have a lead to hand off to the sales team.
But this will only happen if an ecosystem is in place to tell stories and connect fans. Some will go to the games because they are passionate fans of our team, and others will go because it becomes an event to attend with their community of friends. Either way, they are ticket purchasers.
Connecting on an Emotional Level
It doesn't stop there. Connecting with fans on such an emotional level drives them to want to make the team part of themselves. They proudly purchase and wear our team gear, logos, and colors. The gear becomes part of them. It is who they are and becomes part of their lifestyle. Our team is on the path to being a lifestyle brand.
And when we become a lifestyle brand, and our fans can't get enough, our fans have as much of a connection to the brand and their other fans as they do the individual players and the success on the court. The payoff is enormous.
Most team's ticket sales revenue aligns with the success on the court, field, or ice. And that's a problem. Unfortunately, our teams won't be good every year. We may get on a nice run, but not every year. Even the best organizations have down periods. It's part of sports.
But when you become a part of the fan, become part of their lifestyle, and hence, a lifestyle brand, sales are less dependent on wins and losses. Being a fan of your team becomes a way of their life - win or lose. That doesn't mean people won't complain or get frustrated when your team is down, but the fans will still show up. New revenue is the real benefit that makes lifestyle branding so important.
How it's Done
But to do this, we need everyone aligned from the top down. Marketing and social strategies and discussions have to include input from the sales.
The first step is getting everyone on the same page. A lot of lead generation happens through paid social, so we'll start there. Paid social is a necessary part of a holistic social media plan. Social, paid, and organic strategies have to be aligned. Everyone must be on the same page and understand their strengths and weaknesses. Ticket sales and marketing - specifically the social media team - need to realize the way to get to each of their separate goals is to get alignment through one common goal.
It's Work the Time
The process is a long-term business model, not a short-term fix to one season. It will take time to set processes and put the ecosystem in place, but it will be worth it. It won't happen overnight. It's an investment and not a simple get-rich-quick scheme. While building, we may need to offer a few giveaways to keep the sales funnel full. A few gimmicks to sell tickets. But there should be a plan to transition away from the gimmicks as soon as possible. Sports teams are unique. More than any industry, sports teams are inherently lifestyle brands.
More teams need to invest in and build their brand. Create content that spreads its brand message and resonates with the fans. Get them motivated and connected. People wear Nike, use Apple, drink Red Bull, and proudly support REI because they align with the brand personally. The brands become part of the consumer's lifestyle. Teams have a more significant opportunity. Most are already halfway there, but the key is driving fan engagement, regardless of the wins and losses. Every SEC football team, the Green Bay Packers, the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Boston Red Sox have it, and so do others. Building a strong brand should be the goal of every marketing and ticket sales team.
