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DISCLAIMER: This is not legal advice. You must consult an attorney for legal information. You should not make insurance decisions based solely on the information in this or any article; consult a licensed insurance agent in your state.
Marketing 101: The only reason to do ANY Marketing is to get more money into your store. Period, finished, done. Sports marketing tie-ins are just one more way to market your business and get more money into your store. In the end, nothing else matters. That having been said, let’s look at what’s involved in doing a sports marketing campaign.
Ever dream of having a major sports star show up at your place, eat your food with a smile and do a killer photo piece for the local papers? Imagine the photo ops, the interviews, the local air play, celebrity of it all!!!!
Cool…just too cool. One problem folks...these things cost money. And, the bigger the name the higher the price tag. Rats, another beautiful theory smashed by an ugly fact. Maybe, and MAYBE NOT!
Well, let me ask you a question –
Q: Why do sports (or any other) marketing at all?
A: To get more money into my pizzeria
Look, I know that you just don’t have the budget to get the modern equivalent of “Mickey Mantle” at your shop, but there are ways...there are ways. What is required is some savvy, some imagination and some help. First things first, why tie into sports marketing at all?
It depends on your customer likes and dislikes!
The first rule; know your customer, then get to know them better. First off, determine if your customers actually like this sort of thing. Don’t ever fall in love with an idea. Just because sports tie ins may be the darling of the day, don’t get sucked in. Love and lavish attention on things that work for you and quickly kill off anything that doesn’t. So, if your local venue just is NOT sports conscious - let it go. But, if they are SPORTS NUTS, jump on this with both feet.
Once you make that determination, look at the opportunities that are in front of you. If it’s baseball, football, soccer, golf, billiards – whatever – make a plan and a budget, then reconcile the two. If you can only spend $500, forget about having the New York Yankee pitching staff visit your shop. But you can do a promotion that will send your local winner to the playoffs, or the world series, or get them tickets to a VIP box for a night with limo transport – all within your budget.
Maybe golf is big stuff in your locale. You can get a local pro or a recent PGA Tour competitor to show up for an hour or so and conduct a seminar on putting, driving or whatever. If soccer is big in your town, get a soccer pro to spend time with your customers. You can either just have them in as a “celeb” to meet and greet, or you can sponsor a demo for the local school team(s). Soccer moms are NOT to be taken lightly.
By now you should see the possibilities
Once you make your plan and reconcile it with your budget, the real work starts. Unless you hire an outside firm – and I don’t think you have to – it’s going to be up to you to do the “grunt work” of this promotion. Use a simple checklist to guide you through the process, but make sure you cover the basics: Email me at PJ@PizzaProfitSystems.Com for a FREE Checklist.
Define The Campaign: Set up the guidelines for what you want to do. The more specific the better. How will you know if the campaign is a success? Who will do be responsible for things, like the ad copy, the choice of media, booking celebs, getting out press releases, choosing vendors and the thousand other little things needed.
Craft Your Message: Once you decide who you want to talk to, you have to decide what you to say and how you want to say it. Make sure you are speaking to your target audience in the language they listen in.
Select the Media: Take a good look at your budget and then decide what media fits in the budget and will reach your target audience.
Create the Promotion: Sit down and do the hard work of planning out each step of the program. Make sure you cover all the bases – one missed step will derail the whole thing. Once again, email me at PJ@PizzaProfitSystems.Com for a FREE Checklist.
Put the plan to work: Ok, time to take over the world. Now that you’ve wound up the mechanism, pick a date and let it launch!
Monitor the plan: Make sure that each step is actually followed and that everybody involved does what they are supposed to do.
Track the campaign: One you’ve unleashed your “robot” you’ve got to find out where it went and what it did!
Do a Post Mortem: Win loose or draw, you have to take the results, measure them against the goal and analyze what happened. Find out what worked, what didn’t and what surprises cropped up.
Wash, Rinse, Repeat….
If things worked out well, you should be thinking about making your Sports Marketing plan an annual event. If you plan it right, the promotion itself can become an event… “…Only 30 days to the start of our annul Vip Tix/Limo Giveaway! Don’t miss out!”
Celebs or Not Celebs – that is the quesiton
My humble opinion – stay away from working with major celebs. These people have managers, booking agents, lawyers and who know what else. That layer of administration alone will cost you money.
I like going with a giveaway to a celeb event. VIP box seats to almost any event of interest to your group: football, baseball, soccer, golf, tennis are a good way to go. It’s a bright shiny prize to dangle out there and once you award the prize you are of the hook for fulfillment. You can choose to attend with your winners or just let them enjoy the package.
If you still think you need to go with a live ‘celeb’ then consider doing a semi-private event. “25 lucky winners get to spend an hour with Windy City Star Quarterback, Joe Blow.” This is much more work and will cost a bunch o’ bucks. The logistics alone (venue acquisition, travel & fees, licensing, security etc) will cross your eyes.
The bottom line….
Sports marketing tie in’s can be a great tool to increase your bottom line. Just be careful and do reality check every now and then. Make sure that you don’t fall in love with an idea that won’t fit your budget or yield the results you need to be profitable. Plan well, test often, feed the winners and shoot the losers.
Reminder: Make sure you shoot me an email and get your FREE CHECKLIST. Standing offer – if you’d like a FREE E-Consultation on any marketing issue you have, email me (PJ@PizzaProfitSystems.Com) with Consult in the subject line. Give me your contact info and I’ll get to you as soon as possible!