One of the most powerful promotion tools available to you when promoting via social media is your athletes and sponsors.

The biggest advantage of using social media is that everyone has access to these platforms, most likely a social account and can help promote the event.​

​Depending on your participants popularity, using your athletes to promote the event to their own audience/followers will encourage a bigger mass reach to a variety of target audiences. If you have sponsorships or partners, discuss a marketing plan for promoting the event on their end as well.

​If given enough time, strategize with the marketing teams and other affiliates your ideas for promoting your event.

Tell a story, highlight the athletes, free merchandise giveaways, but make sure everyone is on the same page working together rather than trying different strategies for a more powerful approach.​

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Keep reading to learn a variety​ of powerful marketing tactics that might be worth trying to boost your ticket sales and event awareness. ​​

When you are marketing anything it's not just about selling, but telling a story, creating a message and building specific emotions around it.

Whatever your message, make sure it is consistent and becomes the leading guide for all marketing campaigns across all boards.

Examples of some effective messages used in sporting campaigns:

• "The Girl Can - What about you?"
• #WhatsYourGoal
• "Thank Your Mom"
• "Making Our Mark"

Now is the time to get to know your athletes. What are their stories? Do they already have a following?

Use them to your advantage and do small highlight campaigns on each athlete in photo or video form; they would probably love the coverage as well and be compelled to share the campaign to their own audience.

Remember you aren't confined to traditional advertising anymore, today's technology has changed the entire way we engage with our consumers - so take advantage of that!

It's time to start engaging with your fans and followers online through social media, show them that you care and are present. It makes such a difference.

Communicate through video ads, go live, show them behind the scenes, comment back, and encourage them to share their own experience at the event with hashtags and reposts.

Make the game about your audience and not just the athletes.

If you are taking advantage of social media and have good results, you should take it one step closer and make everything mobile friendly.

Make accessing your events, feeds etc. online easy for your fans.

Most marketers recognize how much activity occurs through mobile devices, so create strategies that are easy for your fans to use and/or access.

The Forbes magazine reports that 80 percent of people recall a video advertisement they saw within the past month, 64 percent are more likely to buy a product after watching a video advertising it, and “social video generates 1,200 percent more shares than text and images combined.”​

Today’s society will be more likely to watch a video they find informative and unique than they will to read a long informational post.

The key is to hold the viewer’s attention and avoid sounding boring or dry. Create a concept that will both entertain and inform while remaining unique, and different; no pressure!

Before, companies counted on advertisements and word of mouth to grow their business, but today, they are using their own websites and social media outlets as de-facto advertisements.

These methods can still work, but if you’re an unknown entrepreneur with a new business and a limited budget you should use a faster-growing way to boost your business -- social media influencers.​​

Influencers are able to promote a brand by using their access to followers to spread awareness and promote interest in a product, service, or event.

You may have heard about social media influencers, who are in their own right celebrities.

This is because they have the power to help grow a brand and make them desirable. In that spirit, you can use the participants in the sporting event to influence their followers.

This is especially helpful if the participant is a pillar of the community or even a celebrity.

Just like a marketing campaign, you need to have a plan for how you want them to promote your brand. Keep in mind these goals should be simple actions you want to see or hope to achieve; examples are “fast growth”, “awareness”, “more engagement” etc.

When creating these goals don’t get too crazy, and remember, Influencers have a following for a reason.

They know what works and what doesn’t for their audience.

So give them all the creativity they need to broadcast your brand and give them a creative license to introduce everything authentically and natural. You can suggest your ideas, but I am positive if they think it stinks they won’t go along with them and be okay with that.

Event locator sites are very popular today because it allows users to discover events that they would be interested in within a certain radius; and there are a variety of online options.

Make a point to list the sporting event on all of the popular event locator sites to help people discover more information about it and increase awareness.

Be sure to include all applicable information such as ticket prices and gate times. ​​

Here are a few discovery sites we publish our events on:

Events posted on Purplepass will be automatically syndicated and published all across the internet through Eventful to event listing sites, local newspapers, etc.

This platform connects consumers with entertainment, movies and local events. Over 22 million people rely on Eventful to find out what's happening and decide what to do; from movies, concerts and sports to family fun and nightlife.

With millions of local events to choose from, Eventful provides the world's most comprehensive selection of local entertainment content and serves its users across multiple platforms including online, mobile and email, delivering highly personalized content and recommendations to each of Eventful’s 22 million registered users.

With Evensi for Business, we provide an easy-to-use and wallet-friendly promotional tool for instantly creating multi channel advertising campaigns for your event, without having to worry about marketing strategies.​​

A brand ambassador already can generate interest in their activities or a social following, so when they are used in a promotion strategy, they can attract their fans to direct their attention to the organization or company they are working with to further promotion efforts.

When the brand ambassador uses their fame or influence to attract public attention, they create an opportunity for the company or organization to harness that influence and use it to reach the target audience.

This is similar to Instagram influencers; a new form of advertising that is becoming more and more common.

An influencer is someone who has a big fan following on Instagram that can promote your product through their account.

This form of marketing has a focus on influential people rather than targeting markets as a whole on social media. Brand ambassadors do the same thing, except they appear at events, connect with people online and in person and offer a human touch to the event experience.

Creating a blog for your event not only improves your site’s search engine optimization but adds a human touch behind your event. Write about news reports, interviews, latest updates, info graphics, etc. Anything that highlights your sporting event to get people talking.

Going live has become more accessible due to Instagram and Facebook live features available on your smartphone. If you have a high following on social media, I recommend this form of marketing either before or during your event.

Go live for behind-the-scenes shots, talks with featured artists, sneak peeks, whatever works with your event. It is a fast way to get your audience not only engaged but to feel more involved with your event and acknowledged from your end.​​

If you want to learn more about event planning, marketing hacks, etc., feel free to continue reading at our blog below!
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