With Euro 2016 right around the corner, many companies are ramping up their marketing efforts to better align their products and services with the quadrennial spectacle. Many marketing managers underestimate just how difficult it can be to market their brand around a major football tournament. “It sells itself,” they say; “We’ll just piggy back off our national team,” they add. But let me ask you, how relevant is your brand to Euro 2016? www.charlisays.com takes a look…
If you’re not in the football industry you may be finding it more difficult to achieve relevance in such a high profile event. If you’re not Adidas, KIA, Coca-Cola or Carlsberg, you’ll have to be more strategic to attract eyeballs and engagement with your brand. But if you don’t, then you and your brand will be all alone on social media while everyone else talks about football!
As a marketing manager, you have to approach Euro 2016 as you would most marketing campaigns, only realizing that this one has the opportunity for much bigger upside (after all, not many events can guarantee at least 8 billion views on television alone.
If you’re looking to get your Euro 2016 marketing right, start with the following three tips and build from there.
-
Leverage social media
Successful marketing managers already use social media effectively. In the case of Euro 2016, social media instantly becomes 100 times more important. First of all, you probably don’t have the operational budget to be advertising at the game or on television. The good news is you don’t have to! Social media is free to use and advertising on it effectively doesn’t cost you very much. If you’re on Twitter, make effective use of hashtags and make sure you time each and every single Tweet! There’s no sense launching your Twitter campaign in the middle of the night when there’s no game to be played or when the game-time hashtags aren’t trending. Begin by bookmarking the official schedule from UEFA’s website and plan your marketing campaign around all the key matches.
-
Speak the local language
Euro 2016 spans more than just Europe. It will command global attention. Therefore, your marketing campaign should be geared toward different regional markets. Your messaging should be massaged (and where necessary, changed entirely) depending on where you are marketing. Cultural intelligence is really important in that respect. The last thing you want to do is pull an HSBC and launch an “Assume Nothing” marketing strategy, only to realize much later that “Assume Nothing” translates into “Do Nothing” in many overseas markets. Hardly inspiring!
-
Think about how football fans can use your product or service
Are you marketing to the general public or a niche market? In either case, they are probably football fans. Begin by asking yourself how these and other football fans might interact or use your product or service. Think of Euro as an introduction to your next customer. You know they like football. How can you use this information to upsell or cross-sell? Think about it, as this will form the substance of your marketing campaign, regardless of which media channel you choose.
The Euro 2016 tournament kicks off in France on June 10 and will last for one month, giving you plenty of time to piggy back off this year’s premiere tournament.
I hope you enjoyed reading Euro 2016: Three Media Tips to Get into the Football Spirit – tweet me @Charli_Says and let me know!
Enjoy the beautiful game!