4 Online Marketing Essentials for Sports Teams

Most of us genuinely love sports but never get involved in it in real life. Still, have you ever thought of gathering your own team and joining an amateur league for the very least? Let’s face it: in their bravest dreams, true fans wish to be closer to professional sports. Some of us even seriously consider starting a club and build their own fanbase around it.

However, it’s not enough to find players and eventually start competing with others if you want to get noticed. To make your presence known, you need to show great results on a constant basis as well as put a lion share of effort in sports marketing. And since the majority of your potential fans reside on the web, online brand advertising becomes your top priority. If you’re ready to pave your path towards fame, check out 4 essential actions to undertake.

1.   Launch Your Team’s Website

The core of your online marketing strategy is a sports team website. This is where your fans will be able to get first-hand information about your story, club members, match schedule, and many more. The website should also contain relevant news and updates, photos and videos from sporting events, and contact information.

Your team website is what leaves the first impression on your potential partners and sponsors. Thus, it’s important to keep it user-friendly and responsive.

If you have enough time and money, you can entrust the website creation to the professional web developer or even agency. But if your budget’s running low, it’s possible to establish your site using website builders with pre-made themes. Most of these services don’t require any coding experience to make a website, so you can easily create one in a matter of days.

2.   Create Social Media Pages on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram

The next step is to integrate your website with popular social media, as the overwhelming percentage of people actively use at least one popular platform like Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. Social media are free to register, so that is another chance to expand your audience reach without investment.

The best network to kick off is Instagram. The platform is entirely focused on the visual content of all kinds (photos, short- and long-format videos, etc.), what makes sense for sports businesses. Your Instagram profile may become your team’s public gallery, where you post memorable moments from matches, video commercials, and stories dedicated to the daily lives of your team members.

Twitter and Facebook deserve your attention as well: most people seek relevant news on these media more often than on Instagram, which is more meant for entertainment. Start with three at a time and see which one brings you more followers.

3.   Start an Email Newsletter

Suggest visitors of your website to opt-in to your email newsletter, if they want to keep themselves in the loop. A good old yet effective email marketing is one of the surest ways to retain loyal fans and even boost your popularity in the offline.

An email newsletter is something that requires a person’s unambiguous consent, so only those who are truly interested in your team will accept your suggestion. And as you will constantly notify them about new events related to your club, they won’t miss out and will more likely visit your events as the result.

4.   Add a Blog Section to Your Website

Blogging often used by online businesses to drive more traffic to their websites. Aside from articles about your sports team, you can cover relevant topics in your niche: industry news, match predictions, expert opinions, interviews, answers to popular questions in the community, etc.

If you publish several quality articles on the weekly basis, your website will gradually improve its SEO ranking, especially when you target long-tail keywords. Blogging allows you to include internal links leading to other pages as well as increases your chances to get a backlink to your site. The quantity and quality of internal and external links are major factors considered by search engine algorithms while calculating your website rating.

In general, persistent marketing efforts always pay off if you promote the right thing. To make sure you do the right job, don’t forget about the more practical development of your sports enterprise. Recruit best sportsmen and coaches to your team, provide them with the best conditions for effective training, win matches and tournaments. And when you manage to combine sports and marketing in the right way, success is sure.