Sports Marketing Plan

The use of traditional media in sports marketing remains popular. Indeed, sports marketers spend a great deal of resources on television, print, and radio advertising, with sports comprising a substantial portion of ad spending for television and radio channels. A significant percentage of sports fans actually watch sports events for the commercials. They tend to enjoy the commercials more than the game itself. Traditional media enables sports marketers to reach geographically dispersed consumers at a fairly low cost per exposure (Swayne, 2011). Take an event like the FIFA World Cup, for instance. The event has following from virtually every corner of the world. Without television, radio, and the print media, it may be quite difficult to communicate with such a geographically dispersed fan base. For this plan, it would be important to incorporate traditional media. In fact, traditional media should be allocated a significant fraction of the marketing budget if the desired marketing outcomes are to be effectively achieved. Therefore, for Green Bay Packers, of great importance is to choose media channels that are popular with the target audience.

Non-traditional techniques can also be valuable in marketing for Green Bay Packers. They can significantly boost the impact of traditional media. Guerrilla marketing is one technique that can be useful in this regard. This technique will enable Green Bay Packers marketers to use creative, unconventional ways to grasp the attention of the target market in a memorable way and at a more personal level (Swayne, 2011). Guerrilla marketing takes advantage of public spaces such as streets and shopping centres, grassroots campaigns, road shows, posters, billboards, viral marketing, and other unconventional methods. Viral marketing has particularly become common in sports marketing, with video streaming websites such as Youtube providing a valuable conduit for presenting marketing messages in creative ways. Viral sports videos have actually become common in the recent past. A major advantage of guerrilla marketing techniques is that they involve low costs while at the same time generating high impact (Bruton, 2016). It would, therefore, be important to make use of non-traditional strategies for Green Bay Packers.

Whereas the importance of traditional media in sports marketing cannot be overemphasised, the usefulness of contemporary media cannot be ignored. Social media has particularly become a vital marketing tool for sports marketers. Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube and other popular social networking sites enable two-way communication, one-on-one marketing, active fan engagement, user-generated content, unstructured communication, and informal language, making them ideal for sports marketing (Bruton, 2016). Indeed, social media has changed the way marketers and consumers interact. Given the extensive loyalty they exhibit towards their favourite teams or players, sports fans increasingly desire to be engaged in a more intimate, unstructured, and real time manner. Social media enables this at a significantly low cost. It allows fans to interact with brands at a more personal level. For the desired outcomes to be achieved for Green Bay Packers; however, it is important to know the most appropriate social media channels to use and, most importantly, how to engage their fans in these channels.

Group Sales

One of the major sources of revenue for sports events is the sale of tickets. It is crucial to have a well-thought ticketing plan so as to maximise revenue. One of the ways through which ticket sales can be maximised is by offering group tickets (Shilbury et al., 2014). This particularly entails selling tickets to a group of people. The group may be a class, a family, a bunch of friends or colleagues, and so forth. Attending an event as a group provides an opportunity to spend quality time with loved ones, which often makes the event more enjoyable. Sports marketers can take advantage of group attachment to offer discounted tickets, thereby increasing sales. People are more likely to buy tickets when they are discounted and when they offer a chance to enjoy the activity with other people they hold close. A common misconception is that group tickets are about selling tickets at a cheap price. This should not, however, be the case for Green Bay Packers. The objective ought to be to create a more enjoyable experience for Green Bay Packers fans.

An unforgettable experience for Green Bay Packers fans can also be created via innovative ticket packaging. Sports fans deserve to feel special. This can be achieved by packaging tickets in a more attractive and personalized manner. Custom-made tickets are important for appealing to the emotions of fans (Shilbury et al., 2014). They create the wow factor, making the event even more memorable. More importantly, fans may be more inclined to keep tickets when the tickets appeal to their emotions. It is not unusual for fans to take their tickets home after the event. They keep the tickets as reminders or souvenirs. This may further strengthen the bond between the fan and the team. Rather than the usual way of designing and packaging tickets, it will be important to provide more personalised tickets for Green Bay Packers fans.