Every four years the world comes together to cheer for their country in the World Cup. It is one of the biggest sporting events in the world. With soccer’s biggest event in full swing, advertisers are putting their best efforts forward to dazzle consumers. The world’s biggest event provides marketers with the opportunity to learn from some of the biggest brands. Sports participation has many benefits, but let’s take a look at the lessons marketers can learn from the World Cup and some of the biggest names in advertising.
3 Marketing Lessons from the World Cup
Consistency is key in creating a timeless brand
The casual viewer of soccer’s biggest event remembers the names of the best soccer countries because of how often they have appeared in the event. Take Germany for example, which is a very successful soccer program, is the only team to have qualified for the semi-finals in four consecutive events. Germany’s soccer program is a symbol of consistency. Just like in marketing, people will come make to your site more often and you will rank better organically in Google search if you post to your blog for example regularly. Being consistent in your message and content goes along way in earning brand reputation and repeat visitors to your site. Success does not happen overnight, is in the longevity of building the brand.
Be Creative
Think outside of the box when you are developing your creative. With consumers searching Google everyday and watching soccer’s biggest stars, Google changes it’s Google doodle to honor the tournament. Just with your marketing, push the envelope to attract a new audience and engage your current customers. When I worked in tourism at a Convention & Visitors Bureau, I created a song search campaign that was so out of the box and my boss was hesitant at first but allowed me to proceed forward. What ended up happening was we reached people who never heard of us before, created a new marketing niche by partnering with musicians and venues. Our website was attracting new visitors to our website who kept coming back that summer and music venues who never worked with us suddenly became partners. Our music video reached 75,000 views in one week and the overall campaign was a resounding success and bigger than we could ever imagined. By taking the chance and thinking outside of the box we were able to grow the brand.
Be big like the event and competing brands
With social media today, brands can compete for customers all over the world. Each brand, small or large, has the same tools to attract visitors to their website. I didn’t work at a big tourism destination, I was at a small to mid-size destination and we didn’t have the budget to compete with the big boys. But I countered with a strong content strategy that build up our audience. By creating daily content on our blog that we published out via social media and expanding the text on our website not only was I able to increase or organic visitor sessions, we had an increase of 40% year over year visitors to the site. Topping the 500,000 visitation mark for the first time ever, which was a huge deal for a brand our size. It doesn’t matter if you are a small brand, you take use the same ideas that the big brands do and tailor it to fit your brand. They may have more money, but by playing big in the content world you are able to attract more visitors to your website and increase sales.
It takes a lot of money to compete on the biggest of stages with the world’s largest brands, so many small brands will not be able to be seen there. Regardless of that fact, the concepts of good marketing can be scalable to fit your brand and budget. What works for large brands will also work for smaller brands.
