With each new year of March Madness comes new sports marketing plans. The 3–Week long NCAA tournament is attracting businesses to put forth their very best social media marketing plans. All these companies have goals to be the most creative, wittiest, and fastest to tweet. The ad-revenue of March Madness continues to grow year by year and is steadily catching up to major events such as the Super Bowl. Marketers are debuting new ad campaigns and doing everything they can to get their name in the mix.
This year’s biggest trend will be “Real-Time” marketing. “From now through the NCAA's Final Four weekend in early April, brands will attempt to score marketing points after nail-biting games and general basketball-related social media activity.” While some efforts will be real-time reactions to game events others will be pre-planned. All types of brands; food, insurance, and even hotels are all buying in to get a piece of March Madness on Twitter.
There are 4 types of tweets taking place.
Real-Time: As soon as games end, brands are reacting with witty sayings and tweets to become part of the frenzy.
Prepared: Multiple tweets prepared before games and then used based on what’s happening
Promoted: Advertisement on users Timeline promoting a particular brand.
Intentionally Confusing: Tweets about sports and the brand but not necessarily basketball.
Using March Madness to advertise is a smart and efficient move for these companies. A major attractor is the variety of fans that watch march madness. March Madness attracts fans of all ages and sexes as well as the dedicated and leisure fan. Along with variety of fans come a variety of platforms. March Madness can be watched on television, the computer, tablets, and mobile devices. That means there are 4 channels on TV plus their websites and the March Madness website and mobile apps. This is extremely useful because consumers can be reached anywhere and multiple times a day.
This marketing strategy is extremely relevant and useful to this course. Real-Time marketing is an example of how marketers must evolve to stay relevant to the consumer. Companies must continue to adapt to “stay ahead of the game”. The importance of staying relevant is realer now than ever and the window to react is now slimmer than ever. Companies must now hire professionals specifically for Twitter. This person must be creative and witty and always have a pulse on their audience. Because of this need companies now have to rethink their hiring and the experience of their employees. Also, professionals looking for jobs will find it beneficial to have social media experience. Overall, I think that Real-Time marketing will become more common practice and expand outside of sporting events.
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