5 ways to score with high school and college football promotions

Does anything evoke as much passion as high school and college football in your community? Promotions such as contests, quizzes and ballots are a great way for newspapers to tap into that passion.

Here are five tips for how you can take advantage of the excitement around local football this upcoming season.

1. Football is a Huge Revenue Opportunity. High school and college football promotions can be run anytime from August - February, which means this is a chance for you to create a valuable sponsorship package that spans this long time frame. Advertisers are very interested in sponsoring local sports, but make sure you start selling early, so that you have enough time to secure the advertisers you want.

2. Tap into Local Passion. Everyone in your community likely has an allegiance to a local high school or college football team. They probably know someone who plays, which means they are likely to invest more time in your promotions. Plus, your advertisers likely hold these teams near and dear to their heart since they are right in their communities.

3. Leverage a Variety of Promotion Types. Consider ticket giveaways, pick'ems, cutest fan photo contests, Instagram hashtag photo sweeps or a pizza or burger ecommerce offer.

Here's an example of a hashtag photo sweeps that was run by KIRO-FM where fans submitted photos of sporting team gear for a chance to win a pair of Sounders tickets. You could adopt a similar concept for a football fan photo contest.

4. Experiment with Rival Match Up Quizzes. This is a unique promotion where each week, you build a quiz around the history of the rivalry between the team your local college team is playing that week, or a particularly storied rivalry between two local high school teams.

5. Use Your Internal Resources. Be sure to work together as a team. Don't work in silos. Leverage your sports department to build your weekly rivalry quizzes. Work with your news team to cross-promote your football promotions in print, email, digital, social and every other asset you have.

What high school and college football promotions are you thinking about running this year?

Matt Coen is the president and co-founder of Second Street, a leading provider of private-label online promotions platforms and partner success services for media companies based in St. Louis, Mo. He can be reached at (314) 880-4902 or matt@secondstreet.com.