5 simple steps to grow basketball revenue + engagement

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Bracket fever is contagious in March with nearly 70 million college tournament brackets expected to be filled out this year.

Our latest webinar, found here, lays out five steps to make your basketball campaign your biggest revenue generator and engagement driver yet. Plus, hear from Sherry Hayes and Kate Lowe of WLEX-TV about how they turned their bracket into a $60,000 win for their station (and they don't even air the tournament!)

Ready to get started?

Step 1: Download the Playbook

First, download Your Guide to Basketball Contests and Interactive Content. This playbook is jam-packed with case studies, best practices and inspiration to get your entire March basketball campaign running successfully.

 

Step 2: Run Turnkeys

Putting together a great basketball campaign doesn't have to take a lot of work. These ready-to-run and ready-to-customize turnkey quizzes, contests and the 3-in-1 tournament bracket make it easy to have a beautiful basketball campaign in just minutes.

 

Step 3: Create a Bundled Campaign

Dramatically increase your revenue and engagement when you bundle multiple contests and interactive content together. By combining basketball-themed brackets, quizzes and contests together, you can create one powerful campaign to sell to your advertisers and target a much wider audience. Set yourself up for success with our Sample Sales Packages for ideas and best practices.


Step 4: Integrate Advertisers & Talent

Great campaigns thrive on audience engagement. If you want to connect with your audience all season long, integrate your talent and advertisers as VIP Pickers for your pick'em. Check out how The Atlanta Journal-Constitution leveraged VIP Pickers.

Your users will come back time and time again to see how they match up against them. The entire sports department of WLEX-TV and additional talent participated as VIP Pickers in the Hey Kentucky! Hoops Bracket Challenge.

Looking for more ways to incorporate your advertisers and drive additional revenue? Kate Lowe's team at WLEX created an advertiser bracket. For every $500 in incremental spend with WLEX, advertisers could sponsor a team in the tournament. Depending on how far their team advanced, the businesses could earn additional advertising spots throughout the tournament. This simple bracket drove an additional $43,000 in incremental revenue for WLEX.


Step 5: Promote. Promote. Promote.

Developing a great campaign is only half the battle. You have to have a comprehensive marketing strategy to make sure that your target audience knows about your campaign. Leverage all of your company's assets starting with print, on-air, website ads and social media (and here are our best practices for promoting.) Above all else, send a dedicated email announcing your campaigns – email is the single most effective tool for driving engagement.

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.

Second Street, Coen, sports
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