In the competitive world of sports events, marketing is a crucial yet often costly endeavor for event planners and destinations alike. While planners are focusing on promoting the specific events they organize, targeting participants, spectators, and sponsors to ensure successful turnout and engagement, destinations are typically focused on marketing their location as an ideal venue, as well as highlighting local attractions, facilities, and amenities to attract event organizers and attendees. Regardless of the differences, both groups constantly seek ways to stretch their marketing budgets without sacrificing effectiveness. Adopting smart strategies and leveraging available resources makes achieving a significant impact, even with limited funds, possible.
Understand your target audience
Maximizing the marketing budget begins with understanding and engaging the target audience. Without it, it’s seemingly impossible to ensure efficient resource allocation. As Melonie Sturm, SVP and managing director at Watauga Group, notes, “If you are a destination looking to talk to event planners or stakeholders in the decision-making process, it’s crucial to understand who that person is and what their media consumption is relative to their decision-making process.”
Knowing the target audience and where to reach them makes marketing efforts more efficient and effective as well. “If a destination’s target audience is someone looking to choose a spot to host their next big event, we can reach them in specific places like LinkedIn, where they are looking for business acumen,” Sturm adds.
Sam Ashraf, director of marketing at Discover Central Massachusetts, also highlights the importance of engaging the target audience. “We identify our audience through analyzing visitor data and interest in our website and visitor guide requests. Engaging them involves branded content, targeted advertising, and promoting local businesses.”
As consumer preferences and behaviors evolve, however, marketers must continuously refine their understanding of their target audience to ensure they deliver content that resonates. This ongoing process of audience refinement is where social media analytics becomes an invaluable tool. Analyzing data from platforms like Facebook and Instagram allows you to gain deep insights into your audience’s preferences, behaviors, and engagement patterns. This knowledge allows you to create highly tailored content that resonates with your specific audience. For example, analytics might reveal that your audience engages more with video content on Instagram but prefers infographics on Facebook. Armed with this information, you can adjust your content strategy, accordingly, creating platform-specific content that is more likely to capture attention and drive engagement.
Leverage digital marketing strategies
Once the audience is understood, destinations and event planners can strategically target them through digital marketing, which offers numerous cost-effective strategies. “A digital component is an important part of the marketing strategy so that you have multiple touchpoints for the person going through the decision-making process,” Sturm explains. “The more times we can hit somebody with the right message, the better to get them to consider our destination as the place they want to go. That means a thoughtful digital component, including email.”
Ashraf highlights search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising as particularly effective. “We invest in email marketing campaigns, leveraging our subscriber list to promote upcoming events,” he says. “Our website is optimized for mobile to ensure a seamless experience for users on all devices. Additionally, our events calendar is the number one resource in the region, attracting significant traffic and providing comprehensive information on upcoming events, making it an essential tool in our digital marketing strategy.”
Geo-targeting is particularly effective for marketers operating on tighter budgets, allowing them to focus on specific geographic areas to ensure efficient spending. As Sturm shares, a destination can start by targeting people in neighboring states. “Then, if budget allows, they can cast their net a little wider,” she says. “Geo-targeting also allows marketers to focus on a specific zip code if they prefer, ensuring a particular subset sees their ads. But it’s important to note that timing is critical if your budget only allows a few weeks of geo-targeting. You’ve got to make sure your audience is seeing your ad at the most appropriate time.”
Utilize social media
Social media platforms are invaluable for engagement and reach. Sturm suggests starting with social media, especially when on a tight budget. “You can easily get into paid social through boosted posts,” she says. “By putting a small amount of budget behind your organic posts that you’re doing already, you can give them an extra lift and get exposure to a broader audience without a heavy financial investment.”
Tammy Dunn, executive director of the Snohomish County Sports Commission, emphasizes the importance of storytelling on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn to gain more attention.
“We focus a lot on those specific platforms,” she says. “Telling a story
on them about athletes, venues, or local attractions generates a good amount of interaction and engagement.”
Build & nurture partnerships
Partnerships with local businesses and influencers can significantly extend marketing reach, getting more eyes on the destination or event without removing anything from the marketing budget. For example, the Snohomish County Sports Commission partnered with a local business, Dave and Buster’s, while hosting an event in town, leading to a win-win for both organizations. “We partnered with Dave and Buster’s for the 2024 USA Softball Class B 14U to 18U Western Nationals,” Dunn explains. “They provided an umpire meal, which filled a specific need we had, and in return, it allowed them to interact with parents and teams during the event, promoting their business effectively.”
Allocate wisely
Effective budget allocation is key to maximizing ROI. Sturm advises balancing performance media with brand awareness building. “If you’re more on the conversion end of things, you want to be in the digital space where someone can take immediate action,” she explains. “For upper funnel awareness, broader-based tactics like outdoor boards or streaming video can be effective.”
Ashraf echoes the idea. “We analyze past campaign performances and current market trends to allocate our budget,” he explains. “We prioritize spending on channels with the highest ROI and adjust our strategy based on ongoing performance metrics.”
Smart allocation also means ensuring that the marketing dollars aren’t stretched too thin, Sturm adds. “You want to make sure you’re doing a good job at one piece of the marketing puzzle before adding another,” she said. “Know that all cylinders are firing correctly before adding others.”
Measure success with key metrics
Tracking the right metrics ensures that marketing efforts are yielding results. “Key metrics include website traffic, social media engagement, email open rates, and conversion rates,” Ashraf says. “We also track the ROI of our campaigns and the number of RFPs received, which helps us understand interest in our region.”
Sturm emphasizes the importance of frequency and reach in digital marketing. “In the upper funnel, we look at the total number of impressions and reach,” she says. “As you move closer to conversion, you’re looking at clicks to the website, requests for information, and other conversion-based results.”
Be consistent
Even with a robust arsenal of marketing tactics, the key to truly maximizing marketing dollars lies in consistency. Implementing strategies such as targeted advertising, social media engagement, and partnerships is essential, but these efforts must be sustained over time to build momentum and recognition. “It’s important to be as consistent as you can be,” Sturm says. “If you can help it, based on your budget, never be one and done. Try to build the frequency of your messages and have as much of them as your budget allows. You can’t blow out the budget and think they will come. Even if you’re having to rely on organic content, stay in a rhythm of doing it consistently and then put some money behind it when you can.”
