How to Promote a Sporting Event with Facebook

A successful sporting event requires a large turnout, and a large turnout requires effective promotion. In general, promotion requires a lot of time and money if you want a large audience to be exposed to your content, but Facebook does a great job in changing the way we promote our sports events.

Let's say you are in charge of event marketing for a regional swimming event or maybe a motocross race, while these sports have rabid fanbases, they aren't always as easily activated as college football fans.

Your task is to educate your current fan base about your event while creating buzz and interest to develop new fans and increase your audience. Traditional marketing exercises are expensive and sometimes ineffective, and yet social media, Facebook in particular, can effectively boost interest without ruining your budget.

Over a billion people use the social media platform regularly, and Facebook makes content easy to target to specific audiences in desired areas. Which means Facebook is capable of replacing a multitude of promotional channels, condensing an entire campaign onto one website.

All you have to do is work the system in your favor.
 

Hold a Contest

Sports are competitive, and so are sports fans.

There are plenty of people who would love to attend your event, but sometimes things like cost prevent them from doing so. Maybe you have a valuable piece of memorabilia that sports fans would be elated to get their hands on. Whatever you have to offer as a prize, there’s certainly plenty of people who will want it.

Before the big event, hold a contest to give away tickets or memorabilia. In general, contests typically involve users liking, sharing, and following you on social media. This gives you the perfect opportunity to draw up a larger audience, exposing them to information about your event and enticing them to attend.

Use Targeted Advertising

Facebook allows its users to send out advertisements to as broad or as narrow of an audience as the user desires. For sporting events, you’ll be able to set up strict parameters that assure you aren’t wasting your advertising dollars.

If you’re attempting to target people between the ages of 18 and 30 who live within a 50-mile radius of the upcoming event, who have your particular sport listed as an interest, Facebook makes this easier than ever.

Create and Maintain an Event Page

Sometimes, people are excited to attend an event, but they get caught up in their day to day lives. They procrastinate buying tickets and get sucked up in their day to day lives.

Creating a Facebook event page will keep them from forgetting about your event while simultaneously getting them hyped to attend.

Make an event page for your sporting event, and send out invitations. Leave invitations open, so potential attendees can share your event with their friends and invite others. Word will spread organically.

As long as you’re regularly updating the page with details about the event and relevant photos, people who have been invited will receive updates that remind them that your sporting event is right around the corner.

Use a Facebook “Like” page

Creating a “like” page will help you maintain an active presence in the lives of those who are interested in what you do. It will boost the visibility of your event, and make it easier to promote any other events you may be promoting in the future.

Use this page to post regularly and engage with sports fans. If they come to your page because they enjoy the experience, they’ll be sure to see pertinent information about upcoming events they may want to attend.

One of the most crucial aspects of Facebook event promotion that you need to focus on is staying active. On Facebook, your visibility will significantly drop if you post something and forget about it. While organic reach will occur, you can’t expect that reach to fulfill your goal for you. Set aside some time each day to make your presence visible.

With a background in business administration and management, Tess Pajaron currently works at Open Colleges, Australia’s leading online educator. She likes to cover stories in careers and self-improvement.