Whether you’re an avid sports fan or you haven’t followed football a day in your life, it’s fairly safe to say that all of us know one thing: Super Bowl Sunday is right around the corner. But while you work on perfecting your artichoke dip for the big day, don’t forget that the Super Bowl is a lot more than just a sporting event–especially for savvy businesses looking for some wins of their own.
At the end of the day, the Super Bowl is unquestionably one of the most notorious advertising arenas of all time.
The ad spots are invaluable, the ads themselves often ingenious, and everyone either loves–or loves to hate–the sheer volume of these advertisements that we’re inundated with for a whopping three solid hours.
And while a well-executed ad in one of the Super Bowl’s coveted ad slots could drive incredible ROI, you don’t necessary have to shell out millions in order to generate buzz around your business, widen your audience, build your brand and boost sales.
So how can you make the most of the Super Bowl season? You don’t have to be Coca Cola, Budweiser or Doritos to build your brand during this world-wide event. There are a number of lessons that you can learn from these top advertisers that don’t involve the exorbitant ad spend. Take some pages out of these advertisers books and learn some of their surprisingly simple tricks to help give your business’ marketing an added boost. That’s why we’re taking a look at what your business can learn from these tops dogs in order to enhance your marketing efforts and gain powerful visibility and get in on the game.
Capitalize on What’s #Trending
One of the best ways to grow your audience is to tap into what’s already trending. 70% of the mentions of “Super Bowl Ads” are happening on Twitter. People are already buzzing about brands and products and services, creative ads and viral content. The brands that advertise during the Super Bowl are talked about well after (and sometimes even before) their ads air. Some leak ads before the event, others promote them afterwords with strategic social media moves or popular #hastags. Try getting in on the action and gain a whole new audience with some savvy #SuperBowl related posts, blogs, ads, articles, hashtags, memes, customer contests, videos, infographics or other content and capitalize on what everyone’s already talking about.
Engage, Engage, Engage
The companies that are the most successful are the ones that keep the converation going even after sports fans have changed channels, turned off their television sets and cleaned up the chips smashed into the carpets in their living rooms. The kinds of big brands that are successful enough to get seen during those precious commercial breaks are doing a lot more right than just successful advertising. It’s safe to bet that they’re utilizing every marketing component to its fullest–especially one of the most important: engagement. And so should you.
Conversation begets conversation. So start the conversation by getting active online. Whether you’re trying to gain new leads or retain current customers, engagement is one of the most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal. Start conversations by creating content with value, content that’s relevant, content that’s sharable. And don’t stop there. Relationships that bring the biggest ROI involve an element of give and take, of back and forth, so if you get a question on your blog–respond. If you get a comment on your facebook–respond. Attract an active audience, improve retention, and increase sales by encouraging participation through content, contests, and real conversations. Encourage likes, retweets, pins, and shares.
Don’t Forget to Tie it all Together with Social, Paid and Organic Search
If you’ve purchased an ad spot or created a great piece of content you’re trying to get to go viral, don’t leave it to fend for itself–give your content the boost it needs by remembering to optimize it for organic search, promote it through paid search and share it on social media platforms.
The Advertisers that make it in the commercial-packed extravaganza that is the Super Bowl, are successful not just because of their brief 30-seconds of fame on national (and even international) television, they’re successful because they make sure they’re doing everything they can to maximize that visibility both on and off TV. Make the content you create is designed to be the gift that keeps on giving. Create a targeted PPC campaign that, instead of working separately, works in sync with your other marketing efforts. Make sure anything you do whether originally online or off, can be found online with optimized titles, keywords, meta descriptions and more. And then take that optimized content and promote it on the most powerful platforms around–social media sites–to encourage shares, likes, and backlinks that will help you go viral, get immediate visibility with a wider audience and longer-term relevance and authority in the eyes of the search engines.