Unless and until you have kept yourself in the underground, you have heard about the FIFA World Cup held in Brazil this year. The game is not only about the balls and goals. It’s is also about the buzz that it is successful in creating. It is also about the sentiments of the fans bound with their teams and players. This highly anticipated event is considered to be the most marketed in the history.
Let’s have a look at some of the stats that shows the evidence of the popularity of this sporting event:
- The opening game of the tournament between Brazil and Croatia on June 12 was seen by 42.9 million people on Brazilian TV network itself.
- 5.700,000,000 were spent on sponsorships and commercials.
- Brazilian team tops the chart of the most followers on Twitter with over 1,460,000.
- Facebook estimates that out of its 1.28 users, there are 500 million football fans.
- There were 350 thousand tweets per day even before the World Cup commenced.
- Shakira’s world cup hit “La la la” generated 97 million views within just 2 weeks of it going live.
How has this game been able to generate a fan base with the help of advertising that not only the game but also the brands associated with the game have managed to create a massive buzz?
The World Cup offers some invaluable lessons in branding:
Storytelling
There is nothing more appealing than a personalized brand storytelling. The Colombian kid James Rodriguez burst into the scene with this World Cup. The vertebra injury of Neymar virtually made his team a handicap. Lionel Messi didn’t live up to the expectations. What is common between all these news? All this news are the min-event stories that were successful in creating a buzz in this world cup.
Brand stories could take on a huge event like the FIFA World Cup and bring it down for the understanding of the common viewers. These mini-event stories give a personal touch and you could in fact relate with this news as you are closely following the tournament A connection is established which brings the viewers back to watch the match again and again.
Storytelling gives a personal touch to your brand and help the customers identify with the company. By highlighting the stories, you could help in creating strong bonds with the customers.
The success of your online marketing is also highly dependent on this factor, as how effectively are you able to strike a chord with your target audience counts.
Socializing Is Vital
The world cup has stormed the world of Internet. Fans are now able to follow their teams on any given social media platform. People in 230 countries were talking about the game and their favorite players, making this the most social event.
What we get to learn over here, is that social is the new channel of communicating with your target audience. It’s a trend that, no matter how much one denies, is here to stay. It is where your audience likes to hang out and you need to come up with the most innovative ways to keep them engaged. Brands could reach a wider audience by creating compelling posts that the viewers find useful and entertaining.
Tailor Content For The Target Audience
There are a number of videos that show the pains the players had to go through to come at this stage to play the World Cup. The promotional video of Team Germany was entirely composed of football clips that was combined together with music.
The marketers who have created such videos know the nerves of their target audience very well.
When you know the various segments of the audience well, it becomes easier to come up with the content marketing strategy that will appeal to them.
The reason why the Germany team video was successful is because the kids aged six in Germany are very well skilled in the game of football. The football team players are considered national heroes. So, naturally the video was going to be an instant hit.
Know your customers before creating a content marketing strategy.
Plan The Strategy Well Ahead
Adidas adopted the rule of planning ahead and it paid off well. The sports equipments’ major brands shot up the sales 45% more than the sales of last year. This was slated to be the biggest marketing campaign of Adidas in the history of Adidas in soccer.
Apart from Adidas, all the brands that planned ahead such as the airlines, or the car manufacturers, or even McDonalds gained more boost than ever with the current year’s World Cup.
This shows that it is critical to plan ahead to capitalize from the trend. Ask yourself some simple questions:
- Is the target audience reflected on the site?
- Do you have a set of proper landing pages for the current event or microsites?
- Are you using appropriate hashtags so that people could track you?
- Are all your efforts done keeping in mind the basics of responsive design?
- What was the strategy carried out by your competitors?
The key is to be planned 3-6 months well in advance.
Conclusion
The 2014 FIFA World Cup has broken all the records. However, it was achieved with a systematic method. If all online marketing efforts are carried out by keeping in mind the strategy implemented in this huge event, success is guaranteed. The lessons that the World Cup teaches us every 4 years are priceless and ageless.