Cricket is a religion in India. Anything and everything related to cricket gets noticed and when it comes to IPL, it is the biggest sporting event in the country. Factually speaking, IPL is now worth almost as much as one EPL football match.
When it comes to big brands, they have the money and resources to back them to do bigger campaigns on various social media platforms. But what is it that smaller brands can do to get noticed during this period, because which brand won’t want to get noticed during IPL.
Contest based content
Having a contest during this period of time is one of the best ways to get more engagement and brand value. How you do it, depends completely on your brand. You can build your content strategy around the players, which can be a great way of reaching out to the masses. Also, this type of strategy allows brands to dive deeper into a market where they have never been able to set a base before. Over the years many brands have asked people to retweet or reply who they thought was the real champion among cricketers ‘a to b' and this has helped them get noticed in an instant, without investing many resources.
Another simple idea could be a 360 degree creative - where you ask your audience to find a particular object within the creative. This could work perfectly well for both kind of audiences, those using a desktop as well as mobile.
These are ideas which as brands are short, simple and making use of minimum resources to maximize efforts.
Tweet based campaign
Cricket fans love tweeting about #IPL and sent 18.8 million tweets in 2018, a 100% rise in number of IPL-related tweets in 2017. In addition, the #IPLFinals 2018 was the most tweeted finals ever in the history of the tournament recording over 1 million Tweets.
So what do these numbers imply? They simply mean that people love engaging in conversation, especially one related to IPL. And this is where as a brand you can play smart and join the conversation to get yourself noticed.
From tweeting about scores to a great moment in the match, all of these will help your brand get noticed. Also, you can use in-built Twitter features to generate content such as video, GIF’s etc. for more audience reach.
People like brands that engage their audience, make a conversation and this is the perfect opportunity to do so.
On-ground activation event
IPL happens during the month of April-May and this is a great time when you as a brand could do an on-ground activation, based around cricket. Simply holding a cricketing camp or a small tournament will get you the audience you desire for.
Also, over the last couple of years, brands have been using their brand identity to hold smaller tournaments similar to IPL, this helps them generate people interest in their brand and build engagement.
Influencer marketing
The term influencer marketing is a well-known term in the world of social media. But, what is it about influencer marketing that can add value to your brand? When you work with influencers who are related to the field of cricket, your brand becomes reliable. And automatically the audience wants to know more about you, your brand, thereby increasing visibility on various social media platforms.
So, creating an influencer marketing campaign during the IPL season can help you reach larger audiences and more fan following.
Connecting with people
In the age of digital media, connecting with the audience is a must. And if you are not connecting with them and simply selling your brand then it is of no use.
IPL is a time when a lot of regional content is making way for itself on various social media platforms, simply because the teams belong to different regions of the country. With a 66% share in overall content consumption, regional languages have surpassed English.
And if you can organize your brand content according to regional languages and then sell it, then there is nothing stopping your brand from getting noticed.
* Times Internet Data, KPMG Study (April 2017)
So if you are a brand or a digital marketing agency, IPL could be your ticket to not only getting noticed but also engage the customers to help you in getting a good number of leads.
