English Premiere League Social Media Campaign Strategy: The Premier League is a private company wholly owned by its 20 Member Clubs who make up the League at any one time. Each individual club is independent: working within the rules of football, as defined by the Premier League, The FA, Uefa and Fifa as well being subject to English and European law. The principal objective of the Premier League is to stage the most competitive and compelling league with world class players and, through the equitable distribution of broadcast and commercial revenues, to enable clubs to develop so that European competition is a realistic aim and, once there, they are playing at a level where they can compete effectively. Demographics: Who: The demographics of this campaign will consist initially of men ages 18-35. Throughout the stages of the campaign (based on its successfulness) the demographics will stretch to youth ages 8-17. Where: The social media campaign will exist nationally, but the rest of the marketing/advertising campaign will concentrate in soccer hotbeds such as St. Louis, Dallas, Seattle, Portland, Atlanta, Kansas City, and Phoenix. In addition traditional big cities will also be targeted; New York, Miami, Los Angeles and Chicago. When: The plan will be initiated two weeks before the start of the season, and will run one week before the end of the season when the winners will be announced. Research: 23% of Facebook users check their account 5+ times daily 30% of Twitter users have an income over $100,000 There are 2.7 billion likes/comments per day on Facebook 60 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute. Over 4 billion YouTube videos are viewed a day up from 3 billion Over 4 billion hours of videos are watched each month on YouTube The 6:35 per month spent on Facebook is nearly double the time (3:20) spent on Google.
In an analysis of more than 60 Facebook marketing campaigns, 49 percent reported a ROI of more than five times, while 70 percent had a return on investment greater than three times. Competitors: The biggest competitor is the MLS, there are also indirect competitors such as the NFL, MLB and NBA. Scenario: The EPL is one of the most recognized soccer federations in the world, it involves the best clubs and players from around the world. It has had an immense following in Europe for many years but has yet to reach a very high level of popularity in the United States. The EPL utilizes its social media very well, but not targeted to American viewers. Mission: In order to help improve the awareness, popularity and sales of the EPL, there will be a contest organized via social media channels. This campaign/contest will be focused in the United States only and only U.S. citizens will be eligible to win the contest. The goal is to increase the awareness of the EPL in the U.S. and in turn increase merchandise sales for the league. Challenges: Soccer is a very polarizing sport in America and most people who are soccer fans, have some sort of allegiance already. Will this campaign be able to bring in new fans? There are a lot of sports to compete with in America, will people embrace a foreign product? Will there be enough ROI to justify the contest?
Goals/Objectives: Increase awareness of the EPL in America Increase merchandise sales of EPL in America by 10% Strategies Tactics Launch Social Media Campaign Contest o A points contest including sharing/retweeting/voting/subscribing/checking in Create a central Facebook fan page Increase twitter presence with contest Set up a EPL foursquare page Create bi-weekly fan voted highlight YouTube videos Increase all content via EPL social media channels Create EPL presence at MLS games/across America o Have representatives and interactive booths at select MLS games o Create Youth camps and tournaments sponsored by EPL Marketing campaign for American players playing in the EPL o Increase marketing for American players in EPL YouTube talk show featuring different players Appearances by players TV marketing
GOALS MATRIX
Social Media Channels: YouTube Overview: YouTube is a website essentially used for video sharing. It offers access and the ability to upload various video content such as movie clips, previews, music videos, persona blogs, short homemade videos, promotional videos, how-to videos, etc. Why Use It? The EPL will use YouTube to post videos featuring interviews with players, coaches, and fans vlogs entries. The EPL will also implement a highlight show that will air on Tuesday of each week. At the end of the show there will be a fan voted top ten highlights of the past week. (The highlights eligible to be voted on will be released on Sunday night) YouTube is a great channel for the EPL because there are an immense amount of highlights when you are dealing with the greatest players on the planet. Being able to share those will be essential to building the awareness of the EPL. Facebook Overview: Facebook is a social networking platform that allows individuals, collectives, and businesses to create profiles, exchange messages, upload photos and videos to create albums, tag people, create status updates, like business pages, claim deals, seek coupons, play games, share scores and activity, check-in to locations, show current and past events, find/add friends, become admins to run pages, create fan pages, subscribe to individuals and pages, like photos and videos, status updates, and other profile-related activity. Why Use it? Facebook will be a good social media channel for the EPL because it already has an established following and is the most commonly used social media platform available. Currently the EPL has many unofficial or specific fan pages (rumors page, transfers page, news page etc.) By
centralizing the fan page to include all content, it will help create a better presence. This will also allow fans to easily share ALL content from the fanpage. Twitter Overview: Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows both individual users and businesses to blog, update, and/or tweet up to 140 characters. You can attach links, photos, videos, mention people, and hashtag. Hashtags allow tweets to be part of trending topics, which you can see what is most popular on different parts of the Twitter page. Why Use It? The EPL will use Twitter more as a news resource to post scores, rumors, news, links, photos, videos and articles. It will give the EPL another avenue to transmit the information and perhaps reach another demographic or crowd than FaceBook. Foursquare Overview: Foursquare is a free app that helps let everyone know and make the most of where you are. Foursquare allows you to share and save the places you visit. They can also give you personalized recommendations and deals based on where you, your friends, and people with your tastes have been. Why use it? Foursquare is more of a supplemental channel as it will mainly be used as a points mechanism for the contest. But by simply adding the channel and encouraging people to check in, it will help increase the awareness simply because they have zero presence as it stands now.
Campaign Contest Overview The contest will be announced two weeks prior to the season starting in which on all marketing materials/commercials/advertising will make note of the contest rules being posted on Facebook. The contest will deadline will run two weeks into the start of the season, in which plugs and announcements will be made about the Facebook page in regard to the contest. The contest will be a points based contest in which contestants will be able to score points based on the sharing of content on Facebook, retweeting of Twitter content subscribers and votes on YouTube, and check ins on FourSquare. Each medium will have records kept of the contestants and their activity, and each week will be cross referenced and the leaders will be announced on the weekly highlight show on the EPL YouTube channel. Mediums will be cross referenced based on email address/contact info. The two most important mediums of this campaign will be Facebook and YouTube. In order to be a part of the contest, a person would have to be subscriber to the YouTube channel or a fan on FaceBook. The top ten point scorers will be awarded 2 tickets to the EPL championship. Each share of EPL posted articles, videos, announcements on FaceBook will net one point, each re-tweet of the same on Twitter will net one point, each
Social Media Flow Chart with listening posts.
Metrics To measure increasing awareness of the EPL a social media campaign, we will keep track of activeness of the followers through the following listening posts Tactic Listening Posts YouTube: views, shares, subscribers, votes, likes Facebook: Fans, shares, likes, comments Twitter: Followers, retweets, replies, FourSquare: Check-ins, comments, likes, shares Tools Wildfire http://monitor.wildfireapp.com Social Mention www.socialmention.com FaceBook insights Hootsuite The current social media presence is fairly low for the EPL. Taking this into consideration, it is an optimal time and opportunity to really raise that awareness with a successful campaign.