While on my computer today an article about the athletic department at Penn State University popped up in my feed. It stated "Penn State Intercollegiate Athletics will embark on a comprehensive survey of its Nittany Lion Club membership and current season ticket holder base later this month in order to gain a better understanding of where the department stands in the eyes of its most avid supporters." Penn State is actually taking the time to find out how to become a more "fan appreciative" program. All of this is a part of their marketing plan. When marketing your athletics program one of the key things to do is understand your audience. Clearly, Penn State has taken the time to begin to figure out what their audience wants from them so that they can be better prepared and more effective program for their fans.
Another key to marketing your program as I stated before, is to come up with some sort of gimmick in order to fill seats and allow your school spirit to show. In the world of college football, rivalry games are created to allow fans to not only to feel excited about at least one big game during the season, but they are created in order to help generate more interest in the athletics of the school. Yearly rivalry games such as "The Iron Bowl", "The Lone Star State Showdown" or "The Red River Rivalry" are all examples of big time rivalry games which are not only marketed to the current students and faculty, but also to the alumni of each school.
Marketing is a subject that can we can go on forever talking about but for now we will focus on two things:
1. Understand your audience
2. Create a big time rivalry game
These two things will help to change your program over time and are a good start when you are coming up with your sports marketing plan for an intercollegiate athletics program.
Quote for the day: We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.
- Aristotle
JP aka Coach Poindexter
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