Sports is a very big industry and therefore the range of products related to it are also diverse. Athletes inspire many people, so many sports-related brands hire them for sports product promotions. However, if you are a new sportswear company and don’t have the budget to hire an athlete to advertise your sportswear brand, then the sportswear marketing methods given here will open up a whole lot of options to get your sportswear brand noticed and in becoming successful.
Basic Elements
Before jumping into sportswear marketing strategies, let us see some things that are crucial for your brand performance
1) Portfolio
A sportswear brand must have a rich portfolio of options (through photos, videos, etc) so that people with different choices and preferences could find many products that suit them. Even though you might hold less stock of each variety, focus on coming up with many varieties so that it would suit a broad audience base. Basic market research can give you some valuable insights on customer preferences and what is working well currently.
2) Price
For most new startups, they prefer to price their products at lower margins so as to stand against the established brands. You can come up with high price tags if your products can justify the pricing based on their material or excellent/unique physical appeal.
3) Distribution
Unless the products get distributed properly, they sit as a burden for any company’s cash flow. So network with many small and big distributors so that your stock does not pile up unnecessarily in your godowns. If you are starting at a much smaller scale, you can start with digital e-commerce platforms like Amazon to get the stock rolling.
4) Customer Experience
It is ultimately the customer experience that will determine how well and how fast your brand will grow. So keep a close eye on customer demands and new trends. Listen to customer complaints and try to resolve and reduce the most common concerns.
Sportswear Marketing Strategies
Let us go through the sportswear marketing strategies that can propel your brand growth.
1) Press Releases
One of the most common methods to announce your sportwear brand as well as to get instant attention is through a press release. A press release by virtue of its big distribution gets seen across various sites due to which it not only gets views but it also generates valuable backlinks during the process. Another advantage is that it is used extensively by many PR agencies for the brand building of a company. By getting your press release across some of the most recognized news websites, you get the right start of building your sportwear brand.
2) Keyword Domination
Make a list of all keywords (search engine queries) that your customers might type in Google. Separate low competition, medium competition and hard keywords using any keyword research tool and go after ranking your site in Google for low competition keywords first followed by medium and hard keywords. This will ensure that you get traffic and sales consistently from people searching for sportswear products on Google. You can alternatively allocate this entire process to any SEO agency to make things more efficient.
3) Google Ads
A quick way to get your products in sight of active and targeted customers is by running ads on the Google platform known as Google Ads. You can easily set daily and monthly budgets and can show ads to users based on preset keywords. For efficient operation of your ads on Google, you can outsource this task to any digital marketing agency.
4) Facebook Ads
Facebook by virtue of its big userbase is one of the most sought-after ad platforms after Google Ads. It provides many sets of options for targeting ads. Though people clicking on ads on Facebook are not as actively interested as in Google ads, the cost per click is lower than Google Ads. You can either opt to manage these ads yourself by learning various aspects of it or can get an agency to do this for your company.
5) Social Networks
Social networks like Facebook, Instagram, etc are ripe sources for getting free traffic by being active on these platforms. The only downside is that it takes some time and consistent efforts to build your own following and brand on social networks. The mode of marketing your sportswear brand on such networks must be minimal at the start followed by a gradual increase in marketing content with time. During the starting phase, you must interact with people by posting good and interesting non-promotional content. Once you have built the audience, you can insert more marketing content later.
6) Email Marketing (Self and Other)
Email marketing enables any business to make much more sales by virtue of continuous communication. There are two methods that you can adopt for email marketing of your sportswear brand.
A) Self: In this method, you can collect email addresses using your own website by providing an opt-in form (in exchange for offers/discounts).
B) Other: In this method, you can contact other similar but non-competing businesses that have big email lists and are willing to promote your sportswear brand message in exchange for some fees/charges.
7) Video Marketing
One of the top 10 most trafficked websites in the world is Youtube and therefore tapping into the potential of Youtube is a great strategy to get visitors and clients. You can create videos around your sportswear brand and can start posting it for a different set of relevant keywords (with optimization) so that it can get discovered by people searching for sportswear-related products on Youtube. Apart from posting such videos on your own channel, you can get a big audience soon if you can create videos and get Youtube influencers (big channel owners) to post on their channel so that subscribers of those people can get notified of your brand.
8) Youtube Ads
While running ads on many top-quality networks like Google and Facebook require a big enough budget, Youtube, though being a big traffic source can provide clicks and visibility at a much lower cost. Youtube Ads allow many targeting options combined with the advantage of low-cost clicks. To get the masses to be aware of your sportswear brand quickly without burning the budget soon, you can opt to run ads on Youtube.
9) Content Marketing
Each and every article that you post on your website can generate a consistent flow of traffic every day for many years. If you post just 1-2 articles every day, then within a few months, you will be having your own digital asset that will passively generate traffic for your business. Right topic selection and consistency will pay off in the long run in a huge way. Apart from posting on your own sportswear website, you can disperse some content as guest posts on other authority sites to build the authority of your site in search engines along with getting traffic.
10) Relevant Influencers
Influencers already have a big loyal audience and by utilizing their reputation, you can grow your sportswear brand faster. Since your business is in the sportswear sector, you can select influencers from categories like fitness, sports and athlete fan clubs, etc. Sites like upfluence, Heepsy, etc provide multiple options to search for influencers using various parameters like country, category, fees, etc. In order to select the best possible ones and to stay away from fraud profiles, you can also see the results that they (influencers) got for their past clients by seeing the reviews posted about them.
11) Creative Content & Social Media Contests
Getting your brand or content shared organically is the best thing that can happen for your sportswear brand. However, people tend to share things that are too compelling and interesting for them. So you can create unique and engaging content to get people to voluntarily share and spread the word or you can incentivize the whole thing by holding social media contests. You can create a compelling contest for users so that they stand a chance to win something useful in exchange for getting your brand message shared on their social profiles. There are many apps (like UpViral) that can enable such contests and automatic selection of winners based on criteria set by you.
12) Guest Posts
Sites that are already established and have a good volume of monthly traffic are ripe sources of getting public attention along with direct SEO benefits. Such sites are also considered to be of high authority by search engines like Google due to which the outgoing links from such sites add big value to the linked sites. Therefore, you must strive to get content on big and authoritative sites. You can search for guest post opportunities and can prioritize the sites based on their performance to get your content and links posted on them.
13) Forums
Dedicated forums related to particular topics are one of the good methods to get exposure as they already have traffic/users. You can search for forums related to sports, athletes, and all associated subjects to come up with a big targeted list of sites. After creating the list, sort it by the number of active users (displayed in most forums) and start creating accounts. Most forums don’t allow new members to promote, so you can either wait for some time or discuss with the forum mods to get your sportswear-related marketing material posted there. You can also explore paid advertising on such forums.
14) Other Businesses and Services
You can explore other similar but non-competing businesses to get further exposure. Let’s say there is a sports company that sells sports-related equipment or gives sports-related guidance, then you can partner with them to cross-promote each other. Similarly, there are a number of fitness trainers in each region, you can get in touch with them so that they can refer your business to their clients. You can do the same with many local sports training academies.
15) Mobile Advertising
People are stuck more to their mobiles nowadays. Many mobile apps allow advertising options and you can explore mobile advertising through many third-party sites that have traffic inventory in billions. Advertising on mobiles also gives a user many targeting options like age, country, gender, etc so that any advertiser can accordingly create and operate ads.
16) SMS Marketing
SMS marketing is superior to many other forms of marketing because people check SMS more often and they have high read rates. There are many firms that already have a big database of mobile numbers as per location and they can send bulk SMS to millions of people. The only thing is to ensure that laws in your location do not prohibit it. You can discuss more with your SMS marketing provider.
17) Affiliate Networks
You can explore the potential of affiliate networks for marketing your sportswear brand. Many big affiliate networks like commission junction, share a sale, etc have thousands of affiliates waiting to promote products and services. You can join any such network as an advertiser and can open your doors to 1000’s of affiliates who will handle the hard work of promoting your brand through various methods as permitted by you. Also, you don’t have to deal with paying these affiliates individually as the affiliate network will take care of the commissions and payments.
18) Competitors (alternatives + ads)
The name of your competitors can be creatively utilized to get more customers to your sportswear brand. By bidding on brand names of your competitors in Google Ads, you can make sure that the ads for your sportswear brands appear every time people search for names of any of your big competing businesses. Along with this keyword bidding on brand names, you can also create content related to your competing sportswear businesses on your own site (along with some SEO) so that the same visibility is ensured in organic search on Google too.
19) Offline Marketing
The most traditional methods of marketing like getting ads on newspapers, billboards, banners, etc still work to this day. Though it is difficult to measure the direct effect of most of such offline advertising strategies, they do work well.
20) Reviews
Seeking reviews of a business before buying products and services from it is the new norm for most people. In such a case, having few reviews or negative reviews can prove damaging to your brand. Therefore focus on customer satisfaction and effective handling of questions, complaints and concerns. You must also actively encourage people to leave reviews of your sportwear company to build a positive brand image.
21) Pitching Investors
To get a big jump in your sportswear marketing efforts, you will require a consistent flow of money and a big budget. In order to do so, you can pitch some investors who can invest in your business. By securing enough funds from investors, you can try many marketing methods at once to get full-scale coverage across many channels. This will prepone your success as you can proceed much faster with your sportswear brand promotion.
22) TV Ads
Running commercials on TV is a great way to reach many people quickly. Though running ads on TV requires a good budget, the awareness generated by it is much greater. You can start with running ads on medium-range channels and can scale up to bigger channels once you start seeing success.
23) Sponsorships
Since your business is associated with the sports industry, sponsoring sports teams and competitions is a better option. You can start with local and regional sports teams (if you are low on budget) and can then proceed to national-level teams. Another method is to sponsor budding athletes so that you can get your sportswear marketing on a budget.
The key points listed above can open up a range of potential for your sportswear brand marketing. If you think that something has been missed or if you have some questions/doubts, do comment below.
