March Madness Marketing: Strategies to Engage Fans and Drive Success

March Madness creates unparalleled excitement, drawing fans and non-fans to watch college basketball teams vie for the national championship. Brands across the US leverage this buzz with targeted consumer promotions to capitalize on the buzz and excitement surrounding the NCAA tournament (and brackets) and the school spirit of students and alumni.

Basketball is the second most followed sport in the world and more so among 16-25-year-olds in the US. The NCAA Division I basketball tournament is commonly called ‘March Madness’ and takes the format of a single-elimination tournament between 68 teams. According to ESPN, in 2023, the men’s final averaged 14.69 million viewers, and the women’s final averaged 9.92 million viewers – an all-time high. This much-loved sport is further boosted by NCAA developments like division realignments, NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) deals, and legalized sports betting. Meanwhile, technological advancements and the rise of streaming services are transforming fan engagement through immersive experiences and diverse viewing options.

March Madness Promotions: Scoring Big with Smart Marketing Strategies

Few events rival March Madness in creating a buzz, and for marketers, the tournament offers a unique opportunity to engage audiences and drive sales. Here are key strategies to make the most of this annual sporting spectacle:

1) Build Engagement with Fans

The excitement starts even before tip-off. Brands can tap into the pre-tournament buzz by creating?engaging and sharable content through?bracket challenges, asking fans to pick Cinderella teams or predict winners. During the games, amplify engagement with bracket and mini-bracket contests, live social media activities, and rewards for accurate picks.

2) Maximize Real-Time Fan Engagement

Gamification-based promotions like Sports Bingo or Bracket challenges bring fans closer to the action while offering exciting prize opportunities. Platforms like Snipp help brands partner with professional sports leagues and teams to drive engagement and loyalty at every stage of the tournament:

• Pre-Game: Motivate fans to participate by playing the odds, conducting registration drives, and collecting data for valuable first-party insights.
• In-Game: Delight audiences with real-time interactive gameplay, enhancing the experience with rewards and special offers.
• Post-Game: Keep the momentum going with post-game promotions, messaging, and new incentives to drive foot traffic and continued excitement.

3) Bracket Battle: Engage Fans with Themed Contests?

One of the best things about March Madness is the bracket. Every year, millions of people?fill in their tournament brackets – analyzing expert predictions and poring over form guides to chart the course of the famously unpredictable tournament.

Lean into this by running a?contest that asks players to fill out a bracket and share their picks with you online. In exchange, players can win prizes for accurately predicting results and the overall tournament winner. These can be anything from a care package with your most popular products to an experience day or a cash reward. The important thing is to offer something customers value.

To keep players engaged throughout the tournament, consider awarding prizes to the highest-scoring players at the end of each round. Alternatively, you could use a live scoreboard to show players how they compare to others and indulge their competitive instincts.

4) Collaborate with Influencers and Streaming Platforms

Partnering with athletes or sports influencers during March Madness 2025 boosts visibility and adds authenticity to campaigns, resonating strongly with sports fans.

Collaborations with platforms like Paramount+, YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, DIRECTV STREAM, and Max offer access to tech-savvy audiences. These platforms enable innovative ads, such as interactive commercials and real-time promotions during games, while leveraging personalized subscriber data to target campaigns effectively.

5) Run Purpose-Driven Campaigns

Show your brand’s values by supporting meaningful causes. For example, you can help drive the continued growth of women’s sports by running promotions centered around the Women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament. Or consider how your campaign can support underserved communities related to sports or provide useful resources or opportunities to those in need. Obviously, these can be tied to your company or marketing team’s broader efforts around community impact and don’t need to be one-offs centered around one sports marketing window.

6) Engage at Bars and Social Spaces

Sports bars are bustling with March Madness fans, offering a prime opportunity to create unique, “ownable moments” that stand out from the usual bracket-based promotions. Collaborations with these venues can boost visibility through branded contests and gamified activities.?

Think beyond the ordinary to craft experiences that resonate and leave a lasting impression.

7) Excite with Giveaways

Sweepstakes, or giveaways, are among the simplest and most popular consumer promotions. And for good reason: they're easy to set up and, if you do it right, even easier to enter. All consumers must do is perform a simple action – like signing up for your mailing list, scanning a code, completing a survey, answering a poll, purchasing a product, etc., or liking a Tweet – for a chance to win a grand prize. It's a great way to build excitement and drum up interest in your brand. Offer prizes tied to the event, like tickets to the finals or exclusive merchandise. The key to a successful?sweepstakes?is offering relevant, valuable rewards.

Marriott Bonvoy, as the NCAA's Official Hotel Partner, launched the 'Score Big with Marriott Bonvoy Game Day Rituals'?campaign, featuring NCAA players performing pregame rituals at its properties. The brand also offered a giveaway for members to win a Women's Final Four trip, including flights, accommodations, courtside seats, and a session with Sydney Carter, boosting tournament excitement and brand recognition.

8) Join the Conversation on Social Media

Every year, March Madness triggers a flurry of social media activity. According to Statista,?in March 2023,?64% of enthusiastic sports fans?planning to watch the NCAA tournament indicated they would actively engage with social media during the event. Research from Sprout Social reveals that?March Madness-related topics reached over 576,000 engagements and 1.57 billion impressions on Twitter on the tournament's first two days alone.

Joining social media conversations – where it makes sense for your brand – is a great way to engage with customers and promote your products during March Madness. The most successful brands take this one step further by running themed social media promotions to capitalize on the excitement the tournament generates.

FanDuel?harnessed the power of the hashtag to drive engagement during March Madness 2022. The company shared several amusing?March Madness Memes?throughout the tournament with the caption #MarchMadness to get in on the fun. In addition to making fans laugh, the posts generated roughly?1,000 engagements and 22.29 million impressions.

For March Madness 2024,?SKIMS?launched a highly successful and engaging social media campaign that combined high fashion with the excitement of college basketball. The campaign showcased the brand's expansion into menswear while strategically tapping into the fervor of collegiate sports. Leveraging the popularity of NCAA athletes, SKIMS featured players sporting its products in visually striking content that resonated with male college basketball fans. SKIMS Unveiled the?Men's All-Star Campaign?featuring prominent college basketball players like Caleb Love (Arizona), Donovan Clingan (UConn), Hunter Dickinson (Kansas), and others; SKIMS' latest campaign celebrates March Madness with style and star power.

9) Join the Conversation on Social Media

Use the tournament to gather valuable customer insights. Promotions with receipt uploads or sign-ups can reveal consumer habits, preferences, and competitor product trends.

March Madness Marketing: One key sports marketing window

There are various windows to run sports marketing campaigns to engage passionate fans when they're most engaged. Our?Guide to Sports Marketing is a great resource that gives you trends, stats, marketing ideas, and examples of other brands' actions (see various?sales promotion examples here). Consider running a campaign for March Madness or planning for the next sports marketing window using some of the ideas above or in the guide!?

Contact us?to discover how our sports-based promotions solutions can help you engage your customers and drive sales. This article appears on the Snipp blog.