As someone that used to work in the front office of a professional basketball team, I’m continually blown away by how often sports and event marketers fail to capitalize on smart promotional opportunities with their extremely enthusiastic fan bases.

Listen, long before “fans” became a term synonymous with Facebook, it was used to describe those foam thumb-waving and jersey-wearing sports fanatics who obsessively followed their favorite teams and athletes on the gridiron, diamond, hardwood, fields, and ice. Facebook and sports is a dream match up. A can’t miss combo – it’s Celtics vs. Lakers, Yankees vs. Red Sox, and Packers vs. Vikings all wrapped into one. You can’t screw it up, unless you fail to evolve your digital marketing strategies.

In 2013, strong marketing fundamentals start and stop with MOBILE. Failure to leverage mobile as a powerful promotional device for your team is the equivalent of missing a wide open layup on the court. It’s the unstoppable offensive play every brand marketer should be running to achieve success with their consumers.

Let’s face it, mobile is no longer the optional add-on topping for a brands promotional initiative. It is THE slice of pizza. Over two-thirds of Facebook and Twitter traffic is already coming from mobile devices. If your brand campaigns aren’t accessible from ANY device (smartphone, tablet, or PC), you’re flat out failing to reach and reward the majority of your social media fans and followers alone?

Mark Cuban recently got a lot of attention for blasting Facebook and threatening to take his Dallas Mavericks’ brand pages (and money) to other social platforms. Well, the Mavs’ owner has some reason to bitch about his newsfeed visibility, but what about the Facebook mobile app and mobile web interface not supporting fan page applications? Because of this, it means roughly 1.5 million of his mobile phone carrying fans (60% of his 2.5 million) aren’t able to see or interact with his content? Can you say marketing air ball?

In sports there’s a saying that “winning cures everything”. While North Social can’t improve the Maverick’s winning on the court (six games below .500 as of today…), we can help fill the team stat line in and out of the arena. We just released three new mobile apps that bridge the mobile gap and allow teams to access their full Facebook audience with their social and mobile promotions.

So let’s take a look at how North Social device-agnostic apps can help your sports or entertainment brand push out a memorable and motivating promotion. Or in this case, any brand that sells seats to a live or recorded event (i.e. sports teams, movie theaters, concert venues).

MOBILE SWEEPSTAKES INSPIRATION: Sports & Entertainment

PROMOTION CONCEPT: Pimp Your Seats

This is a seat upgrade sweepstakes where two lucky fans will have the opportunity to remarkably improve their vantage point and be able to enjoy the rest of the game from the front row.

HOW IT WORKS:

1) Prior to the event consumers will be exposed to messaging which alerts them to enter the promotion. Consumer touchpoint examples could include: messaging on Jumbotron, public address announcement, advertisement in game program, call to action on the back of tickets, or even a decal on seat backs.

2) Consumer gets out their phone, visits unique URL and submits their name and email.

3) Entrants are collected via North Contact (free for all inbound list building and analytics).

4) Instant email autoresponder is sent to entrant (optional). This is a smart way to further engage your consumer by presenting them with a follow up message and motivating digital offer (ex. use this promo code to receive a discount on concessions or a 30% off any of merchandise sold on your team website).

5) Brand randomly selects and confirms winner.

6) Lucky fans move down to be closer to the action for the remainder of the game.

Mobile Sweepstakes App Flow (Info Screen > Entry Screen > Share Screen)

ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS:

The above promotional execution is meant to be done the day or night of the event. However, you could also promote and run an equally powerful seat or ticket giveaway prior to an event. We’re just throwing out ideas so the time spent brainstorming in your dimly lit conference room is a productive one…

If you’re a B to B brand, think about giving away passes to your event. If you’re a band or a promoter, how about putting a unique mobile-ready URL on your wild postings so your diehard fans can win tickets to your show. If you’re a radio station, how about having your deejay drop a mobile URL on listeners to win tickets to a sold out show. The ideas are endless. The executions are simple.

You’re welcome Mark.

P.S. When it comes to the NBA officiating, you’re on your own.

We set up a demo so you can see this app in action right now. Just visit www.pimpyourseats.com on your mobile handset or click this big blue button.