NCAA Championship Ticket Marketing

NCAA DI Men’s Basketball

NCAA Men’s Basketball ticket marketing is a fully integrated, multi-platform campaign built for a national audience with one thing in common: a strong affinity to college basketball, aka March Madness. Each year, sixty-four teams compete in the preliminary rounds of the of the tournament in 13 cities across the country. There are segments of our audience who will adopt to different phases of ticket sales, approach or style of basketball, entertainment value, geographic location of a tournament game, etc. We tap into these factors and key research-based insights, when planning and executing creative.

Stories and moments from the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament are among some of the greatest ever told in all of sports. The tournament has it all. History, action, drama, the triumphant underdog and the heartache of defeat. Stories that are still talked about to this day.

And, even if you don’t remember specific names or years, when those moments play out in your mind, you remember where you were when it happened. They become a part of your experience, and your story, as you recount your team’s march through the tournament.

Phase One

Pre-sale: The countdown to the tournament is on.

Through CRM we leverage email as well as organic and paid social media to target individuals geographically and behaviorally inclined to attend a game in one of the preliminary-round cities. Based on our target audience profiles, we partnered with each local organizing committee (LOC) and media outlets and utilized Facebook and Instagram posts and stories to encourage early ticket purchasing.

Throughout the pre-sale phase, dramatic visual story telling was able to grab attention and create urgency.

Social platforms allowed us to expand the drama of our narrative, add targeted local content and emphasize the FOMO element of this one-of-a-kind experience.

Phase Two

On Sale: Game on.

With research and understanding of our audience segments, we learned what will encourage them to attend a game where they live or would travel a couple hours to attend a game. In this phase, we partner with the LOC’s and their media outlets to saturate local markets to generate game awareness and drive ticket sales on a local level.

Photography and footage of tournament play and atmosphere amped up the hype as games played out and the team’s stories began to unfold.