From crafting innovative campaigns to leveraging social media buzz, the cricket season serves as a springboard for brands to connect with their audience meaningfully,
By Raviteja Dodda
Come March every year, the entire country gets into a frenzy as it experiences the most significant sporting festival of the year.
As the Indian Premier League (IPL) sweeps the nation with enthusiasm, it’s not just cricket enthusiasts who are enthralled; marketers, too, are eyeing the field with keen interest. Beyond the boundaries of the cricket stadium lies a vast arena of opportunity for brands to engage with their customers long after the buzz dies down.
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From crafting innovative campaigns to leveraging social media buzz, the cricket season serves as a springboard for brands to connect with their audience meaningfully, ensuring a lasting impact far beyond the cricket pitch.
While these outcomes are not easy to achieve, they’re not beyond the reach of brands if they plan game-changing approaches like implementing unified customer views that power contextual customer experiences. To enable this, marketers need the right marketing analytics platform.
Why Cricket Sells
Research statistics also endorse the staggering impact of IPL-driven engagement across various sectors. For example, the gaming app Dream 11’s campaign, which was based on the movie 3 Idiots and brought Bollywood and cricket together, was a big hit during the season. Even the CRED ad in which Rahul David posed as an angry young man was a success! While the Ads were iconic because of the cricket references, the brands ruled the audiences’ minds and hearts!
A testament to the success of capitalising on the cricket buzz, a recent study showed that Finance apps experienced substantial user growth (~67%), capitalising on the surge in digital payments for food orders during the IPL season. Another
The gaming sector also experienced an astronomical revenue growth of 225%, primarily driven by the cricket-loving masses’ engagement with fantasy gaming platforms during the season. This segment alone witnessed a gross gaming revenue reaching approximately Rs 2,800 crore during the Indian cricket season, marking a significant 24% increase from the previous year, according to Redseer.
While these are some impressive numbers, as the tournament nears its end every year, much to the dismay of marketers, apps also see a downfall in usage with substantial uninstall rates. This phenomenon particularly affects gaming and entertainment apps, with a 47% uninstall rate, demonstrating the transient nature of event-driven engagement. A significant portion of these uninstalls also stems from users who downloaded the app primarily for cricket-related content and removed it upon the conclusion of the season.
That’s because the brand recall weakens if the content and reach are not strong enough to resonate with fans beyond the tournament. It is, therefore, essential to focus on maintaining high engagement levels after the tournament ends.
Sustaining Growth Beyond the Tournaments and Trends
The message is clear: while user acquisition remains important, the significance of remarketing a brand must be a focal factor for brands. Some strategies that marketers can adopt to continue to be in their customer’s mind space and have their wallet share beyond the tournament season.
Give AI-powered Analytics a try: AI-powered analytics play an essential role in unlocking valuable insights from massive datasets, which can drive informed decision-making and strategic planning. With the help of machine learning algorithms and predictive analytics, marketers can quickly identify trends, patterns, and correlations in consumer behaviour. Such tried and tested methods can optimise campaigns, enhance customer experiences, and predict future trends more accurately.
Capture Your Customer’s Pulse Via a Unified User Profile: Tailored experiences and campaigns have a significant impact on customers. Marketers can collect data from various touchpoints like app interactions, social media, and customer support to create unified customer profiles. This data helps to segment customers and create personalised content and targeted campaigns that align with their interests and preferences. Additionally, it enables marketers to anticipate customer needs and address pain points to foster stronger brand loyalty.
Craft Dynamic Content That Resonates: Adapting and customising content in real time based on each user’s unique interactions and preferences can significantly improve customer engagement. Brands can build deeper connections with their audience by utilising personalised push notifications, in-app messages, and tailored content recommendations. For instance, consumer brands can examine customer interactions across physical and online touchpoints and use advanced segmentation techniques to create micro-moments that resonate with customers. By implementing a scalable omnichannel engagement strategy that covers the entire customer journey, brands can incentivise customers through promotional campaigns and retention strategies.
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In the fast-paced world of IPL marketing, success hinges on a data-driven approach that prioritises personalised experiences and creates sustained engagement. By leveraging customer analytics, brands can navigate the complexities of the IPL season and emerge as champions among their target audiences. Intelligent martech platforms play a crucial role in this dynamic environment, enabling marketers to harness the cricket buzz effectively. These sophisticated tools offer consumer behavior analysis capabilities, predict trends and more. Brands strategically using these tools can ride the wave of any viral topic or trend’s popularity and also sustain the momentum long after the season’s last ball has been bowled until the approach of the next season.
The author is CEO and co-founder of MoEngage
