UFC298 was an absolute banger and a half this weekend, and there are plenty of learnings to take away from the event, especially from a marketing lens. Whether you’re a fighter, combat sports brand or a fight promotion, there’s lots of value to transfer to your own craft from today’s blog post!
Make the most out of emojis for engaging captions across your X feed
The social media lead at TNT Sports, Chamatkar Sandhu, certainly caught my eye with this X post ahead of UFC298. In the grand scheme of things, there’s not much context to it; it’s literally just a lot of fingers pointing to a hashtag that is overly saturated across the micro of fight fans on the platform. However, it’s eye-catching and transferable to branding and retention purposes for the likes of fighters, brands and promotions.
For example, in last week’s edition of Ash’s Sports Marketing Class, I wrote about how Ilia Topuria utilised a rose as a big part of his self-promotion against Volkanovski. A similar principle could be argued to be applied in this context with regards to raising awareness around a topic.
X/Twitter is a fast-moving platform where users scroll through content quickly and without realising it. Therefore, to optimise your content as a brand getting noticed, it’s imperative to make them as engaging as possible through your available features. Emojis are a great way to do this across social media. Not only do they communicate the context of a piece of content, but they can also contribute to a piece of personal branding.
Cage Titans don’t hold back on the meme marketing!
Regional MMA promotion, Cage Titans, made the most of some customised content ahead of #UFC298 in his swanky outfit. It also seems like their content team has featured in their own belt instead of the UFC belt to self-promote their own brand through meme marketing as a part of #UFC298.
Not was the Volkanovski skit a hilarious way to capture casual attention from sports fans, it’s also a memeable moment that can be transferable for other brands to self-promote. If you’re an upcoming or established brand, put your mentality into ‘what have I got to lose?” mode, especially with memes as they’re the most shareable pieces of content across the web.
The value that Cage Titans would’ve gained from this singular piece of content involved the following.
- A website visit from me to find out who the featherweight champion is under Cage Titans.
- A comment on both their Instagram and X post promoting that piece of content.
- Awareness raised about their brand and their featherweight division.
ESPNMMA demonstrate the value of promoting quote-themed graphics on Instagram
It’s always a sigh of relief when a fighter makes weight ahead of fight night, especially with how mentally straining I imagine it must be. ESPNMMA decided to optimise this moment for Merab through an Instagram Carousel with two pieces of media, one being an opening graphic behaving as a thumbnail followed by a video that will have an unlimited time limit.
The Instagram carousel is the most inclusive form of content format on the platform, so you should consider it for marketing purposes. You could treat the opening graphic as a thumbnail to captivate consumer attention, considering how influential thumbnails are, followed by the core content you want your audience to see.
When uploading a video, it’s simpler to upload a reel. However, there’s a time limit of 1 minute and 30 seconds, and the only way you can view a thumbnail is by hovering over the user’s Instagram grid. On the other hand, you’ll likely gain more traction and visibility from posting an engaging carousel in the format that ESPNMMA have.
Get into a habit of thumbnailing your social handles on your graphics while editing
None other than the Best is Blessed seems to agree with the majority about Volk promoting his skit at the press conference for UFC298. However, what stood out to me about this simple Instagram post is, to the naked eye, it might just seem like a simple screenshot of an X post edited into a bigger photo.
However, a transferable skill for fighters to take away to improve their content marketing consists of thumbnailing their social handles as a part of their creative assets. For example, MMAFighting could’ve done this with this media piece, and the consumer would likely be made aware of their other platforms across the ‘marketing sphere’.
Therefore, when it comes to designing a cover photo, a fight poster or anything branding-related yourself, little marketing tactics like this can make a big difference in brand awareness from different angles.
Now that’s a wrap from me, if you feel I’ve missed out anything from the sports marketing fountain this week, I’m keen to know.
Ash Sports Media 