How do you organize your event marketing? How do you choose the dates for your theme nights? If resources are low and budgets are tight, how can you make the best of what you have? I don’t have a complete, perfect answer, but the principle of peak on peak could offer some help.

Peak on peak implies putting all of your efforts into a few select events and focusing all your effort into those few events only. Of course you will run the standard campaigns for your other events, including the regular news releases and activations, but you will focus all of your premium efforts into those few particular events.

Your sales team will focus their group sales on these events.
Your big TV commercials will advertise these games as theme nights, appropriate for your audience and organization.
You will encourage your sponsors to do giveaways on these nights.
You will likely have some promotion or engagement opportunity for your students on these nights.
Your ticket mini-plans will all include these games.
Your social media will push these games more and encourage more engagement with your followers.
Your PR team might consider doing some sort of stunt or public display on campus or in the community somewhere.
Your coaches may make a special appearance on the local news breaking down the opponent and their strengths and weaknesses. (Perhaps you could make this a season long partnership and work in a sponsorship deal.)

Literally every aspect of your program will market these few specific games as THE games to attend for the season. This strategy won’t work for every program, but is especially worth the consideration if you are struggling with attendance, have had some trouble in recent history with bad PR, or just really want to SELL OUT. The value of a sell out crowd is well worth the effort in buzz as well as the bottom line.

When you are able to market your game experience as enough to make people want to come see what you’re all about, your games become more than just wins and losses. And at the end of the day, at least in terms of college athletics, there is more to the sport than just wins and losses. There is so much more to a sport organization than just the game, which is what makes sports the most unique kind of entertainment. Do whatever you can to leverage that positive influence with your constituents and become more of that which you already are.

What do you think? Has your organization ever implemented this principle of peak on peak? I think it is a useful strategy if done right, but like I hinted at above, should be adjusted according to the current state of your organization. The idea behind marketing a big crowd and a lot of excitement is to build momentum for the rest of your season, with the intention of being able to capitalize on that momentum game after game, year after year. The more regularly you can build excitement, the more likely it is that more people will be exposed to your organization and become more involved with the great things you are doing.

Leave your comments below – I would love to hear what others are doing in regards to this peak on peak principle.

Go Forth!