Super Bowl Marketing: 7 Tactics To Help You Attract New Customers

On February 1 2019, the headline of a Wired article read:

“The future of Super Bowl ads doesn’t include TV–or football. Why would you splurge on a game-time TV spot when you could just tweet?”

That prophetic declaration spelt out the advantage that is now being enjoyed by small Shopify brands.

You might not have the marketing budget that allows you to set aside $7 million dollars for 30-second Super Bowl commercial slots but that doesn’t mean you can’t attract customer’s attention and money during this period. 

This article will show you 7 advertising tactics you can implement to get your Shopify store in front of your customers, all without putting millions of dollars into a Super Bowl ad like sports betting and technology companies can.

The best part is that these tactics are not new. While they’ve proven to be effective during holidays like Super Bowl, you should ideally pursue year-round to have the best chance of growing your Shopify store.

It is as Josh Cohen–a digital marketing specialist– rightly pointed out in this interview with ADPon Super Bowl advertising.

“While the digital marketing strategies [to be discussed] should be pursued year-round. There is tremendous upside in taking advantage of the buzz around specific high profile events during the year.”

Keep reading to find out what these tactics are.

Outline

• 7 Super Bowl marketing tactics
• Run a contest or a giveaway
• Offer special discounts
• Leverage social media
• Utilize email marketing
• Optimize your content for mobile
• Create a dedicated landing page
• How to create a dedicated landing page with PageFly
• Conclusion

7 Super Bowl marketing tactics for your Shopify store

The Super Bowl represents an opportunity for you to target millions of engaged consumers and bring your brand into their orbit for the first time. Some of the tactics you should consider are explored below.

Run a contest or a giveaway

Source: Pexels

With the Super Bowl comes a competitive energy.

Everybody loves winning. So it makes sense to organize contests that give your fans a chance to win something and get your brand in front of people who would otherwise not know anything about you.

But why should you care about contests, you ask?

Here’s why.

CTAs delivered via contests have a 3.7% higher conversion rate than other CTAs. Not only that, an average of 34% of new consumers are acquired through contests.

An example of a brand that used social media contests to promote its brand is Goldfish Crackers.

The brand organized a fun contest on TikTok that asked its audience to hold as many Goldfish Crackers as they could in their hands. The goal was to beat the record set by professional basketball player, Boban Marjanović–301 Goldfish crackers on one palm.

The result of this campaign? 12.8 billion views on TikTok

So you see that contests can be effective in helping your brand and products reach new customers during the Super Bowl period.

The question now is: How can you make contests work for you?

Here's an example: you could ask your followers to play a Super Bowl-themed game. The winner (probably someone with the most likes or shares) gets a prize that can be redeemed when the big game rolls around.

You can also run a contest or giveaway that is directly related to what happens in the game. For instance, you can offer customers that buy a particular product a discount for every touchdown made before the halftime show.

Source: USA Today

Remember that your contest can happen before, during or after the Super Bowl main event.

Thinking of running a contest?

Keep the following things in mind.

• Define your goals for running the contest. Are you trying to get audiences to purchase immediately? Or do you want to drive traffic to your social media profiles in preparation for game day?
• Choose a relevant prize. The type of prize you choose will determine the level of engagement your contest gets.
• Find partnership opportunities. More people to collaborate with on contests mean more reach for your brand. You can partner with relevant industry influencers to spread the word about your contest.
• Decide entry requirements. Who will be eligible to enter your contest? At the very least, that person should follow you on social media or be subscribed to your newsletter.
• Choose your giveaway platform. Is it social media or email?
• Launch and promote your giveaway.
• Announce the winner and follow up. It helps you build credibility and more engagement.

Offer special discounts

Source: Pexels

Discounting is certainly an OG when it comes to eCommerce marketing tactics.

It has long proven itself to marketers as an effective tool for incentivizing people to make purchases and it is leveraged by some of the most successful brands in eCommerce. 

Online shoppers are usually on the hunt for good deals. That is why 9 out of 10 online shoppers use coupon codes or discounts throughout the year.

So we have established that discounts are important to eCommerce brands.

But do they work for special occasions like Super Bowl marketing?

Well, yes they do.

Keren Kang, CEO of Native Commerce said in an interview with American Express that:

“Discounts serve to drive sales for the busiest buying seasons of the year.”

And the Super Bowl is definitely a busy buying season as the average American is expected to spend an estimated $79 during the Super Bowl. The total amount of consumer spending surrounding the game in 2022 was $14.6 billion.

Source: Browntape

Max Benz, CEO and founder of BankingGeek, told us that offering discounts during last year’s Super Bowl led to an increased conversion rate and website visit.

With this in mind, what best practices should you keep in mind whencreating a discount offer?

Here are two for you.

• Decide whether you want your discounts to be sitewide or for specific collections.
• Be clear on your discount duration. You don’t want your customers to think that your discounts are open ended. Will they only be valid during the big game? Or will customers be able to enjoy the benefits before and after the game?
• Do not over discount your products. While it is tempting to offer mouth-watering discounts in order to entice consumers into making a purchase, you shouldn’t. Instead, choose a discount rate that you can still profit from if a customer takes you up on your offer.

Leverage social media

Source: Twitter

In 2018, HQ–a trivial app–was one of the big Super Bowl winners.

The live game show app managed to pull almost 2 million people from their TV screens during the Super Bowl halftime show with a social media campaign orchestrated on Twitter.

Here’s what the company did.

HQ announced that it would give away $20,000 at half time and understandably, it diverted the attention of almost two million people from super Bowl ads ads (created by brands with multimillion dollar budgets) to its Twitter profile.

Maybe you don’t feel comfortable giving away $20,000. But this campaign by HQ should confirm that a well executed social media campaign can be as good as a Super Bowl ad.

A research conducted on the behavior of Super Bowl viewers show why this is possible.

6 out of 10 Super Bowl viewers find it important to keep up with the big game on multiple devices. And the two most prominent uses of mobile devices during the Super Bowl game are texting and social media--evidence of the effect of pop culture on consumers.

Source: Pexels

Okay. Now that we can confirm that customers will not ditch social media for the Super Bowl, how can you leverage social media to reach these customers?

• Run a social media contest or giveaway. Do not forget to create a hashtag for your campaign to improve your brand’s visibility.
• Offer Super Bowl-themed discounts and promote them on social media. Your website is not the only place to promote your discounts. You can also generate curiosity and sales by letting your audiences on social media know what you have planned.
• In the weeks leading to the event, create Super Bowl-inspired posts to generate buzz around your brand and entertain viewers. It is advisable to start your Super Bowl marketing campaign weeks before the day rolls around

Utilize email marketing

Source: Pexels

According to Statista, 347.3 billion emails are sent daily. 

With this many emails being sent across the globe on a daily basis, it’s easy for consumers to feel the heat when targeted by overeager marketers.

But does this mean that email marketing is dead and should be phased out of your marketing plans?

Definitely not. Email marketing remains a profitable and cost-effective marketing channel for eCommerce brands. 

For instance, Benefit Cosmetics recorded a 40% increase in revenue after relaunching its Blush product line via an email campaign.

If you want to get similar results for your Super Bowl email marketing campaign, it is important that you do not make the same mistakes that most small Shopify brands make–inability to understand what the customers want to hear and when.

Note these stats when planning out your Super Bowl (LVii) emails:

• 61% of retailers believe their customers want to hear from them weekly. But only 31% of customers agree with that schedule.
• 51% of customers prefer to hear about upcoming sales via emails as opposed to social media or ads. Regarding this, Amanda Elam, Bloomberg's Chief marketing officer shared that consumers want brands to use their information to personalize content.

What these stats should tell you is that email is still a viable channel for communicating with your customers if you don’t bombard your customers with messages. 

Plus, most customers already prefer to learn about your promotional offers via this channel anyway.

Optimize your content for mobile

Source: Pexels

Remember the stat quoted earlier: 6 out of 10 Super Bowl viewers use their mobile phones during the big game.

It implies that if you’re going to target Super Bowl viewers, your marketing content campaign should be optimized for a great mobile experience.

There are other stats that show that if you don’t create your marketing campaigns with mobile viewers in mind, you’ll be leaving money on the table.

• 64% of viewers surveyed used their mobile phones for something unrelated to the Super Bowl halftime show they saw.
• And at least 21% of surveyed viewers claim that they’d like to be incentivized to take action on their phone, or offered additional content
• Only 35% of viewers completed a follow up request based on a Super Bowl ad they saw at halftime.

But what does all these mean to you? What does it mean to optimize your content for a great mobile experience?

Source: Business 2 Community

These are some of the things you could do.

• Be clear and concise in your content. Super Bowl viewers have short-lived attention spans so it is important that you are as clear as possible.
• Make your content easy to interact with. Your landing pages, emails, and even ads should not force your prospects through unnecessary steps. Instead, make it easy for them to accept your offer and that will increase your chances of converting customers.
• Make sure your website is mobile responsive. If your goal is to direct Super Bowl viewers to your product pages or landing pages, then ensure that those pages are optimized for mobile viewing.

Create a dedicated landing page

If you regularly run ads (not Super Bowl ads), landing pages shouldn’t be a new idea to you. 

eCommerce landing pages have a huge say in how successful and cost-effective your brand’s marketing efforts are.

High performing eCommerce landing pages help you get the most value out of the traffic you drive to your store via ads or SEO.

Here’s an example of a landing page from Allbirds, an online shoe store.

But how can these landing pages help you make sales during the Super Bowl period?

Well, it is simple. 

Like most other brands, you probably plan to drum up interest for your products via organic social media, ads, and emails. 

But where do you plan to send interested prospects? You’ll waste a huge opportunity to monetize that interest if you don’t have a specific location–landing page–to send your traffic.

This has happened to multiple brands in Super Bowl’s history. One example is Tide.

Tide ran one of the best Super Bowl ads in 2019 but didn’t deploy proper tactics to cash in on its increased brand awareness.

Its siloed marketing efforts ensured that competitors were able to steal away customers via other channels like Search.

An eCommerce landing page ensures that you do not make that mistake. After generating interest and awareness for your brand on social media, you can direct interested customers to your offer and convert them there.

Based on your past creative work with landing pages, you might already know what works for your but here are some best practices to take note of:

• Make sure the messaging on your landing page matches the expectation you set on social media and email. You don’t want your visitors to wonder if they are in the right place. Remember, the goal is to make it easy for every visitor to convert into a customer.
• Target a specific audience and campaign goal. The goal of a landing page is to convert as many of the page’s visitors as possible. To have a great chance of doing this, make sure that your offer and message is targeted at one specific audience in your industry so they can make informed decisions. Also ask that audience to perform a specific action.And if you target the same audience via multiple platforms, the multiple CTAs should lead to the same landing page.
• Make sure your landing page is mobile friendly. This goes back to the point made earlier about the tendency for Super Bowl viewers to engage with their mobile phones during games. If you plan to steal attention from Super Bowl and bigger brands, your page has to be optimized for the best mobile experience.

How to create a dedicated landing page with PageFly

To effectively promote your Super Bowl offers, you might need to create multiple standalone landing pages.

But creating standalone landing pages can be expensive. To save time and money, and increase your chances of success, it’s best to use a landing page builder like PageFly.

PageFly is a Shopify landing page builder that allows you to quickly create custom landing pages (as well as other pages like product pages and blog pages).

What makes PageFly relevant is that it allows you to create branded standalone pages that look and feel like the rest of your website but has been specifically designed for a single focused objective. These pages will also be mobile responsive to accommodate Super Bowl viewers that use their mobile phones during games.

Watch how to get started with PageFly’s landing page builder below.

Conclusion

The Super Bowl Sunday only comes around once yearly. But it is a period that, with the right set of tactics, can help you win more customers and generate brand awareness.

The tactics explored in this article have been proven to work. And it is not too late to lay out your implementation plans for the big game.