As a Strategist, I have overseen numerous marketing campaigns. In my personal life, I have also overseen countless fantasy football teams. Between my time as a marketing strategist and a make-believe football coach, I have found many parallels between the roles.

I hope to share insights between my professional and personal experiences in this article.



Like in the campaign planning stage, every offseason, you have to do your research on the personnel and strategy changes in the NFL. Players sign with new teams, new coaches with different schemes are installed, and a brand new batch of players enter the league through the NFL Draft. Showing up on draft day for your league blind to these changes will leave you at a significant disadvantage for the draft and the season.

fantasypros.com is a good place to start your research

When planning campaigns, be sure to do similar research on market trends, new platforms and functionality, and review data from previous campaigns to get a better idea of what your campaign strategy will look like.

A thoroughly researched campaign and fantasy football team lay the groundwork for future success.

Heading into your fantasy football draft, like setting up your campaign, it is critical to know your competition's tendencies. Are there certain players, positions, or teams that they favor? Do they have specific draft tendencies? Knowing your competition will help you succeed in your draft.

Like a fantasy football draft, knowing your competition in marketing is vital. Do they have strengths greater than yours that you must work against? What about unique value propositions that you must counter? Are they currently running promotions that might undercut your promoted goods or services?

Researching and having answers in both cases will help you succeed no matter what your competition might throw your way.

Like the conclusion of a fantasy football draft, your campaign's launch is just the beginning!

You cannot treat a marketing campaign as a set-it-and-forget tactic. You need to work throughout its run to get the most out of your budget, targeting, and creative. Reacting to performance data and letting it inform your optimizations is key to a well-performing campaign.

For example, are particular messages outperforming others? Pause your lower-performing ads and dedicate more of your budget to high-performing ones. Are repeat customers making more purchases than new customers? Put more budget behind your remarketing ad group.

Like the campaign’s launch, your fantasy football draft is half the battle of your season. It is your opportunity to build out your roster for the season. But what happens when one of your players gets injured? Or your star wide receiver gets suspended? Or you see a rookie who you believe has the potential for a breakout season.

Justin Jefferson’s injury last season threatened many fantasy football teams.

You must play the waivers and replace him with someone offering better value. In fantasy football, like in marketing, it is essential to continually look for opportunities to improve your team or campaign.

While working to improve your team or campaign throughout the season, it is essential to remember the bigger picture or prize.

It can be easy to get too focused on the data/optimizations and week-to-week matchups of a fantasy football season.

However, what you do in the short term should not have lasting impacts in the long term. For example, what if a particular audience gets inundated and annoyed with your ads because you are targeting them exclusively? What about when you reach the finite limits of your existing customers or remarketing audiences?

Like a marketing campaign in fantasy football, you need to make short-term decisions week-to-week, but you can’t let them impact your overall season. If a player gets injured in week 1 but could potentially return mid-season, is it worth dropping him for the short term if he won’t be available to you later when he returns? Or, how long do you stick with a struggling player simply because you invested significant draft capital in him?

When making in-season decisions or mid-campaign optimizations, remember to see the forest through the trees and keep your eyes on the ultimate prize: maximizing your return on campaigns and the championship in fantasy football!


Advertising

Marketing Strategy

What I Learned About Marketing from Fantasy Football

Over the years, VIA Studio has worked with various social media publishing tools, including 

, and more. However, two tools have truly stood out and won our hearts — 

. These tools have consistently delivered exceptional results, making us confident recommending them to our clients and partners.

Social media posting tools allow marketers to manage their social media profiles and accounts through one central hub. Their primary function is scheduling and posting content directly from the tool. Managing social media profiles individually can be time-consuming and make reporting difficult, as metrics, features, and capabilities can differ across social media platforms.
Beyond that service, they can offer additional functions like content and graphic creation, social listening, inbox/comment management, and more!

The first platform we have had a lot of success with for our clients is 

. Agorapulse has a streamlined and easy-to-use interface, and once all of your profiles are connected, the post calendar can clearly show everything that has been recently published, as well as what is scheduled for posting in the future.

Another benefit of Agorapulse is its social listening system. With social listening, marketers can understand how their brand is perceived on social media and the web. Users can create actionable searches to discover what their audience says about their brand — and competitors. Agorapulse listens and captures conversations from social networks, thousands of news websites, and millions of blogs.

In addition to its ease of use and social listening capabilities, Agorapulse’s reporting features are an excellent way to evaluate social performance and discover ideas for future content. We have found particular success with grouping our posts by content type (service offerings, holidays, direct marketing, etc.) using tags to get ideas on what platforms best support different types of content and what days/times are ideal for specific posts. Additionally, marketers using Agorapulse may discover that specific platforms are best suited for certain post types - Agorapulse makes these sorts of insights possible. Finally, all of this reporting can help provide marketers with ROI on their tactics to discover their right social strategy.

The base Agorapulse package costs $49 per user/month. Since the cost is per user, we recommend setting it up with a shared email if multiple team members need to use it. Otherwise, that cost applies to each user.

We typically recommend the Professional pricing plan for our clients ($79/month), especially since plans can be upgraded anytime if additional features are needed.

This is a huge benefit if a member of the creative team is managing your social media. You can easily create and schedule well-designed and well-branded posts using Creative Cloud Libraries and/or Brands, Adobe Cloud files, and Adobe Stock. Having creation and scheduling in one place is a huge productivity boost.

Even if you don’t fancy yourself a designer, 

 has A LOT of templates for you to use, which can give your postings a professional look.

Since Adobe is all about design and creative, the app is very good at developing content like video reels, stories, etc. Scheduling is also built into the mobile app.

Adobe Express allows you to collaborate with other team members on the same files and content.

Adobe Express currently allows up to 3 accounts per channel (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, and Twitter)

The biggest downside is the lack of monitoring and response, which is why we also love AgoraPulse!

Adobe Express is less expensive than Agorapulse but also doesn’t have the “social listening” features. Pricing starts at $9.99/month per user.

Whether you are an agency, an in-house marketer, or a small business owner, a social posting tool can help elevate your social content and make your work more efficient.

VIA Studio also recognizes that some tools suit certain needs better than others. We would definitely recommend Adobe Express for users focused on content and graphic creation. Meanwhile, Agorapulse is a better option for marketing-oriented users who are concerned about performance, market share, and ROI. If you need both, they can even be used together!

If you are interested in onboarding a social posting tool but don’t know where to start, 

! We can get you started on social media marketing, create a social media strategy specific to your business and needs, and even provide social graphics art direction to elevate your social presence.

Social Media & Audience Development

Boost Your Social Media Game: Agorapulse vs. Adobe Express

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Researching and planning is key to effective marketing strategy. We use data, insights, our gained knowledge and research born from curiosity to plan inventive, value-drive marketing plans for our clients.

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Marketing Strategy: Blog Posts

What I Learned About Marketing from Fantasy Football

Boost Your Social Media Game: Agorapulse vs. Adobe Express