Marathon Sports Social Media Campaign
This social media campaign uses a strategy that aligns with the brand’s overall objectives to enhance brand visibility, engage the target audience, and drive the desired actions.
The Problem
The Solution
Since its founding in 1975, Marathon Sports has provided athletic gear to runners, walkers, and fitness enthusiasts across New England, growing from a single store in Harvard Square to 22 retail locations throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Despite this steady physical expansion, the brand has yet to fully harness the power of social media to match its in-store presence. Its current social media efforts lack the strategy and consistency needed to strengthen brand visibility, engage its audience, and drive conversions in an increasingly digital marketplace.
To address this gap, a comprehensive social media campaign was developed to align with Marathon Sports' brand goals and objectives. This campaign identifies key platforms that best suit the brand’s target audience and outlines clear strategies for engagement, content creation, and performance tracking. By leveraging these channels more effectively, Marathon Sports can expand its digital presence, build stronger connections with its community, and support both online and in-store growth.
Campaign Goals
The campaign objectives for Marathon Sports' social media campaign are to boost brand awareness through engaging and educational content that is targeted towards runners and people interested in fitness. The campaign aims to drive online sales of running gear and apparel by showcasing products. Additionally, it seeks to grow a strong sense of community by engaging with its followers. Overall, the objective is to enhance brand visibility, grow product sales, engage the target audience, and drive desired actions.
Social Media Audit
Marathon Sports has built a solid foundation across platforms like Instagram and Facebook, showing strong follower counts, consistent posting, and effective use of features like stories, reels, and hashtags. However, there are key opportunities for improvement in content variety, audience engagement, and platform consistency, particularly by promoting products more actively, re-engaging with X, and incorporating more strategic calls to action and hashtag usage.
What the Brand Does Well
Marathon Sports has an existing social media presence across multiple social media platforms including Instagram, Instagram, and X. They have thousands of followers on all these platforms and have established a fan base for their brand. The largest of these accounts is Instagram with 18.8k. They appear to be most active on Instagram. They take advantage of all the features that Instagram has to offer including posting stories and reels. Their Instagram and Facebook have the most consistent posting cadence, the posts have a characterized theme, and they add detail in each of their captions. On Instagram, they recognize the importance of using hashtags.
Opportunities for Improvement
Although they have a social media presence on these platforms, they still have so much room for growth and improvement. It is crucial that they engage with their followers by responding to comments and commenting on posts they are tagged in. With regards to content ideas, they need to make more posts about the products they are selling on their website. It wasn't often enough to come across posts that informed their audience of their brand's products. Most of the content is photos that recap running events and races. Instead, they should be posting before these events take place. This will inform people of these upcoming events and races that people can watch or participate in.
Additionally, they have not posted on X since September 2023. They need to get this account running again because it will increase their potential to grow across social media. Overall, they lack content creation, consistency, and a clear call-to-action and despite using hashtags on Instagram, they do not use enough of them. By making better content, increasing the number of posts per day, interacting with followers, and using more hashtags, they can increase their engagement and following on each platform.
