Strategic PR Plan: Expanding the Indiana Fever Fan Base - Project

This assignment presents a comprehensive strategic public relations plan designed to expand the fan base of the Indiana Fever, a WNBA team. The plan begins with an evaluation of the current WNBA market and the Indiana Fever's existing fan base, including demographics and levels of interest. It identifies target audiences, including students, staff, and the broader community, and analyzes data illustrating the growth of the target audience over time. The plan also provides examples of how social media platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, can be utilized to engage with fans and disseminate information. The assignment demonstrates how to create a plan to leverage social media and data to increase the team's reach and engagement.

Running head: STRATEGIC PR PLAN 1
Strategic Plan
Name
Institution
Author’s Note

STRATEGIC PR PLAN 2
Expand Fan Base for Indiana Fever
The current fan base for Indiana Fever mainly consists of basketball enthusiasts who are
found both at the internal and external parts of the institution. As a result, the current fan base of
the students is approximated to be around 50%. This indicates that a considerable population of
students is interested in watching basketball at any given time. The other staff members
constitute about 20% of the current fan base.
Additionally, the fan base can be expanded by creating awareness across different
individuals for them to be aware of what the team is capable of doing. At the same time, to
expand Indiana Fever's fan base, it will be essential to organize quite a several events and be able
to show excellent performance in the games. It will contribute towards an expansion of the fan
base through high levels of reputation that Indiana Fever shall have gained.

STRATEGIC PR PLAN 3
Current Evaluation of WNBA, team market
The women’s National Basketball Association has been able to gain popularity due to
various issues that have been surrounding its boundaries. As a result, people have developed a lot
of interest in knowing some of the things that are being encountered within the Women’s
National Basketball Association (Spiteri et al., 2018). Interestingly, it is currently working hard
towards addressing the goals of different people and also serving their interests without any fear
of favor. The top management officials who can run the association are well trained and
experienced, thus making sure that everything is on the right path at all times. Since the
association is attached to a vast range of goals and objectives, it has been working hard to ensure
that these are adequately attained within a reasonable time frame (Mehran et al., 2016).
What is more important is that several teams that are attached to the Women's National
Basketball Association are likely to be connected to different types of counterpart teams. This,
therefore, makes the Tulsa Shock, the Seattle Storm together with Connecticut Sun to emerge as
the most recognized teams in the WNBA that are not capable of sharing the market with what is
known as the National Basketball Association Counterpart Team. One of the primary focuses
that is attached to this business plan is to come out by clearly proving and selling out the entire
idea that coming up with women's teams across different places is one of the most fundamental
investment options. It is also concerned with proving that is attached to good prospects together
with a high potential to adequately generate income for every player connected to the teams
along with a vast range of known entrepreneurs (Kester et al., 2017). On the other hand, WNBA,
as a form of investment options, is known to be associated with different sources of income. The
first one being the revenue that is usually collected from the ticket sales of special team
merchandise, which mainly entails various things like team logo, branded clothing, and even

STRATEGIC PR PLAN 4
cups. At the same time, women's basketball team also has the potential of generating revenue
from a vast range if endorsement together with companies that are capable of adverting their
products and services with the help of the team.
All the teams known to be fully attached to the Women's National Basketball
Association do not entail only winning the league title. Still, instead, it is also focused on the
generation of substantial returns for a good number of investors who are known to own the
teams. It is, therefore, imperative that every team within the league is known to be associated
with an individual business strategy on how it is going to make all the investments that are made
by the owners to become worthwhile. On the other hand, the most common approach likely to be
implemented by the WNBA teams is to perform better in the league championship adequately.
Any team that is capable of performing better in the tournament by winning more titles is likely
to be viewed by the prospective investors as a highly valuable team that is capable of offering the
security of income together with capital growth. This makes it quite common to see different
types of teams that are usually ranked in the leagues to be the ones capable of paying their
respective players a reasonable amount of money.
The current market is very essential in terms of determining the outcome that is likely to
be encountered in future. As a result, there is the need to always choose an appropriate and
reliable current market that will allow various goals and objectives to be attained with a
stipulated time frame (Wedel & Kannan, 2016). The following statistics provides clear
information regarding the current market through the use of different demographics;

STRATEGIC PR PLAN 5
Note: the data are obtained from Wedel & Kannan (2016)
As far as the current market is concerned, the females dominate a larger percentage of the market
compared to the males. Again, the young generation age in the market appears to be more active
when it comes to getting entertained with basketball compared to the old generation.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
Males Females Young Old

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Target audiences
Indiana Fever being among the potential teams that are concerned with achieving a vast
range of goals and objectives will be able to put a lot of focus on a specific target audience (De
Waegeneer et al., 2016). It will, therefore, be essential to come up with appropriate target
markets that will provide the team with one of the most comfortable times to carry out its
operations. A proper choice of the target audience will be able to benefit the organization in so
many ways (Litt & Hargittai, 2016). Through this, it will provide a perfect opportunity to
promote a vast range of its products, thus reaching out to a large population of people within the
shortest time possible. Again, this will ensure that the team is capable of targeting the right group
of people, thereby providing the team members with an easy time when hosting different games.
As a result, one of the primary target markets that will be attached to the team will be the
elementary, together with middle schools that are likely to originate from anywhere within s
distance of 200 miles. These target audiences will be viewed to be arising from "beyond the
classroom" environment. On the other hand, the team also targets groups of various students
arising from within the institution, most so the basketball enthusiasts who cannot go without

STRATEGIC PR PLAN 7
watching even a single game. Different institutional staffs who have been much into basketball
will also act as a target audience for this team. Finally, the outside community, which majorly
entails the parents, is also among the target audience that the team aims towards reaching out to
provide then with one of the best opportunities so far to witness different games that the tea will
be involved in.
Data-Driven
The following driven data clearly indicates how population numbers of the target
audience have been scaling up over the past years as a result of basketball gaining much
popularity.
Note: The data are obtained from Nadler & McGuigan (2018
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4

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From the above data, the total population of the target audience has been rising up almost
on a yearly basis over the past five years. One major contribution towards this kind of situation is
the ability of basketball to gain popularity as at a faster rate.
Social media examples
There is no other professional sports league apart from basketball that makes good use of
different types of social media platforms (Achen, 2016). Indiana Fever will, therefore, be able to
employ a reasonable social media manager who will be able to keep an eye on the team's social
media pages with real-time contents together with updates that are taking place from time to
time. The use of social media is essential when it comes to reaching out to various groups (Zhou
et al., 2016).
Instagram
It will, therefore, make good use of an Instagram page as one of the social media
examples that will significantly help to post various types of essential information and also be
able to interact with a different target audience who are likely to originate from different places.

STRATEGIC PR PLAN 9
Facebook
Again, the use of a Facebook account will be essential for the team to enable an active
interaction with the audience, thereby providing them with a perfect opportunity of presenting all
their views appropriately (Goh et al., 2013). The implementation of the social media examples
will, therefore, be carried out through with the highest level of ethics to help create boundaries
between what exactly should be done and what should be avoided (Nadler & McGuigan, 2018).
Each social media platform also be used based on the rules and regulations of the entire team.