Sports Sponsorship - Digital Trends 2019
Sports sponsorship is gaining in popularity every year. In our time, when digital media are overloaded with various promotional messages, sports offer somewhat extraordinarily valuable - real emotions. Thanks to the development of digital technologies, sports clubs and sponsors have even more opportunities for marketing.
To enhance the target audience, marketers often use a variety of contests, such as drawing tickets for a match for a repost or comment on social networks. The larger the event, the more interest it causes in people. Some advertisers have successfully used this tool for several years and focus their attention on this kind of promotion. This form of online marketing is not so creative. But creativity and emotions are a decisive factor in digital sports sponsorship. So, are social contests contributing to the real goals of sports sponsorship?
The ISPO.com website highlights 5 main trends in sports sponsorship, which will become trendy in 2019:
1. Brand sponsorship through storytelling and content marketing
For those who do not know what the notion of storytelling means, we will briefly explain. This word comes from two American words - story (story) and telling (tell). Storytelling is all that a person hears and sees around. It includes television programs, articles, radio programs, advertisements, etc. The main value of storytelling is that it causes emotions.
The tasks of storytelling for business are:
- to capture clients' attention;
- to bring trust;
- to create associations;
- to stimulate the emotional sphere of a person and to cause empathy in it.
People love interesting stories. This explains the effectiveness of storytelling. If you want to attract customers' attention to your brand by sports sponsorship, you should pay enough attention to such marketing tool as storytelling.
A few years ago, the sponsorship was that the logo of the brand was presented on the sports equipment. Today, sponsorship is the ability to launch storytelling and content marketing.
Even small companies can perform good storytelling. Regional brands actively and successfully use online marketing to promote themselves. For example, using social media, you can quickly bring promotional messages to a specific target audience and optimally increase your sponsorship in accordance with the budget.
The main tools of storytelling are video content, text posts in social networks, bright pictures and photos. The advantage of storytelling is that such content delivers people pleasure to read. Thanks to this tool, you can enhance brand reputation and sales.
2. Targeting
In order for marketing to work, it is necessary to clearly identify the target audience and to form successful messages to them. Instead of "one post for all," you need to prepare separate messages for each targeting group - individually for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and other social messengers.
Social networks provide great opportunities and easy tools for successful targeting. You can form a target group depending on customers' interests, place of residence, work, financial status, etc.
Marketers of football clubs, for example, can use a group of fans aged 18 to 30 who are the main share of all fans. The more precisely the audience to whom the information will be distributed is defined, the more successful the results will be.
If it is a regional club, you can target a specific region when determining your target audience. Due to this, the message will be sent to those people whom they were focused on.
The popular sports brand Adidas spends a lot of advertising resources. They use another interesting targeting strategy - their own Adidas platform and application. Different users receive different messages from Adidas and, of course, exclusive offers.
3. Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is a way to promote a product or service by attracting reputable people who are trusted by the community. For example, for fans of a popular actor an opinion of his idol is very important. In our time, well-known actors and musicians were replaced by bloggers who are particularly popular with young people.
Successful brands, working with popular and influential people, followed by thousands or hundreds of thousands of subscribers, achieve brilliant results in promoting their companies.
When influencer marketing is planned and implemented properly, it not only gives super results, but also creates the right pace and dynamics, activates people.
However, erroneous campaigns will not only be of no use, but they can also damage the reputation of sponsors. A professional approach and qualitative selection of influencers is the key to a successful influencer marketing.
Marketing experts recommend that they refuse to cooperate with "fast" and temporary sponsors, which marketers are offered by some platforms. For a good result, you should look for long-term partnerships, not a one-time effect.
Benefits of influencer marketing for business are:
- According to statistics, almost 90% of users trust reviews of goods on the Internet and the opinion of reputable people.
- Advertisements bring about 30% confidence, and the advice of friends, acquaintances and other people who are trusted - by 90%. However, these recommendations should be sincere and unobtrusive.
- Normal ads are tedious and quickly forgotten.
- Authorities that promote a particular brand are likely to value their reputation and recommend only products which they trust.
The main task of brands is to provide influential people with information about their product, to tell about the goals of promotion.
Michael Jordan and Nike, David Beckham and Adidas are examples of long-term partnerships and successful influencer marketing.
4. Movement is life
More and more people go out for morning or evening jogging. Mass sports are not only useful, but also very trendy in our time. Running, football, triathlon are particularly attractive sports for sponsors.
In Germany, football not only dominates media coverage, but also accounts for a main share of sports sponsorship costs. Nevertheless, there is a shift in the sports sponsorship market. As numerous modern studies have shown, running and triathlon attract more and more companies.
Attributes of endurance, willpower and the desire to train can be used for marketing in various fields. For example, car makers, insurance companies are increasingly using famous football players and athletes to advertise their products. Physical exercise creates a great emotional connection - and it can also be used in many ways in online marketing.
For example, a messaging "experience can not be bought for money" can be used to advertise training with a sports star representing a particular brand.
Another interesting thing is the sponsorship of joint activities for runners. For example, regional marathons that join different athletes give runners the opportunity to share their passion for sports with others and attract more people to run.
5. Social responsibility
Responsible attitude towards their business, consumers, employees and harmonious interaction with the society - is a social responsibility for the goods and services that companies offer to people.
What, in fact, consumers expect from successful sports sponsorship? Yens Falkenau of Nielsen Sports presented the sponsorship study at the ISPO Digitize Summit. One of the interesting results of the study is that "for respondents interviewed social activity, promotion of young talents and promotion of young people - and not just lotteries - are the most important attributes of successful sponsorship," Falkenau said.
Social networks affect the people's minds - it's well-known and often mentioned in a negative context. Facebook, Instagram and other social networks can be used efficiently for sponsors who protect the environment or promote equal rights and pluralism in accordance with the motto "Do good and talk about it."
A combination of interesting emotional storytelling with successful targeting and the right authorities, as well as sponsoring services can give you a great result of brand promotion.
Digital marketing revolutionizes sports sponsorship. Marketing managers are increasingly directing their budgets from print media, radio and television to Internet, especially to social media. However, increased competitive pressure increases the cost of campaigns.
Therefore, creativity is needed. With well-informed and thought-out influencers and targeting, even small and medium-sized sports companies can reach their target groups on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other up-to-date platforms. The goal is to create a stable, emotional connection between the brand and the customer. And sports sponsorship is perfect for this.