3 Common Sports Sponsorship Mistakes and How to Transcend Them
Brands often sponsor sports due to an affinity between the sport and their own mission, or a desire to expand their reach to the fans in the team’s or league’s markets. They might be chasing a strategic goal, such as building brand awareness or stealing share of voice from a competitor. Ultimately, most sponsors want to boost revenue and shareholder returns.
All of the above and more is possible, but brands sometimes fail to maximize the value of sports sponsorships. Three common sponsorship mistakes are limiting campaigns to logo placement, focusing on short-term impressions, not long-term connections, and failing to set objective measures of success beyond ‘awareness.’
Here’s how brands can transcend those three common mistakes and realize the full potential of sports sponsorships.
Go Beyond Logo Placement
Logo placements and naming rights are classic vehicles for sports marketing that generate mentions and brand awareness. But they are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to sponsorship marketing opportunities.
Additional rights to sponsorship can also include complementary tactics such as using the team’s logo on branded products for sale within its marketing area or taking advantage of exclusive opportunities for in-stadium activations. Brands can also go beyond top-of-funnel awareness campaigns, implementing in-game trigger promotions or giveaways that lead to fan responses, such as sign-ups. These activations create opportunities to follow up with consumers via email or digital marketing, ushering them into their funnel and boosting the probability of a sale.
For an example of a brand going beyond logo placement in sports sponsorships, consider Heineken. The company launched a reverse vending machine at the soccer club Inter Miami’s stadium. Fans were able to recycle empty beverage containers and scan a QR code with a transaction ID to win team merchandise and Heineken products.
Campaigns like Heineken’s do not just boost awareness; they create verifiable, data-driven connections between a sponsor and fans that can foster repeat purchases, retargeting campaigns, and lifetime value. They also bring the fan closer to the brand, its products, and what the brand stands for (in this case, not just a good time but sustainability). This closer relationship boosts campaign memorability.
Create a Connection, Not Just an Impression
It is one thing to slap a brand’s logo on a stadium and hope to boost awareness with a team’s fans. Brands can reach another level of engagement and sponsorship memorability by connecting their sponsorship to the experience fans are having when they engage with the marketing campaign.
There are some classic connections between sports and brands. For example, Budweiser and Corona split the beer category as MLB sponsors to capitalize on the familiar vision of fans enjoying a cold beer while watching baseball on a summer day. Dairy Queen is doing the same with a new MLB sponsorship for those not of age.
Other brands bring their technical capabilities to bear. The enterprise software company SAP is doing just that by partnering with the NHL, showcasing its computing abilities by providing real-time analytics to NHL coaches. This does not just get SAP’s name in front of fans but rather shows them what SAP can do.
Brands can also craft a connection to a local market through sports sponsorships. Chick-Fil-A has implemented that strategy in the Atlanta region through its sponsorship of The College Football Hall of Fame and the Peach Bowl, which has since grown to a national audience. On the brand’s sponsorship of the local market, Chick-Fil-A CMO Jon Bridges said, “We like being part of the Atlanta community … It’s good for our hometown,” a sentiment more likely to connect with local fans than a brand with no regional affinities simply stamping its logo on football stadium signage.
Set Objective Measures of Success Tied to Business Goals
As brands become increasingly data driven, the days of executives sponsoring teams just to get tickets to games are quickly fading into memory. The standard now is using sponsorships to forge long-term partnerships that spur measurable progress toward business goals such as increasing sales, reaching a new market, strengthening a current market, or preventing a competitor from gaining traction.
By investing in revenue growth and tying sponsorship tactics to business goals, marketers can evaluate their success through quantifiable metrics and iterate to optimize campaigns. The key to unlocking this measurable value is transcending the outdated misconception that sponsorships’ business impact is limited to boosting brand awareness.
By capitalizing on natural connections between the sponsor and the sponsored event, sport, or team and incorporating direct-response marketing and data collection into campaigns, brands can realize the full value of sports sponsorships, transforming awareness into action.
FanAI helps brands understand and measure sponsorship impact on sales using unique insights to maximize investments. Our mission is to help brands realize the true value of sponsorships by proving their impact on sales, and our vision is to be the leader in optimizing brand marketing performance.
