Keeping Score – Measuring ROI in Your Sports Sponsorship Program
Whether you’re a marketer trying to sell your CEO on the value of a sports sponsorship or a sports entity hoping to entice sponsors – you’ve got your work cut out for you. On both sides of the playing field, measuring the ROI of sports marketing can be a hefty challenge.
Associating your brand with a sport is a big investment, with the potential to do great things for your brand. Your logo on a football jersey, your name on a race car, the official water of the Olympic games – whatever it is, sports sponsorship is worth big money and you need to prove big returns.
Obstacles to Measuring the Value of a Sports Sponsorship
In a digital world, it’s easy to measure impressions, clicks, and average shopping cart values. But how do you prove things like driving brand loyalty and repeat customers (which is really what sponsorship is all about)?
When it comes to setting sponsorship ROI goals and determining metrics for success, things can get murky, and fast! Some of the most common challenges for sports marketers and sponsors are:
- Inconsistent and incomplete data. Such data is often inconclusive or leads to false conclusions
- Translating social media interaction and customer sentiment into monetary ROI
- Quantifying the true value of a team or entertainment property amidst a host of moving pieces: athlete performance, franchise value, brand building, star-appeal, and more
Thus, when asked to provide concrete evidence of a sponsorship program’s success, the first reaction is often panic.
Many sports marketers will try to cobble together data from a wide variety of sources. This practice, known as “duct tape marketing” may work for small projects, but quickly becomes ineffective when you attempt to scale. Understandably, most executives demand quantitative accuracy when there are millions on the line.
Despite these challenges, it doesn’t have to mean game over for your sponsorship program.
Overcoming Odds – How a Pro Research Firm Can Help you Determine the ROI of Your Sponsorship Program
A qualified market research partner can perform a detailed, robust study that incorporates all the complexities of sponsor activation. The results of the study are compiled in a report that can be easily tracked over time.
Study insights may include the following and more:
- Brand loyalty driven by your sponsorship, as compared with competitors
- Identify influencers: isolation of avid fans and insights into their behavior, attitudes and sphere of influence
- How fans move towards loyalty on a brand continuum
- Comparison of the avid fan to the average fan in order to better target your investment to those most likely to engage with your brand
- Detailed demographic profile of your fan community
- Insights into your fan community’s shopping behaviors
- Effectiveness of your sponsorship tactics
- The premium (in dollars) your brand commands as a result of the sponsorship, as compared to competitors
- Possible areas of expansion based on fan preferences
- Insights into how to create more avid brand loyalists through association with sports
We’d love to hear from you – what do you want to know about your sponsorship program? What’s been your greatest success?
