How can sports teams and leagues get brand sponsors and corporate partners to understand that social media activation is now more valuable than experiential activations? This is literally a multi-million dollar question.
Social media and digital activation are typically bundled into sponsor agreements, typically more a throw-in than a specific element of a sponsorship program. But today, activating a sponsor on social media is too important and valuable to treat as an afterthought. Sport sponsors need social media activation because fans are engaged 24/7 on those channels. We have been programming game-day activations once or twice a week, but social media requires different thinking. It can be a continuous co-branding program for sponsors all week or all month long. Just as uniforms with logos are worn every day by players, every sponsor can become part of the brand in an organic and authentic way.
Social media is quickly becoming the primary way for fans to engage with sponsors. Today, social media is where sponsors can target specific audiences and meet specific activation objectives. Audience segments can be specifically targeted, as demographic information becomes more critical in corporate partner acquisition planning. The key to delivering and demonstrating this value to sponsors is to frame assets and activations around specific digital goals and wrap ALL of their impressions and engagements together — across your branded channels but also including athletes, staff, freelancers and staff.
To help sports marketers in this critical area, Greenfly has published a new guide, Eight Ways to Demonstrate Value to Sponsors Through Social Media. This corporate partnership resource outlines partner goals and offers actionable tips and insights for digital teams and sponsor marketing strategists to deliver against those goals through social media.
As partnership and digital / social media teams collaborate more, the organization can better deliver activations that provide more value for both fans and sponsors. When social media teams have a better idea of the typical objectives that prospects and partners have each season, they can more effectively collaborate to conceptualize and create the best content to achieve those goals.
An easy way to start is to frame any potential sponsored social media content around which business objectives each can fulfill. For example:
- What goal does a logo on a win graphic accomplish for a partner?
- What objective does a BOGO offer after a win support?
- When does sponsored content make sense based on the sponsor’s stated goals?
- Which goal does a contest target? A social media sweepstakes?
Your organization is likely already integrating corporate partners into social media. But the key to getting more value for these assets is to frame the activation around specific sponsor goals. That will determine the right measures of success and how to turn those metrics into monetary values for the partner. This guide will walk through how to do that with eight different sponsor activations in sports and social media.
As the pandemic diminishes gameday and in-venue sponsor activations, social media stands out as an enormous opportunity for sports organizations to recoup revenue and deliver value for sponsors.
Get the guide and seize that opportunity. Leverage social media for sponsor activation. Make your organization’s sponsored social media more effective, engaging, and lucrative than ever before.
Build Sponsor Value Through Social
Download this free guide for examples, insights and ideas on how to show ROI for your corporate partners.
