Enterprise 2.0 – Sports Marketing and Sponsorships

Enterprise 2.0 – Sports Marketing and Sponsorships
Consider the multiplyer effect of combining tangible marketing efforts and traditional marketing with the reach, speed and penetration of online CPM.  Even negative events drive attention online much more rapidly than in traditional media.  (Dominos, United Airlines etc.).  While both of these are also brand & reputation examples, the real key is in the viral activity that was created and the rapidity of the spreading message.    

Combining online marketing with traditional marketing generates substantial leverage for sponsors, teams, and fans/consumers alike.  The ability to identify, reach and penetrate markets and niches in ways never before possible and with measureable and quantifiable results as compared to traditional spends is the reason individuals like Chad Hurley (YouTube-Google) have become involved at the highest levels of motorsports. Social Media represents an infinite number of channels for reaching and interacting with groups and individuals that affect your business.  

Online media channels offer the ability to interact directly with costumers and business interests that drive corporate revenues and YOUR brand, using a variety of media and quantifiable micro channels.  Online strategies can provide your company with new sales opportunities, promotional leverage, and even Voice of the Customer influence on product designs and purchasing decision making – increasing revenues at very cost effective margins. 

Online campaigning provides cost effective acceleration of CPM, as well as additional ways to establish loyal customer communities and evangelists that influence purchasing decisions that involve your brand. 

Technology enables companies to not only listen to discussions about their brand and offerings, but to actively participate in discussions WHILE purchasing decisions or comparisons are being made. 

For the first time in our lifetimes, business intelligence can be direct – and both the demand and supply sides enhanced using a combined offline and online medium of exchange.  Sales cycles can be shortened, analytics used to establish how a brand or sale message can be in the right place at the right time, and predictive calculations can even be applied to predict market and customer movements. 

For marketers – this means budgets can be more effectively allocated, results determined more accurately, and promotions and campaigns designed for maximum effectiveness.  Using online mechanisms and multiplyer effects, a traditional spend can be amplified and longer tails of interest created and sustained.

Online market analysis can also tell you what your competitor is doing, and how effectively.  It may even uncover hidden vulnerabilities at your company and theirs that can be owned by the first mover.  You may even discover stealth projects and product launches that you never knew existed, and if tools are run on yourself – you may know where your own investment efforts might be compromised in order to take protective measures. 

Do you know what your competitors are doing and where they have had successes or mistakes?  How would you like to accelerate your learning, and avoid the costly missteps? Have you considered how to use your competitors marketing spends to actually drive attention in your direction? 

Brand monitoring and market monitoring policies and procedures effectively protect brand equity and massively reduce risk profiles.   Pre-emptive measures can be established for your brand, and knowing a competitors vulnerability – you can determine whether exploitation of a weakness is appropriate or not. 

For the first time ever, customers have a voice and are requiring companies to listen and act accordingly.  Those who do not embrace the online medium are rapidly losing market share to those that do.  In a Darwinistic sense, obsolescence is being greatly accelerated as the world changes. 

Is your company evolving? 

Keep in mind that customers can instantly search for information about your company, products, prices, services etc.  It is far better business to produce, control, and participate in this information flow than to either have a competitor provide dis-information, or let your corporate identity online be created by the masses.    

Do you know what the world is saying about your company and how it is impacting your bottom line?