What Is Sports Marketing?

Sports Marketing (Sports Marketing) is a marketing activity that uses sports activities as a carrier to promote its products and brands, and is a means of marketing.

Sports marketing

(Marketing method)

Sports Marketing (Sports Marketing) is a marketing activity that uses sports activities as a carrier to promote its products and brands, and is a means of marketing.

Sports marketing includes two levels. One is to refer to sports as product marketing. The other refers to the use

Sports marketing includes two levels. One is to refer to sports as product marketing. From a team and its athletes to an event and a sports meeting, they can be regarded as products in the sense of marketing. This level can be called "

1. Business Opportunities Behind Sports Activities With the widespread spread of sports craze, sports are both ornamental and competitive.

Sports sponsorship

Sports marketing promotes its own brand through sponsored sports activities. This has become the two most popular marketing strategies in the global market with star promotion. However, we must follow the "4-1" rule when it comes to sports marketing.

Flea rule

You can jump as high as you want. This as

Sports marketing advantages

Sports consumers tend to associate themselves with sports, creating an opportunity to enhance brand loyalty to related sponsored products; and sports marketing has become a common favor of consumers and businesses with its unique charitable, interactive, and cost-effective advantages Brand communication. The specific reasons are as follows: 1. Sports stimulate personal emotional attachment, and sports marketers can associate the brand of enterprises and products with the excitement, motivation and emotion of the game;

2. Sports generally attracts and penetrates all elements of life, and can cross barriers such as culture, beliefs, and race. If you want to find a common language for communication around the world, it must be sports, which is the fairness of sports culture. , Equal, and borderless communication functions, allowing sports marketing to fulfill the brand dream of many businesses.

3. On the other hand, as a sports event with media functions, due to the different group popularity, specifications, and attractiveness of the event, its ability to propagate and the value of business investment vary widely. As a participating enterprise, how can it be faced with reality? Finding value and earning returns are even more urgent! 4. An important trend of general marketing is the change from the direction of "advertising" marketing to "business-oriented" marketing. This transformation can establish the public moral image of "ethics" and "social responsibility" of enterprises, and sports marketing is catering to To this trend;

Sports marketing is a systematic project that relies on sports activities (sponsorship form), combines products (or enterprises) with sports, and gives the connotation of sports events to corporate brands, forming unique corporate identification, image decoding and transfer, and brand internalization and interpretation of value-added system engineering. . Sports marketing can be regarded as one of the most effective marketing tools in the 21st century. It is a strategy in business management. All walks of life have recognized the effectiveness of sports marketing in achieving business goals.

Sports marketing considerations

Sports sponsorship is expensive and risky

Because of its healthy and progressive, continuous hard work and public welfare characteristics, sports are easy to be widely accepted and followed, and the effect is obvious. Therefore, it is by far the most expensive of all corporate sponsorships, and it has grown significantly year by year.

Sports sponsorship investment is huge, often after the company sponsors a project

Sports marketing

A large proportion is used, and the main focus of the year is around funding, material resources, and promotion. It can be seen that the success or failure of the sponsored project has a great impact on brand building throughout the year and in the long run. Due to the actual situation of each company is different, the sponsorship evaluation, planning, financial strength, implementation and other shortcomings of sports events, sports sponsorship can not all achieve the expected ideal results. According to statistics, of the more than 200 companies that sponsored the Atlanta Olympics, only about 25% of them received returns. Some companies only received some short-term benefits, and some companies even lost their money. In addition, the prediction of the future trend of sports events also has risks.

Lenovo sponsors the TOP6 program, and will pay the International Olympic Committee about 65 million U.S. dollars and 3-5 times the supporting funds totaling more than 2 billion yuan. For companies with a current business scale of only more than 20 billion yuan, Existing risks have been the focus of outsiders. It's not uncommon for a company to be dragged down by sponsoring a football team.

The door to the door

Sports sponsorship refers to the payment of a certain amount of cash or in-kind to a sports event as a special business practice in which the sports project is involved in the development of partnerships to achieve their respective organizational goals. Sports events are the basic carrier for corporate sponsorship to exert commercial effects, and are the most important indicators for assessing whether and how to sponsor. Therefore, sports sponsorship must be done on a household basis, which needs to be considered from the following aspects

1. Is the event suitable for the target consumer group?

If the sponsored sports project is not the target consumer group and is not loved by them, there will be no commercial value and no sponsorship. This is the most basic consideration factor. This seems simple enough. However, some companies feel that a certain project is not expensive in actual operation. Many people pay attention to it, or they decide to sponsor it in a hurry when they are valued by government departments. A greeting, a familiar face and no other use.

2. Does the sports sponsorship project match the brand positioning and product characteristics?

No matter what form the sports sponsorship takes, the ultimate goal is to build and consolidate a strong brand positioning service, which affects sales.

The brand must have a product carrier. First of all, the sports we want to sponsor are consistent with the characteristics of the products they sell. The product characteristics include: product functions, features, and sales area. For example, a regional health supplement for women is not suitable for sponsoring a national football league.

Also, sports sponsorship programs must be aligned with brand positioning. The Marlboro cigarette brand has repeatedly sponsored Formula One Europe, linking the masculinity of the world's top drivers with the manly brand connotation of Marlboro. Later, Marlboro has transplanted this strategy to China. In China, Marlboro has sponsored CCTV's "Sports World" column and China's A-A league. Its sponsorship strategy has successfully enabled Chinese audiences to associate Marlboro with exciting sports events and sportsmanship (and sports fans, fans are mostly smokers), and it has exemplified Marlboro's brand connotation-freedom, rough , Adventurous. Once again won the favor of a wide audience.

Marlboro has been sponsoring events with this characteristic, Formula One racing, and football. That's for Marlboro's brand positioning. If you don't leave the sponsorship of this brand positioning, it will be completely different and meaningless.

3. Whether the event is generally recognized and on the rise.

Whether the sponsored sports are generally recognized will determine the breadth of the brand and the degree of public recognition. Sports events also follow the law of wavy development. If it was a hot topic in sports at the time, it was the subject of discussion. Of course, it would spread widely and the effect would be much better than passive communication. The event is going up or down, which will affect the brand s reputation. Sponsoring an event that is full of vitality will often make consumers feel that your brand is young and dynamic. Sponsoring an event that disappoints the target audience and is on the decline will often make consumers feel that sponsored brands are old-fashioned and unwelcome.

Some companies with limited strength can target the current breadth of influence, but have good development

Sports marketing

Sports that show their potential and are on the rise. Even small brands try not to look for overdue sports that may be eliminated.

4. Look at the sponsorship of competitors.

Sponsoring sports also depends on your main competitors. If a competitor sponsors the same or similar sports and is one level higher than the one you plan to sponsor, then it is recommended that you give up immediately, otherwise you will be the victim of the worst. Because you choose to fight directly with your competitors, and your opponent is obviously better than yourself, then you can only leave the impression to the target consumer: When mentioning sponsored sports, consumers remember that they are competitors' brands and forget Even if I knew you, I naturally felt that you were worse than my competitors. In this case, you can find a sport that is suitable for your own positioning and can be distinguished from your competitors.

On the contrary, your sponsored project is stronger than your competitors and has the ability to do a good job. It is recommended to snatch this sponsored brand with your competitors.

Consistent sports sponsorship is the life of sports sponsorship

1. Lack of long-term planning and operation of sponsored projects, serious short-sighted behavior, is the weakness of Chinese enterprises. There were 37 sponsors of the Chinese delegation of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. By the 2000 Sydney Olympics, there was only one Li Ning company (Jianlibao was forced to withdraw due to the exclusiveness of Coca-Cola products). This change in number shows that many companies The sponsorship is still immature, and the understanding of sponsorship is too simple or one-sided. As a result, companies did not get the due benefits, and some even carried a heavy burden, so they were forced to withdraw.

In contrast, foreign companies have a set of long-term sponsorship plans. They even use sports sponsorship as part of their marketing strategy. They set up specialized departments to specialize in public relations planning for sponsored projects, or are led by the president to target the huge market of sports sponsorship. R & D to market, capital to talent, and full mobilization. Realizing sports sponsorship and building your own brand has become part of the company's strategy implementation, and it has been implemented in place.

2. The enterprise must achieve continuity and rhythm in the implementation of the plan. The audience will only have an impression of continuous and rhythmic stimuli. This is the life of sports sponsorship.

Since sports sponsorship is mainly based on psychological effects, various benefits can only be achieved through long-term and unremitting efforts, which is difficult to achieve overnight. Therefore, sports sponsorship is important to maintain, whether it is sponsorship goals or sponsored projects, to maintain relative stability, so that Form a systematic and complete sponsored brand image.

Complete supporting execution capabilities

Sports sponsorship is a complex and systematic activity. In order for the sponsorship project to exert the best sponsorship benefits, it must have a complete supporting implementation capability. And many domestic companies often think that the company has sponsored expenses, and it has finished with the rights of advertising, etc. In fact, this misunderstanding, with a good sponsorship project, it is hard to spend a lot of manpower and material resources to expand the cooperation. Working, it's like buying a good horse, but you can't bear a good saddle. To really make good use of the benefits of sponsorship, it is necessary to cooperate through the promotion of high-altitude media, ground promotion activities, the development of new markets, and product development within the enterprise.

First, formulate a long-term and comprehensive implementation plan.

Because of its non-simple corporate behavior, sports sponsorship also involves sponsored parties, media, sports brokerage companies and other organizations. Due to the large scale of sports sponsorship activities, the marketing tools and propaganda methods involved are often not sufficient for enterprises. Alone

Sports marketing

It is only by weighing the relations between the parties that mutual benefit and close cooperation can create a good benefit for sports sponsorship. For enterprises, sports sponsorship has become an important marketing strategy for the company, so it is imperative to formulate a long-term and comprehensive implementation plan. Generally speaking, it is divided into two parts. The first is the medium and long-term sponsorship strategic plan. In this plan, it systematically explains its position in the company's overall strategy. The goals that need to be achieved are divided into several steps. What is the target plan for each year? What is the approximate budget. The second is a detailed annual implementation plan, which generally includes this year's sponsorship goals, the core of dissemination, cooperation with this project in several steps, how to cooperate (promotion, media placement, product coordination, etc.), personnel organization, etc.

Secondly, it is equipped with a professional execution team.

As mentioned earlier, sports sponsorship is a complex and systematic job. It not only requires enough professionals in all aspects (products, promotion, advertising, public relations, etc.) to be responsible for different tasks, but also requires event organizers to have comprehensive and professional practices. Experience and overall organizational skills to mobilize the entire execution team to complete tasks. Sports sponsorship is still a relatively new marketing tool in China, and a relatively mature professional team and operation mode have not been formed. This is a great difficulty for enterprises in the implementation process. Enterprises can use the richness of sports brokerage companies in this regard from the outside. Experience to train the company's main planning and organization personnel. At the same time, the entire operation of the company in a short period of time to train personnel, and slowly guide to become a professional executive, this type of performer is not only leave the original position, but also competent for sports sponsorship work.

Only by making plans, cultivating and equipping an executive team to ensure that funds are put in place, can the sponsorship effect be exerted. Prevent the whole sponsorship activity chain from being broken due to inadequate work done by a certain department or link, and make the company suffer losses.

Consider broad media involvement

It is necessary to consider the extensive participation of the media and enlarge the sponsorship rights. Sponsorship itself can not produce much communication effect, it is only the most basic tool for sponsors. The real effect is how companies use sponsorship and make good use of communication strategies. This is the essence of corporate sponsorship value.

Sports sponsorship is a kind of borrowing behavior that uses the brand of sports items to drive the corporate brand. Through the characteristics of public welfare and extensiveness of sports, it makes the brand quietly reach the hearts of the people and has a good impression on the brand. In this process, the exposure of the media to the sponsored brands is very important. However, in China's current media environment, your most basic sponsorship rights will also be ruthlessly strangled by the media, because the media does not recognize that your sponsorship is related to him, and will not mention you as a sponsor. So later it was discovered that people only remember wonderful sports events, and no one knows who has spent much money on sponsorship. Based on this environment, companies must form long-term and in-depth cooperative relationships with key media, such as professional sports media, mass media in key markets, and magnify the effect of sponsorship; through airborne media, combined with corporate ground promotions, etc. Promotion activities, reaching out to and attracting the participation of target customers, and deepening the understanding of the brand;

Sufficient financial support

The authors of the "positioning" theory, Al Les and Jack Trow, point out in the last article of their "22 Articles of Business Regulations": Without sufficient funds, no idea can be realized.

International successful sports sponsorship experience shows that the cost of supporting implementation is 3-5 times the sponsorship fee. If a company spends 10 million yuan to sponsor a certain event, then it will have to budget at least 30 million yuan as the related supporting promotion costs in order to obtain Good results.

Sports marketing

As early as 1996, The Coca-Cola Company invested a total of 450 million US dollars in sports in the global market throughout the year, while the funding for the sponsorship itself was only 40 million US dollars, and the other more than 400 million US dollars were all used for external cooperation and the market. Consolidation. The Coca-Cola Company invests $ 1 in sponsorship costs to invest $ 11 in the periphery and target markets for communication and consolidation. As a global partner of the 2005-2008 Olympic Games, Lenovo will pay more than 65 million U.S. dollars to the International Olympic Committee and 3-5 times the total supporting funds will exceed 2 billion yuan.

The sponsorship fee is just an entry voucher. It is the value of sponsorship to maintain the entire cooperation with the promotion activities. Therefore, long-term and continuous funding support is the key.

In summary, sports sponsorship is an emerging marketing method, with large investment and certain risks. Sports sponsorship is not a short-lived short-term behavior, but a long-term, continuous strategic planning. Sports sponsorship is not an isolated sponsorship activity. It is a systematic project that requires strong financial support and supporting implementation. Any misunderstanding and irregular operation of sports sponsorship will only make the sports sponsorship rushed into the market and become a painful "burning money campaign".