Has digital changed the very essence of Sports Marketing or just given us a new set of tools to play with?

Digital within Sports Marketing has seen an emergence within the industry. Digital tools such as blogs, social networks, video sharing, and others have created new communication mediums. It has also created an adaptable communications tool that has allowed fans and customers access and enable engagement with sport stars and campaigns.

Digital has allowed sports marketing campaigns to do more and engage with target audiences that even conventional mediums such as billboard advertisements can’t even yield. Innovations to technology have seen the industry gradually adapt to change.

Digital use within the industry has seen a cost effective method of ‘getting the message through’. The use of social media tools such a Facebook allows access to a wider community worldwide in comparison to newspaper campaigns. This method is cheaper, allows a larger presence and can me measured accurately unlike newspapers. This can be exemplified through Cadburys ‘Bring back Wispa’ campaign, which gained a huge buzz amongst the online community and Wispa eventually made a comeback.

Social media allows marketers to see who’s talking about brands, manage reputations and interact with the communities. It enables brands and athletes grow wider audience participation as well as creating deeper relationships with fans and customers. Platforms such as Twitter enable athletes to communicate directly with online audiences. This connection allows the fan to feel as if they have ‘behind the scene’ access to the athlete. The Twitter page of Brazilian football star Kaka, who has over 2.5 million followers, illustrates the power of digital and the potential it has.

The great thing about digital tools is that it is fairly easy to demonstrate the return on investment on campaigns. Tools like Google Analytics can help build affective measurement systems to see how many people found your website, purchased something, commented or shared your campaign. It also allows accurate measurement variables such as time, date, region and even assess peaks and troughs. With digital analyses tools you can even set up different URLs, landing pages and do split testing to see which variables have brought the best results.

In essence digital has not only provided us with a tool to help us with sports marketing but many varied to tools to go over and beyond with campaigns. Hence, marketers need to adapt to digital strategies to compete with the market.