Sponsorship is a unique opportunity to improve your influencer marketing strategy. It’s the starting point of collaborations with athletes, teams, and key opinion leaders (KOLs). Furthermore, it helps you reach a larger audience offline and online, on different channels. With zero effort.
Continue reading to find out how to make it happen.
TABLE OF CONTENT
- What’s influencer marketing?
- How about the challenges of influencer marketing?
- Sponsoring in sports – a comprehensive marketing tool
- Sports sponsorship advantages over influencer marketing
- Why choose an athlete or a team from the MotoGP World Championship
- Your business as a sponsor
Struggling to achieve something distinctive with your influencer marketing budget?
Sponsoring a team or a rider in MotoGP can give you
the boost you need.
WHAT’S INFLUENCER MARKETING?
You know the drills. Influencer marketing happens when you decide to work with popular social media users. It’s all about promoting products or services to their followers. Influencers have a large and engaged following, so they can generate awareness and interest in your company’s offerings. In some cases, they could even sway their followers’ purchasing decisions to your advantage.
There are a few different ways that you can cooperate with influencers. You may pay the influencer to mention your product in a post or story. Or, you may send the influencer free products to use and talk about. Sometimes, they might ask for help covering the costs of creating it.
HOW ABOUT THE CHALLENGES OF INFLUENCER MARKETING?
Although it can be effective, influencer marketing comes with its challenges:
- It can be challenging to find the right influencers to work with. There are a lot of fake or inactive accounts out there, and it can be hard to know who is worth collaborating with.
- There are many influencers on social media, and it can be time-consuming to find the right fit.
- Some of the most popular influencers lack storytelling. Nor do their post communicate relevant values to their audience. It’s unfortunate, but being viral doesn’t always go hand-in-hand with life-purpose content.
- Some influencers are being called out as inauthentic. They promote products that are irrelevant to their usual content. In other cases, the feed is so staged that the followers choose to overlook any ads coming from it.
- Some influencers prefer to work on a one-off basis. That means that you will get a limited amount of coverage and a short-term partnership.
- One single post may result in a very high fee. Since the algorithm may play tricks against you sometimes, that one single post might not even go far.
Photo credit: Oladimeji Ajegbile
SPONSORSHIP IN SPORTS – A COMPREHENSIVE MARKETING TOOL
Sports sponsorship is a comprehensive marketing tool that you can use to reach a wide range of objectives. It can range from experiential marketing to short-form video content. It’s a great choice to align with a sports team or athlete. You can increase your media exposure and positive associations, as well as grow your customer engagement. Additionally, you can target specific demographics, drive sales, and build brand loyalty.
Sports sponsorship goes beyond a brand name on a motorcycle fairing or a jersey.
Struggling to achieve something distinctive with your influencer marketing budget?
Sponsoring a team or a rider in MotoGP can give you
the boost you need.
SPORTS SPONSORSHIP ADVANTAGES OVER INFLUENCER MARKETING
- Teams and athletes run accounts on social media platforms, as well as websites.
- It’s easy to locate the athletes that fit your brand’s needs. Determine the sport and the level of the competition: you will have a whole set of options among which you can choose.
- Athletes and teams are natural storytellers, and they can offer meaningful values to their audience. Think of some of the following and how they could fit with your brand:
– Dedication
– Overcoming setbacks
– Teamwork
– Sportsmanship
– Healthy lifestyle - As a sponsor, you can count on a genuine connection with the team or athlete. Any time you run a promotional activity, it will be genuine since your brand is backing up the sportsman. Your campaign will raise interest in the athlete’s followers. The do-good factor generated by sponsoring will positively encourage the followers. Your brand supports their favourite athlete, and so they will support you in exchange.
- Teams and athletes plan their sponsorship agreements for a whole season. In MotoGP, that means a consistent flow of content from February until November. This means plenty of material that your marketing team can use – which always comes in handy on social media. As a sponsor, you can start by sharing the results of your athletes on your social media accounts. But you can also have them do take-overs, showing the backstage of the sport they compete in, and the day-to-day of a sportsman.
- You can grow a healthy and long-term partnership with athletes and teams. That will increase your credibility and generate trust, as well as achieve positive PR.
- When it comes to posts dedicated to your brand, athletes and teams will agree on a plan beforehand. Together, you will set out the quantity of branded content to promote your business. That can range from an introduction of your company to the audience, to the launch of new products. But it doesn’t stop there. As a sponsor, your brand appears on the motorcycle of the athlete. Each time he publishes photos of his sports activities your brand will be there. Over and over, with consistency (and tags). The audience will remember and familiarise themselves with your brand, and not only through dedicated posts.
- Not enough? Think of your athlete winning or being one of the main guys of the show. Your brand won’t be only on the athlete’s profile. It’ll appear on his team’s account, on the Championship platforms, on the news, and of course on the good old TV.
WHY CHOOSE AN ATHLETE OR TEAM FROM THE MOTOGP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
MotoGP holds an impressive fan base of 40 million, spread out over different social networks. We guess this is a good sign of its popularity to start, but you can read more about the Championship here.
MotoGP ranks highest in motorcycle racing, with bikes that reach over 300km/h. The sport attracts some of the most skilled riders and teams in the world, with close-fought and unpredictable races. MotoGP fans love the sport for its excitement and spectacle.
By sponsoring, you can gain valuable exposure for your brand while supporting your favourite athlete. Racing fans and customers appreciate your commitment to the sport. Sponsoring a rider can help you grow goodwill in the racing community. On top of that, you can also get exclusive benefits, such as access to VIP hospitality areas and passes to attend the races.
The MotoGP World Championship consists of three categories (MotoGP, Moto2, and Moto3). That means you can explore different possibilities, and make the most out of your (big or small) budget.
YOUR BUSINESS AS A SPONSOR
As we mentioned, you can integrate influencer marketing with a sponsorship plan, generating extra benefits. At its core, sponsorship is a better choice than common influencer marketing, as it’s connected to the values of the sport.
Unstructured influencer marketing can be shallow. Yet, through sponsoring you can count on a whole different perspective: sportsmen will act out as social proof for your product.
Not only your favourite athlete will promote your business on social platforms. He will deliver authentic content, that you can use for your brand.
Thanks to sponsorship, you can strengthen your brand identity with compelling values. Overcoming challenges, dedication, and passion are at the core of competition.
Are these values what move you, too?
Photo credit: Ann H
Struggling to achieve something distinctive with your influencer marketing budget?