The Ultimate Guide to Sports Marketing (Part 2)
5 minute read · Issue Number 59 · Match 12th, 2021
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Bonjour!
Welcome to part two of The Ultimate Guide to Sports Marketing. In the first chapter, we defined sports marketing, the sports market, and sports consumers' types.
By the way, I’m creating a mega-thread with the takeaways from the sports marketing guide on Twitter. Check it out:
Today’s chapter dives into the sports marketing process. What is it about, how does it work, and how can you use it for your organization?
Shall we?
The Sports Marketing Process
Sports marketing exists to satisfy the needs of sport consumers.
Sports organizations need to know what they are good at and deliver value to the sports consumer from a strategic standpoint.
The best way of finding this intersection is through the four-step sports marketing process:
Opportunities
Strategy
Mix
Evaluation
Let’s take a look at each one of the different stages.
Opportunities
“If we knew what were doing it wouldn’t be called research.” - Albert Einstein
The first thing a sports organization needs to do is to identify sports marketing opportunities.
It starts with an analysis of the conditions in the external marketplace (competitors, technology, etc.) and a sports organization's internal environment (strengths and weaknesses, mission, vision, objectives, performance measures, stakeholders).
The analysis allows sports marketers to understand better the market, the consumer, the industry, the competitors, and the organization.
Strategy
Marketers will use the gathered information from the research phase to formulate a marketing strategy that will differentiate the organization, its products, and services from others and position the brand in consumers' minds.
Marketers must be clear on the enterprise's vision and objectives to create a strategy to align with the desired outcomes.
In this step, marketers will elaborate a plan that will cover the following concepts:
Positioning (how to differentiate the product or service in the market)
Segmentation (who is the target)
Mix
You may be familiar with the marketing mix as they’re known as the ‘Four Ps.’
The mix is a collection of critical elements that marketers take into their sports marketing plans.
At this stage, marketers sit down in meetings for hours to make important decisions about the product, the different distribution systems, pricing, and promotional strategies.
Each sub-segment defined in the strategy stage will have its unique marketing mix.
These four elements are essential and should be coordinated together in an integrated fashion.
What do they mean?
Product: the good (or service) that benefits the sports consumer. It can be tangible and intangible. Marketers need to define its features.
Price: the cost a consumer needs to pay to acquire the product or service and the different strategies to price it to the market (i.e., price discrimination)
Promotion: activities designed to attract, stimulate the attention, awareness, and interest of the buyer.
Place (distribution): specifies where consumers access the sport product or service, as it helps the organization to create systems to deliver the product to the consumer best.
Evaluation
The last stage of the sports marketing process focuses on implementation, evaluation, and control.
Here’s where the action happens.
Marketers need to make sure the plan remains on track through systematic evaluation and modification.
In this last stage, monitoring and controlling the process is essential because it feedbacks on every other step of the process, and it allows the marketers to redefine objectives.
How to apply this in your organization?
Whether you’re involved in the sports industry or not, I think there’s a lot you can learn from the sports marketing process.
Stage one is about figuring out what’s happening in the market and about learning about your company. Stage two is about carefully planning and differentiating what you want to put out there with what already exists. Stage three is the methodology through which you’ll execute stage two. And the last part is about execution and evaluation.
The principles apply to every organization, regardless of the industry.
QUICKIES
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Until next week,
Ronen Ainbinder
Twitter: @Ronenain
Website: ronenainbinder.com
Book a call with me: superpeer.com/ronen
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