When companies and organizations hold events and conferences, these can get very costly, and someone has to foot the bill. In the past, this was an unshared prohibitive expense that stopped people from expanding on their business ideas and limited their growth.
That’s where digital sponsorship activation came in. Today, when sports fans and sponsor goals can come together, brands can turn them into a revenue stream that is a win-win.
Companies and organizations can now work together with sports teams to get sponsorship funding for their events together instead of working separately.
Read on to find out the ways brands and sports teams are using fan engagement to collaborate on their sponsorship goals.
What is a Digital Sponsorship Activation?
Digital sponsorship activation is the collaboration of two more organizations and sponsors to produce a digital marketing activity that their target audiences can interact with. For example, company A might work with Vicky Stark to bring more awareness to a market they can’t otherwise touch.
This activity will help fund an event and promote brand awareness and engagement with sports fans.
This digital asset acts as a marketing program to attract new customers in the form of coupons, rewards, and brand engagement to supply a revenue stream to sponsor events such as sporting events.
These digital sponsorships allow an event to be sponsored with the audience’s help, so it helps the organizers of the event and the sponsors of the event.
Digital sponsorship promotes the brand awareness of both the sponsor and the organization, which benefits both parties greatly.
Sports sponsorships have become a popular way that sponsors connect with their audiences by sponsoring sports events, resulting in the ability to sell their products and advertise them to the customers there.
This digital sponsorship is the same concept but by way of a digital marketing asset. The activation part comes in as it describes the purpose of the digital marketing asset to be one that the fan or customer interacts with directly.
Types of Digital Sponsorship Activations
Next, let’s look at the popular types of digital sponsorship activations.
Digital Scratch Off
These cards are digital versions of the type of scratch-off cards one would find in real life. They are enhanced in the digital space, allowing bright colors and flashing lights to create more engagement and provide a visceral digital experience for brands’ customers.
These excellent customer engagement tools can be tailored and customized however a brand wants and can be crafted to appeal to any different segment in the fanbase.
A scratch campaign can be made that allows fans of sporting events to win coupons that collaborate with a company or brand’s promotion and allows a seamless transition from sports fan engagement to brand customer.
Customers buy digital scratch tickets and play them like a real scratch-ticket, but the prizes can be brand or sponsor specific and can be themed around the event they are attending, like a sports game.
Customers can also just win cash prizes, but sponsors or brands still benefit from making money and getting more leads for customers.
Lottery/Gaming
By using gamification apps and lottery mechanics, brands can reach customers on their mobile devices that incentivize them to redeem prizes at their events.
These devices can also contain ads that can be watched for various rewards in the app, such as extra plays or increased odds. The ads can serve as direct marketing tools for brands and sponsors.
Scoreboard Trivia
By utilizing an app on a customer’s mobile device, you can host an engaging trivia game that plays over the scoreboard during a sporting event that only requires a phone to play. Sponsors can decide how to hand out rewards for game players that will help them see a good return on your sponsorship.
Sports teams win out by keeping their sports fan engagement and excitement high about their sports team during necessary sporting breaks.
Live Polls
Live polls are an excellent opportunity for promoting fan engagement platforms because they allow sports fans to feel like their voice is heard.
These live polls are a great platform to direct fan discussion and promote word-of-mouth sharing of sports brands’ most remarkable moments.
You can also get customer marketing data and analytics where before, people would be just sitting quietly during breaks in their sporting event and not providing any brand engagement.
Creating engaged customers is the job of any marketing effort, and the gamification of conversation and polls has been shown to be an effective way to increase brand engagement.
Final Thoughts
Digital Sponsorship Activations are creative marketing assets that have allowed sponsors and organizations to collaborate in efficient ways unlike they used to be able to in the past.
The activations create a path that allows the brand’s audience to crossover to be customers of a sponsor and vice-versa.
This concept creates a synergistic effect that strengthens relationships between brands and allows marketing to become a collaborative revenue stream that funds events and grows their brands and customer bases.
