Marketing in 2021 with a focus on Sports

Sports Marketing Strategies for 2021 and Beyond

With the growth of technology over the last decade, marketing has become increasingly more digitized. As a result, new strategies such as search engine optimization have spurred recent privacy changes and cookieless advertising to appeal to the social change-conscious consumer of 2021. Even through all these changes, the idea of marketing has stayed the same: to value the customer by marketing personally, but also efficiently so you can save time to keep up your day-to-day operations. The year 2021 will continue to see ripple effects from the pandemic, which has caused consumer behavior to change forever, leading to profound implications for brands and marketers worldwide. The sports marketing world has done a great job of adapting to these changes by establishing brand partnerships, being active on social media and fostering customer loyalty. 

Last year was full of successful brand collaborations like McDonald’s and Travis Scott, Louis Vuitton and the NBA, and the NFL and Spongebob; which means more brand collaborations are likely to happen. Unexpected partnerships between brands generate media attention and allow for cross-marketing, which helps grow the sport. For example, when Nickelodeon and CBS partnered up for an NFL Super Wild-Card Weekend during January of this year, it helped capture a new audience by encouraging young children to tune into the game to watch their favorite TV show characters announce the game. Establishing brand partnerships like this is one of the key marketing strategies because it plays well in an era of hard-to-capture consumer attention. 

One of the biggest trends of the last decade with potentially far-reaching implications is social media marketing. Digital marketing through major social media platforms gives marketers the best opportunity to diversify their audience by putting their products in front of potential clients. Social media has reduced the friction from product to purchase with the creation of in-app shopping on social media channels, allowing fans worldwide to purchase their favorite sports teams’ memorabilia with just the click of a button. 

The growth of social media has also allowed marketers to promote their products through social videos. TikTok is one of the biggest platforms for this  having over 1.1 billion users and being available in more than 150 global markets. Platforms like TikTok and Instagram allow marketers to naturally weave brand content into users’ feeds through search engine optimization. As a result, the major leagues around the nation, such as the NBA, MLB and NFL, have started to generate more and more content on social media to appeal to a broader audience. An extension of this video trend is live streams, which became very popular during the beginning of the pandemic. When an athlete goes live on Instagram, all of their millions of followers will try to tune in because it gives fans a taste of what their favorite player is like while at home. Therefore, going live will continue to be a rising marketing trend in 2021 because it allows social media representatives from the major sports leagues to communicate directly with their fans. 

Since the pandemic forced people to stay inside, social media use increased dramatically. As a result, this planted a seed for influencers worldwide to grow their following as quickly as possible. Sports marketing firms took advantage of this by using influencers’ notoriety as a marketing strategy to increase their audience. A perfect example of this took place during the 2020 all-star game when the NBA partnered up with influencers like Addison Rae and Charli D'Amelio to promote their all-star game products. According to Kent Lewis, president and founder of digital marketing agency Anvil Media, "A recent study found that 40% of people reported that they purchased a product online after seeing it used by an influencer on YouTube, Instagram or Twitter." Micro-influencers have such a strong following because they speak more personally and give honest opinions that resonate with their followers. 

Besides having a solid social media marketing team, having direct relationships with customers will be even more critical as the online landscape becomes increasingly cluttered with brands trying to reach digital consumers. One-on-one relationships mean brands can personalize content for better experiences. Loyalty has always been the foundation of sports marketing, which is why customer retention is critical to success. Marketing teams for leagues such as the NBA and NFL have used strategies such as personalized push notifications on smartphones and loyalty incentives to keep their fans coming back to the games. These marketing firms realize that keeping existing customers happy is cheaper than acquiring new ones. Hence, why Sports Media Inc has been successful for the last decade.