How do you experiment with innovative sports marketing?

1 Identify your goals and metrics

Before you launch any experiment, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve and how you will measure it. Do you want to increase awareness, engagement, loyalty, revenue, or something else? What are the key performance indicators (KPIs) that reflect your goals? For example, if you want to boost fan engagement, you might track metrics such as social media interactions, website visits, app downloads, or survey responses.

2 Choose a suitable method and platform

Depending on your goals and metrics, you can choose from different methods and platforms to run your experiments. For example, you can use online tools such as surveys, polls, quizzes, or games to collect feedback and data from your target audience. You can also use social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok to test different types of content, formats, and hashtags. Alternatively, you can use offline methods such as focus groups, events, or promotions to test your ideas in real-life situations.

3 Segment and target your audience

To make your experiments more effective and relevant, you need to segment and target your audience based on their characteristics, preferences, and behaviors. For example, you can use demographics, psychographics, geographics, or behavioral data to create different segments of fans, sponsors, or media. Then, you can tailor your experiments to each segment and deliver them through the most appropriate channels and platforms.

4 Analyze and optimize your results

After you run your experiments, you need to analyze and optimize your results based on your goals and metrics. You can use tools such as Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, or Twitter Analytics to track and compare your results across different segments, platforms, and time periods. You can also use tools such as A/B testing, multivariate testing, or heat maps to identify what works and what doesn't in your experiments. Based on your analysis, you can optimize your experiments by making changes, scaling up, or discarding them.

5 Learn from best practices and examples

One of the best ways to experiment with innovative sports marketing is to learn from best practices and examples from other sports organizations or industries. You can research and benchmark what other successful sports marketers are doing and how they are experimenting with new ideas and technologies. You can also look for inspiration and insights from other fields such as entertainment, gaming, or education. For example, you can learn from how Netflix uses personalization, gamification, and interactivity to create engaging content and experiences for its users.

6 Keep testing and innovating

Finally, you need to keep testing and innovating your sports marketing strategies to stay ahead of the competition and meet the changing needs and expectations of your audience. You need to monitor the trends and developments in the sports industry and the wider society and adapt your experiments accordingly. You also need to foster a culture of innovation and experimentation in your sports organization and encourage feedback and collaboration from your stakeholders.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?