Pro sports is big business worldwide. Here in North America, the competition for fans is intense thanks to the Big 5 sports: football, basketball, baseball, hockey, and auto racing. The competition is so fierce that sponsors need to choose their opportunities wisely. Likewise, teams need to assist with effective sponsorship performance evaluation tools.
Sponsorship performance evaluation boils down to measuring how effective a sponsorship is. If a sponsor isn’t getting enough value out of a sponsorship, you can probably guess what’s going to happen. That sponsor will invest its marketing budget in more productive opportunities.
KORE, the developers of an industry leading sports sponsorship software platform, explains that teams should not underestimate the importance of sponsorship evaluations. You can check out their website or contact them to learn more. In the meantime, here are some key things teams should know about evaluating sponsorship performance:
1. Why It Matters
For starters, sponsorship performance evaluation should matter to teams because it matters to internal stakeholders. CEOs and CFOs alike or very particular about spending money. If those in decision-making positions want to establish the legitimacy of a sponsorship to the executives in the C-suite, they need performance data to back it up.
Sponsorship performance evaluation also matters because:
- It justifies preserving existing sponsorships.
- It helps inform decisions about future opportunities.
- It fuels optimizing sponsorships at every stage.
An automated sponsorship performance tracking tool that enhances the marketing team’s capabilities for providing real time data and metrics on KPIs. That leads us to the next point.
2. Choosing the Right Metrics Is Important
Sponsorship performance evaluation is heavily rooted in metrics. But not all metrics matter. Teams should focus on only those metrics that align with a sponsor’s goals. The rest are irrelevant; chasing them only wastes time and resources.
Here are the types of metrics teams should focus on:
- Brand metrics.
- Engagement metrics.
- Reach metrics.
Within each of these three categories there are numerous metrics that may or may not be applicable. Fortunately, a good sports sponsorship software package should allow for customized metrics so that teams are only looking at what matters.
3. Evaluation Isn’t an Exact Science
Next, teams should be aware that sponsorship performance evaluation is not an exact science. Things can differ quite a bit based on data collection methods, data resources, and even analytical approaches.
This isn’t to say that evaluation is the big data equivalent of alchemy. It is anything but. Rather, it is to say that performance evaluations can point teams in the right direction, yet they are not foolproof.
4. It’s Smart to Follow Best Practices
Given the varied nature of sponsorship performance evaluation, teams can best support their sponsors by always following industry best practices. Based on my understanding, those practices include:
- Setting clear objectives
- Measuring outcomes instead of outputs
- Aligning costs with objectives
- Benchmarking at the front end
- Continually tracking and analyzing data
- Integrating multiple data sources
- Employing real time, predictive analytics
Among the common challenges related to sponsorship performance evaluation are inaccurate and fragmented data. Teams need to understand that their performance evaluations will only be as accurate as the data that informs them. So a team’s choice of data sources is critical.
Sports sponsorship software is a good place to start in the quest to support sponsors with performance evaluations. Teams willing to provide such support will find it easier to attract new sponsors while also activating and maintaining existing sponsorships. And like fans themselves, happy sponsors are more likely to be loyal sponsors. Take care of them and they will come back time and again.
